A NOISY, JOYLESS CHURCH OF CHRIST

I do not intend for this to be a judgmental essay, and I am not trying to be critical of Churches of Christ. It is just that in today’s mail came two items that set me to thinking on these two conditions, noisy and joyless. Both may be generally true of the church at large, but these communications, one from Texas and the other from Indiana, are from Churches of Christ.

The New Braunfels Bulletin, published by the Church of Christ in that Texas hill country town, had this admonition to its people: “The noise level in our services has continued to climb and to become distracting. Let’s give attention to eliminate unnecessary talking and movement and to make wise use of the cry room during services.”

This note reminded me that our folk, for good or ill, are noisy. I say for good or ill, for it may not be all that bad to be noisy. I am only inviting you to think along with me. Maybe it depends on what we are noisy about. If the early Christians were all that quiet, such as when they gathered in the underground catacombs of Rome, it was because they sought to escape detection, for it was actually against the law to be a Christian. When they were free to assemble how and when they pleased, their services may have been more like the winner’s dressing room after a Super Bowl game, as one church historian has suggested.

Churches of Christ are noisy. Maybe that is OK, maybe not. Suppose that we are so glad to see each other that our exuberance, our overflowing love, is not all that quiet. If 100 people (the average size of our churches) are embracing, rejoicing, praising the Lord, enjoying being part of God’s family in vestibule and aisles, it may be a bit noisy but is not that all right? Are we to set aside part of the building that we call “the sanctuary” and enter it as if we were entering the most holy place? Are we to approach that room with “a worshipful attitude,” and are we to slap the kids around so as to make sure they sit starch-straight “in church” or for “worship,” which begins at 9:45? Up until that hour and outside “the sanctuary” they can rip and tear as they please, but they are to cool it when “worship” starts. It is true that the grown folk can be quite noisy as they sit, even in “the sanctuary,” waiting for that first song that begins “the acts of worship.”

While there is a place for small talk, whether at home or at the assembly, one would suppose that if Christians are noisy when they get together it would be mostly over spiritual concerns. I’ll go for it if the noise is a sharing of what we have learned from the Scriptures that week, or in praising God for the victories he has given us that week, for that too is worship and such worship may be noisy.

But I concede that the admonition from the hill country church has a point. So often we are noisy other than as described above, and I suspect the Episcopalians would accuse us of not knowing what worship is. But that indictment might work both ways. I can see us in celebration all the way from the parking lot to the vestibule and right down into the aisles and in our seats, enjoying each other and praising God for his bounties. But it is appropriate for us to settle in and prepare ourselves for what might properly be called “corporate worship” or the worship of the Body in assembly.

It would be a good time to read a few more verses from the Scriptures or to quietly pray that the hour will be to the glory of God. It can be a quiet time to think about and pray for the sisters and brothers we see taking their places, some of whom we know are having a hard time of it. We don’t have to be mumbling to the brother in the seat behind us about the bargain we got on a new set of tires. Something very important is about to happen with the Body in assembly. We do well to give that experience the dignity it deserves.

In the same mail that came today is this letter from a sister in Indiana who has just discovered Restoration Review, and she is delighted to learn that there are others with her concerns. She supposed she was all alone in her hopes for renewal among Churches of Christ, or nearly so. Now she finds a journal, deep in the heart of Texas, that is saying what she herself has been thinking. It is common for us to get such letters. There are many thousands among our churches who share our concerns, though we have not all found each other yet.

For several pages she pours out her concerns, but these lines especially caught my eye: “Do we in the Church of Christ really know what it is to worship and praise, lifting up holy hands to our Father, being filled with joy. Nehemiah said the joy of the Lord is your strength. Where is our joy?”

This time I found no place for equivocation. We have to concede, do we not, that generally speaking the Churches of Christ are joyless? We may go to church more than anyone else, but it is probable that we enjoy it less. And if we are as wary of Satan’s devices as we ought to be, we will realize that that is all the old Deceiver has to do to render our religion ineffective, take away its joy. Satan is not concerned when we work hard at our religion, even to the point of sacrifice, if he can but keep it joyless.

Our problem may be that we have not learned to share with each other, for, as Mark Twain wisely observed, to get the full value of joy we must have somebody to divide it with. So long as we are afraid of each other or of the elders, or afraid of being wrong, we will not venture into those experiences with others that bring joy. Joyous folk have learned to take chances, learned not to take themselves too seriously, and learned to be vulnerable in the presence of others. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit, named next to love in Gal. 5:22, and it is evident that joy is not something that we can generate on our own. In fact Paul relates joy to “the power of the Holy Spirit” in Rom. 15:13, and in Rom. 14:17 he insists that the kingdom of God finds its meaning in the “peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

We are not therefore far off base when we conclude that the joy-filled believer is the Spirit-filled believer. And that brings us to the point of the sister’s letter from Indiana. If we among Churches of Christ are joyless, it can only be because we have deprived ourselves of the source of joy, the Holy Spirit. Throughout much of our history that now extends nearly a century we have hardly known that the Holy Spirit has been given. Many of our leaders have either identified the Spirit with the Scriptures or limited its work and mission to them, bequeathing to us the unique and abstruse (and almost certainly erroneous) doctrine of “the Spirit operates only through the word.”

The Scriptures assure us that the Spirit helps us and comforts us and fills us. Those who are deprived of such promises are not likely to benefit from “the joy of the Holy Spirit.”

Perhaps the two qualities that we are looking at, quietness and joy, go together, both being fruit of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, when one is inebriated of the Spirit (as with other kinds of spirits!) he may be noisy, and we are to recognize this. But one filled with the Spirit may be ever so quiet, peaceful, and gentle—just as other spirits make one this way too! How impressive it is when one is quiet and peaceful and joyous when the storms of life are raging about her—all because Jesus Christ is within.

Ouida reminds me now and again of the passage her mother impressed upon her children, Study to be quiet (1 Thess. 4:11). It is a timely admonition in our noisy world, even in our noisy churches. It certainly had its effect upon Ouida. If all of us in Churches of Christ were like her and her mother, we could never be called noisy and joyless. Well, we are working on it.—the Editor