Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day. Worship on Sundays is a lot of work. I grew up at a time and in churches that required very little in terms of preparation. Certain things had to be done, of course. The church building had to be cleaned, the communion bread had to be baked and the trays prepared, and depending on the season the heating and cooling units had to be turned on. But that was about it. The preacher prepared his sermon which might involve notes scribbled on one or two half sheets of paper. The song leader, who was not the preacher, picked out the hymns they would sing. A couple of men in the congregation would lead prayer. The hardest workers prior to Sunday were probably the children’s Sunday School teachers. While the adult Sunday School teachers only had to make sure they had filled in the blanks in their lesson books, teachers in the children’s classes spent hours with construction paper, popsicle sticks, and coloring pages which were the secret tools for catechizing Christian kids.
No one had a “worship order.” The song numbers were on the wooden board at the front of the auditorium. Everyone knew the order anyway. Announcements, opening hymn, prayer, two more hymns, sermon, or Lord’s Supper if you were one of those churches that did it first so that people going on vacation could leave early and not have to wait through the sermon. Then came the invitation in case anyone needed to get saved or be restored to the church, then the Lord’s Supper (if you were the other kind of church that didn’t care about members going on vacation), then another hymn, then the closing prayer. Why would anyone write it down? It was the same every week. Besides, those churches didn’t believe in having a liturgy. It wouldn’t be biblical.
When I became a preacher I became responsible for the weekly bulletin. It didn’t have the worship order on it. Usually it consisted of announcements, prayer requests for people who were falling apart, an edifying article on why the denominations were going to Hell, and a Bible WordSearch or trivia question. Some weeks I had to copy and fold thirty or more of those bulletins.
I never had text messages, emails, or internet news articles to process on the Lord’s Day. Al Gore had already invented the Internet, but it had not yet enslaved the entire human race and turned our brains to oatmeal. I began pastoring a few years before the September 11th attacks, so when that happened, things changed a bit, but before the War on Terror, the most urgent events to discuss on Sundays were the latest Alabama and Auburn football games, SEC recruiting updates, and the Braves’ pennant prospects.
I don’t have to tell you that Sundays at ROPC are a wee bit more complicated, and not because we have a set liturgy. If anything, the stability of our liturgy ought to make preparation considerably simpler. But the sheer volume of separate projects to prepare, handouts to be printed, coordination of various kinds, and number of attendees makes getting ready for each Sunday a marathon run at the speed of a sprint. Most churches would handle this with something called staff, and not the “rod and” kind, but we are more spiritual than most churches and so we tend to rely simply on providence… and lots of coffee.
I think I am becoming a grumpy old man. (My wife and children are probably asking, “What do you mean becoming?!) Ecclesiastes warns us not to ask why the former days were so much better than these (7:10). The truth is, they weren’t, and even if in some ways they were, dwelling on it is not the path to wisdom. We are constantly tempted to be ungrateful for the present and be naive about the past. But at the risk of erring by reminiscence, perhaps we can admit that a slower pace and simpler way of life was not necessarily a bad thing. It’s good to pull out the china and spend two days preparing for a lavish Thanksgiving feast, but it’s not wrong simply to gather with family and friends one afternoon to eat PB and Banana sandwiches on paper plates or to have a spontaneous outing for slushies at the drive through. That can, and should, be thanksgiving too.
Sundays are not about production, and even if we want to do our work as worshipers in a professional way, we are not professionals. We are God’s people, his children, a people of prayer, sheep responding to our Shepherd’s call. We are a family. Some enter the assembly bouncing and others come broken and bleeding (having learned the hard way that they do not bounce anymore). Some come rejoicing and others weeping. But the point is that we have come to meet with God. He is coming to meet us. That is what the Lord’s Days are about: cleansing, consecration, and communion; confession and consolation; supplication and celebration. It doesn’t matter that our bulletin doesn’t have a Bible WordSearch or that there are too many lemon donuts and too little coffee. We endure these hardships because of the greater joy of why we’re here.
We may live in a modern world, but we should come to worship in an ancient way. Sunday gatherings are not an entertainment production. They are a divine encounter, a holy sacrifice, and a happy reunion of the family of God. Don’t ask why the former days were better than these, but remember the lessons of an earlier and simpler time. God is summoning us to worship. So come simply, and let us adore him. --JME
