“It’s still cringeworthy to me that someone carried the name Work Hard.”

Yes, but I am happy to know that the “Work Hard” man I know (maybe there are others with that name?) now took the name Joshua and is no longer “working so hard” but is a redeemed man who has a solid Christian vision, and is working to form a redeemed ubf chapter.

Well, OK, I guess the way I write and express myself may cause others to somewhat legitimately think that I am writing out of some disquieted tormented tortured soul.

But I know of the rest I have found in Christ. This is what I wrote a friend a few days ago:

“I am very happy and thoroughly content with my life and my lot, maybe even too happy because of God’s endless grace to me. Every day I am just simply amazed to be alive and to be able to live the life that I am living. I am unashamedly living a charmed life, and yet with awe, fear and trembling. My life has been nothing but pure grace, mercy and unconditional love extended to me freely and limitlessly, none of which I deserve!”

Precisely the crux of my epic journey the past 3 years Ben! This topic is exactly what lead me to write my book, Rest Unleashed. When we follow Jesus, He leads us out of the “epic battle against sin”, which is filled with so much activity, and into the “epic surrender to grace”, which is filled with so much peace.

The irony is that when I surrendered to grace (love with no conditions whatsoever) I found FAR MORE energy than ever! Every day is a Sabbath rest in my soul, which is happy and more at rest than ever before!

The lack of rest in Christ, God, the Holy Spirit is what causes life for some Christians and their influence to be totally stifling, constrictive, oppressive, uninspiring, boring, predictable, demanding, unkind, self-centered, and lacking compassion and understanding, all the while thinking (deluding themselves) that they are the top notch Christians and laborers for the Lord in the whole wide world whom everyone else should look up to.

You are bringing up very good food for thought concerning the Sunday worship and Sunday rest in general. My personal problem with Sundays (in the 90s in Germany) was not only the worship service, but the whole Sunday activity that started in the morning and ended in the evening from preparing music and food, office work like proof-reading, correcting, printing and copying the Sunday message, and the day was stuffed with group activities like prayer meetings and fellowship meetings and staff meetings and sogam sharing meetings like no other day in the week. Even if the sun was shining, I often did not see it, because I was in the UBF center the whole day. In the evening I usually had headache from all this sitting in the stuffy rooms, but headache was not considered an acceptable excuse for not attending the Sunday evening sogam meeting.

In my time, there was also a lot of emphasis on having an “absolute attitude” and “absolute obedience”. You had to demonstrate this absoluteness by attending meetings, particularly the SWS, but also daily bread and other prayer meetings, without fail. This went so far that you had to take it more important than any obligations in social or family or work life. Not going to a wedding or a funeral of a close family member in order to attend a SWS or conference is the typical example. You always had to prove to God and others that your faith was genuine and sufficient, and it was only considered genuine and sufficient if you showed this attitude of “absoluteness”.

This article has been very influential in my life. The idea that the Sabbath is intrinsic to the gospel was new to me at the time. But it’s what the New Testament teaches in several places. Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath and the fulfillment of the Sabbath. The whole Christian life is not an endless striving to earn God’s favor, but a posture of resting in God’s favor through the finished work of Christ. The Lord’s day is not a re-appropriation of the Jewish Sabbath, and as far as I can tell there are no Christian laws that need to be obeyed in this regard. But it is important to establish a healthy weekly cycle of life that includes a significant period of rest.

Back in the 1980’s, I recall SL giving announcements at Chicago UBF about Sunday worship service. He emphasized the word “service” and talked about how we are supposed to be diligently serving God every Sunday by striving to bring lots of sheep to the Sunday worship. He told heroic stories of shepherds driving around the city for 4-5 hours each Sunday to bring people. In short, SL made Sunday (like every other day) into a day of hard labor. And on Monday there would be no rest either. Those who didn’t have full time jobs would gather at the Chicago center for all day message writing and message training. Taking a day off was verboten because it would make you lazy. This endless weekly cycle of work, work, work took a heavy toll on people. No one can sustain that kind of lifestyle for long without getting burned out.

Please don’t let anyone tell you that your viewpoint on this is unbalanced or skewed because you’re a leader rather than a pew sitter. Your experience is precisely that, your own experience, and it’s the only experience you’ve got. If you sense that something has gone awry and your weekly schedule is not spiritually healthy, trust your instincts; stand firm on that conviction and, for the sake of your emotional health and your family’s health, make whatever changes are necessary to your pattern of life. Accept your finiteness and be willing to say “no” to things that are not necessary. If you fear that you can’t stop doing so much on Sunday because if you don’t do those things the church and the world might fall apart, sit back and realize that for many thousands of years the world has gotten along fine without you. If something is truly essential then God can raise up someone other than you to do it, and if he doesn’t, then it apparently wasn’t essential. For two millennia the church has survived without preachers using spiffy Powerpoint presentations, and if there is no Powerpoint presentation on any given Sunday, so what? Perhaps the worship environment would be better off without it. Certainly we can do without the stress that all these activities can create. In my experience, the need to continually work, work, work is not an expression of faith but of fear and lack of faith. In many cases, it takes more faith to rest than it does to work.

