Church Is No Spectator Sport

Sport is big business. Whether ice hockey, soccer or tennis, professional sports attract enormous crowds. Spectators pack stadiums and arenas around the world to cheer on their favourites. Someone has humourously written to the effect that sport is largely a matter of tens of thousands of fans desperately in need of exercise watching small groups of athletes desperately in need of rest. Spectator sport!

Christians often approach church as if it were a spectator sport. Since we have our own set of heroes, churches that schedule well-known preachers or personalities quickly fill with eager listeners. And listening is, after all, a spectator phenomenon. Don't take me wrong. I enjoy listening to God's gifted servants. Unfortunately, the opportunity to listen to good preaching is one positive aspect of a system with many problems. Consider for a moment the weekly worship service.

Early Sunday morning lights come on in widely scattered homes. Soon the aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafts up the stairs. After a careful shave, Dad flicks lint off his Sunday suit and picks a conservative tie. With breakfast laid out on the table, Mom shouts at Dad to wake up the kids while she takes her turn in front of the mirror. The kids straggle down the stairs and wolf a hasty breakfast. Soon the revving of the family car shatters the Sunday stillness as Dad tries vainly to control his desire to blow the horn at his tardy brood. With the family finally on board, Dad speeds away to deposit his well-scrubbed cargo at the door of local church or chapel, cathedral or rented hall.

The faithful greet each other at the church door with a cheery, "Good morning!" Before slipping into their well-worn pews, they comment about the weather or last night's game. The more enthusiastic have already preceded the "worship crowd" by over an hour to participate in Sunday School.

The hour approaches. A deacon's frown freezes giggles from squirming children. The rustle of bulletins and the murmur of voices stills as the choir files in. Several dark-suited men men take their places on the platform. Radiating confidence and authority, one strides to the pulpit. All eyes focus on the pastor as another Sunday service begins.

Sports and sacred service--you may ask what they have in common. Although church seldom attracts the crowds which clamour for tickets to a game, both are largely spectator phenomena, dependent on hired professionals for their popularity. Commenting on this phenomenon in Revival, Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd Jones writes, "Now that, of course, is a complete denial of the New Testament doctrine of the Church as the Body of Christ, where every single member has responsibility, and has a function, and matters."

Fortunately, all over the world, more and more emphasis is being laid on personal participation. In sporting circles many people are taking up jogging, skiing, tennis or hiking. In Christian circles many are discovering spiritual gifts.

Down through history the participation of all God's people in ministry has waxed and waned. The Protestant Reformation rediscovered, among other truths, the priesthood of all believers. Unfortunately, the legacy passed down to our generation has stressed clergy more than laity. The biblical dynamic of the Church as the Body of Christ with a host of inter-related parts, or as the Temple of God with its inter-locking stones, has been dimly perceived. We forget so quickly the lessons of history.

Too often, the pattern adopted has been more hierarchical and passive than participatory. Professional clergy ministering to receptive laity has become the accepted model of church ministry. Churches almost universally practice one-man ministry; whether that man be called pastor, minister or ruling elder. This denial of universal priesthood has gouged a chasm between pastor and people that many accept as normative. As a result Protestant churches have developed a host of what Earl Radmacher has called, "petty, Protestant, parochial popes."

I don't aim to deliver another diatribe against either the full-time pastorate or professionalism in ministry. Let me hasten to point out that I am a professionally trained pastor myself! I have no desire to discourage men from setting the highest standards of excellence in ministerial preparation. Nor is this an appeal for a moratorium on recruiting full-time pastors. Never! Rather I appeal for a return to the priesthood of all believers.

Every-member-ministry is biblically normative. The ascending Lord never proposed that his church become a congregation of spectators! Paul writes in Ephesians four, that when Christ ascended he gave gifts to men that all might participate in ministry. This book, then, concerns those gifts and their use in the local church.

 

Watch for the publication of this new ebook!