Archive for category: Church

Have you ever grilled with charcoal?  I used to do it all the time.  To get the coals started, I would pile them up, spray some lighter fluid on them, and then apply a match at several strategic locations.  Those coals would begin to burn, and eventually they would be hot enough for cooking.

But sometimes my pile wasn’t quite what it needed to be.  On those occasions, some of the coals would roll off the pile, over towards the edge of the grill.  Almost without fail, those coals would quit burning.  To get those coals lit again, I’d have to push them back over to the burning pile, and soon enough those individual coals would be burning also.

When it comes to our spiritual life, you and I are a lot like those coals.  We tend to need to feed off other believers, to be encouraged by them, to be inspired by them.  God says it this way: “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.  And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.  Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another–and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”  (Hebrews 10:23-25)

So, is it important for me to gather with fellow believers?  Yes, it is.  God urges us to do so.  When you gather with other believers, not only do they encourage you, but you give encouragement to them.  Just by being there, you tell others that you believe in Jesus, that God’s work is important to you, that spiritual matters are your priority.  That gives wonderful encouragement to others!  And you’re doing it just by gathering with those fellow believers.

Now, to be clear, God also hasn’t told us how to do that gathering.  So, it wouldn’t necessarily have to be in a church.  It could happen in a variety of other ways.  (Like, for example, a home Bible study group.)  God doesn’t command a specific way to do it.

At the same time, Christians throughout history have gathered in a “church-like” setting.  In fact, Jesus himself did so.  In the book of Luke we read, “He (i.e. Jesus) went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom” (Luke 4:16a, emphasis added).  Jesus went to worship at the synagogue.  In our way of speaking, “Jesus went to church.”  And, he did so customarily.  If it made sense for Jesus – the Son of God – to go to church regularly, might it not also make sense for us?  Sure!

Now I’ll quickly confess – I’m not always really excited about going to church, about attending worship or Bible study.  That’s because I’m a sinful human being.  So we go back to that Luke passage above, hearing that Jesus went to the synagogue regularly, and we thank God!  Why so?  Because Jesus was living a perfect life, and doing so in your place and in my place.  Remember,  Jesus not only paid for our sins on the cross, but He also lived a perfect life in our place.  When God put faith in your heart, God gave you credit for the perfect life which Jesus led.  So now God looks at you and at me as being perfect and holy, just as Jesus was!  And that includes our worship life; because Jesus worshiped perfectly, God considers you to have worshiped perfectly, too.

Wow!  That’s good news!  That God would consider me to be … perfect?!?  That’s awesome!  So, what would I like to say to God?  Well, I’d like to say “Thank you!”  Correct?  Sure!  Gathering with other believers can be a wonderful way to do so!

There are other thoughts involved.  For example, which church would I want to attend?  I want to attend a church which is teaching all the truths of the Bible accurately.  What if there isn’t a church like that near me?  Well, perhaps I’ll have to get videos, or access worship opportunities on the internet, or perhaps God might use me to be part of starting a congregation which teaches all the truths of the Word accurately.  Those are difficult situations.

But the general thought is, “Yes, God wants me to gather with my fellow believers, and to do so regularly.”  Why so?  Because God wants to encourage me with His Word, wants me to be encouraged by other believers, and wants to give me the honor of giving encouragement to others.  Blessings on your “gatherings!”

Worship, most of us think, is something that happens in church. And it does. But it does not start or end there.

It is better to say that worship is something that happens in our heart. It’s what happens when God speaks to our heart and our heart responds to God.

For worship to take place, we have to hear God’s message of love. We call it the gospel, which means “good news.” God tells us that good news in his Word, the Bible. He tells us how he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to win forgiveness of sins for us and give us eternal life.

When God’s good news reaches our heart, it lifts the weight of guilt from our soul. It makes us happy because God loves us and he cares for us. Our happy response is to love him back and to say, “Thank you, God!” And we praise him. Also, as with other good news, we want to share it with others.

That is worship. Because it starts in our heart, we can worship anywhere. We just need to keep in mind that it has two sides: God speaks to us, and we respond to God. Another way of understanding worship is that it is everything we do because of our faith in Jesus.

