Weaving Work-Truth into Church Life (Part Two)

Why so little Sunday talk about weekday work? What’s behind the silence? Part One set the stage for a series on specific ways to bring work-truth into congregational meetings. The first step involves dealing with a viewpoint that can block the work topic from the Sunday agenda. What is this idea that stops such talk?

Visualize your next full-church meeting. What will people see as their purpose for getting together? How does your church leadership explain the reason for gathering? I ask this, because our purpose (or the lack of it) shapes everything we do. If I go into my garage intending to change the oil in my car, I’ll find a wrench and a drain pan. But if I mean to build a bookshelf, I’ll roll out my table saw and some sandpaper. Purpose steers my every action. It’s no different when it comes to church. How we answer the “Why meet?” question determines what does or does not take place on Sundays.

Do We Really Know Why We Should Meet?

As much as churches differ, virtually all seem to agree that the purpose for assembling is . . . to worship. So we have worship services, worship pastors, worship centers, worship teams, worship music, and worship leaders. There’s even worship software! Countless Christians equate worship with the songfest just before the sermon. Others see worship as a feeling of adoration or reverence for God.

If we define worship in those ways, and if we see worship as our purpose for gathering, what will the meeting agenda include? Praise music will fill a good bit of the time. A Bible message that inspires us to exalt God in our hearts, thoughts, and conduct will take most of the remaining minutes. Both good. But any talk about work—that earth-and-money-related thing we do on weekdays—will have a hard time finding its way in. After all, what does work have to do with those conceptions of worship?

But what if this almost-universal idea of why we gather—worship—differs from that which the New Testament teaches? What if worship, while not excluded, is not the main reason to meet with other Christ-followers? Is this farfetched? Some kind of heresy? Plenty of Bible scholars who have studied the New Testament on this subject say otherwise.

The New Testament Perspective on Gathering

In his book, Paul’s Idea of Community, Robert Banks, an Australian theologian and author, says this: “One of the most puzzling features of Paul’s understanding of ekklesia for his contemporaries, whether Jews or Gentiles, must have been his failure to say that a person went to church primarily to ‘worship.’ Not once in all his writings does he suggest that this is the case. Indeed it could not be, for he held a view of ‘worship’ that prevented him from doing so. . . . Since all places and times have now become the venue for worship, Paul cannot speak of Christians assembling in the church distinctively for this purpose.”

The late I. Howard Marshall served as Professor Emeritus of New Testament Exegesis at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. In his paper, “How Far Did the Early Christians Worship God?” he investigates the “Why gather?” question. After studying the relevant New Testament passages, he wrote: “It is simply not the case that the purpose of Christian meetings was understood as being primarily and directly worship, homage and adoration addressed to God. To speak of a Christian meeting as being ‘a service of worship’ with the implication that everything which takes place must somehow be related directly to this primary purpose is to depart seriously from the NT pattern.”

Why, Then, Should we Gather as Believers?

So—if not worship—what is the New Testament reason for Christians to meet? Banks says: “The purpose of church is the growth and edification [building up] of its members into Christ and into a common life through their God-given ministry to one another.” Marshall agrees: “We are greatly hampered by the one-man ministry which is still so common. Somehow we need to give the individual members of the congregation the opportunity to exercise the gifts of the Spirit, to receive from one another and to show love to one another.”

What Banks and Marshall are saying echoes the purpose of the participatory church meeting Paul describes in I Cor. 14. All that is done should be for “the strengthening of the church” and so that “everyone may be instructed and encouraged.” In Heb. 10:24, 25, the writer—in urging believers not to skip their meetings—tells why they need to gather: so that they may “spur one another on toward love and good works,” and so that they may “encourage one another.”

Strengthening. Instructing. Encouraging. Spurring on. Gathering should be all about one-anothering in love—the very essence of Jesus’ new command in Jn. 13:34. When we discover and adopt the New Testament reason for our meetings, the agenda door will swing open so that work-truth may enter. As pictured in the graphic, we ought to worship in all we do, 24/7—and, yes, when we assemble as well.

