Often times people talk about the importance of churches being like New Testament churches. Or maybe they get more specific and say churches should be Acts 2 churches. I would say Acts 2:42-47 is the inspiration for this line of thinking.
I’ve been a part of some strategic planning (that sounds way too ominous) for our 5pm service for the past few weeks. It is a newer service, and still very new in figuring out what it is going to look like in the long term. It takes place in a different venue than our two morning services, and currently has a separate worship leader. Our conversation about the service generally is surrounded in what type of format and structure will allow for the most success (however you would label success).
As we’ve talked the past few weeks, my wheels started have been spinning.
Go to most evangelical churches around the world for a weekend gathering and you will hear about 30 to 40 minutes of music, and about the same amount of preaching. And certainly my church is the same way, including this 5pm service. I don’t view that as a bad thing.
We spend billions of dollars each year in order to be more relevant. I see some negative there, but I also see value there (lots of it). I have a job doing something I love because churches see value in that.
When I think of the “New Testament” church I often think of their church services being about meals. People would gather together in homes and they would share a meal together. Quite likely the head of that household would share a message on the gospel and quite likely they would end their meal by taking Communion together.
What is amazing to me is that as irrelevant and unexciting as this “format” of church is, it still worked. I’m all for being relevant, and certainly I fight for being relevant in the style of music we play at Sunset and for the songs we do. But, maybe being relevant isn’t all that important.
(Photo: Juli Modul)
