To show that I can do bad football analogies as well as anyone, I have been wondering lately what would happen if advocates of multisite churches applied their thinking to football.
From what we’re told about multisites and online churches…
We get just as much out of watching a video screen as being there in person
Participating in person wouldn’t really change the experience anyway
The leader is just as happy seeing me as an off-site statistic than seeing my face and hearing my voice
The leader doesn’t need to really know me, nor I him
If that logic is good enough for worship, shouldn’t it be good enough for football, which we’re told isn’t nearly as important?
Watching on TV is just as exciting as being there
Cheering from my couch affects the team just as positively as the folks who are cheering at the stadium
The coach and quarterback know that I’m with them when they review the Nielsen ratings the next day
The coach and QB would prefer that I never interact with them in real life
Besides #4, no-one believes that this is the case. Going to a game is such a different experience than watching on TV that we’ll pay lots of money for the opportunity to do it. It’s not surprising, therefore, that we so often find Perry Noble on the sidelines at Clemson football games, and his leaders in the stands (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
These guys obviously don’t believe that watching at home is as good as being there.
Talk to any engaged 20-something Christian these days, and you’ll likely find that they can rattle off a list of their favorite podcast preachers. For some, a quick scan of their iPod will probably tell you more about their doctrinal commitments than their local church membership. The relatively recent phenomenon of being able to carry your favorite preacher with you as you’re on the go changes the way we listen to the preached Word of God.
The sermon you hear on your iPod is significantly inferior to the preaching you hear at your local church on Sunday morning. Here’s why:
The preacher doesn’t know you. Although preaching is not the only aspect of shepherding, ideally preaching and shepherding should go together. A preacher feeds his flock the Word of God, though always presenting it in a way that’s meaningful for that particular congregation. To your pastor, you’re a known family member sitting around the (metaphorical) table; to your podcast preacher, you’re a hit, an anonymous number.
You can choose your sermons. Podcasts are perfect for people with itching ears (that’s all of us). Each sermon is labeled and invites us to download or delete it. When I go to my local church on Sunday, I usually don’t know the details of the pastor’s sermon. He commits to preach the Word of God as it’s written, and I commit to listen, test and obey the preached Word as I hear it. Dodging difficult messages is harder when you don’t see them coming.
You can listen while distracted. When you listen to a preacher while driving down the interstate eating your lunch, you’re probably not going to be able to concentrate quite as well as if you were sitting in church. The very value of podcasting is that we can take our preachers with us, so the assumption is that we’ll be multitasking when we listen. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with multitasking, but it’s not worship.
You can listen without your Bible. Although this is possible to do in church, the on-the-go multitasking quality of podcast audiences makes this much more likely. Having a Bible on hand as we listen lets us see as well as hear the Word; it also lets us quickly check the context of a verse and engage in on-the-fly testing of the preacher’s message.
You’re alone. In church I am both encouraged and challenged by the fact that I see my Christian family worshipping with me. Fellowship with God is accompanied by fellowship with his family. Although podcasting and Internet participation carry with them the idea of a virtual community, it’s still only virtual. I know there may be thousands of other believers sharing the podcast with me, but I don’t know who they are. Neither will they know me.
He’s always preaching to someone else. When we listen to a podcast preacher, it’s almost always someone else’s preacher. When the preacher challenges his congregation, it’s always someone else who’s being challenged, not me. Not only am I anonymous and unaccountable, the preacher isn’t even expecting me to be accountable.
It’s usually out of context. Sermons are an integral part of church worship, which usually includes other elements like singing, prayer, confession, communion and giving. To take the sermon out of that context deprives it of the participation and preparation that is a valuable part of the in-church sermon.
I’m not saying that we need to delete all of our podcast subscriptions. There are obviously exceptions to all the points I’ve just made.
Clearly, there is value in hearing the Word of God preached well by anyone, but our primary source of spiritual sustenance, beyond our own Bible study and prayer, should come through membership in a local church with a preacher that faithfully preaches God’s Word.
