Faith Works 11-29-18

Faith Works 11-29-18

Jeff Gill

 

The time of worship

___

 

What time is church?

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, and not without reason, that "eleven o'clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week in America."

 

When I was younger, and less aware of the realities of racism that Dr. King was trying to address, I remember my first reaction was "but 11:00 am isn't when church is?"

 

My church growing up always had Sunday morning worship at 10:30 am, and like most things we grow up with, I assumed how me and mine did it was the normal way, the right way, the way everyone did things. Then I went out into the world.

 

And truth be told, I mostly saw other 10:30s, but learned that the scope of the Lord's goodness, a wideness in God's mercy, extended to even 11 o'clock. Alrighty then.

 

Now, I also come from a very Biblically oriented tradition, and the curious fact is that you can't find any Biblical basis for that sort of time conformity. The day for worship among early Christians moved from the Jewish Sabbath to "the first day of the week" when Mary Magdalene met the risen Jesus in the garden, and which we call Sunday in English speaking lands. But that was at dawn.

 

Other than Easter Sunday, and precious few of us at that, no one does worship at dawn.

 

Many traditions have a Sunday evening service, and did back in an earlier day when you rode to town with a dinner basket, attended morning worship, ate under the trees, and had a second round of preaching before riding home. Over the years, as automobiles caught on, the evening service moved back to 6:00 pm for those who continued that pattern.

 

And in that sequence, you can see why 11:00 am or maybe 10:30 makes sense. If you have to get up, milk the cows, feed the chickens, clean up, and ride a few miles into town, it had better not be until 10:30. Two hours of preaching, a leisurely lunch, maybe a turn around town, a 3:00 pm prayer meeting, then home by dark.

 

Yet like summer vacation in school calendars, we still follow a vaguely agrarian timetable on Sunday morning.

 

Quite a few of us, as our members have developed the more complicated schedules of work in 2018, have added services. An 8 or 8:30 am early service, Sunday afternoons are coming back, and many have a Saturday evening service. Other "non-traditional" worship times are getting more and more common; weary preachers are all too aware of the fact that we're also doing more services sometimes just to reach the same number – or less – in worship, but that's what happens as the 24/7 culture and rotating shift schedules eat away at our personal options.

 

I have to admit I've been trying to explain to some of my fellow believers who bemoan downturns in worship attendance that it's not a simple lack of faithfulness, or a devaluation of church that pushes down attendance at the old familiar 10:30 or 11 am hour. It's for many a question of work, or lose your job. The idea of Sunday being sacred is something you're welcome to believe personally, but it's not going to get you out of your four days in a row ten hour shifts, then four off, with Sunday just one more column heading on the time sheet.

 

What's a church to do? Part of it is to remember that there's nothing sacred about one particular worship time. Obviously, the counterpart to that is teaching and preaching about the importance of setting aside time to come together with fellow believers (Bible verses available on request, but there's many!).

 

Some tell me reading this column is their church. I honor the intention meant by saying that, but it does pain me to hear. This is a wonderful chance to converse, and for me to share some thoughts, but it's not a worship experience. My email and messages become a kind of community, but in the narrowest and most limited sense.

 

The challenge moving forward into 2019 and beyond is for faith communities to wrestle with exactly that, though: how to expand forms of community that look different than we're used to. We don't milk the cows on Sunday before riding a horse into town; we may have to find creative ways to use technology and communications to maintain community between chances to physically be present with each other. But it can't be just the virtual! Actual community will always be at the heart of how we come together in unity.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's glad to respond to any number of questions by email, but he's also likely to tell you to go to church, too. Write him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.