Semi-Churched

From Kevin DeYoung:

This is one of those posts I’ve wanted to write for awhile, but I wasn’t sure how to say what I think needs to be said. The danger of legalism and false guilt is very real. But so is the danger of disobedience and self-deception.

I want to talk about church members who attend their home church with great irregularity. These aren’t unchurched folks, or de-churched, or under-churched. They are semi-churched. They show up some of the time, but not every week. They are on again/off again, in and out, here on Sunday and gone for two. That’s the scandal of the semi-churched. In fact, Thom Rainer argues that the number one reason for the decline in church attendance is that church members don’t go to church as often as they used to.

We’ve had Christmas and Easter Christians for probably as long as we’ve had Christmas and Easter. Some people will always be intermittent with their church attendance. I’m not talking about nominal Christians who wander into church once or twice a year. I’m talking about people who went through the trouble of joining a church, like their church, have no particular beef with the church, and still only darken its doors once or twice a month. If there are churches with membership rolls much larger than their average Sunday attendance, they have either under-shepherds derelict in their duties, members faithless in theirs, or both.

I know we are the church and don’t go to church (blah, blah, blah), but being persnickety about our language doesn’t change the exhortation of Hebrews 10:35. We should not neglect to meet together, as some are in the habit of doing. Gathering every Lord’s Day with our church family is one of the pillars of mature Christianity.

So ask yourself a few questions.

1. Have you established church going as an inviolable habit in your family?You know how you wake up in the morning and think “maybe I’ll go on a run today” or “maybe I’ll make french toast this morning”? That’s not what church attendance should be like. It shouldn’t be an “if the mood feels right” proposition. I will always be thankful that my parents treated church attendance (morning and evening) as an immovable pattern. It wasn’t up for discussion. It wasn’t based on extenuating circumstances. It was never a maybe. We went to church. That’s what we did. That made the decision every Sunday a simple one, because their was no real decision. Except for desperate illness, we were going to show up. Giving your family the same kind of habit is a gift they won’t appreciate now, but will usually thank you for later.

2. Do you plan ahead on Saturday so you can make church a priority on Sunday? We are all busy people, so it can be hard to get to church, especially with a house full of kids. We will never make the most of our Sundays unless we prepare for them on Saturday. That likely means finishing homework, getting to bed on time, and foregoing some football. If church is an afterthought, you won’t think of it until after it’s too late.

3. Do you order your travel plans so as to minimize being gone from your church on Sunday? I don’t want to be legalistic with this question. I’ve traveled on Sunday before (though I try to avoid it). I take vacation and study leave and miss 8 or 9 Sundays at URC per year. I understand we live in a mobile culture. I understand people want to visit their kids and grandkids on the weekend (and boy am I thankful when ours come and visit). Gone are the days when people would be in town 50-52 weeks a year. Travel is too easy. Our families are too dispersed. But listen, this doesn’t mean we can’t make a real effort to be around on Sunday. You might want to take Friday off to go visit the kids so you can be back on Saturday night. You might want to think twice about investing in a second home that will draw you away from your church a dozen weekends every year. You might want to re-evaluate your assumption that Friday evening through Sunday evening are yours to do whatever you want wherever you want. It’s almost impossible to grow in love for your church and minister effectively in your church if you are regularly not there.

4. Are you willing to make sacrifices to gather with God’s people for worship every Sunday? “But you don’t expect me to cancel my plans for Saturday night, do you? I can’t possibly rearrange my work schedule. This job requires me to work every Sunday–I’d have to get a new job if I wanted to be regular at church. Sundays are my day to rewind. I won’t get all the yard work done if I go to church every week. My kids won’t be able to play soccer if we don’t go to Sunday games. If my homework is going to be done by Sunday, I won’t be able to chill out Friday night and all day Saturday. Surely God wouldn’t want me to sacrifice too much just so I can show up at church!” Not exactly the way of the cross, is it?

