Tuesday, July 03, 2007

You Can't Cancel Church.

Last year a bunch of people I know and interact with online were all upset about some churches "canceling church" in order for families to be home with their families on Christmas morning. Others have lamented how some congregations "cancel church" on the Sunday night of the Super Bowl. Well, the issue has come up again...

A church in KY has forgone its normal Sunday morning schedule in order for the whole congregation to go to a special screening of Evan Almighty. Now, I haven't seen the movie yet, so my comments have a limited perspective on why or why not seeing this movie together could be a good idea.

But here is one thing I do know. There is nothing we can do to 'cancel' church (or 'skip' it for that matter). The church isn't the place we meet on Sunday morning. It's not the sitting around and the singing of songs and the hearing of sermons. The church is the Body of Christ, alive and serving in the world today. And that cannot be canceled.

I'm not saying that our weekly gathering to worship together is not important to the life of the Body. But if that one gathering (or two...) is the full extent of our worship, then we are only weakly gathering (and I'd hesitate to call that worship). If we can't break from the routine for something a little out of the ordinary once in a while, then are we holding to tradition, or is tradition strangling us?

2 comments:

  1. Mike,

    You're right, you can't cancel "church", but you can cancel a corporate worship service for a non-worship event. I think that's the issue here, especially in regards to the message we send to our culture and to God.

    To our culture: the Superbowl, opening Christmas presents, or a movie is a more important event for us than coming together to glorify God through praise and worship. Really, what should be more important than that? Not even a "day of service" or a potluck dinner, IMHO.

    To God: you come second to our entertainment. We will worship you, but only if it does not interfere with our football game, family gift-time, or movie. Not a good message to give to God Almighty!

    (thought I'd drag the conversation over here from the CCT... give you some traffic!) 8-)

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  2. I've been out of town... sorry for the slow reply. Looks like the conversation over there has been 'canceled'. The tone was getting pretty nasty, so that's not too surprising.

    I understand what you're saying about canceling gatherings for various reasons. I don't like it either. But I don't think this incident is the slippery slope that many fear.

    I went to the movie with my dad while I was gone and I've got to say, I can can completely see how a church could turn corporate attendance of the show into worshipful service. I don't think God took a back seat at all in this case. It wasn't a matter of interfering with events... It was a matter of learning to turn service into worship.

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