It is time that the Christian community got beyond themselves…it is time that we begin looking for what IS working in other churches and ministries rather than sit around and criticize what is going on. Be secure enough to get outside of the circle of people who think, talk and act just like you!!!
We are part of the Southern Baptist Convention. We are part but not married to them. However they are kind of like the Titanic, they are sinking but instead of sinking they are just rearranging the chairs.
With talk like that, it’s probably just as well they’re not married.
The answer, of course, is no, but one might be excused for coming to that conclusion after reading Andy Stanley’s assault on pastoral ministry in this lauded interview from 2007.
Stanley the Younger is a lead-by-example advocate of CEO pastoring and wants to run through the Bible with a large bottle of whiteout to get rid of the tricky bits that describe Christ-modeled pastoral ministry. Since Downing linked to this article last week, I haven’t been able to get this section out of my head:
Should we stop talking about pastors as “shepherds”?
Absolutely. That word needs to go away. Jesus talked about shepherds because there was one over there in a pasture he could point to. But to bring in that imagery today and say, “Pastor, you’re the shepherd of the flock,” no. I’ve never seen a flock. I’ve never spent five minutes with a shepherd. It was culturally relevant in the time of Jesus, but it’s not culturally relevant any more.
Absolutely. That word needs to go away. Think about that and how confidently it appears to have been uttered. This site has chronicled recent appalling disrespect shown to God’s Word by Furtick and his staff, and this Stanley quote shook me with the realization of just how riddled the Turnstile Church is with a low opinion of God’s written revelation.
Some related thoughts on Stanley and the horde of leaders who imbibe his wisdom:
They worship culture more than the creator of culture. Who created the sheep? Who taught man to care for those sheep? Perhaps there was a shepherd standing nearby when Jesus spoke, but that’s only because before the foundation of the world God had ordained his profession and his activities that day. The illustration was the product of a Creator, not of a culture.
They consider themselves equal to Christ. When Jesus said “Follow me,” Stanley apparently thought he was talking about Stanley, as in, “Follow Stanley.”
“Follow me.” Follow we never works. Ever. It’s “follow me.”
Stanley refuses to follow Jesus’ on shepherding, yet appropriates Jesus’ words to clear the deck for himself and bludgeon his followers into submission.
They blaspheme the Word. Jesus is the Word, yet Stanley thinks the best he could do was search for an about-to-expire metaphor because it happened to be close at hand. Jesus was so inept with his references to shepherding that Stanley claims they were irrelevant as soon as Acts. “By the time of the Book of Acts, the shepherd model is gone,” he said. In other words, Jesus’ own words were stale by the time the New Testament was written. If we can dismiss Jesus so easily, why pay any attention to anything the other old, dead guys wrote?
They strip the Word of inconvenient truths. The obligations of a shepherd don’t feel like they fit our more advanced times, so we shouldn’t even try to deal with them. Stanley cites Bill Hybels as inspiration for dismissing the Bible as too anachronistic.
It’s going to be the best corporate institution it can possibly be, and we’re not going to try to merge first century –
The church wasn’t an organization in the first century.
Not an organization? Don’t tell Paul or any of the supervising apostles in Jerusalem. How shortsighted was Jesus not to anticipate that the church would grow so much it would one day turn into an organization? You can’t expect too much business foresight from a young rural carpenter, though, so we’ll give him a break. He founded a pretty useful brand name, so we’ll keep him around.
They misunderstand the role of the pastor. Stanley allows that we can still see glimpses of shepherding.
Nothing works in our culture with that model except this sense of the gentle, pastoral care.
Yes, the shepherd could be gentle, but he was responsible for the life of his sheep. He fed the sheep, disciplined the sheep, and even sacrificed his life for them. Does David strike you as a gentle-all-the-time kind of character? Me neither.
They abandon the saints to the wolves. This was yet another important function of the shepherd, and how our aforementioned hero developed the skills that let him fell a giant. If the shepherd was a disposable metaphor, how do the references to heretics as wolves make sense? Note Jesus’ warning in Matthew 7:15:
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.
