SUPPOSE THAT I NO LONGER ATTEND AN INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH

Would you pretend with me please? Let's suppose a scenario. I haven't quit going to church, but suppose that I have. Suppose that I have made a difficult decision to stop attending Sunday worship at our local church. I am not a cranky irritant. I am an earnest, studious Christian. I love the Lord Jesus and I love his church. Suppose that I have been an active member and participant for many years. I have enjoyed your respect and we have served on committees and boards together. We have always seemed to have similar vision and aspirations for church ministry, expansion and progress. Then over the months of this past year you have heard me question rather than complain about church priorities, practices and methodology. I have expressed concerns about how we spend money, about the weak theology of much of the music we sing, about the topical sermons and lack of scriptural content. Perhaps I have mentioned my need for reverence. Perhaps you have told me, "you sound like an old person." Yet maybe I have pointed out that I like many of my age group do make every effort to accommodate to the changes within church culture and I along with them do not carp and complain. We don't whine or grumble. We sing and we pray and we stay interested and involved. We cherish our church friends and our pastors. We support the evangelistic fervour and outreach into the neighbouring community. What more can any of expect? And then, at some point, for my own reasons, some of which I myself cannot fully understand or explain, I conclude, I can't do this any longer.

This has all been supposition. I am not really thinking about leaving my local congregation, but suppose that I had left. How would you as a church member look at me? How would you treat me? Could you agreeably see me as analytical rather than critical? Could you accept that I was no longer satisfied with the status quo of organized Christianity? Would you trust me when I said that I am still growing spiritually as God's child and that I do desire significant relationships with other believers because I know God has not called me to isolation? Would you believe me when I told you that I made my decision after studying scripture, and because I live in relation to Christ and to other followers of Christ I am convinced that in that relational network I am integrally engaged in church? With how much do you agree?

GOING BACK, FAR BACK, FOR THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH

I believe that Christians need to be provoked to re-examine our practice of faith in the context of church as we have either invented it, inherited it or as we perpetuate it.

When I was a boy and throughout the early years of my own pastoral ministry career, Sunday church consisted of Sunday School classes for all ages, followed by a one hour conventional church worship service containing three hymns, beginning, middle and end, a prayer, an offering, a sermon. The sermon and the spoken Word were paramount in evangelical churches. That was it. Within evangelicalism, this model was a departure from liturgical ceremonial worship in mainline churches. Why did we do it that way?

Twenty-five years ago a contemporary worship wave began in charismatic circles and swept most evangelical churches. A team of worship leaders with guitars and drums occupied platforms and led standing congregations of worshippers in singing praise choruses for 20-30 minutes. This gave the congregation greater expressive involvement modelled by music forms they listened to every day. Why do we do it that way, still?

Some believers ask this question because for them, personally, some aspect of worship is absent, reverence, solemnity, awe, or earnestness. They must name it. Their souls long for something perhaps approximate and unmet. Finally they leave church.

They begin to think that maybe they should go back to the future.

Going back far enough takes us into the presence of Christ sitting with his disciples. He spoke about church to them. Examination reveals that church as he envisioned it was enormous and in practice it was modest, simple. Church would be an applicable term to embrace countless disciples throughout the world in every generation until the end of time. Church would meet in homes, caves, forests, prisons, refugee camps, schools, and buildings constructed by Christians specifically for their gatherings. Wherever they met they invoked the presence of God, were filled with the Spirit of God, praised the Lord Jesus Christ with muted or exuberant voices depending on circumstances, and then went forth to live by faith and to give a reason for their belief to everyone who asked them.

Maybe we should go back to the future. The trip back could become our future. Maybe it should be the future that we seek. Maybe the Church needs nothing more than to be filled with the Spirit and satisfied with Christ.