Related texts: Gal. 5:16-25; Romans 6:1; Col. 1:28-29; Phil. 2:12-13; James 2:19; Matt. 5:16; John 3:36, 14:15; Heb. 10:23-25
My heart was grieved this past Sunday in the hallways toward the end of our worship service at my church. Our church has been in a series through the book of James the past several weeks, and we were wrapping up the series in James 5. Specifically talking about the call for those who are suffering to pray, those who are joyful to praise God, and those who are sick to come to the elders to be prayed over and anointed with oil to be healed. At the end of our gathering, the leadership of our church programmed time for people to come forward for prayer. For me, this was a great opportunity to quickly run to the restroom and then come back in to witness this time and worship while those needing prayer came forward. The moment of grief struck me when I was on my way to the restroom and I walked alongside a father and his two teenage sons. These guys weren’t going to the restroom, they were leaving.
Now, normally I have grace for people who leave because I don’t know what their schedule is like. Maybe they really made a point to be at church that morning in the midst of a busy Sunday schedule. Maybe this one Sunday is a special day where they’re heading to their grandma’s birthday or something. How could I ever know in most instances? In this instance, they gave me the context I needed in order to know.
“Did you want to stay for this?”
“No.”
“Ok cool, I’d rather leave anyway.”
These two teenage boys (seemingly brothers by appearance) had this conversation while I walked alongside of them. Their dad behind them, silent, didn’t offer any reaction or thoughts. I was initially caught off guard and remained silent. I went into the restroom, and my emotions kicked into gear. This beautiful opportunity that we as The Church had to bear witness to and agree on behalf of these people coming forward for prayer and this extended opportunity to worship as the gathered body of Christ was being treated with little care by these young men and their God-ordained spiritual leader. My emotions turned to frustration. My frustration reasoned why this family should have stayed, the value in it. By the time I went back into the worship center my frustration turned to sadness.
These boys, and likely their father, didn’t even know what they were missing. Likely many more people in the room were watching the clock and waiting to be let go into their Sundays. Statistically speaking, these families are unlikely to have any conversation around what we would witness. The trio that left early likely wouldn’t engage in any sort of spiritual conversation at all, especially considering that they didn’t even stay for this time. All of these people were missing the deep value of the time that we gather together on Sunday mornings.
pursue the fullness of christian community
Now, please understand my heart. I know that if I am going to share my frustrations and sadness and call out other people’s sins that I need to be aware of my own sin and see myself as the chief of sinners. I’m not trying to pass judgement and shame people for not being “religious enough” like an old curmudgeon. My heart was grieved because the fullness of life with Christ is marked with a desire to see all that God will do for others (among other fruits that we see, of course), and the flippancy and passivity over the part of the service that is seemingly irrelevant to these boys are a fruit not of the Spirit but of an immature (or even complete lack of) faith and understanding of the Gospel and what it means for them. What a convicting and gut-wrenching thought for me! If we understand what this means, it should lead us to want to share the reality of the value of the gathered body if Christ with everyone, which is why I was so convicted to write this out. I share all of this because I see this consumerism rampant in the Church, and it’s evidence of a lack of understanding of several things including:
-The reasons why we gather on Sundays
-The value of supporting others in the body of Christ
-The expectation that God really does have something He wants to give us or show us
-The depth of the Gospel and how it shows itself in our lives
The issue isn’t “leaving church early”. The issue is what leads us to leave early, what leads us to not prioritize that time with the gathered body, what idols and comforts we chase instead of Jesus. So I have a few thoughts for the average American Christian, but first I need to specify who I am not talking to in this post:
-I am not talking to professing non-christians. I don’t expect you align your life with the Gospel because the Gospel hasn’t gripped your heart- and you don’t claim that it has
-I am not talking to the person who stayed home sick or with their sick kid. God doesn’t expect you to risk getting more sick or other people sick in order to gather. I also am thankful that you stayed home and didn’t get my kids sick, so thank you.
-I am not talking to the person who accidentally slept in. Accidents happen, and there’s grace for that.
-I am not talking to the people who show up and stick around most of the time and once in a while have other events come up that pull them away from Sunday gatherings, whether that means you missed the whole morning or had to leave early. God knows your heart and sees your faithfulness.
-I am not talking to the people who have every intention of showing up and sticking around but just have something come up (like a flat tire on the way to church or a sudden family emergency in the middle of the gathering). Don’t feel guilt or shame over something you can’t control.
I am talking to the person who begrudgingly “comes to church” and just sits through it for an hour and doesn’t think about it again after they leave the parking lot. I am talking to the person who doesn’t actively listen and pay attention during the service for things that God is trying to reveal to them. I am talking to cultural christians and people who say things like “I believe in Jesus” but that’s as far as their faith goes. I am talking to people who intentionally choose not to show up at all simply because they “don’t feel like it”. And I am obviously talking to the people who leave early solely due to a consumeristic mindset about “going to church”.
run from sin, run towards the gospel
Now that the “who” is clarified, let me ask this loud and clear: if you don’t bear fruit in your life as evidence of your faith then why do you even call yourself a christian? When you read Galatians 5:16-25 and compare it to your life do you see yourself becoming more like Christ or are you stagnant in your flesh? Do you justify your lack of fruit? Do you hide behind “grace” and ignore putting your faith into action? Like Paul says in Romans “should we continue in sin, so that grace can abound? May it never be!” (Romans 6:1) My prayer is that this would be convicting that the lack of fruit in your life is a sin of omission (meaning: a sin birthed out of inactivity) and the passivity and flippancy when faced with opportunities to grow spiritually is evidence of a lack of repentance towards this sin of omission!
