A Love Letter to Christians Who Can’t Take the Sunday Production Anymore

I know the deep paucity you feel in your bones. The worst possible Sunday afternoon tragedy used to be a dry pot roast, a brown, leathery consequence of post-benediction parking lot conferences with Tom or Betty.

Now you go home, exhausted from the noise, bothered by the blatant emotional manipulation, haunted by the poverty you see. You’ve gone home angry and annoyed. You’ve wept over what they’ve done with your church, with THE church.

I know the people around you don’t get it, either. You’ve been told that you’re doing Satan’s work by daring to question the church growth strategists leaders in front of you.

It’s been alleged that you’re callously indifferent to the eternal souls of the unchurched.

Even the ones you count as friends think you’re just pining for the good ol’ days. At the very least, you’re laughingly dismissed.

Your gifts have been shunned, ignored, wasted. Heck, I’ve been there, too, that time the paralegal became my boss.

Maybe you’ve been barred from your former places of service, replaced by an American Idol wanna-be with a hot mic and a six-string Ovation.

If you feel like you’re just barely hanging on, please let me offer this one piece of advice.

I know you have friends at your church. Maybe it’s the only spiritual home you’ve ever known. You’ve witnessed marriages there. You’ve rejoiced as your community has been shaped by water and Word. You’ve said goodbye to loved ones. You’ve given faithfully through the spiritual Advents and Christmases, the Lents and the Easters. You’ve cared together for the communities and the world around you. But it’s not the same place. Something’s changed, and it’s something that was never supposed to change. Not like this, anyhow.

Please know that if nobody else gets you, I do. I stand with you and honor you in your grief. You’re not being selfish or petty. You don’t have an attitude problem.

This beloved community, which once marked Sundays by coming together for the work of God’s people, is now a haven for entertainment. It’s a concert venue, really. If it weren’t for a few casual mentions of God and Jesus you wouldn’t even know they had anything to do with this whole thing.

Hale and hearty strains of disciplined worshipers are gone, and in their place, an electronic assault of primal, orgasmic ad libs.

Your script, your job, your voice have all been taken away, and now you just sit there, empty-handed, and empty-souled.

Songs of faith have been replaced by remarkably vapid, thoroughly mundane jesusy ditties.

The rhythm of the church year has given way to the mixed-metered syncopation of popular whim.

Sermons are guided by what the pastor says God is telling him (and it’s usually a him, unfortunately), not by a lectionary or a liturgical calendar.

Sacraments? What’s a sacrament? Commercial pop music is our new contemporary pseudo-sacrament.

There was once appropriate room for a complete range of human emotion, freely flowing from the retelling and reenactment of God’s mighty acts in Jesus Christ. Sobriety, grief, intentionality, urgency, repentance, lament resolution, thanksgiving, joy. And so forth and so on. Now, we’re expected to have fun. Church is the place for a good time, in Jesus’ thoroughly amusing name.

I’ve seen it too. This is how I grew up, in fact. I had a sneaking suspicion that there was more to church than the derivative music and self-aggrandizing topical sermon series. If there wasn’t, I’d have been through with church as soon as I moved out on my own.

Worshiper, please be honest. As tough as it is, you know you can’t stay here, biding the months or years or decades until by God’s grace you grow deaf, blind, and senile. You are right to feel this way. It isn’t a matter of taste or preference, whatever the entertainers may say.

The impetus for your grief is not hurt feelings, or even what’s happening with your own church. You grieve over what’s happened to the church.

This is worship, for God’s sake. And they’ve pulled it up by the roots. Dear Christian, just go.

When your alarm clock chimes next Sunday, hit the snooze. Turn it off. Let your pew stadium-style seat stay cold this week.

And there are still faith communities that have resisted preferential worship and consumer, little-C christianity.

You may have to look a little harder for them. They don’t have billboards. They don’t usually have huge crosses announcing their presence just for the hell of it. They probably don’t have TV commercials or radio spots or celebrity pastors.

You may have to go outside the faith tradition that’s become part of your identity. They might not sing all the same songs or use all the same language you remember. You might not agree with all their theology. There may be faithful followers there who vote differently than you. They might not even agree with you on every hot-button political issue. That’s okay. The church’s worship matters more than any of those things.

So when the buzzing in your ears has finally faded. When the fog has lifted. When the menacing waters of the entertainment church have finally receded. When you can breathe again, get back out there. When the post-traumatic worship disorder has released, start burning the early Sunday oil again.

Find a place where you can go and participate and just be part of the church once more.

Find a place where all voices have a prayer to pray, a song to sing, a sermon to say, and a common story to tell.

Find a place where “The body of Christ, broken for you,” means so much more than “It’s who I am, it’s who I am, it’s who I am.”

Find a place where Table, Font, and Pulpit haven’t been displaced by drum cage, music stand, and Madonna mic.

Find a place where the generational arrogance doesn’t obscure the multi-directional vision of true Christian worship.

Ok... so you say that helping someone who needs help is a work of faith.

Actually i was just quoting what James said, i know nothing.

