A Lifeless Copy

This past Sunday, there was a new church plant launched here in London. They are called The Sunday Assembly. They gather on Sunday mornings to hear announcements, sing, hear readings, and hear a sermon. This sounds fairly normal, but this church is an atheist church. The sermon is given by a stand-up comedian, not a pastor. The-Nave The goal of the gathering is to create a community built around like-minded people being kind towards and helping one another. The space where they are meeting is even an old church (left). So what makes a church?

  • Do they have a building?  
  • Do they meet on Sundays?
  • Is there a sermon?* 
  • Is there singing?
  • Do they have leaders?
  • Do the people having something in common?

The Bible defines the church as a New Humanity. People who were spiritually dead and have been made alive by the Holy Spirit who share life together, giving of each other in joyful sacrifice for the glory of God. It is a community that worships Christ. Our goodness as Christians doesn’t spring forth from our desire to do good, because even our good desires are often tainted by selfish ambitions. Rather, the true church responds to God’s life-imparting grace. His goodness works through the lives of his people. The community we have as the church is the partnership (koinonia) of the Holy Spirit. The Living God himself, indwells us and expresses his character through us towards one another. Christian community is a manifestation of God as we are a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Eph 2:22). So often as churches, we can allow our focus to fall on that which even an atheist can replicate (mere forms and symbols without the life-blood and purpose of them). But what truly makes us distinct is that we are a redeemed community who respond to the work of God in our lives through the means of God’s Word, God’s people, service, evangelism, and prayer (On that note, it is interesting that an atheist church cannot incorporate prayer into their church service).

This is a good reminder for us as pastors to emphasize those things that are distinctly Christian in our churches. That distinction is the life that flows from the Son. Without the life of Christ, all that can be had is a form of godliness, rejecting its power (2 Tim 3:5).

*Another worthwhile topic would be ‘what makes a sermon a sermon?’. Is it simply giving a ‘talk’ (a term many Brits use), or is it prophetically speaking forth the oracles of God’s life-giving word?

4 replies
  1. Bill Holdridge
    Bill Holdridge says:

    Matt,

    Amazing and provocative. You’re so right. It’s possible to have “church” without being one. We share life in common, that is God’s life, the life that’s been given to us in Jesus.

    I remember many years ago having a vision of one of our church services. In the vision, Jesus was an outsider looking in on the activities. The question that stemmed from the vision was simple: would we be able to continue all of our activities if Jesus was absent? Is He standing on the outside, waiting to be invited in?

    Thanks for the post!

    • Matt Kottman
      Matt Kottman says:

      Bill, for real.

      We can use so much energy on the form of faith’s expression and forget the substance. May our people in our services encounter the risen Christ, may our forms and expressions magnify the glory of Christ, causing our hearts to pour forth in worshipful response to our Saviour.

  2. Tim Brown
    Tim Brown says:

    Hi, Matt – thanks for bringing this to our attention. It seems like the emphasis of your article is on a ‘lifeless’ copy. What struck me, and where I put the emphasis is on a lifeless ‘copy’. It certainly is lifeless, and yet, in the very contours and rhythms of how they proceed in a copycat fashion, I see a longing for transcendence – a transcendence their souls thirst for but their minds can never acknowledge. It seems that by the form of their service they are attempting to rise above the ideology of worms – we are accidents of time and chance and matter. From earth we arise and to earth we descend. No one is born an atheist – it is an acquired taste. And it is acquired through intrapersonal violence. We know that they are created for higher things – and a part of them knows it too – though they repress it as Rom. 1 relates. Maybe I know just enough psychology to be dangerous – but their Sunday services are very telling. Maybe it’s a Freudian slip.

  3. Matt Kottman
    Matt Kottman says:

    Tim,
    That is an excellent insight. Suppression of truth in unrighteousness is the default of the human heart. Insightful regarding the longing for transcendence, and love the imagery of “ideology of worms”. Freud or not, he didn’t get everything wrong 😉

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