* * * Where Do You Worship? * * * vftonline.org/VFTfiles/Directory/index.htm I am often asked this question. Those who ask are always surprised by my response. My point is not that going to church is a sin. Im trying to refute those who tell me I sin by not attending church. I do not attend church. I havent been in a church-building for over ten years (with the exception of special events concerning others, like baptisms, weddings, becoming a godfather, etc.).* In my opinion, attending church has nothing to do with worship. I would like to explain why I do not believe the Bible commands Christians to attend church, and in the course of doing so, explain what I understand worship to mean. Hebrews 10:24-25 gives a straightforward command: And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works; not forsaking the gathering together of ourselves, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much more as ye see the day approaching. It would seem, then, that the question, Is it our moral obligation to attend church? receives a fairly straightforward answer: of course. How, then, can I assert that a Christian should not attend church? The command in Hebrews 10 (namely, to exhort one another) is also found in Hebrews 3:13: But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. If we claim to obey Hebrews 10:24-25 by attending church on Sunday morning, do we also fulfill the command to exhort one another daily when we see other Christians only once a week? Moreover, do we even obey the basic command to exhort one another when we simply listen to the polished oratory of a seminary-trained philosopher? Are we really obeying the Biblical commands concerning exhortation, community, and mutual accountability by once a week watching the performance of a BMW-driving entertainer? Millions of Christians attend church every Sunday in America, and yet literacy and morality are in sharp decline. More sermons are preached and broadcast than in any previous century, yet the 20th century is the most violent in human history. To churches we ask, What have you done for us lately? What started out as an apparently obvious issue seems now to be at least a little less clear. What we see on TV and in thousands of churches across the land tells me we need some clarity on this issue. Must a Christian Attend Church? 6. The Lords Supper (Acts 2:42; 20:7; cf. I Cor. 11:20). We have examined the Lords Supper in other papers. Acts 2:42 is cited, but not verse 46, which says that the Lords Supper was observed from house to house, or as the New English Bible has it, in private homes. Gary Norths observations destroy any notion that we must attend church: We now come to that passage which, perhaps more than any other passage in the Bible, sends shivers of foreboding down the spines of sacerdotal authorities: For where two or three are gathered together in my Name, there am I in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20). Here was the basis of the early Churchs so-called agape feasts, meaning the original form of holy communion. This doctrine of Christs presence is intimately related to the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. It affirms that when members of the priesthood get together, God is with them in a direct way, just as He was with the priests of the Old Testament. Members of the early Church could celebrate the Lords Supper, breaking bread in fellowship, from house to house, precisely because Christ was present with them. There is absolutely no evidence in the Scriptures that a church officer was present at every such meeting. In fact, it would be surprising if there had been enough church officers to accompany every feast, since 3,000 converts were added to the assembly on one day alone, a fact revealed to us in the verse immediately preceding the first reference in Acts to the breaking of bread (Acts 2: 40). (One thing is certain: with that rate of growth, the early Church was not able to wait around for ministers of the Word to graduate from an accredited university and attend at least three semesters of seminary.) What the message of the Acts seems to be is that the Lords Supper was universally celebrated on a decentralized basis, with families visiting families and sharing the meal together. And why not? Christ had promised to be among such groups, and He had not said that an ordained elder had to be present with the group in order to obtain His special presence. The passage which allegedly supports sermons (Acts 20:7) is also supposed to support our obligation to attend church to Sup with Christ. Does it? If we read the passage we find it describes a communal meal, not a symbol of a meal. Do you have a meal when you attend church, or just a symbol of one? Compare the modern church communion with the fellowship Paul experienced in Acts 20. William Barclay describes the scene: So vivid is this story that it reads like what it is -- an eyewitness account. Here we have one of the first accounts of what a Christian service was like. It talks twice about breaking of bread. In the early Church there were two closely related things. There was what was called the Love Feast. To it all contributed, and it was a real meal. Often it must have been the only real