The impact of worship multiplies when we join in worship with other Christians. That is where church comes in. In church God talks to us through Bible readings and preaching. The church service is designed to remind us how much we need Jesus and how he has filled our needs. He lived a perfect life that God the Father credits to us. Then he took upon himself the punishment we deserve for sin when he died on the cross. He proved our eternal joy when he rose from the dead, assuring us of a new life in Christ!

In church, believers together respond with music and song, thankfulness and praise. We pray for each other and encourage each other with God’s promises. We form a bond of Christian love and faithfulness. We work together to serve God. Therefore, each of us can say with David in Psalm 122:1: “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the LORD.’ ”

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More Bible passages about worship, taken from the New International Reader’s Version Discoverer’s Bible:

Colossians 3:16, 17. Let Christ’s word live in you like a rich treasure. Teach and correct each other wisely. Sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing with thanks in your hearts to God. Do everything you say or do in the name of the Lord Jesus. Always give thanks to God the Father through Christ.

Romans 12:1. Brothers and sisters, God has shown you his mercy. So I am asking you to offer up your bodies to him while you are still alive. Your bodies are a holy sacrifice that is pleasing to God. When you offer your bodies to God, you are worshiping him.

Hebrews 10:25. Let us not give up meeting together. Some are in the habit of doing this. Instead, let us cheer each other up with words of hope. Let us do it all the more as you see the day coming when Christ will return.

Years ago I was on the way home from church with my parents, after moving to a new city. I commented that the pastor’s sermon was harder to listen to than the pastor we’d had in our old town. My dad said, “Actually, this pastor’s sermons are less flashy, but I learn more.”

From that Sunday on, I started listening to see if I agreed. And, sure enough! My dad was right. I was college age at the time, and I can honestly say, I have never fallen asleep during a sermon since.

No, I’m not patting myself on the back. I’m just sharing with you the secret my dad shared with me: It’s all about content. I don’t go to church to be entertained. Doesn’t the idea of “entertainment” in church sound creepy, when you think about it?

So why do we go to church?

For one thing, we go to church to say we’re sorry for our sins and ask for forgiveness. I can’t say that’s exciting, but neither is it boring. It can’t fit into categories like that at all, when you really think about it.

We also go to church to learn more about God. It’s true, we’ve all had teachers who were more captivating than others. But then, going to class is really about mastering the material. Whether I passed or failed a class in school, it was mostly about me, the student – how hard I worked, how well I paid attention. And don’t we want to learn about God? It’s a pretty important subject to master!

But church is about more than putting knowledge into our heads, it’s also about getting food for our souls. When it comes to feeding your body, certainly some foods are more exciting than others. A Culver’s Butterburger thrills me! Green beans…not so much. I eat both, but fortunately I eat more beans than I do Butterburgers. Why? Because in the long run, it’s a lot healthier for my heart (and waistline)!

The same is true of the spiritual food I need to get at church. I need to hear from God that I have sinned. Even more, I need to hear from God what my Savior has done for me, and that through faith in Jesus I am forgiven. I need to be built back up spiritually after a bruising week. I also need to be equipped to face the coming week’s challenges.

Saying church is boring, is kind of like saying talking to mom and getting a hug from her is boring. Doesn’t that adjective seem out of place? Excitement is for Friday night. Forgiveness and Jesus’ love are what Sunday morning is all about.

Before most personal computers in America ran under Microsoft Windows, they ran under an older disk operating system— DOS.  DOS was confusing to many people, so in 1991 out came the book “DOS for Dummies.” Now there are over 1,700 “Dummies” books, including “Chess for Dummies” and “Chemistry for Dummies.”

Chemistry— whew. My daughter’s high school chemistry textbook goes over 500 pages; her general chemistry college textbook spans over 1,000 pages. Even “Chemistry for Dummies” has 362 pages.

Knowing God well, following his Son, and being sure about God’s gift of eternal life with him— those are more important than chemistry, but can seem even more complicated.  The answers are in the Bible. My Bible has lots of notes to help me understand it, but the words and notes combine to fill over 2,000 pages. “The Bible for Dummies?” Over 462 pages.

Isn’t there a simpler way?

