church attendance

PastorLarry,

I disagree, missing church does not equal an uncommited individual to God or to the body. Any church goer can be helpful to others in the body of Christ by other means of service to them. I don't have a problem with a pastor calling out of concern to make sure all is well and nothing is wrong, but to nag or displine for missing is out of line.

It's easy for one to say, well if something happened to hurt you just deal with the situation, it's not always that slick which is why alot of people end up leaving churches in the end.

 

The point is about obedience to Christ. Christ said to be a faithful, fully functioning member of his body. If you are not that, then you are disobedient. We all struggle in various ways with this obviously, even me. If you continually are like that, then you give evidence that you have fallen away, and thus were not saved (cf. Heb 3, 6, 10). I am not making a comment on any one particular person. I am making a general statement about what Scripture says.

I don't think the early church went to church Sunday morning, night, and Wed night. They would have laughed at such weak commitment. They met every night of the week. We aren't back to that much of a NT church yet. They ate together. There is no evidence that they lived in a commune however. To continue in the apostles doctrine, means that they continually learned and lived the doctrine of the apostles.

Why? Scripture says that believers are not to forsake the assembling of themselves together as some are in the habit of doing (Heb 10). Scripture says that you are to be taught by the pastor to do the work of the ministry (Eph 4:11ff.). If you are not under the pastor's teaching, then how will you fulfill your God-given responsiblity of Eph 4? If you fall away from following Christ, then you show that you are not saved (Heb 3). The antidote to that is to encourage one another daily so long as it is called today (Heb 3). I don't think the problem here is lack of scriptural evidence so much as it is a radical reorientation of what it means to be a NT Christian.

What I am talking about is not all that radical in terms of hte NT. It is just radical in terms of modern "churchianity" as Keith Green called it years ago. Christianity is something we are day in and day out. The church meetings are times of refuge from the world and refuge for the world (as McManus puts it). They are vital parts of the NT Christian life.

Yes. I will confront the gossiper and asked why they haven't talked to the offending pastor about it? I will ask them why they are being disobedient to the word.

yes, because that is a sinful practice and people in the church need to cease from it.

 

Why do you automatically relate attending church to part of the body not functioning? I know folks who do not attend on a regular basis and still are very active in the body of Christ. Attendence to church is only one way to serve ONE WAY!!

 

Because Scripture, the word of Christ who is the ehad, relates attending church to the functioning fo the body. Why should we do less? I have already given reason for this, but I will rehearse a few of them again: 1) The direct command of Scripture; 2) the necessary teaching/learning aspect of the public proclamation; 3) the fellowship of corporate worship; 4) the nature of the body as a body.

Others could be given.

How can you be active in the body when you are not active in teh body? That doesn't even make sense, if you think about it. The body of Christ is something that means somehting. It is not generic "Christian like" activity. It is service and ministry to the body. If they are wilfully absent, then they are at best disobedient to Christ.

How would you like it if you husband never came home and spent time with you and kids while being out "serving the family"? Or perhaps only spent an hour or so every third week with you? People have lost their spouses and their families over that.

How would you like if your legs worked properly only 2 hours a month? How long until you went to the doctor for some answers? Probably not long ...

Why is it so differnet with the body of Christ, especially when there are clear and unambiguos commands about this? It remains one of the most inconceivable things to me.

This morning I just finished The Unstoppable Force by Erwin McManus. You should really read the last chapter of it. It is dead on, about how we treat normal NT Christianity as if it is some kind of extraordinary Christian service.

He talks about the number of "callings" found in most churches (call to salvation, call to commitment, call to service, call to full time service, call to missions, etc.). He says "An honest evasluation of the dramatic number of callings that the church has created would reveal that we have found extraordinary ways of describing the overwhelming amount of Christless living in the church" (p. 202). Later he says, "Tragically, the basics of spiritual formation are seen as expressions of extraordinary Christian maturity" (p. 210). It is particularly poignant ot me because my text for the Sunday morning is Hebrews 5:11-6:3 where the author talks of those who should be serving but are unable because they have never learned.

McManus chapter 10 is the best chapter in teh book and ought to be read by a lot of people. The title itself it provocative: "A Radical Minimum Standard." The convenience, self focused modern society is so far from what Scripture teaches about the minimum of spiritual commitments that the church has become lifeless and meaningless in the world.

