Role of the Church. What do you think?

[Meredith0414]

I've been going to church with my parents the past few month before I moved out to another city. A friend of mine who lives and teaches in our hometown has been coming to church with me as well. While the church does a wonderful job reaching out to unbelievers and people who have fallen, and providing a welcoming and friendly place for families, my friend and I have concluded that we're not being as convicted or fed spiritually like we were in our respective home churches in college. The sermons are more topical and less about looking at the word. I'm moving soon and will have to find another home church anyways, she's worried because she doesn't feel fulfilled by this church. Obviously, she's going to try out different churches, but this whole thing has got me thinking...

What is the role of the church to the individual...

I agree that yes, a church should provide fellowship, community, support and other related synonyms, Do you think it's the role of the church to feed you spiritually? At my old church in college, the Pastor explained often said Sundays are like a party. Everyone gets together and worships and celebrates how great God is but that we should be feeding ourselves through quiet time, studying the word and praying, through out the week. He purported that church (as in Sunday service) is not the (only)place where you should be fed and isn't responsible for your complete diet (Side Note: Even though the Pastor says all of this, every Sunday at that church God convicted my heart and revealed new truths about who He is... funny).

But do you think that you can go to a church that doesn't necessarily feed you or doesn't feed you enough spiritually, but is a great place for fellowship and community?

My opinion is that you can supplement this with bible studies and quiet times and Sunday should definitely be a party instead of the only place you fill yourself through out the week... but at the same time if you don't feel at home in a church you should keep searching.

What do you think? What is the role of the church to the individual in regards to your walk?

Just Curious

 

[ponderingnwandering]

A balance of both really. If you just party, then anyone who is interested in God will instantly be either turned off from learning more about Him or get the wrong idea that all we should do is party; once they hit a rough spot in life they'll move on to whatever suits them best for that situation.

On the flip side, if you come off as "bible thumpers" and constantly throwing around rules without really showing your human side as a church leader, then people will just be jaded and accuse you of being pretentious. It'll sound more like a cult than having a relationship with God. At least it would to me

Eccleasiastes 3:1
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.

 

[MacFall]

The early church was very different from the way churches are run now. The way the service is ordered, the pastor standing up in front of the congregation and lecturing, and other traditions that we think of today as "church" have no basis in scripture. In fact they are more strongly influenced by the pagan traditions of the times of their formation than by the early church.

That doesn't mean that there's something inherently wrong with having church services that run something like:

1. People come in, greet each other, etc
2. Opening prayer and scripture
3. Musical worship
4. Sermon
5. Closing prayer and offering

Which is how my church does things. But I really believe that by conforming to that model of "the church service", we're missing out on what it could be. I think we should bring back the day-long gatherings that church meetings originally were, with open discussions and fellowship being just as important as teaching and musical worship, along with having dinner together.

Recently, my pastor has started talking a lot about politics, and that really frustrates me. Not only because I don't always agree with his views, but also because that's not the spiritual refilling that I come to church for in the first place. We used to have worship services that lasted until the worship minister heard the spirit saying to end them, then we would have multiple people stand up and speak, then we'd have more worship. That was much more fulfilling than doing 4 prescheduled songs and listening to 40 minutes of stuff that I could hear on conservative talk radio all week long.

And more often than not, we don't have an evening meeting for young adults because there are so few of us that if a couple people can't make it the leader usually cancels.

 

[mahlalie]

As I understand it, the early church wasn't a place to which unbelievers were invited. It probably didn't remotely resemble what we have as church today. It was a place for believers to fellowship and build each other up. They supported each other, operating in spiritual gifts, singing, eating, all that jazz. I realize, as an apostle, Paul instructed the people for long periods of time, but I see nothing to indicate that a lecture was the norm outside of those special visits. So I guess I kind of agree that church should be the party, although I'm sure there's a churchier term.

Honestly, I'm a big fan of finding friends that will build you up spiritually. Hang out with those people. Eat with them. Talk about the Bible. Talk about issues you're dealing with. Talk about what God's been doing with you. That's church. Don't get me wrong, though. As a worship leader, I love the musical worship side of church. That's one of the only things about church that I feel can be best done in a church building type setting.

That said, church isn't what it was back then. I think it'd be kind of cool if it were, but it's not. When I go to church, I see those as the roles, though. I'd like to find people with whom to fellowship as previously described. I like to worship to the music with many other believers. In spite of the fact I don't think it should be the primary form of teaching/learning, the lecture from the pulpit every now and then is nice.

Also, I'm not a huge fan of topical sermons either, at least not a steady diet of them. I'd rather learn things from the Bible that open my eyes more to how amazing God is. I want to say that it was John Piper who said something along the lines of that when he's preparing a sermon, he reads the passage and asks himself, "What about his passage glorifies God?" That's an awesome perspective for preaching.

