As is my habit when practicing my hobby of wandering virtual
worlds, I visited a newer church in Second Life that had advertised its
regularly scheduled service. Over a
dozen people gathered, waiting for the pastor to arrive. From their conversation, I could tell they
were regular attendees and staff of the church.
The pastor never arrived, due to technical difficulties
beyond his control.
The congregation left.
Because, you see, you can’t do church without a pastor up
front delivering a sermon.
STORY #2:
Many moons ago, I was a staff member at a virtual church in
that same Second Life world. One of the
Evangelical pastors didn’t show for his midweek scheduled event, so after
waiting with the small crowd for a time, I spoke up and shared my testimony of
how I came to know the Lord. I invited
others to do the same, and several did.
After a closing prayer led by one of the brothers in Christ, we all parted.
The next day, the missing pastor called several of us in individually to chide us for our assumption that we could “take over” his scheduled talk time. I apologized. So did the others.
Der Pastor Über Alles
“The Pastor, Over All.”
When did we, as followers of Christ, shift our gatherings from
bread-breaking, worship-sharing prayer affairs to pastor-directed,
sermon-centric spectator rituals? Drop randomly
into any US or European church, and the elements of the service are startlingly
similar:
- Opening prayer (led by the pastor) with a congregational hymn or two
- A short Scripture reading (usually led by the pastor)
- A long sermon by the pastor (followed by the collection)
- Symbolic communion (but only once a business quarter)
- A closing prayer and/or song
To be fair, Anglicans and Lutherans deserve a nod for doing communion
weekly. Still, the pastor's sermon stands as the main event of most gatherings.
Without the pastor's sermon, it just wouldn’t be church, would it?
Imagine
There’s No Sermon. It’s Easy If You Try.
Imagine you show up at church next Sunday and discover the
pastor has assigned a scripture reading to four or five of the
congregants. Each one gets a chapter of
Luke’s gospel to read aloud, four or five long chapters in sequence.
After that reading session (which is almost as lengthy as last
week’s sermon!), the pastor stands and says, “Wasn’t that something? Those were words about the life of our own
Savior, Jesus Christ. Let’s just think
about that a little.”
Then he sits back down and is silent for ten minutes.
After those ten minutes, the pastor remains seated and says, “If you have any
reflections on what we read today, please stand and share them. One at a time; the Lord likes us to be
orderly.”
Then, after six people get up the courage to share what was
going through their heads – speaking, mind you, without any follow-up commentary
from the pastor – there’s another time of silence.
The pastor notes that it seems all have shared as the Spirit
has moved them, then announces, “I asked our brother George’s daughter to pick
out a few spiritual songs she felt related to the readings we heard today. Let’s listen to her sing them, a capella. We can even join in if we know the songs!”
After that, there’s a small offering collection. (The pastor will distribute what’s collected
to Maria, the recent widow, and to Laurence, who's just been laid off from
work. Some will go also to Frank and Jessica, since they can’t afford health insurance to cover their son’s yearly checkup.)
And then, of course, everyone eats. It’s not church if there’s no potluck supper!
Stop
Imagining
Those with strong faith and good hearts will say, “Yes, I
can imagine that happening at my church!”
But let’s be honest: If that really took place without warning in our real-life churches this
weekend, we’d be dizzy with confusion.
Some of us would even protest openly.
“Where was the sermon? Why were
things changed up so much? Why wasn’t the
pastor doing the pastor’s job? Why
didn’t we have church?”
But this service wasn’t imaginary. It was simply outdated, an anachronism. It was a church gathering similar to those during New Testament times. We wouldn’t recognize it, and that’s our
fault as members of our congregations.
Oh … did you think I was going to lay all the blame on
pastors for running a sermon-centered service with themselves in the
spotlight? My apologies for the
misunderstanding. This doesn’t just fall
on the pastors. I’m to blame, too. You’re right there with me. We’re responsible, because it isn’t the
pastor’s church.
We are the church.
If church is going wrong, we are to blame.
Real
Bible Churches
Many churches call themselves “Bible-believing” and “Bible-centered.” Some even have the word “Bible” in
their very names. You would expect such institutions to have services that reflect biblical worship services.
So what are the elements of a service conducted by the believers
we meet inside the Bible itself?
Stopping by a first-day-of-the-week gathering of believers
in, say, 52 C.E., we could probably expect to run into:
- A hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue with interpretation, several prophesies, all done by a variety of members in an orderly fashion (1 Corinthians 14:26-33)
- Fellowship of mutual encouragement and building up of each other, practiced by all present, not just by a group leader (Hebrews 10:24-25)
- Shared feasts in memory of the Lord’s supper (Acts 2:24), with all members dining equally and no one getting more than others or overdrinking (let ‘em go home if they’re going to do that, 1 Corinthians 11:21-22)
- Multiple lay teachers admonishing one another with wisdom from the Lord (Colossians 3:16)
- Multiple generations in attendance, with no breakout “children’s church” or “youth groups” -- the kids are all there and being addressed when hearing Paul’s letters read (Ephesians 6:1–4 and Colossians 3:20–21)
- Worship with Psalms and other spiritual songs (also Colossians 3:16)
- Public reading of the Scriptures with teachings based on them (1 Timothy 4:13)
Aha! We Found A Sermon!
