Preparing in community

The following is an excerpt from Ravi Zacharias book titled: I, Isaac, take Thee, Rebekah.

"A generation ago, a young person would be in church four times a week -- for Sunday school and the morning service, the Sunday evening service, the midweek prayer meeting, and youth group. This built a community, and the prospective partners were able to observe each other over a period of time in a setting where their spiritual life was trained and developed.

"These days, I know of churches where you sit in from of a screen to watch the service. I am not being critical of this, because the very fact that the congregation is so large and that people are willing to get it secondhand at lease concedes that they must be getting something or they wouldn't be there. It is better to be in front of a screen at church than in front of a screen at home, watching heaven know what. But lets us make no mistake about it. This change has turned everything around and results in a new structure. In a very real sense you are no longer a participant but a spectator. You are no long the one being observed; you are purely the observer. In fact, if the cameras were to pan your face, you would be thoroughly embarrassed. You go to see, not to be seen. There is no watchful eye over you, which is part of the accountability training one needs.

"Some might say that small groups have taken the place of the fellowship and accountability one used to find in small churches. But small -group dynamics are completely different than a congregational community. In a congregational community you relate across a wide spectrum of ages and callings, and your maturity is tested from every angle. In a small group you only learn to relate to those of similar inclinations and affinities.

"Here is an important point. In times of antiquity, the cultural setting provided the impetus for moral development across age and generational barriers. If the culture was strong, moral development was built on a solid foundation. There were balances and counterbalances by generational lines of interaction. As cultures intermixed, values became clouded and the story of a people has been lost by succeeding generations, so that what has actually happened is the loss of a transcending chain of continuity.

"Now, as cultures are blended across generations, a whole new ethos is framed and each generation must reinvent itself without the checks and balances of time an preceding generations. There is not transcending continuity, and the breakdown is drastic. It is not accidental that music has become the focus in many congregations because music has a generational shelf life, where the new music fails to connect with the previous one. Churches have become so 'seeker-friendly' that they have become 'founder-unfriendly' and have ceased to minister to the older generation, who are gradually being dropped from our society just because they are older. This is the very thing that felled King Rehoboam. His entire political theory was framed by the new generation, who place no value on the older generation and the wisdom they had acquired (see 1 Kings 12:1-15).

"We have replaced the old cloisters in monasteries with new cloisters in huge congregations. Yes, it is important to keep a balance and not be stuck in a particular generation, but we have drawn lines that made us myopic in our way of fie wing things. If church is something you observe rather than experience of worship, you will be always redefining yourself by whoever is on the platform. That is a dangerous way to define oneself.

"A worshiping community should be the fountain from which life flows and the ocean into which your efforts are merged. That is where identity is defined, refined and consolidated and where continuity remains.

"This is why premarital counseling becomes handicapped. When it is done, it is purely on the basis of giving directions, never really providing the opportunity to relate to the Church in light of your growth to marriage. An awful lot can be faked in formal settings of instruction. When our older daughter was married, she received counsel from her pastor who required the young couple to spend time in a home for the aged and those under special care. He did this because of a very tragic circumstance in his own life.

"Shortly after he was married, he was involved in an accident that broke his hands. For months he was unable to use them. He told my daughter and her fiance that he learned in a hurry what it meant to be loved unconditionally and how menial a task loving somebody can be when you have to take care of his or her every need. His wife suddingly became not just his partner but his nurse and his caregiver in a situation that demanded absolute commitment on her part. One wonders what would happen in most marriages that are put to such a test.

Zacharias, Ravi: I, Isaac, take Thee, Rebekah, W. Publishing House, 2004, pp. 100-103

Coach Charles
perfectlifecoach.com