meal that poor slaves got all week. It was a meal when the Christian sat down and ate in loving fellowship and in sharing with each other. During it or at the end of it the Sacrament of the Lords Supper was observed. It may well be that we have lost something of very great value when we lost the happy fellowship and togetherness of the common meal of the Christian fellowship. It marked as nothing else could the real homeliness, the real family spirit of the Church. We see that all this happened at night. That is probably so because it was only at night, when the days work was done, that slaves could come to the Christian fellowship. And that also explains the case of Eutychus. It was dark. In the low upper room it was hot. The many lamps and many torches made the air stuffy and oppressive. Eutychus, no doubt, had done a hard days work before ever he came and his body was tired. He was sitting by a window to get the cool night air. Now the windows were not glass windows. They were either lattice or solid wood and opened like doors. They came right down almost to the floor and projected over the courtyard below. We must not take it that Paul spoke, as it were, even on. There would be talk and discussion but Eutychus was exhausted. Down the outside stair the crowd would pour. When they found the lad senseless they would begin to shriek and scream in the uncontrolled eastern way; that is why Paul did not go with the main company; no doubt he stayed behind to make sure that Eutychus was completely recovered from his fall. There is something very lovely about this simple picture. The whole impression is rather that of a family meeting together than of a modern congregation met in a church. Is it possible that we may have gained in what we call dignity in our Church services but that we may have lost the sense of the congregation as a real family in God? We may simply note that there is no real communion in a hard pew or folding chair in a drab auditorium looking at the back of someones neck. Again, were Paul to see our worship services he would ask, Why are you doing this? Worship Assemblies are Not Just Any Gathering of Believers This is the most dangerous part of the Position Paper. It marks a retreat from the world-wide spread of the Gospel and cosmic sanctification achieved by Christ, back to the limited holiness of the Old Covenant. In the pre-Christian world concentric circles of holiness radiated from the temple in Israel, with life getting less holy as we move away from Gods Presence in the center: the Holiest of holies, the tabernacle, the camp, outside the camp. In the New Covenant, King Jesus has definitively cleansed the world, and all is in principle sanctified and consecrated to the service (worship) of His Kingdom. The Position Paper denies this. It says there is a holier-than-there place outside of which acts of obedience do not count (as much). The formal is the holy; the informal is the unclean. The credentialed is the sanctified; the voluntary and decentralized are still defiled. Such regression is the unintentional effect of the traditional church-concepts of worship and ordination. In the New Testament, those assemblies which constituted the corporate worship of God were understood as something clearly distinct from informal household fellowship and eating, even though the worship assembly may have been in an actual home (p. 4). This is clearly an attack on the house church movement, both now and (unwittingly) in the New Testament; a bias against home-churches in favor of official meetings conducted by ordained priests. Even though CCC started out in a home (and the Session would be quick to point out that there is nothing wrong with an official church having formal worship in someones house [should circumstances require]), nevertheless, the concept of official church and ordained priests moves us inexorably out of the home. It must be admitted that in I Cor. 11 they were probably meeting in a home. But the CCC Paper claims that Paul distinguishes between the Lords Supper at the assembly and the ordinary meals in ones house (I Cor. 11:20,22). No, the contrast here is between those who recognize the Spiritual importance of Body-life and Word-centered fellowship (on the one hand) and those who selfishly and atomistically pig-out (on the other). The point of the agape feast is to honor Gods Word and the bread (the called-out assembly of saints [Church] [I Cor. 10:17]), not just to fill our stomachs (Matthew 4:4). Paul says that those who will not sanctify their assembling together might as well stay at home and pig out. If youre not going to worship (by serving, rightly judging (discerning) the needs of the Body (I Cor. 10:17; 11:29)), then you might as well be neutral somewhere else. Nevertheless, this was an occasion of informal household fellowship and eating, albeit with great Spiritual significance. It is possible to come to not a question of physical presence and geographical setting alone, it is a question of the heart (Romans 2:28-19). Modern communion has no more sharing than was present among the Corinthians rebuked by Paul.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 01:22:30 +0000
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