welcome withdrawals…

As I said last week, “I want to switch gears a bit. Instead of pointing out how we have missed the point, I want to move into ‘where do we go from here?’” Not that I am done with criticism and not that I have “what is next” all mapped out. This is undoubtedly going to be an imperfect place to start, but I’m ok with that.

My very first post is titled “God will die if you don’t sing.” You can read it by clicking on “March” in the “Blog Archive” menu to the left and scrolling down to it. In that post, I made a few points about what I believe worship truly is. If you haven’t read it, unfortunately you probably should. You may not agree with my conclusions, but at least you will understand where I am coming from in this post. A lot of people view “worship services” in the same light as an Old Testament religious duty with a lot of prescribed details and regulations all to be offered to God in the “right” way every holy Sunday. I see worship as the “posture” of one’s life (all inclusive) and what we call “worship services” I see more as “gatherings” designed to encourage and spiritually form us. With this view, come a lot less rules and stuffiness than in the typical view of worship purported in my heritage. Again, my first post goes into more detail of why I see things this way.

A friend of mine referenced a great article by Jason Zahariades, found here, in a comment on one of my early posts. I have sent this article to many people and it is definitely worth taking the time to read. In the article a guy, who is not named (aka some dude) is quoted as saying,

“Here's a strong statement: most evangelicals, including Vineyard people, are addicted to church culture. Take away their Sunday service, their bible studies, prayer meetings, and five-song worship teams and they start having withdrawals quickly. I think that it is a necessary part of this process to have a detox time...

That is a strong statement indeed, but one that I believe to be entirely accurate. Here is another strong statement: We need to remove these worship services from the center of our paradigm. Everything we do centers around these times and everything else usually takes a back seat. We are so focused on our own personal piousness and securing our own personal salvation (usually motivated by “an unpredictable grace” theology) it is no wonder we have isolated ourselves in Bible classes and worship services feeding off the sound of our own voices week after week. I don’t know about you, but my personal Christian time sheet over the last almost two decades is filled with “worship services”, bible classes, devotionals, and the like only to be occasionally dotted with “hand to hand” service, community involvement and spattered concern for the easily overlooked. I take responsibility for this, but the pull of the church paradigm current most of us have floated in for years can be hard to swim against. That is why the guy I quoted above suggested a detox. It is like any other addiction. If you are going to change your “Christian lifestyle” or “church paradigm” it will take blatantly saying “no” to what you have been doing for years and it will hurt, be confusing and feel very awkward.

Our gatherings, which typically include prayer, songs, teaching, sharing and encouragement are designed to spiritually form us. But these gatherings aren’t the only way we are shaped. I talk about this even more in “The way to the Way” in June and “Looking in the wrong place” in May. What if we stopped overemphasizing “worship services” and worked to create more equity between encouraging gatherings, serving/community involvement, learning/discipleship, and fellowship (These are just broad titles and an imperfect list)? We often want to keep our worship service anchor and work everything else off of it. This causes two problems. One, as I said before, everything else usually becomes secondary. Many people make it to Sunday church, but not much else. This really makes for imbalance in their (and our) formation leaving so many of us immature. Why? Because worshipful gatherings are just one part of the multitude of ways to be spiritually formed. Two, by adding everything else around our staple Sunday “worship service” we usually begin to create very big and time consuming programs. The major problem with this is that it often leads to isolating ourselves in our church-subculture. I talk about this battle for time also in the “The way to the Way” in June.

So, what am I suggesting? Maybe there is room to explore a more balanced schedule in the chunk of a month. Maybe week 1 consists of a Sunday (anytime) or Saturday night worshipful gathering of praise, sharing, encouragement, and learning. Maybe week 2 is service/community involvement project again on Sunday or Saturday. This could be done in a large group or a smaller groups spread out. Ideally this would involve some long-term commitments instead of a series of random projects.. Week 3 would involve a men’s camaraderie event(“fellowship” is worn out and reminds me of paper plates and styrofoam cups and not necessarily “good times” – although I’m not sold on “camaraderie” either) on one night and a women’s on another. Week 4 could be a week for classes and deep, spiritual discussion. I realize this doesn’t speak to youth groups or children’s ministry, but if you read the article quoted earlier, it makes some good points that speak to those. What would you do on a weekend where the service event happened on Saturday and there was nothing planned for Sunday? Rest, spend time with your family, have your own small group gathering….This isn’t perfect, but the main point is that we need to make major changes in our over emphasis of “worship services” and under emphasis of everything else. One way to begin to explore that is to take “worship services” 0ut of the center of the paradigm and put them on a list of other equally important and spiritually forming items and let the withdrawals begin.