The Church of Christ: Yesterday and Today . . .

THE NATURE OF THE ASSEMBLY

As we think of the meaning of “going to church” or being part of an assembled congregation, we must re-member that God never acts arbitrarily or perfunctorily. All form or ritual that He has instituted not only has deep meaning, but it is ordained for our good. Karl Barth has well said that God is for man, and so all that God does is for man’s enhancement. God wants us to be happy, mature, and beautiful, and all His work in our behalf is to this end. He does not exact responses from us to see how near we can come to measuring up to His demands. He is both too gracious and too loving to act toward us grudgingly. He wants us for Himself, and like that father going out to meet the prodigal son, He reaches out with an incomprehensible love in hopes of making us whole. The assembly, therefore, must be seen in this light. It is one more expression of His love, one more means of conforming us into the image of His son.

The assembly of the saints is not, therefore, simply a response to some command or the fulfillment of some duty. Almost certainly the primitive church did not assemble because it thought it had to. It was an exciting adventure for them, a fellowship of love, and an experience that they would not consider missing. They did not have to be begged, threatened, or cajoled into attending. And surely they had no such notion of having done their duty by gathering with fellow “believers. It was a natural expression of their devotion to Christ and their love for their brothers.

It may sound strange to suggest such in the twentieth century with all our institutional hang-ups, but there is no indication in scripture that the saints gathered to worship. Worship was the whole of their lives. Had you spoken to an early Christian about “going to worship,” he would not have known what you were talking about. To them worship was a day and night devotion and dedication to their Lord. Heb. 12:28 says it well: “The kingdom we are given is unshakable; let us therefore give thanks to God, and so worship him as he would be worshipped, with reverence and awe; for our God is a devouring fire.” There is no more a connection with the assembly in this passage than there is in Rom. 12:1 which also refers to the worshipful life: “Therefore, my brothers, I implore you by God’s mercy to offer your very selves to him: a living sacrifice, dedicated and fit for his acceptance, the worship offered by mind and heart.”

There are therefore no acts of worship. It is not something that begins or ends with the sound of an organ or the intonation of a clergyman, No one leads or directs the worship, unless it would be the God of heaven as He calls us to Jesus through the Gospel. Running errands for a neighbor is as much worship as partaking of the Lord’s Supper, or writing a letter to some lonely soul is as much worship as singing hymns. The apostle seemed to think so at least: “Whatever you are doing, whether you speak or act, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17). We are so hamstrung by our traditions as to be shocked by the suggestion that parents of small children might actually be more worshipful to stay home with the kids on a Sunday or Wednesday night and frolic with them rather than drag them to church still another time. We often frown upon such daring souls, indicating that they have “missed worship.” The truth is that one who “misses worship” to do something merciful such as helping a stranded motorist?) may be rendering a more acceptable service, which is what worship means, than if he spent that hour sitting in church.

Come to think of it, where did we ever get the idea that certain perfunctory acts constitute worship? I say perfunctory, for they are usually just that. When we assemble there are those things we always do, apparently because we’ve always done them. We reach for a songbook and begin to sing, and ipso facto, just like that, worship has begun. Moments before back in the vestibule we were embracing a dear old sister just recovered from surgery, assuring her of our love and concern. But that wasn’t worship! Now that we are singing we are worshipping, for that is one of the acts that constitute worship. It is high time that we learn better than that sort of folly. Singing is not worship. Giving is not worship. Singing is singing and giving is giving, both of which, like all else we do, are to be to the glory of God. Such acts as breaking bread or reading the scriptures might be referred to as worship (though the Bible never calls them such), but only if talking, eating, sleeping, working, making love, going to school, visiting a neighbor, washing dishes, taking a walk, feeding the dog, and all the rest are called worship.

It is our very selves—our bodies minds, spirits—that are offered to God as a “living sacrifice, dedicated and fit for his acceptance, the worship offered by mind and heart.” That is the only worship that the scriptures know anything about. There is no reason to believe that what takes place in the assembly fits that standard any more than what happens at work or at school, or in the kitchen, study, or bedroom. There is therefore no necessary connection between the nature of the assembly and worship. In fact, since service gets at the idea of worship as much as any other concept, it might be more scriptural to associate worship with what happens at home or at work, or at the hospital or out on the street. Especially is that the case in our “worship services,” for there is very little service. For the most part we are spectators, It may be very true that a lot of us worship God all too little because of going to church so much. We do all too little serving at church.

Indeed, the one passage that speaks so beautifully about our worship of God is apparently completely divorced from any notion of the assembly: “Through Jesus, then, let us continually offer up to God the sacrifice of praise, that is, the tribute of lips which acknowledge his name, and never forget to show kindness and to share what you have with others, for such are the sacrifices which God approves” (Heb. 13:15-16). He is not talking about what we do when we go to church, but the attitude and behavior of all of life. Let one praise God as he goes walking or as he drives to work. We “continually” praise God, he says, whether it be when a baby is born or when one of the kids gets married. Or even when the barn burns down or fuel and food prices go up. And notice that if he calls anything worship it is kindness and generosity—”sacrifices” he calls them. These we lay at the altar as much as any “five acts” that we commonly associate with the assembly. The scriptures, of course, know nothing of any “five acts of worship” either in or out of the assembly. We do not assemble to worship, but we assemble as one more expression of “the worship offered by mind and heart.”

The Samaritan woman in John 4 had this institutional concept of worship when she said to Jesus: “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the temple where God should be worshipped is in Jerusalem.” She has her modern counterpart in those who set aside “the sanctuary” in some church edifices as the place of worship or who define worship in terms of certain prescribed acts. Jesus’ answer to the woman reveals that there are no holy places or sanctuaries in the Christian faith apart from the human heart. He speaks of “the real worshippers” as those who worship in no place, whether Jerusalem or Samaria, but who worship in spirit and in truth.

