We had a church family meeting after second service on Sunday. Before we celebrated God’s blessings on us and installed nine new member families, I spoke on how our church deals with major events in the culture around us. For those who could not be there, I felt it would be helpful to put this out as a blog:
Every once in a while something happens in our culture that creates an inflection point. People want to know: how will the church respond? Not, how will the people of God respond as individuals, but what is the institutional church going to do? We had this when COVID hit and there were mandates and the church had to decide how to proceed. We have had another one of these moments last month as Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on a college campus in Utah.
When COVID happened, the elders not only spent time making decisions, but also describing how we came to the conclusions we did. I wrote a lot of blogs (like this one, and this one, and this one) and letters to the church. I think that was helpful, even for the people who disagreed with our direction, because it provided clarity for why we chose the path we did. I wanted to spend some time this morning giving a bit of background for how we handle cultural events, specifically in the church service – as I have been questioned both about why we didn’t mention Charlie Kirk in the sermon AND why I chose to mention his wife a few weeks later.
One member of our church sent the elders this video by Todd Friel of Wretched radio, where he asks four clarifying questions (and one quote) that help to explain why a church may decide to or not to address cultural events at the Sunday service. This was actually for the members to consider the motivations of their pastors and to not assume the worst. The four questions are:
- What are we doing when we gather as the church?
- What are we doing when we are preaching?
- What is the theological issue this addresses?
- What is the role of a shepherd?
I am going to interact with his question and then add one of my own at the end:
5. Is this the time to speak?
Different pastors and churches will answer these questions differently. Some may even follow my line of thinking and choose to act differently. That is okay. The church is not a simple set of dos and don’ts that force us to all respond the same way. It is a diverse group of people who are taking the principles that God has given and trying to apply them in a broken and sinful world. As a church, we have reasons why we do things the way that we do them, but I am not writing this to say that it is the only way to approach it. I will answer the first question today, and then address the others in blogs to come.
What are we doing when we gather as the church?
When we get together every Sunday, we come from all of these different places, experiences, and we come to gather as the body of Christ. This is a time to focus on the unity that we all share – what binds us all together is that we are all sinners saved by grace, through faith, in Jesus Christ. This is a time for us to grow in that reality and to offer praise and thanksgiving to God for rescuing us.
We have a liturgy (order of service) we follow every week. Through it, we are telling His story, from start to finish. This includes:
We Prepare – call to worship reading and song – transition into service
We Confess – songs of repentance – confronted with our sin
We Recognize – read the Law – reminded of God’s authority
We Pray – come to God to lay our burdens down – this is where we mention events
We Preach – God speaks to us through His Word
We Commune – we take Communion – Jesus pours out His grace
We Respond – sing to the God who saves us
We Receive – the last song and benediction give us something to take with us as we leave
I could get into this in a lot more detail, but the point is – we include these elements that God has told us that we should practice in our worship, so that He will be glorified and we will be sanctified. This sanctification is done, not by dragging the cultural issues into the church, but by using this time to be re-centered on God’s greater story. As pastor Josh pointed out in our elder meeting, the space we worship in is called a sanctuary, because it is a place (and Sunday morning is a time) set apart for us to ‘get away’ from all of the fights that take up the rest of our time. Not because God doesn’t care about these things. But because the best way for us to engage them well is for us to have this space where we can spend time with God and His people, focused on the gospel that unifies us, rather than all of the things pulling us apart.
We address what is going on in the world around us during our pastoral prayer, as we bring our fears and anxieties to Him. We prayed for Charlie Kirk, his family, and all those looking for comfort on the Sunday following his death.