Suppose we try to squeeze worship into the weekly meeting with other believers—or (smaller yet) into the time of singing with them? Then our undersized concept of worship will leave no room for something as seemingly “unspiritual” as our daily work. But what if a church structures its meetings to cultivate mutual up-building in all areas of life? What possibilities might that open up for workplace equipping?

Meeting Formats Can Encourage Mutual Up-Building.

In a meeting format that allows it, those with decades of experience in various workplaces can share how God uses them as light and salt there. Those with gifts of teaching can open up the richness of what the Bible says about our everyday work. And newbies to the work world can ask questions that stimulate others to help them prepare for the places to which God will send them to represent his Kingdom during the bulk of their waking hours.

Imagine the dialogue emerging out of that kind of mutual encouragement from the Scriptures and from the testimonies of those seeing God move in the whole lives of fellow Christians. It could cause those present to suck in their breath in awe as they realize what his Spirit is doing through ordinary people in their daily activities, including their work. In this way real—not artificially stimulated—worship would arise from the assembly to the glory of God.

The body of Christ includes a variety of members with diverse callings and gifts. When those members assemble, they must have the opportunity to cross-enrich each other. As Paul puts it in Eph. 4:16, the whole body “grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” When it understands the New Testament purpose for gathering, the church can aim for each-othering.

A shared-church meeting welcomes all of God’s truth—including his truth about work.

The Biblical Case for Shared-Church Meetings

Several authors have urged a return to what I call “shared church.” But their books don’t appear on best-seller lists, and few Christ-followers know about them. This blog is the fifth on such books.

Can church meetings act as a spiritual fire extinguisher? Yes, according to Andrew W. Wilson in Do Not Quench the Spirit: A Biblical and Practical Guide to Participatory Church Meetings.

When I first saw this book, I asked myself, “Are its title and subtitle a mismatch?” Not quenching the Spirit, of course, points to I Thess. 5:19. But what does that have to do with participatory church meetings?

How Can Meetings Quench God’s Spirit?

Here’s how Wilson makes the connection in the I Thess. 5:19 context: “To ‘quench the Spirit’ refers to trying to stop the powerful working of the Spirit of God in the life of the church by restricting the freedom of the people of God to use their spiritual gifts.” So if the format of a church meeting leaves the congregation speechless, it douses the flame ignited by God’s Spirit in all for mutually encouraging one another.

In other words, if only a few up front on the platform—those with microphone rights—have the freedom to speak, then the Spirit-given gifts of the great majority get suppressed. What Wilson is saying flies in the face of the traditional agenda for church meetings. However, his message lines up with the participatory meetings seen in the New Testament church.

The words “Biblical and Practical” in the subtitle provide a preview and broad outline for the book. The book’s early chapters explore what those first-century Christians did when they gathered together. Later chapters explain the foundational principles for shared-church meetings, deal with arguments against them, and answer questions often asked about them.

Watching a First-Century Church Meeting

In Chapter 2, Wilson unpacks I Corinthians 14:26-40. Verse 26 says, “When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.” “In this passage,” Wilson says, “we have the most detailed picture of what actually went on in a church service in New Testament times.”

He notes the absence of several elements we associate with church meetings: sermons, liturgies, pulpits, platforms. “Paul nowhere mentions ‘the sermon’, one main message, the centrepiece of a church service. This is not because Christians in apostolic times did not believe in preaching. Rather the reverse: they believed in preaching so much that they allowed opportunity for multiple people with different spiritual gifts to preach in the church service.”

Wilson has done his homework, often quoting well-known New Testament scholars. For example, he cites Gordon Fee: “What is striking in this entire discussion [in I Cor. 14] is the absence of any mention of leadership or of anyone who would be responsible for seeing that these guidelines were generally adhered to. The community appears to be left to itself and to the Holy Spirit.”

Does this mean those first-century meetings were chaotic free-for-alls? No. In verse 40 of I Cor. 14, Paul cautions that “everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.” This “principle of orderly decency,” Wilson says, is “a second principle that is to be balanced against the principle of opportunity for participation given in verse 39.”

