• Worship: Romans 12:1-2, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (ESV)
• Service: James 2:20, “Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?”

The Sunday morning pep-rally outlined in our bulletin doesn’t seem to honor the Biblical definition of the words “worship” and “service” seen here. Sure “corporate worship” is mentioned in Hebrews – but did it refer to our sort of meeting or something totally different?

I think there definitely is a place for preaching and music – we read about Jesus teaching in the synagogue and how we can praise God with instrument and voice.

However, if we marginalize the Biblical notion of “worship” to a 30 minute time of singing once per week haven’t we missed the boat according to Romans 12:1-2?

If our idea of service is our posterior in the pew – aren’t we denying the truth of James 2:20? (and verifying James 1:22?)

Tonight I celebrated the death of the 30’s with a good friend who turned 40 years old at a restaurant locally famous for good BBQ pork.

We were seated in a private room downstairs of the main establishment which posed a unique problem for me. You see this aging facility has a tiny, dimly-lit staircase leading to their basement dining room.

And this goofball was horribly thirsty at dinner and generally every other dinner. But there was no drink station downstairs, no water, no iced-tea, nothing.

And I was very thirsty.

So I wove through the crowd, up the stairs, and down again a total of three trips (four if you count my napkin run for the tables).

I’m afraid this isn’t a very convincing business model – making your customer die of thirst – or at least providing such a good obstacle as to make the inconvenience of it not worth persisting.

Then of course I saw the correlation between a discussion comment I left earlier this week based on my study of Hebrews 6 for this week’s message. I said over at Ed Stetzer’s “Rethinking Discipleship” post:

“One concept a mentor once taught me was that it’s possible to stay true to the Word of God and still put the cookies on a shelf that everyone can have one.”

How many folks do we have that are spiritually dying of thirst and how many obstacles have we removed that they might access the Living Water of Jesus Christ?

I know so many times I’m guilty of “church-ese” using big words that mean much to me and little to the lost. When I catch myself (either live or in watching the video) I usually beat myself up for a few days about it.

I work hard to teach depth while still making Jesus Christ accessible to the biblically illiterate and lost sheep. This is nearly an impossible task.

What would it look like to evaluate everything like the fellowship supper, bulletin, morning message, dress of church members, attitude, youth group meeting, etc. – in light of what kind of obstacle it might pose to the spiritually thirsty man or woman just trying to navigate the dark stairway, push through the big crowd, and discover Jesus?

I was indirectly reminded over lunch today of a powerful principle I held to strongly in my younger years. If I wasn’t hearing the “F”-Bomb you know the F-dash-dash-dash expletive on a regular basis I knew I wasn’t doing ministry.

Never interacting with lost and hurting people means your precious little ears never have to be defiled by this word or any of it’s creative derivatives. However, in order to be all things to all people as Paul indicated to the Corinthians – we must be willing to hear it.

I took a good long look at myself in the rear-view mirror following lunch and realized that it’d been a good long while since I’d heard that word in a conversation. At one point in the ministry God placed me during seminary I heard expletives flying almost every second.

I heard words and combinations I could never have imagined. But as I looked at myself in the mirror in one of those brief self-reflective moments suddenly the thought rushed to my head, “What a namby pamby precocious little infantile Christian you’ve become.”

I feel closer to Christ today than those early days in ministry but I’m not so sure I feel closer to His people. Perhaps in my effort to pursue holiness the balance has fallen far from my intersection with culture’s reality.

Sure I know the words – I know the pain, the suffering. But when was the last time someone was able to feel comfortable enough with me to express themselves?

Perhaps one of the clearest signs that we’re really taking the Gospel seriously is that we’re hearing on a regular basis the reality of culture expressed in the harshest, most foul combinations of consonants and vowels possible.

“For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.” - 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 (ESV)

Ed Stetzer wrote a recent blog post called, “The Biggest Sin in Your Church” in which among other things he wrote:

“Part of it is that we have to recognize that we’ve created the system that we loathe. I don’t think the reason 15 percent serve is because 85 percent are lazy. We’ve created a system that glorifies the clergy and marginalized the laity. We got the outcome we created programs for. We’ve become “clergified.” There’s a 3-tiered structure: laypeople, clergy and missionaries.”

Ed is right on and those that value Baptist traditions should realize the idea of “clergy” is foreign to our faith and practice. We distinctively believe that all Christ followers are ministers and missionaries that there is no such thing as “laypeople” for even the pastor is a layperson.

There is but one unique, high-priest and that’s Jesus Christ. Makes me wonder, what could we accomplish if the member took their rightful place as a minister and the pastor could return to the pastor-teacher highlighted in Ephesians 4:11?

Hebrews (pt.3) – Pastor Clark Frailey from Clark Frailey on Vimeo.