An Uncomfortable Paradigm Shift

So for all my life, I have 'gone to church'. As long as I can remember (and I have photographic proof to help me remember), my family has attended church regularly… we have always been an ‘every time the doors are open’ bunch! Sunday morning, Wednesday night, Sunday night, gospel meetings, ladies days (well, the ladies in my family went), lectureships, Vacation Bible Schools, Seminars, workshops, work days, revivals, men’s Bible studies… if it was happening ‘at the church’, we were there!

My momma and daddy, God Bless ‘em, taught me the habit of ‘being there’. And I will never forget that… I will always be thankful for that.

There is, however, a new wind blowing… and there has been for a while, actually. The ‘every time the doors are open mentality’ does not seem to be carrying on to the next generation… when it first began to ‘blow’, I would sit back and cast my self-righteous judgment toward the heathen families who ‘missed service’. That seed of condescension grew into full blown righteous indignation within a few years, and found its way into the sermons of a certain young man who was given the opportunity to preach from time to time…

I railed against those who ‘stopped coming to church’ on Wednesday night… I would blast away at those ignorant heathens and openly question their commitment to God to the delight of the Pharisee leaders who had asked me to preach. I was on fire! (and, of course, it caused people to fill our pews to overflow - NOT!)

I am just now beginning to see how utterly stupid I was. And I repent of that horribly destructive mindset… I want to go back to every person who heard me speak and apologize. Not for encouraging (I use that term loosely) commitment… but for the barometer I was trying to use. I apologize for the lens I was trying to view everyone through…

Let me be clear: I am more convinced than ever that we are (and seem to be perpetually) experiencing a commitment crisis. And now, more than ever, we need leaders who encourage us and help us develop our gifts and, yes, exhort us to be a more committed people who search for opportunities every day to serve and show Jesus to others!

But for a couple generations now, we have applied some 1960s gauge to measure others’ commitment to their Lord. And that paradigm is not shifting… it has shifted. And it further widens a generation gap that we should be trying to shrink… My father’s generation is still using the language which endeavors (sometimes unwittingly) to judge commitment through attendance… they use phrases like ‘going to church’ and ‘were they at church Sunday?’, and ‘they should have been in church!’ and ‘let’s bring ‘em to church’, etc… and I know they mean well and want what’s best for their fellow Christians… and I know the importance of gathering with the saints… but I wonder now if we have placed so much emphasis on ‘going to church’ that we have missed the point?

Even the new movement of mega-mall churches (Rick Warren’s Saddleback and Bill Hybels’ Willow Creek) are openly wondering if they – the leadership – have been paying attention to (and emphasizing) the wrong thing (Hybels said this):

“We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.” (see entire transcript at http://www.revealnow.com/storyPage.asp?pageid=6)

Wow. These are some pretty good people trying, I think, to do what is right… and, by all accounts, they have been unbelievably successful using the 'participation' method of measuring spiritual growth… yet they are saying – like a football referee who looks at the replay under the hood – “upon further review, the call on the field was wrong, and should be reversed…”

All I'm saying is this: we need to understand that attending every time the doors are open is not equivalent to (nor a prerequisite for) being Christlike. Sorry, but there it is. And it will take a lot of courage for us to acknowledge that fact. It is an uncomfortable paradigm shift.

Does that mean that we shouldn't yearn to be together every time we possibly can? No... indeed we should! Marvin Phillips has called the 'gathering of the Saints' a holy family reunion.... and one we should all look forward to each week... I couldn't agree more! Incidentally, if you have ever lived outside the Bible belt (or especially in a foreign country), this weekly assembly is even sweeter! So please let us never take that for granted....

But for most of us, attendance is the easy part. It's the life that happens between the Sundays that challenges us and hones us and develops us and proves us...

Let's live every day showing Jesus to others. Let's be the church at the bowling alley or at the softball field... let's live so that people see the same 'me' on Tuesday afternoon at the grocery store that they see on Sunday morning in the worship gathering...

then that 'attendance' barometer will be relegated to a lesser place in our mind... and, for my part, rightfully so...

Blessings!