“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