Thankyou Claire.  We all need to be reminded of this.

Interesting comments Claire. In my experience I’ve found that the churches that emphasise “teaching” as the primary purpose of church tend to tacitly encourage passivity from the congregation.

Churches that focus on corporate “worship” and “liturgy”, as much as teaching eg using the whole body to worship, engaging the congregation through them being active in singing/saying the service tend to engage the congregation as active participants in the service rather than making them bystanders.

Hi Claire,

When you speak of “authenticity,” what exactly do you mean?

Maybe, for some (a significant minority?) in the pews their lack of responsiveness is authentic.

Thanks for the feedback and questions!

In answer to Di’s question of what to say to someone who wanted to do what I’m suggesting, there are a few things I’d say.

Firstly, we’re all different and so how one person does this might be different to another – and I think the differences between us are part of the diversity that God has blessed us with.

The second thing would be to reflect more deeply on the relational aspect of what happens in church – and I mean relational in both the divine and human dimensions. So, if God is really with us, and interested in what we have to say to him in prayer and praise, then our conduct and emotional expression should reflect the wonderful reality that through Christ we have access to the God of the universe, as his sons and daughters!

If our public prayer, speech and singing are a means of building our fellow believers (1 Cor. 14; Col. 3:16) then our practice of these activities should match that purpose. For example, I think there’s often more warmth and encouragement in the way we tell someone how well they’re looking, than in the words that are spoken/sung during a service reminding them that God loves them or demands that we live lives that honour him.

“Thoughtless prayers are not Protestant.”

People can pray thoughtlessly, it’s a shame because generally a lot of thought and very good theology has gone into the prayers included in a formal liturgy and of course The Lord’s Prayer is a set form prayer-it is disappointing to hear that people would utter that thoughtlessly.

Must say I’ve heard plenty of bad theology in those freeform prayers that start “Lord we just wanna…......”

But Mark, meeting to encourage one another IS a high purpose.  The body is there to serve and build itself up in love.  I think we’re at church to praise God to each other as part of our upbuilding, not as an end in itself.

Or have I misunderstood you?

My view is a bit different, and as it happens my minister preached about church today from I Tim 3:15.  He had three points
We are God’s household, so we as a church ought to be like a loving family, where people serve and help each other to grow up into Christ (ie, church isn’t all about the sermon but about everyone ministering).  Then we are the church, the earthly gathering that reflects the heavenly reality of our presence with Christ, so we ought to be regular attenders.  And we are the pillar and foundation of truth, proclaiming the gospel to the world, individually as well as corporately. 
It seems to me that praise is not a separate thing but intrinsic to these ideas, and that worship occurs when God’s word is proclaimed in an atmosphere of brotherly love. (Note that Rom 12:1 is in the context of serving the body.) Therefore, I’ll stick with seeing church as meeting together to encourage one another, with my role being to serve however I can.  This is not a bland purpose:  it is love.

Hi Mark and Ellen,

Responding to Mark several posts ago: I don’t think we’ve given our church meetings a ‘bland’ purpose so much as horizontal one. That is, somehow we’ve been so keen to emphasise (rightly) that worship involves the whole of life that when we come together as believers we don’t quite know what we’re doing, beyond encouraging one another and hearing the Bible taught. Obviously these are not ‘bland’ purposes – but if Christ is with us when two or three are gathered together in his name, and God’s people are commanded individually and corporately to praise him, then there should be a vertical dimension to our meetings as well as a horizontal (which I take it, is what you’re saying).

It’s because of this that Ellen’s earlier comment that ‘we’re at church to praise God to each other as part of our upbuilding, not as an end in itself’ can’t be right on its own.

We do encourage one another as we praise God (that’s why our praise must be intelligible cf. 1 Cor. 14:15-17) but surely our praise more than a means to this end. If the chief end of man and woman is to glorify God then our praise (in thanksgiving, proclamation, song, and prayer) has a purpose independent of its impact on others – it is an end in itself – but in God’s kindness we also glorify him as we build each other up while we praise him!

Hi Di,

Just to clarify, I’m not saying that aspects of our church meetings are either horizontal or vertical. The whole of life has a vertical God-ward dimension. But if we are speaking or singing words addressed to God (or about him), as we should be doing when we come together, then being mindful that this is what we are doing and doing it in a way that reflects that spiritual reality doesn’t distort what we’re doing.

And I would say it highlights the grace of God in the gospel, rather than sidelines it. (Though I confess I’m not sure I understand your point here.)

You may be right, that we need to do more work on the notion of praise, but in the meantime I’m sure it’s not singing ‘Tell out my soul’ or ‘How great is our God’ with little enthusiasm or conviction! Do we really want to say to God “yes, you’re great, but I can’t get too excited about it’?

Hi everyone. I’m with Claire. Whatever else we do in thinking theologically about our assemblies, we need to be engage ourselves in the pews.

Half-hearted singing as a typical response by a believer is terrible regardless of our personality types. Singing whole-heartedly, with lots of gratitude in our hearts and so on, seems right to me.

In regards to Di’s question:

Does everyone here agree that we are a gathering around the word of God? or is something else being thought?

Would it be more precise (though long-winded) to say we are gathering around God himself, present by his Spirit, as he addresses us in his word?

There are probably a lot of reasons why people are not engaged in worship services.  I think you hit on some of them, Dianne.  Here are a few off the top of my head:

1.  The person is not regenerate.

2.  I don’t think we adequately grasp or believe that worship takes place in the Jerusalem above, around the very throne of Jesus Christ and through his mediation.  How can that be boring!

3.  We haven’t done, at least in America, a good job of communicating the truth that worship is a dialogue, between the Lord and his people.

4.  Sometimes our songs or liturgies are not worthy of heartfelt singing because of errors or poor content or music.

5.  All of us are prone to going through the motions, and this possibility increases in churches where there is a set liturgy.

6.  We don’t seem to understand very well how God is truly experienced, and how necessary the Word is in experiencing God.  The two articles about experiencing God by John Woodhouse (recently posted on the Sola Panel) could help us a lot.