Corporate Worshp and Being 'Missional'

Many of the pundits on the so-called "missional church" belittle corporate worship on Sunday as a cultural relic of ancient Christendom (a dirty word not only among the anabaptist heirs of the "radical reformation," but now among all the new, self-styled 'radicals'). It is a tradition, we are told, that now serves as a distraction and even a hindrance to the mission. It ought to be bypassed for alternative gatherings and communal expressions, if for no other reason than to deconstruct the Christendom "congregational model" that so dominates our thinking, and break the old mold to create space for "new possibilities."

Of course, there is a great (if obvious) point in their criticisms about the contemporary church, which has in most cases become entirely consumed with the show business of Sunday morning. The church is indeed neiher a building, nor an event which takes place on Sunday mornings. The church is people, who gather together and scatter for the sake of God's mission in the world, as those who corporately and individually both receive and extend His reconciling grace. Having said that, the rejection or marginalization of public worship as a crucial element to the life and mission of the people of God is both short-sighted and all too American in its reductionism and thoroughgoing pragmatism. On this point, Eugene Peterson writes (quoting Spurgeon),

We live in a pragmatic age and are reluctant to do anything if its practical usefulness cannot be demonstrated. It is inevitable that we ask regarding worship, it is worth it? Can you justify the time and energy and expense involved in gathering Christians togheter in worship? Well, "Look at the mower in the summer's day, with so much to down before the sun sets. He pauses in his labor - is he a sluggard? He looks for his stone, and begins to draw it up and down his scythe, with rink-atink, rink-atink, rink-atink. Is that idle music - is he wasting prescious moments? How much he might have mowed while he has been riging out those notes on his scythe! But he is sharpening his tool, and he will do far more when once again he gives his strength to those long sweeps which lay the grass prostrate in rows before him."