I've been thinking for a while about all aspects of church - what the purpose of church should be, what it is, and what aspects are particularly important to me personally, but lately, I've been thinking about the practicalities of church.
For instance, why do we go to church in the morning? Christians seem to have this view that mornings are holier than evenings. I don't know a single Christian who actively thinks that, but it seems to be a really strong underlying view. People say that we should get up early in the morning to have our "quiet times," and a lot of people strongly advise against ever sleeping in.
This view doesn't seem to be supported in the Bible. Of course, the Bible uses light and dark as symbols for good and evil, and in general, day = good and night = bad. But I'm not convinced that these analogies actually mean that mornings are inherently better than evenings.
In fact, I have trouble with mornings. The earlier I get up, the longer it takes me to actually wake up. I've pretty much always been able to be mobile by 6am (if necessary), but my brain doesn't start working until around 8am. But if I get up around 7:30, I'm good to go by 8. I can function before 8, thankfully, but if I try to do anything requiring abstract thought, I'm in trouble.
(I know this seems like a tangent, but it really is related to church, I promise.)
For about six months, Justin and I tried valiantly to get up and go to church every Sunday morning, but it just wasn't happening. To be fair, for one of those months, I had the swine flu and then tonsilitis, and for several of the other months, Justin woke up unable to get out of bed due to back problems, so really, we only tried hard to get to the morning services at church for three months. But we failed a lot, and most of the times we did get there, Justin almost fell asleep and we were both generally grumpy and thinking about all the stuff we had to do throughout the rest of the day.
This attitude? Not conducive to worship, fellowship, or self-edification.
However, our church has evening services. "Aha!" we thought to ourselves. "We'll just go to the night services - sleep in Sunday mornings, get our work done before church, and then have clear minds to pay attention to the songs and sermons and whatnot."
And really, that has worked for us. We're much more alert during church now and generally like this arrangement better.
... Plus, our church has fellowship issues, and people who come to the evening services generally want to be there. It's less of an obligation and more of a choice.
But people at church don't really understand it. We have to remind people fairly regularly that we don't come to the morning services, and so we're pretty much out of the loop when it comes to announcements and stuff like that. For example, our pastor is moving to a different congregation, and we didn't know about it since we aren't in the morning services. Of course, we don't want the whole service to change just because we don't come in the mornings, but the sheer fact that we don't know what's going on raises questions.
Typically, people don't ask us why we don't come in the mornings. There are more reasons than what I've just shared here, and if someone honestly wanted to know why we made that decision, we would tell them. But no one asks.
Instead, people shuffle awkwardly around the question and ask without asking. Whenever the topic comes up, people in other conversations begin to listen in (you know that feeling?). It's weird. And I don't like it.
People also seem to assume that we don't come to the morning service out of laziness. And yeah, I guess our decision could be construed that way, but honestly, laziness didn't factor at all. We grow spiritually more when we can focus on what we're learning - and why should learning about God in the morning be better than learning about God in the evening?
So couple our evening-service-only-attendance with my alarming tendency to wear khaki or brown pants and Justin's to wear jeans to church, and we seem to be quite hell-bound. People treat us like we're on the brink of salvation, and if we would only come to the morning service, we would really have faith. We get a lot of comments implying that we never come to church, like "We haven't seen you all in a while, it's nice to have you back!", which seems nice, but this is the South, remember?
I'm not really sure what the ultimate goal of this post was, except that I'm thinking somewhat more clearly about the church situation now than I was when I first started, so yay for me!
In other news, I'll have graduation pictures up soon. =)
Interesting observations. I remember being taught that a Christian should always rise early in the morning to pray because Jesus prayed early in the morning. Of course, Jesus prayed at all sorts of different times. One could argue that he is known to have arisen early in the morning to pray because then other people wouldn't bother him.
ReplyDeleteThe early Christians tended to hold the Jewish custom of times of prayer, reflected by the early Middle Ages by the daily offices, including the time of prayer at the third hour of the day (Acts 2). They tended to end up with a serious corporate gathering on the first day of the week because it was the day of resurrection. Before the fourth century they assembled on the first day before dawn or after dusk for the simple reason that it was a work day like any other. If you translated it into modern practice, imagine that you work in a factory. On the first day of the week, whatever day in the work flow that might be, you assemble with other Christians outside of working hours. It's because it is the first day of the week.
So I'm with you. There's nothing more holy about a morning worship service. But then again there's nothing wrong with trying to attend to one. Maybe the Lord will put you in a situation where that's more desirable sometime.
Well, you know I agree with Cap'n Salty. ;-) Meeting on Sunday morning is a tradition because it recognizes the timing of the Resurrection, but it's not a scriptural law. And as the Cap'n said, there were practical considerations as well for the early Christians. I also don't think it matters what time of day you pray and read your Bible. In fact, I do those at at least two separate times. Gasp! And really, I pray on and off all day long. Why not?
ReplyDeleteBut on the other hand, if the church's main worship service is Sunday morning (as is the case for the vast majority of churches), you will have to put up with a certain amount of questioning and feeling out of it if you choose not to attend then. :-/
You could say what Luther said to Philip Melancthon (about sinning boldly) to the people who think you should go to morning church, since they seem to think that your're doing something wrong. I don't think you're sinning. People go to church to learn, and if you can't concentrate and remember what they're talking about, then it's better to go when you'll remember what they talked about.
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