James 2
14 What shall it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but hath not works? Shall faith be able to save him? 15 And if a brother or sister be naked, and want daily food: 16 And one of you say to them: Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled; yet give them not those things that are necessary for the body, what shall it profit? 17 So faith also, if it have not works, is dead in itself.

2. Is this to say that someone who does not believe in Jesus or God for that matter is saved if they help someone who needs help??? They DID complete a work of faith did they not???

No, if they do not believe it would not be a work of faith
also maybe some of those people who you think don`t believe does believe.

There are many believers who just tries to do what Jesus said and keeps their mouth shut, i wished i could be more that way.

Other people just tries, and some people just has it in their mind to do good, maybe that is enough.

Maybe you do not help any one, but if you pass some one by who you know needs help you most likely feel bad about it?

That is why God is the Judge we are not.

>>> some people just has it in their mind to do good, maybe that is enough.

I would submit that those who do good out of true love already have Jesus in their heart, whether they know it or not... and their truly selfless works are evidence of what has already happened... not the other way around.

Those who do good simply to impress others or do demonstrate their own spirituality do not have the truth in them.

It is this difference which is described in Matthew 25 to which you referred. All of your other supporting scriptures also back this up.

A work of faith is evidence of God’s presence in the person’s heart. Helping someone who needs help in and of itself, whether born out of true love(faith) or not, does NOT atone for sin.

I think we pretty much agree, i just believe the reason James wrote the way he did was because he most likely heard people boasting that they did not have to do anything and maybe they was even making fun of those people who believed in trying to do good.

I have experienced the same thing and believe it or not ( from Preachers ) and i have also experienced the opposite

Mathew 26
41 Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Romans 7
21 I find then a law, that when I have a will to do good, evil is present with me. 22 For I am delighted with the law of God, according to the inward man:

23 But I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin, that is in my members.

24 Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

25 The grace of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with the mind serve the law of God; but with the flesh, the law of sin........

Paul was unhappy with himself as any one who fails to do what they know to do will be.

We are saved by Grace only,

John 6
39 Now this is the will of the Father who sent me: that of all that he hath given me, I should lose nothing; but should raise it up again in the last day.

40 And this is the will of my Father that sent me: that every one who seeth the Son, and believeth in him, may have life everlasting, and I will raise him up in the last day.

Do i really believe in Jesus? Jesus knows.

Mathew 7
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’

23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

I believe that most of our so called doctors of religion should admit they do not know every thing.

We should not be boasting that we are saved by our faith, we should be ashamed that we are not even fit to do the little things Jesus said to do, just speaking for myself.
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>>> Mathew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

I think it would be beneficial to zoom in on something here...

“...will of my Father”

What does this really mean?

What does it comprehensively entail?

Does it mean “Don’t sin”? surely.. but is that all?

What about where Jesus said Love god and love your neighbor? Obviously.

But is there more? I think so.

God’s will I believe includes hearing his voice on a daily basis, and doing what He wants us to do without question... even if it is something which seemingly has no impact on anyone or anything from our own perspective.

Jesus said “My sheep hear my voice...”

When Jesus asked Peter who he said He was, and Peter replied “You are the Son of God”... Jesus then said “The Holy Spirit has revealed this to you...

So we see that it is the Holy Spirit Who is the voice of God’s will... and He instructs us daily on what His will is and what we are to do... whether it be to comfort a stranger, or speak against someone’s Heracies.... or share a thought about God’s word.

Point being is this... The way I read Matthew 7:21 is that the one who does the Father’s will is the one that literally hears His voice every day.

How can you do the Will of the Father if you cannot hear His voice?... Yet again we see that righteousness (salvation under the Blood of Christ alone) comes first... then the action.

22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’

Were they really doing it in Christs name or were they trying to promote their own name?

If you ask these people how much faith they had they would surely tell you that the evidence was Proof of much more than i could ever hope to have.

But regardless of the mighty works they did they obviously were not doing the will of God and they were not saved.

“...will of my Father”

John 6:40
For this is the will of God, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

You wrote. God’s will I believe includes hearing his voice on a daily basis, and doing what He wants us to do without question... even if it is something which seemingly has no impact on anyone or anything from our own perspective.

So we see that it is the Holy Spirit Who is the voice of God’s will... and He instructs us daily on what His will is and what we are to do...

If that works for you, that is what counts, but i believe God talks to me through the scriptures by his prophets and i believe the holy spirit directs me to Christs word once in a while.

You
Point being is this... The way I read Matthew 7:21 is that the one who does the Father’s will is the one that literally hears His voice every day.

How can you do the Will of the Father if you cannot hear His voice?... Yet again we see that righteousness (salvation under the Blood of Christ alone) comes first... then the action.

I agree on the Blood of Christ alone) comes first... then the action.

Christ was the word so his voice was heard when he was here, he then sent the holy spirit to teach. but it must not be real obvious how the holy spirit was to teach or why would more people not see it the same way?

My daughter is a spiritualist and God talks to her so she believes she is the only one who knows the truth and as far as i can tell it almost always disagrees with the Bible.

So i am a firm believer that there is nothing wrong with having ones personal belief ( as i have mine also )but we should never teach anything unless it is taught in very plain words from the Bible.

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