Well, attendance is not service, but it is a necessary part. And it is only one way, but it is one indispensable way, if Christ's words mean anything at all.

 

Okay Pastor Larry, you mentioned gossiper. I didn't say anything about gossip. I have first hand experience with both incidences I'm going to describe. I will agree with you that the pastor should have been confronted in this episode. Unfortunately I didn't think it to be my place to do it.

Now that the gossip issue has been taken care of(for the moment anyway) lets get specific about the hipocritical attitudes of some of our preachers.

The first episode is the ordained minister who used to work with my husband. If he hadn't of told you he was ordained you wouldn't have been able to tell from his actions. He cursed and even worse would tell you something and then tell someone else the oppisite, as it suited his purposes. Thank the Lord he wasn't a full time pastor. What would you have said to this man? (probably a good thing it wasn't my place)

The second episode is much different. It came at the end of a series of events that led the lady involved to stop going to church. This lady had worked in the church for years. Rarely missed a Sunday. One day her husband up and left her(and their young daughter) for another woman. She was left with little income. Mistake on the church part number one was that NNE ever contacted her to see if she needed help(physical or spiritual and we have 5 ministers) She was so shell shocked by the divorce that she stopped coming for a time. Said she felt like everyone was looking at her and making judgement.

Some time after this her roof needed repairing. Our church has a very active Carpenters for Christ group. One of the church men approached the minister in charge of this group with the proposal that the lady provide the materials and the men in the group do the work. The minister completely ignored the request and never brought it to the attention of the committee that makes the decisions on who this group is going to help. This lady won't be back. As far as she is concerned the church doesn't give a hoot about her and her daughter. And by the way, she knows it is wrong not to go to church. However, she is so hurt by the actions of our church that she is afraid to trust another church.

This is the hard one, our church has around 1500 members. How are you going to handle this one? When you do get to finding out about this(by the way we've changed senior ministers in the course of this) are you going to be able to deal with the bitterness that has built up in this lady over all this time?

Can you really single out those who don't go to church every time you think they ought to for disipline? What about those who chose not to take communion for a year? You going to disipline them too? And just what is the disipline for those deceitful church members I mentioned who take advantage of people during the week and give great sums of money for the church's support come Sunday morning?

You've opened a can of worms when you talk about disiplining church members. The biggest problem is where to start!

Oh yeah, you really going to tell a 70 something little old lady to get a life?

 

You said Do you really want to hear about the hippocritical attitudes of your fellow pastors? When someone is talking to me about a fellow pastor, that is gossip.

I don’t know the whole situation and am only hearing your side. I am always hesitant to make comments about situations I don’t know much about. However, based on what you have said, I would use the word of God to confront him first about his tongue and actions, and then about his disqualification from ministry based on the teaching of 1 Tim 3. If I was a member of the church and he didn’t respond to me privately, I would take two or three others to go with me to talk to him. If he didn’t respond, I would bring it before the church. That is in fact the biblical pattern of obedience in Matt 15.

Again, not knowing the whole situation, I am commenting somewhat in the dark here. However, it sounds like the church was wrong. They should not have rejected her. But that is not the pastors’ faults. It is the people’s fault. Where were you? Did you go and sit with her in those lonely nights? Did you go and pray with her? You see, that is the biblical role of ministering to the body that every believer is responsible for. It is not someone else’s job, I always say; it is your job. Go do it.

The carpenter is wrong. If the lady needed help, go help her. You don’t need a committee to put a roof on. Get two or three guys and go do it. Going to a committee makes no sense to me. When someone comes to me with something like that, I say, “Have at it. Get it done.”

As for the lady, she needs to be lovingly and tactfully challenged about not being in church. For her to “know it is wrong not to go to church” and still do it shows a serious issue. Bitterness and lack of forgiveness is not an option for the believer. She is to forgive just as God forgave her. And as soon as God holds something against her, then she will be permitted to hold something against someone else. She needs to be challenged to think about why she is putting herself above God. God forgave far worse sins than the church mistreating a divorcee. Why does she think she has the right to have a higher standard than God? You can be loving and tactful, while being straightforward. Use God’s word heavily. Don’t make it your own opinion.