Note Paul’s last words to the church leaders on Ephesus in Acts 20:28-30:
Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit hath made you bishops, to feed the church of the Lord which he purchased with his own blood.
I know that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
So much for being irrelevant by Acts. Most on point is Jesus’ reference in John 10 to leaders who abandoned their roles as shepherds.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.
He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
Yet according to Stanley and his brethren, shepherd is out, and hired hand CEO is in.
Good to know.
They add their own wisdom to their religion. Although Stanley is all for doing away with shepherding, he insists on adding the CEO as an essential part of church leadership.
I think a big problem in the church has been the dichotomy between spirituality and leadership. One of the criticisms I get is “Your church is so corporate.” I read blogs all the time. Bloggers complain, “The pastor’s like a CEO.” And I say, “OK, you’re right. Now, why is that a bad model?”
It’s a bad model for the church because it’s not shepherding and it’s not Biblical. It’s an excellent model for Starbucks, though.
They are building a mass of mindless followers. The followers must be kept quiet and uninformed.
As you increase the number of people, you have to decrease the complexity of the information. Congregational rule, when you’re trying to make a complicated decision, works against the principle. So consequently, the guy with the microphone and the clearest message always wins. The most persuasive person in the room is going to win. Whether right or wrong.
We don’t want good arguments to persuade people, then they might start doubting the leader. Think of all the time Paul wasted arguing his case to the council in Jerusalem (Acts 15) when he could have been about his business of being a model CEO.
They are building a guild of authoritarian leaders. Has it ever struck you how much time these head pastors (?) spend talking to us and each other about leadership? When was the last time they held a conference to talk about God in the fashion of a Piper? Steven Furtick noted the abundance of leadership talk and resources last week:
This generation has the most access to leadership development in the history of the world. We had better MAXIMIZE it.
For what? Historically, the combination of a little bit of religion, compliant followers and authoritarian leaders has usually led to bad outcomes.
They are building a nursery for heretics. At times, we at PP are pressed to declare that folk like Noble and Furtick are burn-them-at-the-stake heretics. When we refuse to do so, we’re usually told to go away because we’re hyperventilating about stuff that doesn’t matter.
For the last decade or so, astute observers of American evangelicalism have been complaining and warning about the church’s creeping anti-intellectualism. The Turnstile Church is what you get when you mix that anti-intellectualism with cultural flexibility–a church that looks like the culture it’s a product of, but can’t see what might be problematic with that. Note how criticism is dismissed without ever–ever–engaging ideas or Scripture. If you can’t defend your ideas, if you refuse all challenges, how would you ever know whether the wolves have entered the fold?
We live at a time where massive churches are led by pastors who quote Scripture like it was Shakespeare (a few well-known quotes repeated over and over), distort it, ignore it or reject it. We are not yet at the stage where we have much blatant heresy, but we’re getting there.
What happens to the generation that comes after Stanley and Warren and Noble and Furtick? The generation that has been encouraged to ignore the study of Scripture. The generation that thinks authoritarian leaders are more important than pastors. That knows there’s no value in Leviticus. That thinks Acts talks about pastors on video screens. The generation that thinks most other local churches are either corrupt or inept. That thinks you can talk about God however you want to.
I shudder.
The problem is that by the time we get there, it’s too late. How do you bring CEOs back to the Bible when they don’t know what’s in it and don’t think it should govern them? By then, the game is lost.
So when do you raise the alarm? When do you scream bloody murder?
This is the first I’ve heard of Skye Jethani, though he seems to be a pretty important figure in the church planting / pastoral conference world. You can check out his blog here. He seems to have a pretty good perspective on things. Here is his video from The Nines online conference from last week:
Skye summarizes his speach with three main points:
Your legitimacy does not come from the impact of your ministry.
If outcomes are in God’s hands, and not yours, you must stop judging the legitimacy of your ministry by the tangible outcomes of the ministry. You must also stop judging other ministries by the tangible outcomes as well.