If we twenty-first-century Christians were to visit one of those first-century church meetings, we’d be in for a jolt. “The variety of gifts, contributed by multiple people interacting with each other,” Wilson says, “shows that the New Testament church was not a ‘one-man show.’ How different the New Testament picture is to what we find in most contemporary churches, with our productions and programs, liturgies and set orders of service.”

More Insights into New Testament Gatherings

The picture Paul paints in I Corinthians 14 is just one of several New Testament descriptions of how New Testament Christians regularly met. In his third chapter, Wilson examines I Thess. 5:19-21. “These exhortations,” he says, “appear to depict a church whose gatherings were participatory.” He quotes Scottish theologian, I. Howard Marshall: “Gifts for ministry were being exercised, but some people were trying to suppress them (we don’t know just how), but it is wrong to do so.”

In Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus, Wilson sees even further evidence of participatory patterns in church meetings. Paul told Timothy to stay in Ephesus for a while so that he could “command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer” (I Tim. 1:3). Paul left Titus on Crete to appoint elders who could “encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it” (Tit. 1:9). By their teaching, these well-trained elders could silence those who were “teaching things they ought not to teach” (v. 11).

The fact that some taught wrongly shows that the teaching/preaching role was not limited to just one specialist. Wilson says, “Neither Timothy nor Titus are given honorific titles anywhere in the New Testament . . . .Timothy and Titus were neither the first bishops nor the senior pastors of the churches. . . . Many (if not all) of the brothers were free to speak, upon whatever subject they wished, but abuses that this system allowed were not left uncorrected, and high standards of teaching were encouraged and expected.”

Principles Behind Participatory Church Meetings

In Chapter 8, Wilson identifies New Testament elements that undergird participatory church meetings:

1. The Holy Spirit’s work: “It is possible for us to restrict God’s Spirit’s activity within the church. We shut God’s Spirit out, hose down the fire of His power, hinder His operations and stop His activity among His people.”

2. Gifts of the Spirit: “In modern evangelical churches there is a shrinking gift-pool due to the increasing professionalization of Christian ministry.”

3. Mutual Building Up. “The New Testament lays heavy emphasis upon the need for Christians to know each other, closely and intimately enough to be able to bear one another's burdens, confess faults one to another, encourage, exhort, and admonish one another; and minister to one another with the Word, song and prayer.”

4. All-Believer Priesthood. “The idea of a distinction between the ministry and other Christians, leading to the setting up of a clerical ‘caste’, is unknown to Scripture.” Wilson again quotes Gordon Fee who deplores “the one-man show of many denominational churches.”

Other elements include the government of the Church (participatory), the Church as a Body (not a few superstars), and Christ as Lord (who rules the Church through the Holy Spirit). Wilson quotes A. W. Tozer, who said: “We must acknowledge the right of Jesus Christ to control the activities of His church. . . . It is not a question of knowing what to do; we can easily learn that from the Scriptures. It is a question of whether or not we have the courage to do it.”

Moving Toward Participatory Meetings

Because “a church that is not used to participatory church gatherings will probably not be able to start having meetings like this without a transition period,” Wilson offers 20 suggestions for making the shift. Among his recommendations: persistent prayer, personal Bible study, good expository preaching, multiple preachers, testimonies, questions and discussion after sermons, to name just 6.

He closes his book with these words: “Doing anything for God requires that we step out in faith, that obstacles and opposition will arise, and that nothing will ever be perfect on earth. Conviction is required for all who wish to do the will of God in their own generation, like David (Acts 13:36). ‘Let each one be fully convinced in his own mind’ (Romans 14:5).”

Why Do We Gather as Christians? (Part One)

True or false: “The New Testament reason for meeting with other Christians is to worship God.”

If you said true, your answer lines up with what most of us have been taught. One website, which suggests how to speak to children about church, begins with: “People go to church to worship God.” We call our main congregational meetings “worship services.” In those meetings we sing “worship songs,” led by “worship leaders” in charge of “worship teams.” Sometimes we call church buildings “worship centers.”