If I were the pastor, I would be at her house tomorrow to talk to her and see what steps we can take to straighten this out. I can certainly understand the struggle with anger and bitterness. She needs to be loved by the people in the church. IN a church of 1500 people, this should have never gotten this far. The pastors should have never had to go visit her. The people in the church are to be being trained by the pastors to do the work of the ministry (Eph 4:11ff.). They are the ones who should have been there, holding her up, and helping her out. It sounds like 1500 people dropped the ball on this one.

This was never a subject of the conversation. We were talking about long term, willful absence.

I don’t watch who takes communion and who doesn’t. So I wouldn’t have any way to know this.

You go and talk to them. If someone is involved in dishonest business practices, it could be grounds for church discipline.

It is not that big of a can of worms. It is a tough call to make. I have had to make it before and it was sobering when you realize you are making the call. But when our commitment is to biblical obedience, discipline is always a last resort, at the end of a long journey of prayer, love, confrontation, and involvement. This is not something that happens the next day.

[q/b]I have before … not exactly in those words, but I have challenged one of my biggest supporters and most generous people in the church to me personally about some unbiblical attitudes she had towards people.

The reason there are ongoing conflicts with people is because everyone tiptoes around, too scared to be biblical in our actions by going to people and talking to them. Just deal with it. My greatest heartbreak in ministry was a situation that developed over 1 1/2 years when a very close friend and I had some issues and we didn’t deal with it biblically. We let it fester and it split the relationship. In 9 months, two life long friends had a five minute conversation when we lost our unborn baby. We got together for the first time after that nine months later. Everyday, I live with the fact that because I wasn’t willing to step up and challenge both myself and someone else to biblical obedience, I lost a life long friend and partner in ministry. I have vowed to never let it happen again. I might lose a friend, but it won’t be because I do nothing.

We are chickens in church. We are too scared to stand up and say “God said it; do it.” We are too frightened to raise the bar to the radical minimum standard that the Bible sets forth. I think we just ought to go out and get it done. Call people to be obedient, love them come hell or high water as the saying goes, and get it done.

I don't know what you have been through or why this has touched a sore spot with you. My only desire is to challenge thinking about what Scripture says for us.

 

Well if you want to look at this technically speaking ...the BEST way to minister is outside the church itself, not the church building but outside of believers. It's the world directly needing ministering to, of course believers need fellowship and teaching but I'm sorry, believers are very well equipt and able to minister and serve aside from attending church, if they can't then the pastor of the church they attend needs to rethink his position there because he hasn't equipted his flock with the means of growth. The major part of a functioning church body is completely outside the walls of the church.

 

The sore spot is because I have seen either too much 'disipline' (and not in the correct spirit) or to little(way to often).

I think the leadership are chickens because there is a fine line between legalism and obedience. I also think that a lot of times 'regular' church members don't want to get involved for fear of making things worse.

Yes, I was the one holding her hand and praying her through this. I still am. However, I have hesitated to get into the matter with between her and the church because I wasn't a member there when this all began. At that point I was simply her friend.

I have only told one side and as I have left names out it we are talking more in hypothetical examples than as gossip. Now if I had come on here and said 'you know what such and such did' we'd have to talk about gossip. Oh and I'd be wrong.

 

Discipline them?????
I'm sure this has been addressed in previous posts that I haven't read yet, but right up front, that seems rather harsh.

 

Nowhere in Scripture is discipline used for unfaithfulness to church. However, the priviledges of membership can be removed from those who are inactive. In our church a member needs to attend at least 4 services a month to be considered active. Once they are inactive, they must request to be re-activeated. If they are inactive for 6 months, they are removed from the membership roll.

 

Our church does not discipline those who miss church as long as they live in the community. Even in my case (I don't live in the community) they are trying to find me a place to move to because I'm having a hard time being at every service as I live 30 miles away. I had to move last year to take care of my mother who is now in a nuring home. I missed many services but they never gave up on me or admonished me for missing. Even now, with gas prices so high, I try my best to be at Sunday services. That's 120 miles a day if I make both services. These are loving caring people and they are always trying to get people back in church, no matter how long they have been away.

 

Just curious ... what is discipline if not "removing the privileges of membership"? That is exactly what discipline is ...

This is certainly our approach for the most part. There does come a point however where people make it clear they have no interest. I think a lot of people spend all their time on the malcontents instead of feeding and loving the people who are there.