Featured Is it important to "dress up" for church?

This is a cultural issue. Seventy-five years ago, people dressed up (suit and tie for men) to go to baseball games. It was considered a big deal.

I suppose the idea for dressing up for church was that you were showing reverence and respect for God.

I wouldn’t were shorts to church, but I no longer were a suit.

peace to you

 

There are two reasons people dress casually for church:

1) They're consumers, not Christians. They're at church for entertainment, deistic therapy, or because they're dragged there. They don't dress up because they lack the reverence of a follower of Christ.

2) They're stupid and don't understand the function of dress. Less intelligent people dress more casually in all situations, even in situations they know more formality is customary.

 

1 My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism.
2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in.
3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,”
4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

James 2:1-4

 

What about the financially comfortable guy that shows up dressed like a slob?

For me, it's more of a societal downgrade, and not a church issue.

 

I suppose I would need to know how this financially comfortable guy (or gal) dresses on most days.

 

The financially comfortable guy that shows up dressed like a slob is just about every slob. They all arrive to church in new-ish SUVs. They wear expensive brand-name slob clothing, like Nike shoes and professionally ripped jeans. Dressing up is more about style than cost. You can get dirt-cheap dress shirt, pants, and shoes from Walmart.

Society is more casual, but the slobs at church still dress better for work than for church. Churches do Christians a grave disservice by encouraging them to dress casually. These churches are sabotaging the influence and success Christians can have in society, because people do judge you by the clothes you wear. Even that slob in church will judge someone dressed more casually than himself. That intellectually-deficient slob will even judge people dressed like himself when dealing with others in important matters, even if it's just asking directions.

 

My point is, I don’t believe this is entirely a rich vs poor thing, while the Scripture you presented certainly was.

(Of course I'm not the OP, so I understand that I could be wrong.)

 

Did the first century church dress up?

 

It's about "fine clothes" vs. "filthy clothes" just as much as it's about rich vs. poor.

 

I don't know any scriptural instructions about how one dresses for church other than the already-referenced James 2 passage, which warns against showing favoritism toward someone who does dress up. So the answer-- scripturally-- is No. As for the correlation between dressing "up," or "nice," for an event and how important one considers it to be, that's worldly and meant to influence from that perspective-- the one salesmen, lawyers, jehovah's witnesses, and mormons work from.

 

It is a deliberate personal choice for me to dress casual at church. I know people who have left services because they felt under dressed and it made them feel like they were not good enough to be in a church. I know of no person that was ever driven from the house of God because someone else dared to dress casual.


"It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble." [Luke 17:2 NASB]

"Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble." [1 Corinthians 8:13 NASB]

 

3) A person with a changed heart seeks praise from God, not from people. [Rom 2:29]

 

While I don't "dress up" for church, I don't wear old clothes, either. am clean, & have my dentures in. I wear nice, but casual, clothes. My wife generally wears a nice dress (Pants if it's cold) & her usual public makeup. (She's not much on bling.)

 

Not nearly as important as making sure that your heart and mind are prepared and ready to worship the Lord and to hear from His word!

 

Hmph, well some church ladies are still holding the line & admonishing sisters to keep up Sunday attire!

Mrs. Albert Mohler, in the appropriately named Southern Seminary alumni magazine The Tie:

"a well-intentioned move to counter ostentatious attire has resulted in opening the floodgates such that anything goes. It is very difficult for us to recover and to take steps to go back toward traditional Sunday dress. The fourth commandment is still there. 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy'. Many have forgotten that Sunday is set apart, and that it is not like every other day."

"her Sunday clothes are going to be different from her other clothes? Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. Unlike the discount store whose tags say, 'there are no rules', her father and I believe there are rules. There are absolutes. There is a line that you just don’t cross. I hasten to add that it wouldn’t matter if her father was a seminary president or a ditch digger, the rules would be the same."

 

Turn the clock back 60 years and I remember going to church and the sister were dressed up nice and the brothers had on three piece suit and tie... And some of them also wore hats and hung them up on the hat rack... As soon as I became a man and joined the church I grew up in, I noticed a change in the men wearing the hats... Pardon the pun but following suit like all the other men in the church, I also started wearing a three piece suit and tie... Feeling it was the norm in our church until around a couple of years back I stop wearing one all together... I wear the suit on cold occasion but no tie... And I never will go to meeting day in blue jeans... Brother Glen

 

You would hate our summer worship meetings then, as we have people coming in with tee shirts and shorts on at times!

 

For me, wearing "special" clothes - jacket and tie - helps to prepare my mind, because I think attending church is special. It's not about impressing God or impressing other people. Other than church, weddings and funerals I almost never dress that way, and I otherwise dislike neckties.
Our church has no "dress code" for attendance, though if someone were to come in decidedly revealing attire or some blatantly attention-seeking clothes or distractingly malodorous, a regular attendee might privately offer a caution. (And on the last, find out if the condition is a result of that person's being homeless or something, in which case help can be offered.) The only dress directions concern those with a "platform ministry", like choir, and that's mainly to avoid detracting from the message in the music, preaching or whatever.