If our identity is truly rooted in Christ, we will defy the expectations of our culture.
Listen to this eight minute clip. Jethani really makes some great points.
Great night w a great man of God. Thx Pastor Joel 4 your humility & msg of hope. Love & honor!
Now it seems Pastor Furtick has added Joel Osteen to his growing list of spiritual mentors. Maybe, you say, this was just a nice photo op, and Steven doesn’t really know much about Osteen. Nope. Here’s a post defending Osteen from Furtick’s blog. A few selected quotes:
But to all of you mean spirited name callers who have made a career of condemning celebrity preachers: Who the heck do you think you are to criticize a man who is impacting a city like Pastor Joel is impacting Houston?
Since when is “impacting a city” the final litmus test of God’s approval? One could easily argue Truman had a large impact on Nagasaki.
…Osteen preaches to 40,000 people weekly…
You couldn’t get 40,000 people to come hear you preach if you gave away free Escalades at the door.
Once again, we get the SCOREBOARD argument, and a slam at smaller congregations. And regardless of what Osteen may be preaching, it’s all fine because he draws a large crowd.
…If you’re concerned about a lack of cross centered preaching, then preach the cross yourself instead of wasting valuable time opining about how someone else should do it better.
Which goes completely against Jesus and Paul’s many admonishments to be on the lookout for false teachers.
…Don’t hurl insults at someone with a big church simply because you can’t make your church grow, and although you’d never admit it, you’re jealous.
That’s right… most of the time the motive isn’t defense of the Gospel… it’s jealousy and presumption.
And of course, the strawman argument that the only people who may have a problem with Osteen are jealous pastors. We couldn’t possibly be concerned Christians following the biblical call to “test all things”.
…You know, I think it’s absolutely essential that Christians think critically about what is being taught in Christian pulpits. We must preserve sound doctrine. We must guard against erroneous theologies.
This is a hilarious way to end a post that is scolding us for doing just what he says we must do. But, to follow Steven’s advice here and think critically about what’s being taught, here’s a clip of Osteen you should watch. Is this what Steven calls sound doctrine?
First, note the new signature. On a few occasions now, readers have mixed up James Duncan and myself. While this is much more damaging to his reputation than to mine, a little clarity never hurt.
Now, I’d like to open a discussion about mega-churches. Let me make it clear that I have never heard James Duncan speak against mega-churches. These views are mine and mine alone. He is certainly capable of agreeing or disagreeing with any of these thoughts, as are each of you. I will attempt to put forward a scriptural view of what Church is, and how it should look. However, admitting that some of this is grey area, I am open to correction.
Two straw-men that must be burnt before we can engage in any authentic discussion on this matter:
There is no concrete cut-off number where a church has become too large. It would be impossible to pinpoint such a number. Thus, forcing me to do so would effectively change the point of this discussion and kill any other argument that I may be able to make.
To insinuate that large attendance of a particular church is necessary for the sake of thousands of salvations, is to completely misunderstand the nature of salvation, the purpose of church, and the power of the Almighty God. If God can save souls at a certain mega-church, he can also do so at a small rural congregation, or even in some open field in China where there is no established church of any size in sight.
For the sake of this discussion, we’ll use Hartford Institute’s definition for a mega-church, which it gives in it’s simplest terms as a Protestant congregation of two thousand or more regular attenders. Again, don’t get caught up in a specific number, but it will help if we all work from the same definition.
With all this in mind, I will now try to answer:
What is Wrong With a Mega-Church?
It usurps the shepherd/sheep relationship that a pastor is to have with his congregation. We’ve seen here where some pastors have been down-right scornful with members of their flock who would hope for their pastor to care about them specifically. True, one man cannot faithfully minister to 10,000 people, but a pastor’s heart should be to care for his sheep. Here’s what Andy Stanley said in a 2006 interview with Leadership Journal: “Should we stop talking about pastors as “shepherds”?