Perhaps this might be helpful for you. All people need to practice the principle of the Sabbath in their own lives.

I heard Rick Warren once say something to the effect that we human beings need to divert daily, withdraw weekly and abandon annually.

In my opinion UBF lacks a balanced or a proper theology of rest, probably because of an over-emphasis on “hard work.” This leads to burn-out, tiredness, lethargy, discouragement, and it causes people to go through the motions without much spirit, enthusiasm, zeal or joy. Yet, because some want to give the image of faithfulness to others, legalism, duty and performance righteousness prevails.

But if one understands and applies the principle of the Sabbath and indeed find rest, they are the ones who work the best and who work tirelessly with love, joy and peace, etc.

Here are some of the conflicts in the worship service that came to mind while reading the article:

rest vs work
giving vs receiving
people vs God
worship vs service
legal requirement vs freedom

The article mentions, at a basic level, the first one I listed: rest / work. I find this related to the name of the activity, which I currently find as an oxymoron: worship service. We put a lot of work into a Sunday worship service. But am I there to worship or to service? What then is it to worship? What is the purpose of the work we’re doing on this day of rest?

giving / receiving: to and from God? or to and from people? Sometimes, I heard the worship service or the message called a bible study. Is studying, even the Bible, a form of worship? Is it appropriate for that time? Especially, when this study is written to instruct people to do this or that, to encourage campus evangelism, or to give a practical “one word”?

I have also observed that the message has become like an idol. It is so closely scrutinized and the messenger criticized along with his message. No other area of the worship is given such attention and critique. In my opinion is like an idol and the worship service is very out of balance. Or, people have become demanding in regards to the message. I likened it to the worship being a restaurant where people want to be fed by a certain food, rather than a time to worship God.

legal requirement / freedom: I have begun to question why I go to a worship service once a week, every week. Why am I and others expected to come for worship like this without fail? I understand that Christian churches meet for worship every Sunday. It’s part of joining in the church body I have to concede to in order to participate. But how about when there are other meetings? How about if numbers of your service are counted? Why are people not free (that is, without being shamed or guilt tripped later or having their commitment questioned) to come, say, only 3 out of 4 Sundays of the month? I have heard stories of people missing their sibling’s wedding, for example, because they couldn’t miss the Sunday worship in their chapter. I think there is an underlying fear that if we let people be “free” that they won’t come. But I don’t think that would happen at all. Instead, we’ve become so binding.

Paul did many different activities on the Sabbath depending on where he was and what the circumstances were. Is it necessary to turn the weekly Jewish Sabbath into the Christian worship service? Until the synagogue system was in place, did Jews gather every Sabbath? Is it right to call our worship time on Sunday as a Sabbath? Are we not giving proper attention then to the Rest that Jesus brings his people into, like that described in Hebrews 4:1-11?

I have been told that my viewpoint is somewhat unbalanced or skewed because I haven’t come for a worship service just as person who just sits throughout the service. Instead, I prepare music, messages, environment, AV equipment, and so on.

But I am puzzled by some aspects of each of the three comments above.

Ben’s description of the Dutch sabbath doesn’t sound very appealing to me — a series of no’s and do not’s. Why not read a “non-Christian” book? The separation of activity into holy versus
secular seems artificial.

The article that Bill linked to, and which Andrew mentions, is interesting but not closely related. The emerging house-church movement is a lot bigger than people realize. There are aspects of it that seem helpful and aspects that are disturbing to me, for reasons that I might lay out in a future article. House church ministries are fine as long as the leaders make an effort to articulate their ecclesiology (view of the church) in a positive way. But — and I speak from experience — house church leaders can be notorious sabbath breakers too. The relative merits of mega- versus micro-churches are worth discussing, but that’s another topic.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Church/Default.aspx?id=1100148

Makes for an interesting read!

Bill

This is an awesome piece. Dutch people have a good view of the Sabbath. From midnight to midnight Sundays are devoted to the Lord. No TV, movies, no work, no lawns being mowed, no cars being washed (housework and homework too) no restaurants, no buying of anything (so that others don’t have to work). Even reading is limited to the Bible or Christian books.

I too have experienced Sabbath burn-out. Jamming Bible studies in before and after worship service, playing music during the service, running off to a family dinner afterward. On those days, instead of feeling refreshed, I feel harried and cranky. No more!

One of the best Sabbaths I’ve ever spent was with you in Boston. We had worship service at your dining room table, then went to a service brimming with college students near Fenway, and later in the afternoon I went to Park Street Church with my wife and saw Philip Ryken, who is now president of Wheaton, speak on Zechariah 3. Better than any conference I’ve ever been to.