I was traveling west for a gospel outreach with a group of young men. Enroute, I stopped by to see an old family friend who, for whatever reasons, had become jaded with his heritage in New Testament style assemblies.
Somewhere in the conversation, he asked me where I was heading. I told him I was going to have some meetings in North Dakota.
“Meetings!” he responded, with a slight edge to his voice. “There’s a typical Brethrenism.”
I was taken aback. What heresy had I imbibed as a child and now had blurted out in the presence of this renowned Bible teacher? A heresy so grievous that it had a name! A Brethrenism, of all things.
“Meetings?” I queried, half afraid now to speak the word aloud.
“Yes,” he answered, “anyone else would say ‘services.'”
“Ah!” I was beginning to understand the enormity of my heterodoxy. That’s what it was. The crime was heterodoxy–a studied attempt to be different. I confess I found it half amusing that this brother would object to such a word usage. After all, he seemed to delight in heterodoxy. But I suppose you don’t want to be different in something so unpopular as this!
It’s like the head-covering issue. “No one else wears head-coverings,” they say. As if our purpose is to fly in the face of convention, to irritate the church at large; as if we were avant garde trail blazers, attempting vainly to be trend setters. The issue would be seen more clearly if they added the word, “anymore” to their sentence: “No one else wears head-coverings anymore.”
The fact is, a generation ago you could hardly find an uncovered woman in any church service anywhere. We didn’t step forward with this; everyone else stepped back.
As far as the term “meeting” goes, the concept is hardly a new one to describe certain kinds of gatherings. Of course secular society feels quite comfortable with the term: board meetings (not ‘services’), sales meetings (not ‘services’), PTA meetings (not ‘services’), etc. I’m not trying to be silly. The point is this: meetings and services are gatherings which are very entirely different in their intent.
Board members, sales staffs, and PTA groups do not come together to be served; they are coming together to serve. To meet connotes bringing together available resources to help one another in the accomplishment of mutually desired ends.
The question then arises: When the church comes together, is it to be a service or a meeting?
The early church evidently thought it was for meeting. Is this not the principle of life in the body? Every member in the body is designed to give away. The heart does not pump blood for the heart, but for the whole body. The lungs do not breathe for the lungs, nor does the pancreas produce insulin for itself. Every part of the body is designed to give. As each member of His Body functions as healthy organs act, the whole body grows “up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love” (Eph. 4:15-16).
Does any part do without? No. The way to get is to give, just as surely as the way to live is to die (Jn. 12:24-25), and the way up is to go down (Mt. 20:26-28). The church is not a service center but a meeting place of redeemed and gifted believers who follow the example of their Lord in coming not to be served, but to serve (Mt. 20:28).
I was standing with another Christian near the entrance to an auditorium where a citywide Bible conference was soon to begin. Suddenly, through the doorway burst a young man, disheveled and out of breath. He looked like he had dressed on the way there.
“When does the service start?” he asked.
“Just as soon as the meeting is over,” came the answer from my companion.
Yes, that is the answer. The answer to ho-hum, humdrum, halfhearted gatherings of the church. We come together, not to be served, but to serve. “We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Let’s not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as some are doing today. Let’s get serious about our meetings.
And then let the service begin.