Absolutely. That word needs to go away. Jesus talked about shepherds because there was one over there in a pasture he could point to. But to bring in that imagery today and say, “Pastor, you’re the shepherd of the flock,” no. I’ve never seen a flock. I’ve never spent five minutes with a shepherd. It was culturally relevant in the time of Jesus, but it’s not culturally relevant any more.
Nothing works in our culture with that model except this sense of the gentle, pastoral care. Obviously that is a face of church ministry, but that’s not leadership.
I think most of us understand that you can’t just throw out biblical terms because they are problematic to our methodology, but that’s exactly what Stanley has done, as have hundreds of other “pastors” who see him as a mentor. We must change our methodology to fit scripture, even if that means not packing thousands of seats with people you have no intention of ministering to. It only makes sense that a pastor should not be over a congregation that is too large for him to meet their needs. Of course, some of this physical work is delegated to deacons, but if a pastor is to be held accountable for all the sheep entrusted to him, he needs to have a relationship with them. Some pastors may be able to faithfully attend to 1000 or more members. Some may only be able to care for 20 or 30, but if a person is going to church and not being ministered to, they are actually just attending a performance.
It fuels the cult-of-personality, celebrity pastor driven congregation. The majority of these mega-churches are headed by charismatic, purpose-driven leaders. These guys are very driven towards their goals. I would assume that most of these guys could be just as successful running any business as they have been in running a church. That leads me to ask, is this why thousands of people are showing up on Sunday morning? I don’t recall Paul, when giving instructions to the churches he planted, asking, “Who among you has the most charismatic personalty? Who is the most fashionably dressed? Who has the most clever wit?”. No, the things he looked for in church leaders (listed in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 ) all dealt with character and righteousness.
It raises questions about the motivation for a pastor to have such a church. As in, why do you need 12,000 people in your church, 11, 500 of whom you will never have any contact whatsoever? Are you the only minister in your town capable of delivering the Gospel? Isn’t it possible that a large majority of these peoples could be more effective elsewhere, where there attendance will be much more noticeable? Is it a pride issue? Does it make you feel powerful to know their are thousands of souls hanging on your every word? One could assume that a congregation of 12,000 probably pays better than a congregation of 500. Is that an issue?
It makes it impossible for all attendees to be involved in worship in any meaningful way. The real worship will have to be performed by those on stage, while thousands of others watch from the seats. 1 Corinthians 14:26 paints a picture of all members being vitally involved in a worship service. This is completely impossible at a mega-church. The ministry is then left to the professionals, while the normal people sit and watch. This is also in contrast with Ephesians 5:19. I could also argue that this is against the Priesthood of Believers described in 1 Peter 2:9.
I’m going to stop here for now. If there is sufficient discussion, I may do a series on this, but this should be plenty to get us started.
This week, Perry Noble is telling pastors how to avoid an affair, and this morning he’s recommending that they pay more attention to their families. Fair enough, but early on in his piece comes this reference:
Too many pastors … let the expectations and demands of needy, clingy church people (notice I didn’t say Christians) DRIVE them to a place of insanity.
A few questions:
Isn’t everyone needy?
Shouldn’t Christians be clingy?
Does being needy mean you’ve lost your salvation?
Does going to church (thus becoming a church person) make you lose your salvation?
Wasn’t the one sheep of the 99 that the shepherd went after somewhat needy?
Isn’t it a pastor’s job to care for the needy?
What does Noble have against Christians who go to churches other than his own?
Just finished reading a book by Al Mohler called He is Not Silent. Very good book that I’d recommend to anyone involved in ministry, even though it is effectually written for pastors. One particular thing that stands out to me is the three levels of doctrine defined by Mohler as:
Level 1 – Essentials of the Faith. This level includes things like the virgin birth, the Trinity, the Resurrection, and the deity of Christ. If we don’t get these right, we can’t really consider ourselves Christians.
Level 2 – There is room within level two for disagreement, but these are serious enough that we couldn’t really worship together on a regular basis if we did not agree. Things included in this group may be infant baptism, charismatic gifts, and position on predestination.
