Church

Part II

   In this second installment of the article on church, I want everyone one to know my heart.  After receiving phone calls, emails, and facebook responses, of which many were kind.  I could see that you might be missing where I am coming from.  I am not saying we need to go back to anything or we need to quit what we are doing, I am simply opening it up for discussion and thought.  Then, if we from what we see and hear are compelled by the Lord to change, then do so.  I myself have no desire to go back to the way things were, nor do I want to make sweeping changes just for the sake of change.  There are some traditions that have been handed down from the New Testament writers that are good, but, do we truly understand what they were teaching or are we just repeating what someone else taught us what church the fathers meant.   There is a good share of thinking and tradition that has been fashioned after pagan rituals and accepted as truth and orthodoxy.   There is a book written by George Barna and Frank Viola that deals with this, but yet they do not expose everything.   The book is called “Pagan Christianity”; they address many things we do in church today and where they come from, reveling startling truths from preachers to methods of services.   

  Lets be honest here, if what we are doing is so right why isn’t working the way it should.  Pastors are being burned out and quitting ministry and churches are closing their doors.  Then the groups that seem to be growing are weak in faith and truth. Other religions are growing faster in America than the Christian churches.  The Barna Group is showing there is a major shift in how people see church and are seeking alternatives to traditional church.  After all these years of great movements and revivals the church has made no greater impact than it did a century ago.  One third of all adults in America are still unchurched.  According to the Barna Group of this one third (34%) (24%) are atheist and agnostic. (20%) are of a non- Christian faith. The remaining percentage call themselves Christians but attend no kind of church, of this group, 15% call themselves born again. This varies from region to region, from the east coast to the west, from north to south.  Then there is another startling statistic, which a large majority of our youth leaves the church at 18 never to return.  Once again the Barna Group has some staggering numbers and reasons.  I could spend a lot of time dealing with theses but for time sake and your reading I will not.  I would encourage you to take the time and see for yourself.  There is an article on the top six reasons the youth leave our churches, which is eye opening.  The fact is, today our youth are being bombarded with science and secular humanism, and their faith is under attack.  Then what they get in church neither prepares them for what they are to face in life or many of the teachings they get in church makes no since, in a troubling world.        

  While doing some research into this matter I have found so many groups from one extreme to another, they all telling us they are right.  From heavy oppressive leadership and legalism, to those who teach nothing and are so loosely assembled that anything goes and is accepted since we are all going to the same place (speaking about heaven).  Do not get me wrong and again I say it, do not get me wrong.  I am not speaking for or against your church or the ideal of church.  I do believe everyone needs to belong to a group of some kind and what that should look like is what you are comfortable with, as long as there is a clear message of truth.  Like I said in part one the word for church in the Greek is ekklesia; meaning a community or group that comes together.  Many of the usages in the New Testament were not addressing a whole but a singular group or place so we know we are encouraged to belong to a group.  (Heb 10:25 NIV)  Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

 With the above said lets start taking a good look at the church in the Bible.  The new church that started in Acts chapter 2 was made up of Jews that held fast to the Jewish ideals of Christ.   They first began meeting within their synagogues and believe it or not there are some things we do today that can be traced back to them.  With that said let’s look at the synagogue and its function and way of worship, maybe we will see a pattern here.  Synagogues began in Babylonian captivity between 606-536 B.C...  The exiled Jews could not go back to the temple in Jerusalem to worship so they began to gather in the communities they were assigned to.  These meetings were dedicated to preserving the word of God and their devotion to the Old Covenant.  Even when they were allowed to return back home to the land of Judah, many remained behind being dispersed to various parts of the world.  By the time of the Roman empire synagogues were in about every civilized town. 

 The synagogue was a place where they Jew could come every day to offer prayers and worship besides what they did in their homes.  To establish a synagogue there had to be at least 10 men to make up a meeting.  Women were allowed in the meeting, but sat in their own designated place.  This would be a building where the Jewish community would revolve around.  They not only had Sabbath services (we will look at that later) but it was somewhat like a community center, school, and local court to settle civil matters.  Youth were taught in the law and traditions of the Jewish way. 

Each synagogue had leadership that would over see the affairs of the group and building, There would be one or more responsible for the reading of the word.  If they were fortunate to have a Scribe to make sure they were accurate in the law that was even better but not all groups had one.  The local synagogue was run by laypeople and financed by membership dues.  Each building had a platform and podium from which they read the word.  They would often let visiting Rabbis read from the law, such as Jesus did in Luke 4.17-20.  They would have a booth called a “holy ark” where they kept the scrolls, considered the most sacred items in the synagogue.

