My Problem With CityServe
Would I really want Jesus to wash my car?
There is an attempt on the part of several well-meaning churches in our area to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ more visible in our community. I commend them for their zeal. Their goal is one we all share as Believers and I pray the Lord will grant them great success.
I was forwarded an email from one of the organizers of CityServe inviting people to join the hundreds who had set aside a weekend to serve the community in various ways. I am not aware of all that was done in the name of Christ by this group, but I am confident that their efforts were noticed by many. In fact, I believe they worked at A Woman's Concern Pregnancy Resource Clinic to help clean and spruce up the facilities there. That work is close to my heart, and I appreciate their willingness to help a Christian organization like AWC in such a practical and meaningful way.
However, there are several things that trouble me about this effort. Let me quote the email I received:
**CITYSERVE: Instead of having church, we're going to be the church by going out and serving the community! On April 17th and 18th we are going to go out and do good. We are calling it CityServe. On that weekend, we will not be gathering to have church; we will be scattering to be the church. NOT SIGNED UP YET? Please register .... If you've already signed up for a project, invite your friends and neighbors to join-in too. Thanks :)
Another email stated:
CityServe. You may not have heard about CityServe...or you may remember it from last year. So what is CityServe? It is a weekend sponsored by a number of local congregations where Christians throughout the community go out and serve the community. It is a weekend to focus on good deeds not just good news. If a picture is worth a thousand words, an act of service might be worth 10,000 sermons! This is a weekend where 100's of people will be out preaching the best sermon of their lives.
So far over 500 people from a 1/2 dozen congregations have signed up. But there is still a need for about 300 more people to rake, paint, build, bake, sing, pray, gather, clean, and simply befriend someone who needs a little hope and a little help.
The CityServe organization would be thrilled if some of us were interested in giving time on Saturday or Sunday to join the CityServe event. If you would like more information or would like to register online. The easiest way to do that is to go online atCityServe (www.sc-cityserve.org).
It seems that in the minds of those who operate CityServe, service to the community is at least as important, if not considerably more important than corporate worship among believers. Is service to the community a bad thing? Of course not. Is doing good bad? (It is a rhetorical question.) I do not want to criticize anyone for selfless, servant-like service to others, whether it be to believers or unbelievers, in the name of Christ. Good works are good. But I am certain that substituting such service in the place of corporate worship and fellowship, and actually presenting such service as possibly being preferable to the worship of God's people, is inherently dangerous if not actually sinful. "I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge" (Romans 10:2 ESV).
For example, let's take the phrase, "Instead of having church, we're going to be the church by going out and serving the community!" Having church vs. being the church. I recognize there is often a problem with merely "having church" or just "doing church". Certainly for many, church is a chore, a weekly obligation that must be met because it is an expectation. For many, church attendance is definitely not the highlight of the week. And for those Christians who experience that kind of church life, I pity them. Please, for the sake of your own souls, find another church. Don't continue just having church.
Secondly, there is the idea of being the church rather than merely having a church service specifically by means of serving the community at large. I understand the idea. Reaching out to those around us in practical acts of kindness for the sake of spreading the gospel message is certainly commendable. This is mission work. This is love. This is putting faith into action and making it tangible. Excellent. But it is no substitute for the gathering of God's people on the Lord's Day for corporate worship among genuine Christians. Serving the community instead of "having church" is actually spiritually counter-productive.
What this philosophy could do (and probably is doing) in the minds of some, is minimizing the visible Church and the corporate worship of God by His people for the sake of good works. It also tends to further blur the lines between believers and unbelievers. Doesn't the unbelieving community expect Christians to be in church on Sunday? Aren't we expected to worship Him on the "Sabbath"? Doesn't God expect us to worship Him, to set aside the world for a regularly scheduled time of undivided attention towards the One whom we love supremely? The One whom we love even more than the community we desire to reach for Him? I cannot recommend washing windows at a nursing home, however well-intentioned that may be, at the expense of gathering together with my own brothers and sisters to worship our King together, as we have been commanded to do:
19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God,22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Absolutely, we are to stir up one another to love and good works. But not to the neglect of meeting together as is the habit of some. Is it possible that some who are involved in the CityServe ministry could develop the habit of not meeting together because service to the community is preferable to corporate worship, preferable to merely "having church" with the brethren? Absolutely. It was a problem in the first century church, and it is a problem today.
Thirdly, "invite your friends and neighbors to join-in too." If the mission of CityServe is primarily to minister the love of Christ to a predominately unbelieving community, then Christians alone should be employed in that task. Only Christians are capable of sharing Christ. Unbelievers, by definition, cannot share the love of Christ with others. To recruit unbelievers to do the work of ministry is at the very least confusing, and at worst, deceptive for those who serve and for those being served.
Again, I understand the reasoning behind engaging unsaved friends and neighbors in a church function. We want them to see what we have in Christ, we want them to see we are normal human beings, we want to befriend them for the sake of the Gospel. But we cannot invite them to participate in "missionary" activity if they don't even know Christ. For that reason, they should not be invited en masse, indiscriminately, to participate in a mission they don't (yet) believe in.
