What is the purpose of our gatherings as believers? This is an “age-old” discussion we wrestle with here in the West or all over the world for that matter. Do we gather to worship? Is it discipleship? Is it evangelism for people to bring their friends who are not Christians? Often times the answer to this question determines how you “do church.” I have a library full of books written by authors, mostly pastors, who advocate their slant on the answer to this question. Within this continuum you have a wide variety of expressions ranging from the ultimate show like Ed Young Jr. at Fellowship Church in Grapevine (TX) who used a real tank on stage as a prop. They don’t spare any expense for the Sunday morning program to be top notch. For other churches it is more like huge bible studies with the focus being on cognitive discipleship where the teaching usually is expository and lasts a good hour.
What is the purpose? Does anything from the early church in Acts give us a blueprint? Well, yes and no. If the goal is to contextualize the expression of church into the host culture then what does Acts teach us? Again, do we read Acts as DEscriptive or PREscriptive? So they gathered in the temple initially and met in homes daily but once persecution hit the temple-gig was out the door and the church was forced underground. Obviously they weren’t putting on a big show for the “lost” people of the first century and instead of tanks on the stage there were camels or something.
I’m not even saying how we’re “doing church” is wrong at all, but sometime when you think of placing our blueprint of church today back onto the Acts church it does seem a bit odd. How would the people respond to an entertainment-drive church? Would it makes sense? Would masses of “lost” people wander in off the dusty roads to learn about how to have a better marriage or to learn skills from a biblical perspective on how to deal with co-workers? Well … I’d have to say probably? Maybe? Definitely? Who knows? And that’s probably not even a valid question since I firmly believe that Acts is more descriptive and reactionary as to the way they “did church.”
Others argue that we gather to simply worship God through song. So which is it? Are we taking too much liberty in our compartmentalized categories to think we can dissect what takes place on Sunday as one thing over another? Church is not something that happens on Sundays. It’s akin to saying that I am a human more than one hour a week. I’m a human 24/7. We ARE the church 24/7 and while we may gather on Sundays for an hour that is but a mere fraction of our entire lives. Think about it … you spend more time in the shower each week than you do at a worship gathering! So if all we’ve done is defined chuch as an hour time slot on the weekends where does that lead us the rest of that day or even the entire week? So is all the debate on how we meet for an hour even a relevant conversation? Shouldn’t we spend more time getting people to do/be church the rest of the week since that takes up 99.8% of the rest of their lives? If all we’re focusing is that .02% of the week and spend all of our money, resources, and staff on that itty bitty time slot doesn’t that seem a little lop-sided?
