Danger in form over function

Someone just informed me they were thinking of changing churches after attending this past Sunday’s main service and finding the sanctuary had been converted into a theater-style venue where they removed all the old wooden pews equipped with Bible racks and holes for the communion cups. All that was left were fancy new reclining seats.

This person’s church is one of a group of five churches under the name The Orchard. The preacher, Colin Smith, is actually at another location and his sermons are pumped live over a jumbo-tron screen at the front.

In an official Orchard FAQ I found on the internet, the question was asked, “Why renovate the Arlington Heights Campus?”

The answer: “To thrive in the next chapter of The Orchard’s history we need the Arlington Heights Campus to be a vibrant, growing and sending campus. Turning the 45-year-old Arlington Heights facility into a 21^st century campus is a key step to position us for growth. We believe an interior renovation will benefit our entire multi-site church and help us advance our mission.”

*****

The Apostle Paul writes in I Corinthians 3:9, [9] For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.

“People get all caught up in the form, but it’s each of us who are the issue,” explains Preacher Richard Jordan in an old study. “Having or not having a building isn’t the issue. Having said that, you’ve got to be careful because the building can get to be a problem. You can make a god out of it. You can make an issue out of it.

“There’s a real strange little verse at the end of Hosea 8. He says, ‘For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples.’

“Do you know one of the most dangerous things a group of God’s people ever go through is a building program? I’ve seen it happen over and over where the building gets to be the issue.

"The first church I was ever in as a lad, I saw it split in half over the color of the new drapes to put on the back of the choir loft. Some wanted burgundy and some wanted lavender and the group that won stayed and the group that lost left. I would have just left them down. I thought the wall looked pretty good myself, but what does a kid know?

“Let the doctrine be the issue. You see, if the Adversary can get your eyes off the Lord and who you are in Christ, you know where your eyes go? To things. Israel has forsaken her Maker. It didn’t say they went out and built a tavern; it says they went and built a church building.

“There’s many a minister and church today shackled with bond programs, debt programs, mortgages and payments that have to be made on buildings they built as monuments to the pride and arrogance of a program, rather than because they needed a place to house the work of God and make it work smoothly.

“With many a ministry, I’ve sat at tables with pastors who said, ‘I’d love to preach what you’re telling me but I can’t.’ I say why? They answer, ‘Because we’ve got bills to pay.’

“Somebody asked me this morning, they said, ‘Boy, after you so clearly explain some of these truths, why is it that people don’t see it?’ There’s one of two reasons. Ignorance--and after they’ve heard it they can’t be ignorant--or willful unbelief.

"A lot of times willful unbelief doesn’t come just from hearts of wicked rebellion. It just comes from a man saying, ‘Well, okay, but I’m going to build a temple.’ You got to be careful!

“The building is a wonderful asset that gives stability to a work. I appreciate that. I thank God for the people who made the sacrifices to provide a place like this that we can come along and enjoy the fruits of their labors. But the issue is the work that goes on in the hearts of people and not the building.

*****

“I got a letter from a lady this past week who asked me, ‘I understand that you’re pastoring the congregation that’s left of the old North Shore Church. I heard it closed up?’

“You know what I do? I write people back and say, ‘North Shore Church didn’t close up. Norwood Bible Church didn’t close up.’ That aggravates me when people do that. That’s like, ‘You just threw in the towel and quit.’ They didn’t quit. Have you quit? I haven’t quit. Here we are! They say, ‘No, no, no; ya’ll are Shorewood.’ Well, where do you think we got that name?! That’s part of one, part of the other.

“I mean, the building isn’t the issue unless you don’t understand. Or unless you forget. There’s always somebody who’s going to point to the form and the structure as if the form and the structure were the answer. Function is the issue.

“Spiritual organization in Paul’s epistles is you get the life and the ministry of the Body of Christ functioning,  with the doctrine working in people and those people want to gather. They want to have a steady thing, they want to reach others, they want to bring others in, and this life begins to go and so you put a structure around it to make the life function smoothly.

“If the group wants to get together, you’re going to have some form. You have to have a place to meet. We’ll never get together if we don’t decide where we’re going to get together at. That’s called organization. You’re going to have to have a time to meet, too.

“There’s these natural things so that everybody shows up at the same place at the same time. The form follows the functioning of the life. When you make it a religion is when you do it the other way and you’ll never get rid of that danger.

“The answer is not the form; the answer is the functioning of the sound doctrine in the Believers being carried on, and if the sound doctrine is working in the Believers and the life of Christ is working in the group, it doesn’t make any difference where you meet.”