Level 3 – These are non-essential to the Faith. It doesn’t mean they aren’t important or shouldn’t be discussed. It simply means we won’t have to break fellowship over a disagreement. One thing that pops in to my mind on this level would be eschatology.
The reason I bring this up is because it seems like some here only recognize Level 1 and Level 3. You either push to call someone a heretic, or you don’t think it’s worth making a fuss about. That makes discussion particularly tough for me, because I would say most of the disagreements that I share on this site fall into Level 2. I’m not saying the person in error can’t be a Christian. I’m not calling them a heretic or a false prophet. However, for the most part, I’m not nit-picking either. I’m pointing out (sometimes in a light-hearted manner) things that I consider to be very serious issues. I point them out because I think these issues need to be addressed by each individual believer, and sadly, some modern leaders seem to want them swept under a rug.
I want to hear from you. Which issues fall into each level for you? Is this completely subjective, or is there a biblical standard to follow? Does it matter at all, or is it enough for one to confess belief in Jesus?
In this video we see Steven Furtick rage against churches with an angry little rewrite of the campfire favorite, “Kumbaya”. Here are Furtick’s new lyrics:
Kumbaya my Lord, Kumbaya. Our Church is stuck in the 1950′s and we won’t change anything my Lord, Kumbaya.
An Entire generation is dying and going to Hell with no role model outside of Paris Hilton, my Lord. Kumbaya.
Give me another program, another Bible study, Kumbaya.
A few things I want to point out about Furtick’s rant:
It’s hypocritical. – Furtick is usually strongly against criticizing preachers, or churches, or Christians that you don’t personally know. This apparently only applies when the criticism is aimed towards himself or his friends.
His anger is all about style, not about substance. Note that he doesn’t say anything about properly preaching the Word. It’s all about churches being stuck in the 50′s and not competing with Paris Hilton for role model status.
Since when did Bible study become a bad thing? Seriously. The whole clip is drenched with this hateful sarcasm, and then the very last line…which he emphasizes more than the others…lashes out against having another Bible study. It makes you wonder what exactly is happening after those 1,000′s of people are being baptized. Shouldn’t Elevation be starting many more Bible studies to ensure the growth of all these brand new Christians?
38Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
40With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.
In this very special audio version of his blog, Pastor Furtick and a few special guests from his creative team have a round table discussion about how the sermon series are planned at Elevation. In an act of selfless bravery, I listened to all thirty minutes of this, so that you don’t have to. You can thank me later.
Here is what we learn about the process from this enlightening discussion:
1.) Steven gets lots of really cool ideas. It may come from watching the Foo Fighters, listening to T.D. Jakes, or talking to his kids, but just know, Steven comes up with tons of really cool ideas.
2.) Steven is really cool.
3.) The ideas for sermon series come from Steven’s imagination.
4.) Steven is unique and relevant.
5.) Sometimes, Steven lets the creative team help him to form his really cool ideas, but sometimes he doesn’t.
6.) Steven is a visionary. (Actually referred to himself in this way.)
7.) After Steven shares his awesomely cool ideas, the creative team does things like “build a brand” and “create a buzz.” Not really sure what those terms mean as they relate to church, but they seem to be getting increasingly popular among the seeker types.
Not a lot was said about Scripture, except a couple of subtle jabs towards Pastors who teach eighty-one week series on the book of Genesis, and things like that. So basically, in thirty minutes, we learned that the ideas for the series come from Steven’s “vision”, and everything else falls in line after that. Oh yeah, and that Steven is really cool.
What I found more interesting was the spreadsheet that they use to help for the series:
Note the placement and wording of question number 7. “What Scriptures do you think you’ll use during this series?” Wait…you mean to tell me we’ve already came up with the concept for this series, with how we want it to make people feel, movie tie-ins, target audience but haven’t decided upon Scripture backing for this series yet? Wow.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen multiple times where Furtick and Noble have made great errors in misapplying Scripture, and we’ve wondered how that could keep happening. I think we’ve found our answer. At least in Furtick’s case, he openly admits to dreaming up cool, gimmicky sermon series, and only later tries to come back and tie in Scripture to justify his stance. If you are selective enough, and willing to ignore context, you can make the Bible seem to say anything you want. Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, David Koresh, and Jim Jones all claimed Scriptural backing for their whacked-out beliefs. This is exactly opposite of how a Pastor (or anyone else) should approach Scripture. The Furtick model is to decide what you belief and then try to find some Scripture to back that up. We should always approach the Scripture first, and let God’s Word dictate what we believe.
