Meanwhile, down in How’s-ville
Let’s be real – we’ve made a mess of our (Church) own history. Do me a favor and check out this simplified Church History diagram, I’ll wait… (click here)
Did you do it? Because what they show is a looooooong line of splits and disagreements and divides and…. you get the picture. What are those splits about? MOST of them (not all, but most) are about the HOW of Church.
Seriously – the How. We agree on the Who. We agree on the Why. We can’t seem to get together on the How and it drives us apart. What is worse is that the How has made us competitors at best for attention, attendance, and membership. All because of the How.
Now, there are some biblical mandates that determine some of the How – and we’re not pulling anything into question there. So lets pull focus and turn our eyes much closer than the entirety of Western Church History: Sunday morning at your home congregation.
What has divided us there? Is it the Who? No. Is it the Why? No. It is the How.
Worship Wars exist because of the How of worship. Church splits happen because of immensely important things like carpet updating, furniture moving, and paint colors. Seriously. I wish I were exaggerating.
Yesterday our sermon time was spent on an examination of the powerful moment of Communion that the Restoration Movement Churches celebrate every week. We dove into the four aspects that have driven us to this moment: Historical Significance, Physical Significance, Mental Significance, and the Proclamation we make when we gather around the table.
Three of the four were relatively benign and not really news, we’ve got this thing down. Where the tension could have ramped up was when we started down the road of the How. Nowhere in Scripture is there a mandate for the How – just the Why and Who. We don’t have to use unleavened bread. There is no commandment to do so – we just follow the one example of the Passover meal (Jesus’ last supper where He instituted what we remember each week). He used unleavened bread because of the Jewish celebration of Passover. That isn’t what we’re celebrating at all – but try, just try to slip in bread with active yeast on a Sunday morning! CHAOS! Tears! Angst!
All because of How we’ve always done it. I repeat a true statement I made during the sermon: There was a near (we’re talking NEAR) church split because the communion table was moved from the front of the auditorium off to the side. It did not change communion – it did not affect Who we remembered… but it messed with people’s How. And when the How gets messed with – well, we plant our feet, pull up our fists, and get ready to fight.
Shame on us, all those inhabitants of “How’s-ville.” We want things our way – and will fight to keep it that way. Doing so has blinded us to the Who, What, and Why of Communion, Worship, and Church.
Philippians 3: 17 – 21 17 Dear brothers and sisters, pattern your lives after mine, and learn from those who follow our example. 18 For I have told you often before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes, that there are many whose conduct shows they are really enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 They are headed for destruction. Their god is their appetite, they brag about shameful things, and they think only about this life here on earth. 20 But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. 21 He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.