Thursday, June 28, 2007

What if all of life was worship--the way we approached every day...expecting God to show up? Would it impact our lives? Wouldn't there be an overflow from our lives into our assemblies--Sunday, Saturday, Thursday or whenever...?

What would it look like in a 1000+ member church if we gathered each week in eagerness and suspense...expecting God to make Himself known in our midst. I wonder how it would impact the way we worship. I wonder how it would impact what was said. I wonder how it would impact the way we allocate our time for different parts of the service. Would we listen more? Can it really happen? Are we too conditioned? Has "Sunday morning church" morphed into something that leaves too little space for God's surprising presence? Or have we arrived? Is this what centuries of Jesus followers were longing to establish?

PS: Great comments, Steve! It's exactly where I was coming from but neglected to write...

8 comments:

Steve said...

Ya know, that's a very interesting question. I realize it's sort of, well, your job to think about such things, but I wonder if the question is somewhat off-kilter. I'm really not trying to be a stick-in-the-mud, but isn't this the kind of thinking that has created the "Sunday-Monday Disconnect," as Alan Hirsch puts it?

Here's a quote from his latest blog post:

It is left to the believer to live one way in the sacred sphere and have to another in the secular. It is the actual way we do church that communicates this non-verbal message of dualism. The medium is the message after all. And it sets people up to see things in an essentially distorted way where God is limited to the religious sphere. This creates a vacuum that is filled by idols and false, or incomplete, worship.

Definitely read the entire thing, though.

I'm all for experiencing God during the hour a week we're together, but isn't a more important question, "What if we lived each day expecting God to show up ... to guide us in the extraordinary way of Jesus ... to shine through us as we minister to our broken world?" (or some variation thereof)

What do you think?

Brandon Scott Thomas said...

to be honest...that's my point of view too. In fact, more than I could probably write about here. However, I should have asked--realizing that's the model many have and will have for a while. What do we do with it? Abandon it? My point really is...if we lived that way, really, where every day is an experience in worship with the Lord--wouldn't it impact our assembly times--whether it's Sunday, Thursday, Monday morning or late Friday night? Wouldn't there tend to be an overflow of sorts from lives lived when they all get together?

Brandon Scott Thomas said...

PS: check out the last part of that paragraph--about Jesus followers...that was tongue in cheek. :)

Sarah said...

Yes, yes, yes, and it's very hard to take you seriously with your indian headdress on.

As a "layperson" I sense that struggle/ frustration in the leadership of the church where I worship. I think that as each of us grasp what it means to be a Christ-follower/ imitator living each day in worship, our coming together as a body will look dramatically different. But I sure don't know how to get there. I strive for MY life to look like that, but I don't know how to encourage the other 1,499 people I worship with on Sunday morning to do the same.

Good thoughts -- BST and Steve!

wstaple said...

Brandon,

I just got out of chapel service a few minutes ago. Phil Joel, former Newsboy bassist, led worship this morning. He and his wife have created a new ministry called deliberatepeople.com. The whole premise of the ministry is that as Christians we've got to be intentional about having a close relationship with God. It doesn't just happen accidentally. Same thing with having a life that's full of worship. We've got to be deliberate about it.

Wade

Deb said...

Great debate, here. I'll add my two pence.

A large part of Americans rethinking church also means they will have to rethink the financial structures their 'churches' have set up. It seems that many of America's 'ministers' have developed a sense of entitlement towards financial recompense of ‘services rendered’. If many of America’s ministers were paid on the scale of what the average ‘minister’ and vicar get here in the UK ($18,000 to $24,000, plus very meagre living accommodation), many would rethink their career move. (Charles Siburt’s Rich List of Preachers just came out at ACU: http://www.acu.edu/news/2007/070620_ministerssurv.html)

It seems that the money-trap plays a large role in how to do church in America. They need a great building set-up to validate their level of worship and fellowship. When one removes all the perks – the buildings, the facilities like indoor gyms and bookstores, fellowship halls with kitchens, glossy educational resources, generous choir rooms with built in risers, ginormous parking lots that need police to control traffic, unbelievable sound/media systems, but to name a few – the reasons for being ‘church’ draw farther away from Jesus’ sermons to those on the hillsides. (How in the world did he survive without at least a megaphone?)

I think that money and celebrity have made things too posh and cushy for most American church people to seriously want to change their 'style of worship'. If that were not true, then many of them would insist that the foreign missionaries they support live as grandly as they do. They would do more than send a group of short term missionaries to fashion a Habitat for Humanity structure out of concrete. How patronising is that?(I have a book with quotes from all the American visitors who visit our neat old churches over here, and then complain because the pews are too hard, there’s no heating or AC, no rooms for Sunday School, no fellowship hall or kitchen, a poor sound system, and for goodness sakes, where’s the indoor toilet? They ignore our village community aspect of fellowship, where our real church takes place.)

Until we strip things down to the bare essentials, or they get stripped down for us, we sometimes do not learn what true church is truly about. I am not advocating this, totally. But would your typical spirit-led pastor or worship leader really want to ‘do church’ if they did not have a budget or access to all the toys?

Deb said...

PS: I DO advocate an honest journey towards true church, totally. The road does sometimes get rough, though.

Unknown said...

I think we need more message from the pulpit that what we do on sunday morning should be rejuvenation to continue throughout the week. Not just singing songs in the car, or making sure we pray or read our bible every day, but that we are being the hands and feet of Jesus and loving radically.

I often feel that when I sit on my porch drinking a beer with any of my homeless friends that come by, that what I'm doing is much more "church" than anything we do on Sunday mornings.