Needed: A New Way to Meet #1: History of Church Meetings – Why Do We Meet This Way?

Let me take another potshot at the sacred. Now I’m going to stop preaching, and start meddling. There’s a wonderful or seemingly wonderful thing…I’m afraid…I’m afraid of the religious system. Every time you think maybe it’s going to die, it’ll come up with something else new that’s no good. So today, we’ve got the worship movement sweeping across American churches and outside the organized church, too. Now, those of you who are Pentecostal know that we watched you back when I was a little kid. We watched you, and you would have these glassy-eyed fits. Forgive me. I’m sorry. I’m telling you, I watched them when I was a kid, and they would do like this. I really thought they were seeing something. That was put on…and they’re still doing it.

Well, now today we’ve got worship. And worship…Lord, forgive me, but Lord, I’m doing this because this is the way I feel…we’ve got people who are going, well, you know, I do that too, but I watch those people. They do that for two or three or four years, and I get to saying something to myself. You’re cheating. You’re cheating. That’s not real. I know it’s not real. I didn’t say it wasn’t real in the beginning; it ceased to be real.

You see, saints, everything we do has to have a source. There’s only one source for all we do, and if we don’t have that as a source, everything else we do will die out. I’m afraid of today’s worship movement. I’m just as afraid of it as I am of “Hoc est corpus meum.” It’s going to get institutionalized, and it’s going to be there; it has no source.

I’m going to repeat myself later on, but I’m going to say it now. Worship does not lead you to Christ. Can you please understand this? Worship does not lead you to Christ. Christ will lead you to worship. It has to start with Jesus Christ. The worship movement does not start with Jesus Christ; it starts with worshiping Jesus Christ, and as fine as that is, it’s two totally different worlds.

Yes, people worship “worship”; and if not, pretty soon you’ve institutionalized it. Yes, I’m afraid of it. It’s beautiful, and I love it. I’m standing up here and telling you I love super churches and glory churches; I want to be a member of one, but I know two years from now it’s going to be worn out. I’m telling you, worship is heading in the same direction tongues is. You can just milk that cow so long, and it won’t give any more milk. It’s all hat and no cattle. It’s all boot and no horse. That dog won’t hunt. It will not work. As you sit there, my question is: you do it over and over, and somewhere in your heart you know this, but you never stop to question it. My question is not why we do it. My question is: why do we never question this?

Now, I’d like to say to the Roman Catholics, the Episcopalians, the Baptists, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the super churches, the glory churches, and the people currently heading up worship. I know the people heading up that worship are so driven by this that they will be really offended. I want to tell you all that it will be Jesus Christ first, or it will be death in two to three years, and sometimes much sooner.

I am just going to wreak havoc here for a minute. One, I believe the entire concept of meeting needs to be laid down—the whole thing. In fact, I’m not sure, but we may need to end meetings, period. I don’t think we can begin the Christian church with meetings. She’s got to begin somewhere else. Meetings must come later. We need to lay down our singing. We need to lay down our worship. We need to lay down the preaching of the sermons that go with it. Lay down the sharing. Lay it all down…and start all over again somewhere else. Lay the whole blooming thing down. It’s been 1,700 years in pain; take it out and shoot it.

Brothers and sisters, let me tell you something. This weekend’s conference is not about how to meet. This weekend’s conference is the church. This weekend’s conference is about the church, because we’re dealing with how our meetings are part of the body of Christ, the meeting of the church. We’ve got to have a totally different concept for the church. I’m going to get ahead of myself here, but I’m really tired of this; the church getting so short-changed. Luther, Calvin, you don’t know what you did to us. Our concept of the church of Jesus Christ is that Sunday morning meeting from 11 to 12 a.m. God, have mercy on us all that we would think that is the glorious church.

Let me tell you something. Isn’t it true that everything fun in the Christian faith is outside the church, and everything boring is in it? Is that not true of our present-day situation? If you want to do something exciting, you join Campus Crusade for Christ, or InterVarsity, or Youth with a Mission.

Is it not true that most of the fun you’ve ever had as a Christian has been outside the church and all the boring stuff has been in it? Is it not true that most of your touch with Jesus Christ has been outside the church, somewhere else? What a shame. Why, she’s better, more beautiful, more glorious than the church buildings, Sunday morning, Campus Crusade, InterVarsity, and Youth with a Mission, Young Life, and Youth for Christ, and…is there any more? Let’s go all in here. Sorry, I love all you people; you’re wonderful Christians and all that, but you ain’t got a shred of New Testament to back up your existence…and the church has got no business being boring.

I’ll tell you something else she’s got no business being: a violin with only one string. Let me tell you what I mean by that. Go into any group, and they’re stuck in one way of meeting, no matter what it is. It’s either glory, or it’s praise, or it’s worship, or it’s classical singing, or it’s a certain kind of preaching. The word versatility doesn’t seem to exist in the Christian vocabulary. Variety seems like a word from a world beyond us. Whatever happened to versatility and variety? And part of this is your fault. Hey, you like one kind of meeting, and you’ll play that thing until it’s dead. Then you’ll take it out and bury it and play it at its own funeral.

I’m going to propose to you that the first-century church had a different way of approaching everything than anything that we do today.