I was struck by this powerful remark:
The ways of destroying the church are many and colorful. Raw factionalism will do it. Rank heresy will do it. Taking your eyes off the cross and letting other, more peripheral matters dominate the agenda will do it-admittedly more slowly than frank heresy, but just as effectively over the long haul. Building the church with superficial ‘conversions’ and wonderful programs that rarely bring people into a deepening knowledge of the living God will do it. Entertaining people to death but never fostering the beauty of holiness or the centrality of self-crucifying love will build an assembling of religious people, but it will destroy the church of the living God. Gossip, prayerlessness, bitterness, sustained biblical illiteracy, self-promotion, materialism-all of these things, and many more, can destroy a church. And to do so is dangerous: ‘If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple (1 Cor. 3:17).” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
- D.A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry: Leadership Lessons from 1 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 83-84. HT: Justin Taylor
January 7th, 2010 | 3:08 pm | #1
Carson left some things out: ritualism, religiosity, formalism, empty and vain repetition.
January 7th, 2010 | 3:17 pm | #2
Mr. Sido, your sins of ritualism, religiosity, formalism and empty/vain repetition are forgiven and covered by the blood of Christ. Rejoice and go in peace.
January 7th, 2010 | 5:23 pm | #3
Paul,
So how we worship doesn’t matter?
January 7th, 2010 | 5:53 pm | #4
Mr. Sido, it appears to me that you are more concerned about the “how” of worship, trying to find regulations and principles that are non-existent, rather than paying more attention to the “why” and “whom” of worship. The more you try to promote your false-theory of “regulative principles” and thereby try to legalistically castigate what you don’t know or understand as “formulaic,” the more joyfully I will pray the liturgy, and rejoice in the Gospel freedom to do so.
I pray too you find the joy of that same freedom in Christ, to worship Him in spirit and truth, and to sing with all the people of God the great canticles and songs of the liturgy that have given voice to our faith.
Te Deum laudamus!
January 7th, 2010 | 6:00 pm | #5
Rev. McCain – Thanks for this. As I read the thought struck me – and your comment cemented it – that while the ways of destroying a church may be many, the ways to build it are mercifully few and simple. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it does mean that we have all that we need. Thanks again for posting.
January 7th, 2010 | 11:42 pm | #6
That’s funny. Foundational to those pesky, false regulative principles is the “why” and “whom” of worship. Darn.
January 8th, 2010 | 6:20 am | #7
Here’s the Lutheran “take” on how worship is done, and an explanation of why the first Evangelicals did not throw the baby out with the bathwater during the Reformation, when it came to worship practices:
“We refuse to be guided by those who are offended by our church customs. We adhere to them all the more firmly when someone wants to cause us to have a guilty conscience on account of them…. It is truly distressing that many of our fellow Christians find the difference between Lutheranism and Papism in outward things. It is a pity and a dreadful cowardice when one sacrifices the good ancient church customs to please the deluded American sects, lest they accuse us of being papistic (i.e., too catholic!). Indeed! Am I to be afraid of a Methodist, who perverts the saving Word, or be ashamed in the matter of my good cause, and not rather rejoice that the sects can tell by our ceremonies that I do not belong to them? We are not insisting that there be uniformity of perception or feeling or of taste among all believing Christians – neither dare anyone demand that all be minded as he is. Nevertheless it remains true that the Lutheran liturgy distinguishes Lutheran worship from the worship of other churches to such an extend that the houses of worship of the latter look like lecture halls in which the hearers are addressed or instructed (NOTE: if he were writing today, he’d no doubt add: they look like movie theatres in which the hearers are entertained!), while our churches are in truth houses of prayer in which Christians serve the great God publicly before the world.”
(Essays for the Church, Volume 1, p. 194 (St. Louis, CPH, 1992).
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