I know it is not RC (religiously correct) to question the nearly universal idea that gathering with other believers is all about worship. So please grant me a little grace as I ask you to examine the evidence for this rarely questioned conviction.

Right off, I’ll reveal my assumed starting-point. I believe Scripture is our only rule for faith and practice. Faith involves what we believe—truths such as the deity of Christ, salvation by grace through faith in Jesus, his bodily resurrection, and so on. Practice involves what we do, including how we meet with other Christians. I am assuming the New Testament, not church traditions, should have the last word on why we assemble.

Check It Out

What is “worship”? In the New Testament, the Greek words for worship of God all reflect attitudes and actions directed toward him. Duties carried out toward God. Esteem and reverence directed toward him. Obedience and service oriented toward God. Bowing down toward God. In short, in worship, we aim our attention in a God-ward direction. Think of a single arrow pointing upward from us to God.

If you have a complete concordance, trace the uses of “worship/worshiped/worshiping” in the New Testament. You’ll find that, together, those English words appear about 70 times (NIV version). Yet you will not find those words used in contexts that speak about what we Christians do in our regular gatherings.

Yes, in Acts 13:2, while fasting and praying, a group of prophets and teachers were “worshiping.” Not so much a church gathering as a prayer meeting among church leaders. And in I Cor. 14:25, Paul says an unbeliever, after hearing gathered Christians prophesy, might be led to “worship” God. Here, an unbeliever—not believers—is worshiping. Neither text describes what typically goes on in church meetings. But this is about as close as the New Testament comes in connecting the word “worship” with Christian assemblies.

By contrast, a great many verses describe worship as taking place not in church gatherings but by individuals in other settings. The Magi, upon seeing baby Jesus, worshiped (Matt. 2:11-12). Anna, presumably by herself in the Temple, worshiped (Lk. 2:37). The disciples worshiped Jesus in a boat (Matt. 14:33). As they hurried away from his empty tomb, the two Marys worshiped Jesus (Matt. 28:>9). The man born blind worshiped Jesus (Jn. 9:38). And so on. These are not what we call “corporate worship” occasions.

Others Agree

After a study of all the Greek words translated as “worship” in the New Testament, the late I. Howard Marshall (well-respected as a New Testament scholar) says: “It is a mistake to regard the main or indeed the only purpose of Christian meetings as being the worship of God.” (See "How Far Did the Early Christians Worship God?")

And in Paul’s Idea of Community, Robert Banks writes, “One of the most puzzling features of Paul’s understanding of ekklesia [assembled church] for his contemporaries, whether Jews or Gentiles, must have been his failure to say that a person went to church primarily to ‘worship.’ Not once in all his writings does he suggest that this is the case.”

Then Why Should Christians Gather?

The New Testament leaves no question that we believers should meet. But why? If not to worship, what should be our main purpose for getting together? Think of it this way: you and I are to worship anywhere and everywhere—all alone, with our families, in our workplaces, and in our church gatherings. In other words, worship can rise to God even when no one else is around.  

But time after time the New Testament calls us to do something we simply cannot do by ourselves: one-anothering. In his new commandment, Jesus calls us to “love one another” in the way he has loved us (Jn. 13:34). These words became the seed from which the dozens upon dozens of New Testament one-another/each-other instructions grew.

For example, the two one-anothers in Hebrews 10:24-25 explain why we should never stop meeting together: “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. 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.” Getting together lets us see and hear each other. This  creates the setting in which we may spur on and encourage each other.

This focus on one-anothering when we meet, although in different words, shows up in I Cor. 14:26: “When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.” Each of us has been given one or more gifts to use in building each other up. The New Testament term “fellowship” is a one-anothering word. The church is a body made up of mutually-supportive members. It is a family whose members huddle to help each other. This is shared church.

(Part Two will explore why the single-arrow model does not reflect the gathered-church picture seen in the New Testament. It will also ask, “Why Does Our Purpose for Gathering Matter?”)