The Gospel Coalition

This month’s Christianity Today features the question: “Should churches try to minimize disruptions?”

At South Carolina’s NewSpring Church, children are not admitted to the main service and doors are locked after the sermon starts. In North Carolina, Elevation Church leaders removed a boy with cerebral palsy from church because he was disrupting the service. The incidents raise the issue of how to respond to disruptions in worship. Should churches try to minimize disruptions in services?

When the Elevation Church incident took place, I remember reading blogs that criticized Steven Furtick for how his church handled the situation. I wondered if the critics had ever been put in that kind of awkward situation before. In every church I’ve served in (including the ones in Romania), we’ve had disruptions. Most of the time, it’s been an unruly child. But we’ve had the occasional heckler, drunk, and even the “elderly man having heart palpitations” problem as well. Each situation required a different response.

At the heart of this question is the tension between the purpose of the church gathering and the people in the church gathering. On the one hand, we gather as a church in order to hear the Word proclaimed. Anything that disrupts or distracts from the centrality of the Word can be a hindrance to the church fulfilling its purpose. On the other hand, we gather as church people – in all our glorious messiness. The ideal worship service inevitably runs up against persistent reminders of human fallenness.

So, in response to Christianity Today’s question, I provided this answer:

“I want to see disruptions minimized so that the Word can be proclaimed with clarity and without distraction. Even so, churches should be hospitable to all, including those who engage in behavior that seems ‘disruptive’ to others. In the end, we should embrace this tension rather than resolve it. Each local church should continually rely on the Holy Spirit in order to know instinctively when the disruption is detracting from the Word or when the disruption is a divine reminder that we are called to minister to the people with us, not the idealized church community in our minds.”

I don’t think there’s an easy way to solve this issue. The Holy Spirit must be our guide. So, by all means, try to put an end to distractions that hinder the church’s mission. But let’s always be open to the Holy Spirit convicting and confronting us through the disruptions that come up from time to time.

Read the rest of the responses, which run the gamut from Will Willimon to Mark DeYmaz.

The “M” in MTV Does Not Stand for Missional:

My failure was classic over-contextualization. Over-contextualization is when you view missional opportunities primarily through a cultural lens instead of a gospel lens. In this instance, I was more concerned with providing a cool, “unchurchy” environment than I was with making sure the environment didn’t reflect poorly on the gospel. The guys I tried to reach needed healthy gospel boundaries around their newly discovered Christian liberty. I failed to provide that for them. I over-contextualized in my approach because I tried to make the gospel submit to the culture rather than letting my pop culture sensibilities submit to the gospel.

Who’s Afraid of a Woman President?

In 2008, Christians were faced with the real prospect of a woman president (Hillary Clinton) or vice president (Sarah Palin). Some (though very few) complementarian Christians wondered whether this could be right, while critics of traditionalist interpretations wondered how consistent it was for Christians to elect a woman to national office when they wouldn’t vote for her to serve as pastor of a local church. In light of Michele Bachmann’s candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, I found myself asked that question again in recent days in an interview with Christianity Today’s women’s blog “Her.Meneutics.” I think the question is a good one, and is more complicated than it first appears, to both sides.

How to Destroy a Culture in 5 Easy Steps:

If the goal were to undermine cultural institutions, the process for getting from Unthinkable to Policy would follow these five easy steps…

Arm Yourself for Righteous Suffering:

In saying that because Christ suffered that we are to arm ourselves with the same way of thinking, Peter reminds us that we are to arm ourselves much like military personnel might prepare themselves for battle by equipping themselves with the proper weapons for military action.  So then, how do we prepare our minds for righteous suffering?  How do we arm ourselves with the right way of thinking about righteous suffering regardless of the extent of persecution?  We preach truth to ourselves.