“Church
is Boring…”
…Is a statement a child might have the
audacity to make, but so many Christians feel or have felt this way.
Well, is church boring?
Oftentimes it’s hard to stay awake. The sermons might be way too
long to keep our attention. Maybe the singing is dull, maybe off-key.
The prayers could be monotonous, also too long, and may seem to be the
same every week. We have to sit almost the entire time. To some
worshipers, the most uplifting moment in services is when the preacher says,
“If anyone here is not a Christian…” because we know the service is reaching a
conclusion…
We’ve all had thoughts similar to these at
some time or another. What Christian hasn’t experienced the weight of
dragging to the assembly of the saints, perhaps half-asleep, half-awake, barely
made it through service without passing out in the aisle from boredom, then
felt miraculously revivified leaving the building, on the way to lunch, after
the conclusion of the service? Let us all consider the following thoughts
before making the above assessment of our assemblies, that is, that “church is
boring”.
Firstly, let us remember that we do not go to church, at least not in the sense
that we are not in the church until we go to the building. We assemble or gather together with the local saints of God in the name of Jesus
Christ and are obeying a command to do so (Acts 20:7, Heb. 10:25). In
God’s design for the local congregation of His elect people, he requires that
we assemble to sing praises to him and to sing songs of encouragement and
exhortation to one another (Heb. 2:12, Eph. 5:19), offer collective prayers (I
Thess. 5:17), audition readings of scripture and teaching therefrom (Jude 1:3),
in addition to the specific commands of taking collections (I Cor. 16:2) and remembering
the sacrifice of Christ (Acts 20:7) on the first day of the week.
Secondly, let us remember that every
Christian in the assembly is required to actively
participate in every aspect of the service. For the disciple of
Christ, the assembly is not a spectator event. We don’t just go to get
something out of our being present, but also to whole-heartedly contribute!
Yes, the singing might seem dull and off-key to someone just listening,
but for the active participant, there is a constant effort to convey the ideas
and sentiment of the songs, a constant effort to help contribute to a orderly
and harmonic sound. You do your best to make the singing better (I Cor.
14:15)! What about prayer? Someone just listening to the prayer
might think it monotonous, but what about someone making an effort to hang on
to every word of the prayer, put their own spirit and thoughts behind every
request, every supplication? Consider the fact that you are part of a
collective effort of speaking to God the Father (I Tim. 2:1)!
What about the sermons? Yes,
sometimes they are a little longer than expected. Sometimes our empty
stomachs growl their own complaints against the extra time taken to expound a
point. But the engagement of a speaker with an audience is not a one-way
street! A message is not a message without an active recipient, someone
with their antenna up, so to speak. Give effort to be a more active
listener! And how much more engaged and serious should we be during the
Lord’s Supper, as we consider that “he who eats and drinks unworthily, is
guilty of the body and blood of the lamb” and “eats and drinks damnation unto
himself not discerning the Lord’s body” (I Cor. 11:27,29). Every time we
partake, we are to actively remember, and examine ourselves, lest we be guilty
of going through the motions and reducing a sacred act to something carnal (I
Cor. 11:23-29)!
Finally, let us consider that we are not
the primary audience during our assemblies. God is watching! And
he’s not just watching our outward actions: he’s looking right down into the
depths of our hearts (Luke 16:15). When the Lord observes your worship, your
singing, your involvement in prayer and the preaching of the gospel, the
meditations of your heart as you make a material contribution to the work of
the church, does He see a lively spirit motivated by truth and love, or a dull
spirit bored half to death?
Sadly, many churches in the world today
feel “traditional” assemblies are not nearly as exciting and entertaining as a
football game or a music concert, and so they’ve sought to make worship more like
these worldly events. Many churches today have rock concert atmospheres,
live bands, light shows, stand-up comedians and professional story-tellers as
preachers, and “contemporary” and/or “spirit inspired” worship where just about
anything goes. Worshiping in “spirit and truth” (John 4:24) and the
simple preaching of the Gospel are being displaced by emotionalism and
entertainment. Men are coming up with new ideas every day to make worship
more fun and exciting, more appealing to our carnal nature. But how many
souls are being misled thereby?
Let each individual member of our local
congregation labor to keep us on the narrow path of worshipping as the Lord
prescribed. Let each individual labor to keep our services from becoming
“boring”, by doing everything he and she can to contribute to the effort.
Jeremy Koontz