In my recent posts on the physical center of the Christian worship, a few commentators challenged the idea that the Christian church should assemble on Sundays. I promised them that I’d explain why, so here it is:
The Sabbath is as physical and natural as night and day. The origins of the Sabbath come from the seven-day cycle God established in the first week of creation, not from the Ten Commandments. God worked for six days and rested for one. Work six, rest one is built into the essence of creation, just as the cycles of night and day and winter and summer are. Although we should worship with our whole lives and pray without ceasing, there is a special day in seven created for us to focus on worship. In other words, we can’t just celebrate the Sabbath whenever we feel like it, just as we can’t turn night into day just because we want to get more work done.
The Sabbath provides us rest and worship. The creation account and Commandments tell us that the purpose of the Sabbath is to rest (for ourselves and our servants) and to worship. Neither purpose is made obsolete by the New Testament.
The Sabbath is a gift, not a law. A few earlier commentators have asked me to show where the New Testament “requires” observance of the Sabbath. Why are we looking for a law? The Sabbath can’t be understood without understanding grace; it is God’s special gift to us. If I tell my son that he has to be back from playing with his friends in time for dinner, I don’t expect him to ask me where in the family rule book it insists that we eat dinner. Because he’s a member of my family, I am delighted to offer him dinner, but he needs to be at home when we eat so we can enjoy it as a family. Similarly, God gives believers the Sabbath as our spiritual sustenance. To ask for specific rules dictate why and when we should benefit from it misses the whole point.
Jesus didn’t abolish the Sabbath, he embodies it. Some argue that because Jesus fulfills the Sabbath, it’s no longer on the books. Jesus describes himself as the Lord of the Sabbath, which is a designation he would be unlikely to use for something that had passed away. Exodus 31:16 tells us that God gave the Sabbath to his people for generations to come. The analogy is imperfect, but when we refer to the President of the United States, we don’t assume that the president has replaced the country. Instead, we see the president as a personal representative of the country. Jesus not only embodies the Sabbath, he is an essential part of it. The two central elements of the day can only be found through him. He is the source of our rest and the only reason we can worship. Rather than abolishing the Sabbath, Jesus was necessary to preserve the Sabbath.
The Sabbath publicly celebrates Jesus. Paul instructs the church or assemble an an orderly fashion. Although churches were sometimes assembled in believers’ homes, church worship was not a willy-nilly whenever and wherever proposition. The question, then, is when did the early church leaders decide was the best time to exploit the Sabbath and worship God. The early church re-calibrated the six-plus-one sequence from Genesis 1 and moved the day of rest and worship to the first day of the week, which became known as the Lord’s Day. In 1 Corinthians 16:1-2 Paul assumed that the most convenient time for the church to collect money was on the first day of the week, presumably because everyone had gathered then. John received his revelation on the Lord’s Day (Revelation 1:10), and the term’s usage assumes that his readers would know what day that was. When we enjoy God’s Sabbath on Sunday, we proclaim Christ’s resurrection just as surely as we do on Easter. The great thing is that we only have to wait seven days to do it again, not a whole year.
I’m sure there’ll be objections and other observations in the comments, but let me try to replicate a quick Q&A here.
Are you saying that we must observe the Sabbath? No, because Paul tells us in Colosians 2:16 that we are not to observe the Sabbath simply because it is the Sabbath. Our salvation is not found in works of observing Sabbaths and holy days. I’m saying that the Sabbath is a part of God’s grace to everyone. As an element of common grace, he gives all men rest, which is a point I made in the cultural argument for a Sunday Sabbath. It’s also part of God’s special grace to believers that we are privileged and able to worship him on a special day that he reserved for us. The Sabbath is best understood as a gift, not a law.