Did you notice the last element? Yes, there was a sermon in there – as part of many other expected elements. Clearly teaching and exhortation can’t take place without that item we call a “sermon.” Yet it wasn’t the longest, dominant part of Christian gatherings, just as the preacher (here called an overseer) was not the sole or even dominant presenter of truth. The overseer kept watch over the congregation (Acts 20:28), apparently helping everyone participate in ministry.
Does scripture have long sermons in it given by leaders? Indeed, it does! However, the longest of them on record are
almost never given in the private home-church setting:
- Peter’s longest sermons took place in the public area of the Temple (Acts 2), in the portico of the Temple (also public, Acts 3), and in the non-church home of Cornelius (Acts 10).
- Stephen gave his long sermon in front of the Sanhedrin (a judicial setting rather than a house-church, Acts 7).
- Paul loved a long sermon, including one in the synagogue at Pisidian (Acts 13), one in the pagan Areopagus in open-air Athens (Acts), and one in Traos on the first day of the week when there was a gathering to break bread (Acts 20).
There we go. That last one was likely taking place at a house-church, the only one that does in this mix of Acts’ Longest Sermons. But take note: That sermon was lethal. Paul talked so long that one of the young listeners sitting on a third-story windowsill fell asleep and dropped to his death (Acts 20:9). Paul had to bring him back to life before continuing.
Fair warning, you long-winded televangelists out there.
I’m A
Linguist, Can’t Help Myself
As ever, I can’t do a blog post without squinting at some of
the words and pondering their hidden histories.
Unlike other times, though, this part isn’t just for Word Nerds.
"Sermon"
The word sermon derives from the Latin term sermó,
a speech or discourse. No surprise
there, since a sermon is pretty much a speech.
But in Latin, sermó also meant “a conversation,” a meaning it
most certainly lost on its journey through French and into English. Yes, a sermon can be a one-way speech, but it
could also be a back-and-forth discussion with more than one speaker.
So, I ask: What if that word took a journey back to its
original meaning? What if some of our
sermons became conversations again, discussions between congregants and their
minister, or even between each other in wisdom-sharing sessions, as a revived
act of doing church in a biblical way?
"Minister"
I haven’t used the word “minister” in this blog yet, opting
for the shepherdly resonance of “pastor.”
The word minister comes from Latin as well and was spelled
exactly the same as it is in English. In Latin it meant “servant” and
“attendant.” These days, our word for a
church attendant is “usher” and our words for church servants are “receptionist,”
“collection plate passers,” and “lady who vacuums after we all leave.” Many ministers consider their “service” to be
the writing and giving of the weekly sermon as their congregation's Talk Boss. But real service that really serves? Is there enough of that from ministers? Is there hope for a Ministers Revival back
into service roles? I don't mean symbolic, ritualistic
service (“Last week, the minister washed our feet during the Easter observance!”)
but real service (“Last week, our minister came for dinner … and insisted on
bringing the food and cooking it!”)
"Congregants"
Like half of all English words, congregants and congregational also owe their origin to Latin, but I’m more fascinated by their English usage. Before English used it to mean a flock of
people herded together for church, "congregation" was a 15th century medical
term for “an accumulation of bodily fluids.”
That triggered the metaphor-ometer in my brain. Fluids coming into the body, fluids going
out, fluids flowing through, a dynamic stream that keeps the body viable – and we
are the Body of Christ. We accumulate as
a “congregation” in English’s oldest sense, and our regular flow, the movement of our words and wisdom among one another, keeps dispersing the nutrients and the oxygen that keep the
whole alive.
When we stop flowing?
Well, the metaphor turns dark. We
have terms for when a body’s fluids accumulate, turn sluggish, lose their
motion and participation in the corporeal flow: edema, ascites, pleural
effusion, cardia tamponade, cerebral fluid, a whole bunch of terms you don’t
want to hear coming out of your physician’s mouth. We aren’t stationary observers of the
Body. We are its lifeblood, and we’d
better get moving.
I Have A
Fantasy …
Can congregations ever grow to a point where lay members are willing
to carry their biblical share of the praise, worship, speaking, teaching, singing,
heart-building and meal-sharing? Can
pastors ever grow to let them? Sure,
there are “worship leaders” in the music ministry and teachers in the Sunday
School programs, but what about the myriad other roles that don’t just
contribute to a Christian gathering, but make it a Christian gathering? I can’t help but imagine a movement in the
churches that empowers congregants and unburdens pastors by freeing
the Body to act as a Body. It would
require laymen to take hold of responsibilities, and it would require clergy to let go of some. It's a fantasy in which no part of the body is greater than any other part …
with Christ as the head.
I know that this vision of the church sounds like a
fantasy. It sounds like commune-building. It sounds like a bunch of hippies.
It sounds like the Bible.
Marana Tha,
YoYo Rez / Cosmic
Parx
P.S.: Bet you thought “shepherdly” was a world I made up. It isn’t. It was in common use in the 15th century, and I was feeling 15th-ish today.
