CLOVERDALE BAPTIST CHURCH 2015

I read many Facebook respondents in the last few days express sadness at the demolition of the forty-something year old building that housed the Cloverdale Baptist Church. I acknowledge my own melancholic sentiments as the giant arm of the shovel pushed through sanctuary walls and reduced them to rubble. I am permitted the feelings since I served as lead pastor for ten years from 1991-2001. I was daily inside the facility and officiated countless meetings and services, weddings and baptisms. My two children were each married to their sweethearts in that sanctuary into which sun blasted through the gaping wound this week before the walls disappeared. 

Now they must remain as memories and that is fine since next to the demolition site now stands a newly completed building with twice as much seating and classroom space and state of the art equipment. This observation stands as a metaphor for a theme on which I have been hammering for a little while. What has been constructed is not a church although that is how we commonly employ the term. Nor would it be true to say that the church was reduced to debris. Church was the collective people inside the older structure and Church continues to be that group of people and whoever also joins them inside the new design. It's difficult for us to move away from language that by weight of habit associates church with physical structure, but we should make the effort. We do not go to church. We are church. We don't attend church. We live as church. Does it make any difference? I believe it does. Otherwise, like a fantasy we could say, if we build it (the church), they (people) will come. What we should say is, if we are it (the church) they (the people) will come. It is not where we go but who we are that is important. If we live as church, God's family, Christ's bride, a ransomed flock with a divine shepherd, then by exposure to us, others whom the LORD wants to call will hear his voice. 

RETHINK WORSHIP - NOSTALGIA VERSUS POPULAR

I am unsure whether I am being realistic. Perhaps you can tell me. Worship and church have been synonymous but what we have been doing with worship deserves examination. First, we have lately presumed music is equated with worship and this has led to silly tags like worship CDs, worship leaders, worship bands, and worship teams, effectively omitting scripture reading, recitations, preaching, prayer, offering, testimonies and silence from a definition for 'worship.' As composers have produced creative and fresh hymns and spiritual songs there have also been attempts to accommodate the range of reactions. Many churches have provided options, that is, dissimilar worship services. Traditional versus contemporary is the pitched tension. Old versus new is a dichotomy that I view as needless and unhappy. Nostalgia versus popular? Baloney.

Who wants this? Pastoral staff members do not want additional preps and toil. Medium sized churches agonize from splintered relationships when trying to imitate the professed success of wealthier and grander churches. Segregation by age breaks the spirit of the Body. An older generation does not need to worship alone. Seniors don't need only music composed before or during their own youth. They must participate and witness the enthusiasm and involvement of younger generations. Children, youth and young adults need to experience worship together with elders to understand the corporate identity of this people that Jesus has redeemed. We should consistently be incorporating new songs into the best songs of previous generations. What is indispensable is a theological filter within each congregation to insure that the theologies do not differ between newer and older material. 

And then there is this peculiarity. When an expectation is provided that people deserve choices of worship styles, they are offended when their selection is altered or removed, so they leave. Of course an individual can worship privately, but that is not to say worship is about the individual. We are not a community of consumers. God also calls his new covenant people to worship together with others as a distinct group of those who share a salvation story. Am I being realistic or sticking my head in the sand?