Can we celebrate the Sabbath on Wednesday like Rick Warren does? I don’t think so. The reason is that the Sabbath offers two privileges: rest and worship. Although Warren’s Wednesday services are opportunities to worship, it’s unlikely that it really functions as a day of rest for most of the congregation because our culture treats Wednesday as a work day, even in Southern California. Worship becomes something that is tacked on to the end of the day, rather than being the main point of the day, as Sunday worship is, or should be. It’s interesting that although Warren says his Wednesday services are his church’s real Sabbath, they don’t get the attention that a rest/worship day would enable. To quote an observation from my test-marketing post,
In his long-term goals, [Warren] dreams of having 15,000 members, though only 5,000 attending midweek (p. 363). This isn’t reality; it’s his dream. The Christian service is really just an optional extra.
Can we celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday like Piper does? This is an improvement over Warren’s plan because Saturday worshippers are more likely to be able to combine rest with their worship. The weakness is that it misses the resurrection proclamation and celebration of Lord’s Day (Sunday) worship.
Aren’t you relying on church tradition rather than the Bible? A little, but no more than anyone who uses a Greek lexicon to study the New Testament. Although the New Testament does not specifically say the church worshipped on Sunday, we can look at how the term Lord’s Day was interpreted by contemporaries of Paul and John. We see that they understood it to be Sunday. I don’t think that looking at how contemporaries understood a term is much different than consulting the works of Greek scholars to see how various NT words were understood in their time (something I did, for example, in the scatology post).
This is an issue that’s been brewing in the comments to the Turnstile Church post, and it also matters when we start to think about the effectiveness of doing church online.
My basic position is that even though the church is not a building, it is usually found in a building. The fact that Christians function as a church only when they regularly meet in a building makes it a reasonable shorthand for people to refer to that building as the church.
The universal Church is organized into particular geographical churches. Although Paul’s advice applies universally to all churches, his epistles were addressed to city churches with particular problems and characteristics. We see a similar distinction in the seven churches of Revelation. These were specific churches with their own personalities and faith trajectories.
Church government requires face-to-face assembly. Paul’s instructions to Timothy about church welfare requires that church leaders have a high degree of familiarity with the people under their care (1 Timothy 5). Elders are told to correct a wayward brother first privately, but then, as a final resort, publicly (Matthew 18:17). The assumption is that the public announcement is about a person that the other members of the church know.
Christian worship requires physicality only found in a church. In worship we are to sing together. God blesses us through the laying on of hands. The sacraments require physical presence for their proper administration. We extend the right hand of fellowship and greet each other with a kiss. There are other examples that might be worth the attention of a future post.
Christian worship has a time and space dimension. Although eternal himself, God created a system of worship that was tied to a calendar through holy days, especially the Sabbath. Similarly, although omnipresent himself, God created a system of worship that was contained within at least four walls. Although we can worship God anywhere and at all times, he has clearly shown us that our highest form of worship is within sabbath (time) assemblies (space) of other believers.
Hebrews 10:25 recommends church attendance with these words:
Not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh.
As I once pointed out here, the Greek word translated as assembling is episynagoge. It means that Christians are to physically assemble together in one place. The root is synagogue, which itself means a physical gathering point, usually a building.
Yes, church also can refer to all Christians, living and dead, but it most commonly references distinct gatherings of believers who meet each other face to face for regular, physical worship of God. I assume that is our starting point, against which we’ll later assess efforts to redefine the church in ways that take it out of those chronological and physical constraints.
This blog is mine alone and does not necessarily–or very often–represent the thinking or sentiments of anyone who disagrees with me, my wife, my employer, my friends, my family, my pastor, my brother, my church and, almost certainly, God. After I hit the Publish button, it doesn’t always even reflect my own thinking. It does seem to often reflect the thinking of Tommy F, Twit Conway and some guy in Minnesota, however.