5. Have you considered that you may not be a Christian? Who knows how many people God saves “as through fire” (1 Cor. 3:15). Does going to church every week make you a Christian? Absolutely not. Does missing church 35 Sundays a year make you a non-Christian? It does beg the question. God’s people love to be with God’s people. They love to sing praises. They love to feast at the Table. They love to be fed from the Scriptures. Infrequent church attendance–I mean not going anywhere at all–is a sign of immaturity at best and unbelief at worst. For whenever God calls people out of darkness he calls them into the church. If the Sunday worship service is the community of the redeemed, what does your weekly pattern suggest to God about where you truly belong?

The Greatest Obstacle to Personal Happiness

Most people think that sinning is the best way to happiness. Otherwise, why would so many spend their days figuring out how to sin bigger and better?

However, sin is the greatest enemy to our happiness, as the Puritan Ralph Venning convincingly demonstrated many years ago. His teaching is summarized below, but his aim in it all was to show that sin is directly “against man’s good, both present and future, here in time and hereafter to eternity, in this life and world which now is and in that to come. It is against all and every good of man, and against the good of all and every man.”

1. It is against God and therefore against ourselves. Sin is our enemy because it is against God, and separates us from God, who is our greatest good and joy.

2. It is against the good of our body. It has corrupted our blood, made our bodies mortal, rendered us liable to and thereby vile. Before this body is laid in the grave, it is languishing, in a continual consumption, and dying daily, besides all the dangers that attend it from without.

3. It is against the good of our soul. A wrong done to the soul is much more to man’s hurt than a wrong done to the body. Nothing but sin wrongs a man’s soul, and there is no sin which does not do so.

4. It is against our well-being in this life. It deprives us of our livelihood, and of that which makes it worth our while to live. Sin is against man’s temporal good, either in taking it from him, or cursing it to him.

5. It is against our rest and ease. It increases our work, makes it harder, reduces our rest, and disturbs even our sleep.

6. It is against our comfort and joy. Both work and children, areas that should have been full of satisfaction and joy, produce sorrow and toil all our days.

7. It is against our health. It is the source of all diseases and sicknesses.

8. It is against a quiet conscience. Its guilt pierces deeply and painfully.

9. It is is against our beauty. There was no such thing as vanity or deformity till sin entered; everything was lovely before, and man above anything in the inferior world.

10. It is against the loving and harmonious co-habitation of soul and body. They were happily married, and lived lovingly together for a while, till sin sowed discord between them, and made them jar. There is now many a falling out between body and soul, between sense and reason; they pull in different directions; there is a self-civil war.

11. It is against our relationships. Our comfort or sorrow lies much in our relationships, but now that which was made for a help proves only too often a hindrance.

12. It is against our being. Sin aims not only that we should not be well, but that we should not be at all. How many it strangles in the womb! How many miscarriages and abortions it causes! Man no sooner begins to live, but he begins to die.

13. It is against our moral good. It has defiled and debased our body and soul, using each for filthy purposes.

14. It is against every faculty, sense, and member of our body: It is not any one faculty only that sin has defiled, but, like a strong poison, it soaks and eats through them all; so that whereas all was holy, and holiness to the Lord, it is now evil, and evil against the Lord.

15. It is against our memory. How treacherous is our memory as to good! but alas it is too tenacious as to evil!

16. It is against our understanding. It has blinded our understanding, and made us ignorant. It has depraved our understanding, and made us fools.

17. It is against our good in the life to come. If sin had only wronged man in this life, which is but for a moment, it would not have been so serious. But sin’s miserable effects are everlasting: if mercy does not prevent, the wicked will die and rise to die again, the second and a worse death.

You want to be happy? Target sin as your greatest enemy, not your greatest friend. It is the greatest obstacle to your happiness in every way.

And that is why we LOVE the name JESUS, for He shall save His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21)! No one in the universe has done more to promote happiness than Jesus. He saves us from the greatest enemy to our happiness, and saves us to holy happiness and happy holiness forevermore.

