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| with thanks to http://www.christcenteredmall.com/stores/art/fincher/heres_the_church.htm |
What is a church service supposed to be about? Should I be able to invite non-believers? Or should a service be focused on the community of believers and look for other opportunities to serve non-believers?
My initial thoughts are that the combination of just standing there singing, with no significant interaction between people, for such a long time - and the often self-focused (i.e. all about my experiences of God and my feelings about God) lyrics - puts me off a bit!
If church were not for welcoming non-believers, then I could see that this may be useful for the believer to manipulate his/her own emotions (practising self-control) through the joy of music but, even then, I feel my emotions would better be stirred in the right direction by lyrics that praise God (i.e. tell stories about God, rather than speak of my feelings – or wished-for feelings! - about him).
So that moved me onto thinking about the second question, initially because of the question about what would all that self-expression at God with no significant interaction with others make a non-believer think, but then also thinking about when we take communion, with the stern warning from Paul “For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.” (1 Corinthians 11:29) - does our invitation to a non-believer to come to church become an invitation to something that is, in a very in-your-face kind of way, an invitation to something they can't partake in?
On that last point, I discussed this with an Anglican, who suggested that inviting people to church and then having communion is a good thing: the idea being that you preach such a loving Jesus that, when the offer of partaking in his body and blood by faith comes, the hearers believe and partake! Good point!
I also asked a Catholic about this. His answer was interesting from a 'is church for believers?' point of view. He said that Catholics tend to treat a church service as time for the sacraments (and particularly communion) so very little else goes on in church. When I asked him when they do all their outreach, etc., he said that every moment outside of church is an opportunity for that. This is a nice idea because it seems to free the church from having to 'own' each of its member’s evangelistic programs or ideas or activities!
I also asked a Baptist / Free Church worshipper about what he thought church should be about. He mainly focused on the teaching, suggesting that it should be more of a Bible study and discussion in small groups than, necessarily, a talk from the front. I like the more personal aspect of this, although I personally think that preaching from the front can still happen if the preacher doesn't try to suggest what the 'application' is from the passage for everyone but, instead, just preaches about how each passage tells us of Jesus and the gospel of God's love for us, letting the Holy Spirit work out the application individually with each believer in the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years after!
Lastly, I spoke with a 'neocharismatic evangelical' church planter, who'd grown disillusioned with the current emphasis that a lot of his church's music has on self-expression (instead of true praise). He was very interesting: he firmly believed that church was an evangelistic activity – claiming that every believer should be built up through the same activities, etc., as would "evangelize" the non-believer.
An on-going question for me, then ... what do you think?