You might be thinking “Kevin, you’re just coming down too hard and being overdramatic.” And you might be right, because like I said earlier I don’t know the whole situation in everyone’s life. However, I’m not being unrealistic. We live in a culture that decides to quit or leave once we get uncomfortable or bored. This has crept its way into the Church, and it’s been justified under the guise of grace. But this is not grace that is afforded to the individual, it’s carelessness. We’ve become careless over the souls of those who we are in the company of. If I don’t say something and encourage you to prioritize that 70-ish minutes of your week then how can I say that I care that you know the Gospel? I want you to be as exposed to it as possible, so of course I think you should be in an environment where the Gospel is preached over and over and over again!
But we (hopefully) hear the Gospel during the message on Sunday mornings, so what does this have to do with leaving early when we do “extra experiences” during our gatherings? My friends, this is where my worship leader heart comes out strong. Set aside the fact that the leadership of your church spent time praying over, organizing and planning this for you, and that people gave up more hours than the 15 minutes of extra service time that you’re being asked to stick around in order to make this happen. Set aside the fact that people have been praying for you to be receptive to what God has for you on this Sunday. Set aside even that the commitment on your part is so minimal that you might not beat the traffic out to lunch right after service as your greatest sacrifice in order to stick around. The real reason why I am so passionate about this is twofold: first, this is an opportunity to take what we’ve just learned and apply it to our personal faith walks and put it into action (even if we are just watching other people participate and bearing witness to it). Second, we get to expose ourselves to the work of God that it would permeate our perspective on the God of the universe and influence the way that we worship the rest of the week, not just on Sunday and not just during the hour or so on Sunday that we are together.
Exposing ourselves to and having a desire that God would give us tangible experiences is the difference between cold and dead religion versus a living and active faith that gives new and abundant life (Colossians 1:28-29)! If our souls are not nourished by the Gospel and “worked out” the way that we work out our muscles by participating together in worship- even if we are simply actively observing with humble and teachable hearts- how could we ever expect to grow? We so desperately need it! (Philippians 2:12-13)
there is an urgent mission
Let me explain my zealousness a little bit to wrap up. My heart is grieved and broken over this family who didn’t see the value of the gathered church. Not just because they left, but because that’s a symptom of a deeper heart issue. In order to best articulate, I need to share a difficult story.
During my time as a student worship leader I was asked to play music for a funeral for a family in our church. This family viewed gathering together on Sundays as a low priority. By their own testimony they made it clear that sports had been a higher priority on Sunday mornings. Because of this prioritization, their kids had little exposure to the Gospel and the parents had minimal encouragement and training on how to raise their kids (and encourage each other in their marriage) with a biblical perspective. Because their faith was a low priority in their life, gathering with the body of Christ on Sundays was a low priority in their life. Because the family’s Sunday morning “workout routine”, so to speak, wasn’t prioritized their faith was not active. Because their faith was not active, these parents made it clear in conversations leading up to the funeral that there was no reason to believe that their son had surrendered his life to Jesus on this earth. This was the most difficult funeral I’ve ever witnessed. A family who had only ever paid “lip service” to Jesus was shaken with a realization that their faith was not being passed down to their kids, and their own faith was even challenged through the experience and exposed as “passive-at-best” by the lack of fruit that they did not bear.
I believe in the perseverance of the saints (commonly known as “once saved always saved”) but I also don’t see anywhere in the Bible that says faith is just a one-time “believing in Jesus” with no follow up or growth whatsoever. In fact, I see the opposite found in James 2 (“even the demons believe!”) and from the mouth of Jesus (Matthew 5:16; John 3:36, 14:15). Parents, and I’m preaching this to myself even, are we really putting our kids in environments to learn the Gospel, understand the Bible, and experience the works of God? And then are we following that up with valuable conversation and dialogue? Are we open to questions and pursuing knowledge together?
Friends and fellow Christians: are we actively pursuing Jesus and diving deep into a life that reflects that pursuit? My heart is grieved because I don’t want to sing at anymore “unsaved church kids” funerals! My heart is grieved because we have the Truth and we have the resources to see many surrender their lives to Jesus and yet we remain ignorant when there is every reason to be engaged with the body of Christ and the person of Jesus. Instead of placing ourselves and our friends and families in environments to see God at work we decide that these experiences are not relevant to us and we disengage. May we repent of this!
May we give God all of our attention, even when it is inconvenient to us!
May we seek God with all of our minds, even when it is difficult to comprehend!
May we walk alongside our friends and our children in their journey toward and through faith, even when we have questions ourselves!
Finally, may we simply persevere through just 15 extra minutes on Sunday mornings with active attention so that maybe, just maybe, we can bear witness to the extraordinary work that God has for others… and through that witness would we be influenced, encouraged and edified in our faith as well.
“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” // Hebrews 10:23-25 (ESV)
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Kevin McClure has been leading worship in the local church for over 10 years in different capacities of student and adult ministries. As a songwriter, musical artist, and worship leader he has had the honor of touring the United States both as a performer and worship leader over the better part of the last decade. With a heart to see believers learn how to take the act of worship beyond the setting of a group gathering, Kevin is incredibly intentional with his time on and offstage to help teach the practice of worship as a lifestyle. Kevin lives in Omaha, Nebraska with his bride Hailey and his two daughters, Everleigh (8) and Eliska (3). His favorite food is coffee (lifesource), loves bonfires, and is convinced that Jesus is a Chicago Cubs fan.
Kevin McClure 