Edit: It looks like MacFall beat me to the general idea of what I was saying. lol

 

[WiredSpirit]

The way I've always understood church to be is the primary weekend services are the wide circle or the base of the triangle. The focus is on worship and community. If you want to learn more you involve yourself in classes. Chances are the pastors even teach classes based on their sermon series that go into much more depth than they give in a 20 minute lecture.

 

[Sketcher]

I agree with that pastor.

As far as being "fed," if I had to pick between that and a church that challenges me to practice what I already know, I (hopefully) would pick the latter every time. Yeah, digging into the word is great, but it will only get you so far - especially since churches tend to go for the more popular books in the Bible. In a way, I believe they're right to do that if they keep getting new people coming in, they need to learn what we older believers take for granted, and we can't expect them to jump into discipleship relationships with people they just met. What we need to do is involve ourselves in service according to our gifts. If it's ours to disciple or lead a Bible study, we need to learn how to do that. We absolutely need to practice seeing needs and meeting needs as we see them. We need to practice stepping out just our routines to practice charity. We need to look beyond ourselves and what our brains can absorb from reading a passage. There's growing in knowledge, but there's more to growing up than that. As we grow in knowledge, we need to grow up and act our spiritual age.

 

[Meredith0414]

And more often than not, we don't have an evening meeting for young adults because there are so few of us that if a couple people can't make it the leader usually cancels.

The same thing happens at my current church. It's mostly made up of families and while the high school ministry is thriving the "young adults" of the church don't really have an outlet. Luckily I'm moving soon and hope to find a home church that'll actually be a spiritual home.

I continued talking about this with my friends and told her what some of y'all have said and we went a little off the beaten path and started talking about "mega-churches". My current church is at the brink of becoming a mega church and I can't help but notice the correlation between topical sermons (or "feel good Joel Osteen" type sermons and mega churches. And again, places like that can be great for unbelievers and "baby Christians", but not for me i guess. I'm with mahlalie in that I prefer small groups of friends or "home churches". When I was in Austin my bible study group would have a one of our guys play a few worship songs on his guitar before we started and just about every time I was overwhelmed by the presence of God. I feel like places like that are so rare though and are more valuable (in regards to an individual's walk with God) than mega-churches.

 

[prettygeek]

"Big things come in small packages" is the best way to describe my church. We have less than 30 people every Sunday, 85% of the active members are over 50 years-old, we have a minimum of 3 kids each Sunday, and we have about 1 young adult (me) each Sunday...however, we offer a lot for a small church...

I'm fortunate that my church goes through great efforts to fill our spiritual cups during our Sunday services. My Sunday school class goes through one or two chapters of the Bible every Sunday and we look at how other commentators view the passages as well as the teacher's interpretation and how we can apply the lesson in real life (along with a discussion of the passage). We also have a good bit of scripture in our Sunday services (include a lesson from the Old Testament, a Psalm reading, an Epistle reading, and a Gospel reading). The sermons usually reflects on the Gospel reading and how it can be applied to life.

We have other projects and services in the evenings and during the weekdays, but this is more of our fellowship/community/fun time. We have a Wednesday service that's solely dedicated to enriching the lives of our youth through teaching, crafts, and fellowships with other kids. We take part in fundraisers for local ministries and participate in big projects (like packing boxes for Operation Christmas Child). We have fellowship meals where we enjoy each others company and they're generous enough to invite my kids from the shelter for their annual holiday meals. We also go on trips (my two favorite trips were the Billy Graham Library and a Wofford football game) where we, again, mainly enjoyed each others company.

However, I know not everyone is that fortunate; some church have all teaching and no community or all community and no teaching.

I think it depend on what the person wants to get out of their faith; do you want more fellowship, more spiritual teaching, or both? I personally don't feel like it should solely be my church's responsibility to feed me spiritually (although they do a wonderful job of it). To me, community and fellowship is more important; it was the close-knit family feeling the caring members had for one another that made me want to keep going to church. It was the only church I felt like I belonged to; a place where I could grow as a Christian, become involved in my community, and feel like a member of a 'family.'

I feel like people should/will make efforts to fill whatever void is missing; even if filling that void means changing churches. How they fill that void is up to them. Its like trying on clothes; you may find something you like, but it may not feel completely right. You have several options; you can keep wearing it and not feel happy about it, you can alter it a bit in some way to make it feel better to you, or you can hang it up and try on something else until you're satisfied. I only really have two voids: I'm a person that craves to learn as much as I can about God and the Bible, and I really do wish we had some "young" Christian adults (or young at heart). Along with my Sunday services, I also like listening to podcasts, read books, or watch online videos from other pastors who can give me even more insight on my faith (my personal favorites are the podcasts of Chip Ingrim and the video sermons from Mars Hill...not too bad). These help me look at God and the scriptures in many different lights (then I can share those views with my church members and we can discuss it).

As for the "young adult" void....well I guess that's part of the reason why I joined this community.

 

[Meredith0414]

As for the "young adult" void....well I guess that's part of the reason why I joined this community.

I had the same idea!