Fourthly, "It is a weekend to focus on good deeds not just good news." Again, I understand this mentality. Walk the walk, don't just talk the talk. Put feet on your prayers. "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." (James 1:22 ESV). I get it. But once again, the terminology betrays a condescending attitude toward the gospel: "just good news"? Is the Good News not absolutely the greatest news that any human being could ever hear? If not, then the doing of good deeds is for nothing and we have descended into moralistic rather than redemptive work.
Finally, and this one hits very close to home: "If a picture is worth a thousand words, an act of service might be worth 10,000 sermons! This is a weekend where 100's of people will be out preaching the best sermon of their lives." This statement leaves the distinct impression that most sermons are pretty much a waste of time, as if we didn't already know that was the general consensus. Sermons have already been intentionally and happily displaced by prolonged times of "worship" (which at least implies preaching has nothing to do with worship). Preaching has been relegated to the very back of the church bus, tenuously seated by the Emergency Exit.
There was a time when sermons were measured by hours rather than seconds, and admittedly most of today's sermonettes are often truly not worth the time. Surely there are acts of service that are genuinely worth 10,000 sermons. I've heard many, and even preached some worthless sermons myself. But if that is the regular fare at your church, I would strongly urge you to stop wasting your time, effort, and money and find a church that actually takes the proclamation of the magnificent Word of God seriously and makes expository preaching the primary focus of corporate worship.
Acts of kindness and service to an unbelieving community are not a suitable substitute for the communication of the Gospel message. Nothing is. Saving faith comes by hearing the word of God, not by vacuuming carpets. Saving faith is imparted by the Holy Spirit through the verbal proclamation of the truth. At some point, a person actually has to hear the words of the Gospel. Admittedly, it is often very helpful for the unsaved to see our love and care for them through "random acts of kindness". But they will not come to know Jesus Christ by kindness alone, by "servant evangelism" that does not include the proclamation of the message by some means.
We must be absolutely clear about this: Moralism and its twin, works salvation, are a false gospel. There are multitudes of infidels serving in Haiti and elsewhere doing more vital work than CityServe is doing. Things like life-saving surgery and building permanent shelters for the multitudes of homeless people there. If hundreds of Christians only preach by means of their service to others, and that service is the best sermon of their lives, they are no different than millions upon millions of unbelieving people all over the world. They are simply being nice. But as Christians they are sinning against the Lord who bought them, who also commanded them to go and preach (i.e. speak) the word of God. To make matters worse, if they are merely being nice to the neglect of gathering together for worship, they doubly violate the commands of God. Why would we want to encourage genuine believers to go out and be nice to pagans while simultaneously skipping out on church (Unless of course their niceness is 10,000 times better than the sermon they would hear if they were in church)?
I would suggest serving the city on days other than Sunday. That helps believers understand there really is a difference between how Christians live and how the unsaved world lives. Secondly, I would suggest it be done by believers only (or at least the vast majority should be believers) if it is being done in the name of Christ. And if there is no definite effort to share the Gospel, maybe this service should be done specifically for the sake of other Christians rather than the general public. I would also suggest that it be done amongst the general public with the specific goal of at least leaving behind literature that clearly explains the biblical gospel message, along with an invitation to visit church the following Sunday.
CityServe is not a bad idea. As I understand it now, I think it needs some serious changes in attitude, and in purpose. Moralism is deadly, and I believe it is being promoted unwittingly. Neglecting the Body of Christ for the sake of serving the ungodly is detrimental to the health of the Church. Works of service appear to be presented as a preferable substitute for boring old church and miserably dull preaching. Yes, we must avoid being mere hearers of the word. But we must not replace hearing and speaking and fellowshipping with mere doing. Certainly we must not replace worship with work. We cannot neglect worship for the sake of good works.
One final suggestion. Several years ago, it seems I read John 13:35 for the first time with understanding. There, Jesus tells His disciples that the world will know they are His disciples if they love each other. One of the most powerful evangelistic tools we have at our disposal is our love for one another, not our love for the world. They (the world) will recognize us as legitimate followers of the Lord Jesus specifically because we love each other. Consequently, if we don't love each other, then the charge of hypocrisy is legitimate. How can we love the world if we don't even love each other, our brothers and sisters for whom Christ died?
It may be that the efforts of CityServe would reap a greater spiritual harvest if our love for one another was more evident. Maybe we should have a ChurchServe outreach. I find it to be a constant labor to love the people of my own congregation as I should, and a constant need to encourage them to love each other as they ought. But when that love happens, evangelism also happens. Others notice the genuine love that transcends offenses and forgives sin. When very different people from all kinds of backgrounds dwell together in harmony and love for the sake of the name of the Lord Jesus, it is a public display of the miraculous love of God at work in the hearts of His people. Even the unbelieving world understands that kind of love comes from being with Christ.
