Worship Service
In my last article, I noted that a good summary of the early church was described in Acts 2:42: “…they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. [ESV]” How different is that from what we experience in modern-day church? From my perspective, quite a lot! However, for now, let’s just concentrate on the typical Sunday-morning church gathering, usually called “The Worship Service.”
Whether evangelical or mainline, most churches follow a set pattern for Sunday-morning gatherings. Welcome, announcements, couple of hymns, a prayer, “tithe” collection, a sermon, and a wrap-up song along with an alter call. Some churches fiddle around with the order, but the general outline is the same.
Granted, some of this sounds a little like the early church as described in Acts 2:42. There is some prayer time (usually a request to bless the offering, maybe a prayer for the pastor before he preaches, and an ending prayer). There may be some formal fellowship (if shaking hands qualifies). If you are lucky enough to attend a worship service that includes communion, then there is breaking of bread (more on that in a future article). However, very little of that sounds like the “devoted” activities of the church in Acts. Let’s face it: at worship service, most of our fellowship, breaking bread, and prayers are pretty passive.
Which brings me to my main point. The most passive activity on Sunday mornings is also the main focus of almost every worship service. The sermon. Yes, love it or hate it, the sermon is the central activity of worship service. Lasting anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes (or more!), the sermon is where the modern church tries to accomplish the one other activity listed in the early church of Acts: the apostles’ teaching. Let’s leave aside for now the purpose of preaching, and concentrate on what we’re actually doing during the modern sermon.
Because of the way the church has morphed over the years, worship services are too structured to allow a back-and-forth between the teacher and the audience. Very seldom (let’s face it: almost never) is a question ever posed from the audience. If the goal is to explain Scripture to disciples well enough to help them on their spiritual journey towards sanctification, then a lecture is probably the least-effective method to use. That’s one reason why we can look around Sunday mornings and see folks who have mentally checked out (or even fallen asleep). No matter how enthusiastic a preacher may be, the amount of valuable, retainable, applicable information passed from pastor to layman is next to nil.
However, the question may be: is the purpose of preaching during worship service to exegete Scripture in order to help disciples progress in sanctification? Judging from most any worship service sermon, I’d say not. The typical sermon seems focused on bringing the lost to salvation. In other words, the pastor tries to evangelize the church. Read that last sentence again. Doesn’t “evangelize the church” sound like an oxymoron? Evangelization happens to people outside the church (if we consider the church to be the local community of believers). I’m all for evangelization, but if I hear one more sermon where the preacher tells me I need to repent and believe, I may just lose my religion. Okay, I’m just kidding. But seriously, do you think the sermons we hear on Sunday mornings are anywhere close to how the disciples were taught in the early church? I think not.
So, if you’re still reading this, you may be asking, “what is the solution?” Before we get the solution, we need to first finish diagnosing the problem. And we’ll do that in our next couple of articles.