My Favorite Santa Claus Story

There are a lot of Santa Claus stories floating around this time of year. Almost all of them are completely based in fantasy. Flying reindeer; a sleigh full of gifts; precarious chimney climbing; a fluffy red suit — all of that is total fiction. But when my kids used to ask me, “Dad, is Santa Claus real?” I didn’t say “No.” In fact, I answered in the affirmative. (Pause for dramatic effect.)
Like any good student of church history, I explained that Santa Claus was actually a fourth-century pastor named Nicholas of Myra who was later considered a saint by the medieval Roman Catholic Church. He was a favorite of Dutch sailors who called him, “Sinter Klaas” (or “Saint Nicholas”) which then came into English as “Santa Claus.” Of course, I was careful to point out that the modern American version of Saint Nicholas bears absolutely no resemblance to the fourth-century pastor from Asia Minor. The real Nicholas did not live in the North Pole. He was not Scandinavian. He did not drive a team of magical caribou. He did not work with elves. Nor did he travel the world every Christmas Eve exchanging presents for milk and cookies. No, he was a pastor. He worshipped the Lord Jesus Christ. And he would have been appalled at the way his legacy has been used to obscure the true meaning of Christmas. But I digress…

My point in this blog post is to relate my favorite story about Nicholas of Myra — the real Santa Claus. There are several historically-based legends about Nicholas — stories about his incredible generosity to the poor (which is where the connection between Santa Claus and gift-giving originates); and stories about how he secured the release of three innocent prisoners who had been condemned to death. But my favorite legend of them all involves the Council of Nicaea in the year AD 325. That council, of course, centered on one primary doctrinal issue: the deity of Jesus Christ. A heretic named Arius, not unlike Jehovah’s Witnesses today, adamantly denied that the Son of God possessed full equality with God the Father. So the Council of Nicaea convened to discuss the controversy, ultimately concluding that Arius was wrong and that his teachings should be condemned. It is in that context that we pick up this fascinating story about Santa Claus. Author William J. Bennett explains the story well:

Tradition says that Nicholas was one of the bishops attending the great council [of Nicaea]. As he sat listening to Arius proclaim views that seemed to him blasphemous, his anger mounted. He must have asked himself: Did I suffer through all those years in prison to listen to this man betray our beliefs?

His anger got the best of him. He left his seat, walked up to Arius, faced him squarely, and slapped his face. The bishops were stunned.

Arius appealed to the emperor himself. “Should anyone who has the temerity to strike me in your presence go unpunished?” he demanded. . . .

[Consequently,] Nicholas found himself under lock and key in another wing of the palace.

But in the end, the bishop of Myra got the result he wanted. When the arguments were done, the council rebuked Arius for his beliefs. The bishops drew up a statement that came to be known as the Nicene Creed, which affirms faith in the Holy Trinity and declares that Jesus is “of one substance with the Father.”

Perhaps Constantine secretly enjoyed watching someone put Arius in his place. Perhaps some of the bishops admired Nicholas for standing up forcefully, if overzealously, for his beliefs. Nicholas must have had friends and supporters in high places, because when the Council of Nicaea concluded, he was set free and his clerical robes were restored.

(William J. Bennet, The True Saint Nicholas [New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009], 38-40.)

So there you have it: the man our society has dubbed “jolly old Saint Nick,” upon hearing Arius openly deny the deity of Christ, became so incensed by Arius’s blasphemy that he stood up, traversed the room, and slapped the heretic in the face — in the midst of an imperial council for all to see. That is pretty dramatic! It’s possible, of course, that this account is only legendary. But even if it is, it is by far my favorite Santa Claus story. It reminds me of the fact that the real “Saint Nicholas” worshipped the Lord Jesus Christ. He was zealous for Christ’s honor and unwavering in his doctrinal convictions. He was even willing to confront error and heresy head on if necessary. (And not merely by putting coal in Arius’s stocking.) In the midst of a holiday season in which our culture tries to obscure the real meaning of Christmas by pointing to Santa Claus, I like to remind people that — if the real Santa Claus were still alive — he would be pointing people to Christ.