Back in 1529, Martin Luther, a professor of Bible at a university in Germany, published the simplest, most practical and trustworthy handbook to Christian faith you can find.  Luther called it his “Small Catechism.” (Catechism is a Greek word, originally meaning “teaching out loud.” More commonly, people use the word to mean a religious instruction book in the form of questions and answers.)

Think FAQ— frequently asked questions— brief (about 20 pages), down-to-earth and well organized.  Luther meant his Small Catechism to be simple enough for average children to understand, and for their parents, especially fathers, to teach them.  That’s why each section of the Small Catechism introduces a topic, then says something like: “As the head of the family should teach it in a simple way to his household.”

Luther wrote the Small Catechism after a tour of northern Germany that left him miserable: “The ordinary person, especially in the villages, knows absolutely nothing about the Christian faith, and unfortunately many pastors are completely unskilled and incompetent teachers.  Yet supposedly they all bear the name Christian, are baptized, and receive the holy sacrament, even though they do not know the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, or the Ten Commandments!  As a result they live like simple cattle or irrational pigs” (preface to the Small Catechism).

Maybe you know the Lord’s Prayer; maybe not. Maybe you don’t know what a creed is, let alone can recite the main Christian creed and explain what it means.  Either way, Luther’s Small Catechism can help you. It has simple questions and answers about:

• The Ten Commandments (what to do)
• The Apostles’ Creed (what to believe)
• The Lord’s Prayer (what to pray)
• Holy Baptism
• Holy Communion

The Way Christians and Christian churches serve others with God’s Good News (the “Keys and Confession”)

At the end come suggested daily prayers and a helpful summary of the duties that parents, children, husbands, wives, etc. owe to others. Luther meant it to be practical for all ages.

To read the Small Catechism in English click here

What kind of a foundation does a building contractor build before erecting a building? It all depends on what kind of building he’s putting up. Is it a playhouse for children? Or is he building a skyscraper?

The same rule applies when you’re building a Christian life. God has not called us to be starry-eyed sentimentalists, with our feet firmly planted in mid-air. God wants his children to live confidently, not to wobble through our lives somehow and finally to stumble out into the dark.

There are those today who prefer to believe that human beings are independent to God, that there is no supernatural being to whom we are accountable. Folks like that honestly believe that we determine what’s good for us and what’s bad, what’s true and what’s false.

The order of worship we follow when we gather with our fellow Christians each week includes a creed, a statement of what we believe – about God, and about life. Martin Luther once made the statement: “Every person has to do his own believing, just as every person has to do his own dying.” The Christian Church has three creeds: the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian.

The best-known of the three – the one you may know by heart – is the Apostle’s Creed. The foundation for this creed was laid by Christ himself when he commissioned his disciples, “Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” From the earliest days of the Christian Church, candidates for baptism were required to make a public declaration of their faith. The Apostles’ Creed may have evolved from that public declaration of faith. Since this was a personal creed, the speaker spoke singularly, saying, “I believe . . .”

Several hundred years later the Nicene Creed was adopted by the Christian Church. (Nicea was a city in Turkey.) The Emperor Constantine convened a Council of the Christian Church to settle a controversy created by a teacher named Arius, who denied that Jesus is God. Arius taught that Jesus as the Son of God was created, not eternal like God the Father. Although the Nicene Creed was not used as a baptismal declaration, it specifically addresses the error of Arius. Every time we confess the Nicene Creed, we declare that Jesus is “the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God . . . of one being with the Father.” It is because this was a creed to be confessed by the whole church that we speak it with plurality, saying, “We believe . . .”

We don’t know who the author of the Athanasian Creed is, but it’s generally agreed that this creed is a couple hundred years younger than its two sisters. It’s much longer than the others. We therefore don’t use it regularly in our weekly worship services. But the Athanasian Creed offers a clear expression of the most basic truths of the Christian religion.

These three ancient creeds don’t make much sense to the three pounds of pinkish-gray jelly between our ears. Each of the three confesses that in one Godhead there are three distinct persons. Each of the three confesses that the Son of God became a human being to rescue lost sinners. Pretty mind-blowing stuff when you try to understand it!

These three creeds – Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian – were the ancient church’s way of putting its money where God’s mouth was.