Modern Delusion Part 3: Worship as Education

Issue 13

As a young lad, I would not have told anyone that the sermon was my favorite part of Sunday morning. In fact, had I been blessed with less tact, I probably would have told everyone with ears to hear my vehement assertion that the sermon on Sunday morning was a confusing type of drudgery only tolerated because of the entertaining music and the doughnut holes I was allowed afterwards.

As I grew up, I had varying opinions of sermons. Most depended on the preacher—some were regularly interesting, others terrifying, and others a dull monotony. After I came to Christ, sermons became either interesting or dull, though I now had a determination to get out of them what I could. But I was still conditioned, somehow, that the sermon was the most important and key part of what occurred on Sunday morning.

In part this was naturally how one would interpret the evangelical services I’d attended throughout the younger part of my life. There was no call to worship, no confession of sins as a church, no assurance of pardon that our sins had been forgiven, and like as not no Lord’s supper afterwards. There was singing, announcements, maybe a scripture reading, more singing, a sermon—quite long—more singing, and then doughnuts and back home we went. It was all rather bewildering. What were we there for?

In my young mind, it was rather obvious that the sermon was what everyone had come for since it took up most of the allotted time (or at least it seemed to), and the singing done before and after was a means by which we both gave God praise, thereby making Him happy, and prepared our hearts and souls for the main course of the morning—that is, the sermon.

I was rather indifferent to sermons as a young child—I would have been perfectly content to watch and listen to the fascinating band up front without sitting for long periods of time while one man talked and mused on philosophical matters which did not apply to dump trucks, fire engines, or guitars.

As I grew older, and after our family moved to a more reformed evangelical church, I began to realize that other people’s attitude of this rather monotonous phase of Sunday mornings was particularly respectful. After I became a Christian, I knew instinctively that sermons were good for me and that I must apply myself and learn something—and indeed, I was and am serious in this pursuit. But something felt off about how much attention was being paid to this part of the service. Maybe this was because the sermon was the only thing of value present in the service—quite possibly, the worship music which had captivated me as a five year old did not have the same affect on the more mature aspects of the congregation. In fact, by this time I had broadened my experience of churches and had come to discover the tremendous weightiness that the classical or traditional style of congregational worship contained, and I was now rather disillusioned to the forms of worship I had once enjoyed as a young lad.

Even so, I sensed an idolization of learning; a continuous desire to know more, to study harder, to write more notes. I wrote notes, and I still do—it’s a good practice for those who, like myself, have limited memory space. But I sensed something further than this—perhaps it was the talk afterwards amongst congregants about the sermon (referencing these notes), or the careful attention to detail, or the notebook laying beside the Bible, rapidly filling with graphite.

I do not want to dishonor the thirst for God’s word, His spoken truth, and His revealing that truth during Sunday morning or any other Bible studies. As a young man I did notice, however, that there was almost no mention of that second song we sang—what did God think of that? Was He pleased? Did the lyrics speak biblical truth? Did the style match it? Did the congregation sing it well? Typically the only attention paid to the songs was whether they quoted the passage focused on within the sermon.

This is a problem to which the reformed world, in all its goodness, tends to fall prey. The idea that the Sunday morning gathering is for educational purposes only seems to be picking up steam as churches become more thirsty for biblical truth without being equally thirsty for the application of this truth. It is an especially common tendency where a church has the modern style of worship—rather trite at best—and a slammer of a hardcore reformed sermon. Of course, in this case, the sermon is obviously the best part. But this is like saying (to use an extreme example) that the best part of a car is the really slick headlight on the driver’s side. Sure, maybe it is the best part of the car—the rest of the car may be a dilapidated mess. But the builder’s purpose for the car was not that of producing light. Similarly, our lack of care in regulating and remaining skillful at the other parts of our gathering have left us laser-focused on the one aspect of Sunday morning which still seems to hold any real meaning.

Thus we find ourselves giving full attention and care to the sermon and everything that goes into it, to include the qualifications of the pastor and the books he likes to read. But the singing (and whoever leads it) is a rogue afterthought, the main purpose of which is to give the congregation the feeling that their hearts are prepared to listen to the sermon. And while little attention is given to the singing, almost no attention is given to the rest of the liturgy. Once again, I’m not about to say that the sermon is not worthy of attention, but to give it overdue attention at the expense of other important aspects of the gathering is indeed folly. It puts undue pressure on the sermon to deliver something it was not designed to deliver, and it neglects the other equally weighty aspects of the service. Furthermore, it highlights a tendency common in our rapidly secularizing society.

America has turned from God in preference to all manner of idolatry, and one of these idols is the god of education. Everywhere we are told that if only people could become more educated, they would stop doing bad things. Governments implement educational programs for “underprivileged” classes and prison systems, they enforce education spreading propaganda, and they offer education to their veterans and employees. Because the family unit and all of its good education has been handed to the government, children are not growing up. And to fix this, more education is prescribed in the form of high school, associates’ degrees, four year degrees, and postgraduate studies. Perhaps it may be said that society at large picked up this idolatry from the church. In any case, the snowball affect has not will not be kind to us.

When the service of corporate worship on Sunday morning is undertaken as a primarily educational experience, it detracts from the other routine things which have occurred in the church for millennia: confession of sins, forgiveness, sanctification, and the Lord’s supper. I will expound on this particular idea in a future article where I can give it the proper scriptural attention it deserves.

God calls us into His presence not to become smarter and then go home. Smart people are not the definition of saved and regenerated Christian, purchased by the blood of Christ. Education, while valuable, is only a means to an end. It should result in a stronger, more sanctified Christian. But it can also result in a smarter pagan. Somehow, in all of our thirst for knowledge, we have forgotten that knowledge by itself is worthless—without Christ’s justifying work, we are dead in our sins. And the current form of evangelical corporate worship does not adequately reflect this.