You’ve heard of the Pharisees if you’ve been around most churches for
very long. They were the religious watchdogs of Jesus’ day and they gave him
fits. But they weren’t always like that. In their early days, during Ezra’s
time, they were great. They were lay folks, like most of you; not professional
Christians, like me. All they wanted to do was to serve God and bring their
nation back to God by applying his word to the activities of the people. No
problem with that. But over time their desires went way beyond God’s word, and
they started to include lots of their own opinions about God’s word, and then
their opinions came to mean more to them than God’s word did. Everyone had to
do everything just like they did. Jesus wouldn’t do it…and didn’t do it. His disciples
didn’t either. The Pharisees couldn’t handle that. So they killed him. They
thought it was about them.
The early church faced it too. No sooner had Christ gone to heaven than
folks started arguing about worship.
Let’s keep the Sabbath, some said. Nothing
wrong with that.
But Jesus rose on
Sunday! We should worship on Sunday. Nothing wrong with that either.
But each thought the other was wrong, and the fight was on…but it
wasn’t over.
The early Christian community met for worship on Sunday evenings. It
wasn’t until the next century that they started meeting on Sunday mornings. It wasn’t just which day of the week was
the right day in some people’s minds but which part of which day. The Bible teaches that it doesn’t matter; and
when things don’t matter we shouldn’t make them matter. But we often do when we
think it’s about us.
Initially the order of worship included scripture reading, singing,
prayer and communion. But they didn’t actually sing. They chanted in a style known as “plain song.” Eventually plain
song chanting evolved into Ambrosian
chanting (named for St.
Ambrose [4th century] who suggested applying a systematic set of
rules to plain song chanting to help maintain proper decorum, and further into Gregorian chanting, named for Pope
Gregory the Great [6th century]).
Then someone came along and said, Hey,
let’s try this. The Greeks have a cool way of chanting. They call it Greek
meter. People really like it. We should use it in our worship. But
Greek meter wasn’t the same as chanting…
God doesn’t like Greek
meter!
Oh yes he does!
And the fight was on. And that was just the beginning. By the end of
the fourth century Greek meter was the accepted method of singing in the
church. Then someone came along and said;
Greek meter’s okay,
but the music of the street is Roman marching songs. We ought to sing like that. Can you guess what
happened?
No way! Someone argued. God’s not into Roman marching songs! God’s into Greek meter!
Who says God’s not into to Roman marching songs? Greek
meter’s boring. More fighting…
Next, someone had the idea that the church should learn how to use
melody and harmony in their singing and use instruments to accompany the
vocals. Predictably, many others objected.
And the young church who had so much going for them turned on each
other and starting fighting about worship—and we haven’t stopped since. It
happens every time we forget that it’s not about us.
The musicians
weren’t the only ones to make that mistake. Take
a leap through time to the eighteenth century. For the first time in years
there was enthusiasm and excitement and life in the worship services of some churches.
But the fellows that were largely responsible for it, the Wesley brothers, John
and Charles, soon found themselves holding worship services outside, instead of
inside church buildings—not because they preferred open fields but because the
people in the churches wouldn’t let these loose cannons inside their buildings.
In our own country, from 1732 to 1744,
Jonathan Edwards and his British sidekick, George Whitfield, were experiencing
the same kind of new working of God in the New England states. You’d think the
churches up there would have gotten involved—you’d be wrong. Instead, lots of the New England churches turned
into cold, lifeless reminders of what happens when we forget that it’s not
about us.
A century later, Robert Raikes, a Londoner, noticed tons of little
street kids who didn’t have anyone to love them, care for them or teach them anything.
So he came up with an idea to educate these children and at the same time teach
them about Christ called Sunday School.
Wonderful! Really? There were churches all over, including most evangelical
churches in the US, who opposed it with every fiber of their being. It’s the
weird kind of thing that can happen when we think it’s about us.
I’m convinced there’s a movement of God taking place today, but it’s
not about us. It’s very different from anything that most of us who have a
church background have ever had much to do with. It’s why we choose to approach
ministry so very differently than many of us have known before.
There’s an entire generation of people who, because of what they’ve had
to endure within their own families, because of the moral decline and
malfeasance of so many elected officials, and because of the hypocrisy,
corruption and exploitation from the spiritual sector, have no confidence in
anything institutional—including the church—perhaps more so.
The church has assured them with newspaper adds and mail outs that we
have answers for them. But when they’ve turned to the church we’ve been too
often too busy with things that are about us to notice them. In turn more people than every before have decided the church doesn’t have any answers
for them. According to Dr. Robert Anderson of The Antioch Affection more
than 50,000 people attend church every weekend, turn away in disgust, then walk away never to return.
Hey guys…it’s
not about us. It’s about God. It’s about us becoming and being the people he
wants us to be, so he can use us to do what he wants to do.
(Ed Saucier)
