Rutz describes the weekly church service as “doing little for the Kingdom except sitting in a row on Sundays looking at the back of someone’s head, and wondering if your team will win the afternoon game on TV. ...They get a benediction and hardy handshake at the door…after which [they] are supposed to go home and improvise [their] own lifestyle of state-of-the-art centered sainthood. And a week later, there [they] are in the pew again, looking at the back of someone’s head. … Both layman and pastors are starting to figure out what is wrong in that routine; it is like having a hockey team listen to the coach’s pep talk for an hour, and calling that ‘a game’ ”.
Attending a church service is not service. Service is the conscious act of reaching out to your fellow man. Webster defines service as work performed by one that serves, a contribution to the welfare of others.
Wolfgang Simson, in his challenging book Houses That Changed The World, writes
"Jesus expects [Christians] to live a living faith, to live the truth He preached, or even we preach. And when Jesus was asked to explain more clearly what He meant, He said: “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” (Mt.25:35,36)
Thankfully, in many places around the globe including
Furthermore, this concept of Christian “team players” is growing, so that “none but the cultist or culturally challenged diehard thinks that his is the only true church and font of all truth.”
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"The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its
sending capacity." --