  The order of a worship service would be some what in this matter.  They would come together and one of the leaders would read from the scriptures (mostly the books of the law).  Then someone would be called upon from the congregation to share what the reading would mean for the hearer in daily life.  This could take any where from a very short time to hours depending on what was being spoken, or how many would share.  Then there would be a psalm of benediction, prayer and then they were dismissed.  To this day most synagogues still operate in this matter.  I myself have had the privilege of doing some remodeling work on a synagogue platform and taking the time to talk to a Rabbi , asking many questions on how they conducted their services, and I was amazed in many similarities.   The ideal of group worship was not common, they believed that was more a private matter in their daily lives, and every good Jew would take time daily for worship and prayer.  There were also times in solemn assembly they would worship together (we will deal more on worship later).    (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Robert Yarbrough “Encountering the New Testament”, Judaism 101)   

With this understanding let’s look at the new birthed church in the Bible.  Other than in homes (Acts 2.44), and notice in the beginning when they met they were not a place for the unsaved to get saved but were already believers coming together because of their faith.  Boy have we got that one turned around now days.  The early church would be meeting in the local synagogues when they could.  Until Cornelius in Acts 10 there is no record of any gentile member.  That event took place in a home as well, but we are looking at the synagogue right now.  Stevens’s great message that got him stoned in Acts 6 was in a synagogue of former slaves from other countries.  Saul, later called Paul first went to synagogues to bring believers back to Jerusalem for judgment, then to their homes.  Then when he began to preach he started in the synagogues Acts 9.20.  In fact as you read in Acts, Paul would often start with the Jews and in their synagogues teaching them about Jesus. (Acts13, 14, 17, 18 ).  This would explain somewhat why the church would fashion it’s services after a synagogue.

The point I want to make here is the way they conducted a service in a synagogue has many similarities to a modern church but yet there are some great differences.   It is these differences that even today that are dividing us. There is much of what we do today that was developed much later, about the third century. The way we do things such as worship and rituals that there is no evidence in the scriptures that the New Testament church did.  The ideal that salvation or getting saved at alters as we know it today through the church or taking place in the church also developed many years later.  Over the next several weeks I will be looking at many aspects of church and how we do things.

I want to deal with the following:

• Leadership
• Worship
• Service styles
• Denominations
• Doctrines
• Legalism
• Apostasy

 I know I will challenge many of you and your thinking.  I might even make some of you mad.  I have always been known for killing sacred cows.  Please join with me in our search for truth and let’s talk about these things.  In all honesty none of us have a corner on truth and let’s face it there are a lot of things we would all change if we had the courage to do so.  We have a troubling world we live in and we need pure direction from God in giving answers to the questions people have.  The unbelievers today are convinced that the church hates them and is out of touch with reality.  While we hide out in our four walls doing our Sunday duty, singing and preaching, making sinners feel bad and righteous people feel better.  We are bleeding members that leave our groups angry and disillusioned never to return to the faith, because to them it don’t make since in their world. The world around us grows more angry and misguided; we are facing a post Christian society while we are having church.     

  When I came up in church and under many preachers, a lot of what they taught me, did nothing to prepared me for what I was to face in this generation.  Even when I began to pastor my first church, I quickly found out how little I was prepared for.  I muddled through making so many mistakes.  Looking back there are some things I wish I could take back, but I can’t dwell on the past.  As I began to lead a group on my own and started studying more for each service I began to raise more questions than answers.  How was I to deal with the people that were coming to church with so many different ideals, from who God is to how we should live?  I went to those who I trusted as leaders and what they offered me was based on traditions or things I knew were no longer working.  “Just be faithful” they would say, but I was hurting and in need of truth, and just staying where I was at, being faithful was not helping.  

In closing this week I will not tell you to just be faithful, get up and search for truth.  Like the disciples of Jesus they had some what an ideal of the truth but could not wrap their brain around it.   They understood that Jesus was the one but could not at first accept the ideal of him suffering, dying, and resurrecting from the dead.  That is why they where so taken back and discouraged when Jesus died and had a hard time at first accepting that he was risen.  It seems to be a human condition.  When we are confronted with a truth over something we have held in tradition over many years we will stick with the tradition simply because we are familiar, and comfortable with it. Let me use a quote from an unknown source “when a man is honestly mistaken and hears the truth, he either ceases to be mistaken or he ceases to be honest.  What will you be!