It bothers me whenever I hear the notion that the corporate gathering of the church for worship is an impediment to outreach.
This kind of reasoning suggests that the time spent preparing and conducting services would be better invested in carrying out acts of ministry and outreach.
My mind boggles that people with biblical, let alone Presbyterian, convictions could arrive at the notion that corporate gathering for worship is not an integral part of our ministry and mission.
I’ve also never been able to get around the type of maths that figures in the context of a 168 hour week that it is the two to three hours invested in worship (and the number of hours spent by those who prepare to lead it), that impedes ministry and mission. What’s happening during the other 165 hours?
Really, it sounds to me more like a desired outcome in search of a rationalisation than a necessary deduction.
At mgpc I strive to keep much complexity out of our gatherings. If there was a power failure at 9.25 it would be a sad situation if we had to send everyone home because we wouldn’t be able to do church. At the same time we seek to present all that we do in a manner which is helpful, but unobtrusive.
What I’ll readily concede, though, is that corporate worship which doesn’t show the fruit of ministry and mission throughout the rest of the week is deficient. It’s an issue the leadership here are striving to address.
With typical clarity of expression Douglas Wilson addresses the topic:
The Church is not supposed to take mission on as a side operation; the Church is mission.
There are two basic ways to miss the point here. One is to abandon or minimize the task of worshiping the triune God on the Lord’s Day in order to “get out there” to evangelize and influence the world in the name of Jesus. This is like taking the engine out so that the car can go faster. The other way is to grant how important the engine is, and to keep it in fine operating order, but mounted on cinder blocks in your garage. In the former error, the engine is not central, and it should be. With the latter error, the engine is central, but the wrong kind of central. An engine that runs must be connected to the car, and a car without an engine is useless.
Read Wilson’s whole post here.
If you read Wilson’s whole post I believe there is benefit to be had, and it’s not necessary to read the Federal Vision into his comments.
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