See The Bigger Picture

On pages 444 and 445 of Give Praise to God, Horton reprimands the traditional church/church service. He hypothesizes that one of the reasons our culture needs such entertainment and zing and pizazz is that we have lost the weightiness of God and the unfolding drama of redemption. He points out how, "The service is almost reduced to the sermon, as if everything else were mere window dressing." And even the sermon is reduced to information. He points out that drama is a good thing, the drama of the redemption Christ offers us and the drama of a relationship renewed!

I don't know if it's just me or just the churches I have attended for most of my life, but there seems to be no always present knowledge of this great drama of time. The perfect relationship, the broken relationship, and then the restored relationship is something I feel has escaped our purposes in our private lives as well as in the corporate church. If we want the gospel to be attractive to people than let them in on this drama. Show them the love, the sin, and the forgiveness. I believe this is what Horton is saying (at least mostly).

Now, this idea of something that should be ever present in our minds and actions has been something God has been showing me this semester, and I look for ways to apply it. As far as sharing the gospel with people, what better way to be a friend to them. Don't push a gospel agenda when you don't even know who they are, but rather let them get a taste of the love of Christ through you. And then see how responsive they are to the drama.

Now this is an application in personal life. But what about the church? How do we switch from a dull service that has lost the weightiness of God, as Horton says, to a service of redemption and relation with the God of the universe? Is it through slowly awakening the minds of the congregation to the awesome drama of time? Is it through teaching? How can we show the body that it's more than a service and a sermon? What do we do in church to get the bigger picture of the weightiness of God and His drama of time?