The Gospel (and its effects)

There seem to be two dominant schools of thought when it comes to who the primary purpose and (human) audience is in corporate worship. One says “the primary purpose of the corporate gathering is to convince unbeliever and the ’seekers’ of the beauty of Christ and call them into a ‘personal relationship’ with Him, making new worshipers of God” The other says “no, the primary purpose of the corporate gathering is the worship of God by His people, edifying and training them to do the work of the Church, including evangelism.”

So, which is it?

I was prompted recently to remember a on online conversation from the old DerekWebb.com forums (around 2004, I think) that had a profound effect on how I saw corporate worship. In it, a friend said something that I never had previously seen or heard articulated — that the so-called “seeker-sensitive” model of doing church that’s so dominant in evangelical America is wrong-headed and that when the church gathers, it does so for worship and teaching, not for evangelism. That statement knocked me for a loop, as I’d been pretty entrenched in the “gotta win souls, gotta get ‘em to walk the aisle or pray the prayer” culture for most of my life. At the same time, it really resonated with me, as I was already convinced that Hybels/Warren seeker-driven “worship” was inadequate. (It didn’t help that the church that I was a member of at the time was then preparing to go through Warren’s “40 Days of Purpose” dreck.) God really used that one post to start me on the road to learning about, embracing, and valuing corporate worship as more than just a time to “win souls”.

So now, it’s three years later. I’ve learned a lot, matured a little (I hope), and I find myself at a tension between the two schools of thought. I’m starting to think that to reach either conclusion is to embrace the same false dichotomy (albeit on different ends of the spectrum). This dichotomy suggests (or outright states, in some extreme cases) that while the Gospel message of Christ’s burial, death, and resurrection (accompanied by the Spirit) is what convinces the unbeliever and brings him into relationship with Christ, it’s something else — something “more” — that empowers the believer to then live as Christ calls him or her to live. That the Gospel is our entryway into the family of God, and after we’re in, we move beyond the Gospel to more “advanced” Christianity of some sort.

Regardless of how well-intentioned this is, it’s moralism at best, and at worst, gnosticism. The fact is that the Gospel that converts the neophyte “seeker” is the same Gospel that empowers the most mature believer to live day-by-day as Jesus calls. There’s a story that’s been told numerous times of the great Reformer, Martin Luther. In the church that he was pastoring, preached the Gospel to his congregation, week after week after week after week. His people wondered why they couldn’t move on. Surely we get the Gospel by now, Pastor! Why do you keep preaching the Gospel every week? His answer: “Because every week, you forget it.” We never move beyond the Gospel because the Gospel is what grounds us.

Now, this isn’t to say that every week, a simplistic “Gospel” message from John 3:16 is to be preached. Not at all. But too often, passages that don’t explicitly say the words “Jesus” or “Christ” are preached in such a way that robs them of meaning and reduces them to moralistic platitudes (ie: “How to live a victorious life”, “How to have a good marriage”, “Why we need prayer in schools”, etc). We seem to forget what should be obvious: that the Bible — the entire Bible — is about JESUS. This means that every passage of scripture, including those from the Old Testament, can and should be preached in such a way that points to Christ as glorious and the only solution to our problem. Take, for instance, the “unauthorized (or strange) fire” incident in Numbers 3 in which the priests Nadab and Abihu were charbroiled for not worshiping God as He had told them — it would be easy, especially for Presbyterians like myself, to preach a sermon entirely focused on the Regulative Principle with absolutely no Christ! But Jesus is there! God’s wrath justly burns against us as it did against Nadab and Abihu, and like them, we should be consumed. But no . . . Christ took that upon himself on the cross, and upon Christ the flames of God’s wrath are burned out, never again to be ignited against those who belong to him.

Jesus is there.

Therefore, it would seem to me that our worship and our preaching should be neither seeker-focused nor believer-focused, but Gospel-focused. We preach the Gospel every week from whatever passage of Scripture we’re in, and then allow (and expect) that Gospel to have its intended effect on each one there, whether believer or “seeker”. We need to let go of the either/or mentality.