To worship in spirit means to serve God in sincere devotion, not out of constraint, law, or tradition. To worship in truth means to honor Him in the great I Am, the truth of Jesus Christ as the Son of God. This is a call to life in the Son, not a summons to a prescribed order of worship, however “right” it might be.

We can probably speak of “the corporate worship” of the saints without doing violence to the scriptures, though the term itself is not a biblical one. There are those things that the saints are to do together in assembly, and so they are corporate acts. The term worship becomes objectionable when it is used exclusively of certain acts being carried out in certain places rather than the whole of the believer’s life. Yet the believer does those things in assembly with other believers that take on a different character because it is the congregated Body of Christ. It is in order to call this corporate worship or service. We all pray privately but prayer in the assembly moves at a different level in that it becomes a corporate function. It was important to Campbell to restore to the assembly what he called “the prayers of the congregation,” which is more than someone leading prayer. Singing may not have been congregational, that is, in unison; but it was a part of the purpose of the assembly (1 Cor. 14:26), whether as solos or however, and something different from that singing that more generally filled the believer’s life (Eph. 5:19, Col. 3:16). And there is something special about reading and studying the scriptures as the assembled Body. Rev. 1:3 grants a special blessing to those who read and hear the scriptures in assembly.

There is no scriptural evidence that the pooling or collecting of money was a part of corporate worship, and it is hardly appropriate to the purpose of the assembly, which we shall deal with shortly. Only the Lord’s Supper is exclusively related to the assembly. It is the one corporate act that gives special meaning and honor to the gathered Body. We may not be able to prove that the Supper was only on the Lord’s day or Sunday, but we can sustain that it was always a corporate act. People who break bread in a wedding ceremony or in mini-meetings apart from the congregation do not act with scriptural precedence. This is not to say that private observance is wrong, but it is to say that the character of the Supper may be misunderstood. The Supper is a community fellowship, a family affair, a meeting of the Body and the Head in intimate communion. But if this makes private observance suspect, it also questions a second serving of the Supper to a handful of the congregation at a later hour, which is an anomaly in the modern Church of Christ.

The Supper is a community’s memorial and proclamation, not a sacrament or some efficacious means of grace. One has not missed some special personal blessings if he is unavoidedly absent from the assembly, and so he doesn’t have to “get his” later. It is the Body that breaks bread as a memorial, so if a member has to be absent from the assembly he is excused. If he sees the Supper as a sacrament (that which in itself is a means of grace), then let him observe it at home or at work or in his car. If a congregation must have a second serving, then the entire congregation should again break bread.

If the nature of the assembly is not, then, to perform certain acts of worship, what is its nature? The apostle is clear enough on this point: “All of these must aim at one thing: to build up the church” (1 Cor.14:26). He is speaking of mutual sharing in song, teaching, and ecstatic utterance. Throughout 1 Cor. 14 he describes the assembly as an experience in edifying and encouraging one another. In verse 3. “When a man prophesies, he is talking to men, and words have power to build; they stimulate and they encourage,” and in the next verse he places prophecy over tongues because it has the power “to build, to stimulate, and to encourage.” In verse 12: “You are, I know, eager for gifts of the Spirit, then aspire above all to excel in those which build up the church,” and in verse 19 he says he chooses to speak plainly rather than in a tongue “for the benefit of others as well as myself.” That phrase well summarizes the nature of the assembly. Then in verse 31 he calls for order in mutual sharing “so that the whole congregation may receive instruction and encouragement.”

I would settle for those last words from Paul as the purpose of the assembly: that the whole congregation may have instruction and encouragement. We do not assemble to worship or to perform acts of devotion. We shut ourselves off from the evil world for a few precious hours so as to be with Jesus and his Body in assembly in order to be built up in the holy faith, encouraged to be faithful to our call, and instructed in the scriptures.

While the Supper was always observed in assembly, it is probable that there were assemblies without the Supper. Their purpose was to encourage and build up one another. As Heb. 10:24-25 puts it: “We ought to see how each of us may best arouse others to love and active goodness, not staying away from our meetings, as some do, but rather encouraging one another, all the more because you see the Day drawing near.” Heb. 3:13 puts, it “Day by day, while that word ‘Today’ still sounds in your ears, encourage one another, so that no one of you is made stubborn by the wiles of sin.”

Mutual edification is the substantial principle in Paul’s epistles, finding application to the whole of the believer’s life in and out of the assembly. Rom. 12:4 is an example: “Just as in a single body there are many limbs and organs, all with different functions, so all of us, united with Christ, form one body, serving individually as limbs and organs to one another,” and he goes on to show that the purpose of our several gifts is for mutual up building. The grand principle is underscored in Eph. 4:16: “He is the head and on him the whole body depends. Bonded and knit together by every constituent joint, the whole frame grows through the due activity of each part, and builds itself up in love.”

All this makes it evident that the Body is not only to assemble, but that in its assemblies it is to build itself up in love through mutual sharing. We are without scriptural authority when we split the assembly into one speaker and a silent body of listeners. We are also missing the mark when we seek to transform a meeting place into “the sanctuary” and thus achieve “an atmosphere conductive to worship.” And so we have come to equate silence with reverence, thus circumventing that spontaneous ministry that builds, encourages, and informs. It is an atmosphere conducive to “the fellowship of the Spirit,” the sharing of the common life in Jesus, that we must seek to achieve. This is the nature of the assembly.—The Editor