This month’s Christianity Today features the question: “Should churches try to minimize disruptions?”
At South Carolina’s NewSpring Church, children are not admitted to the main service and doors are locked after the sermon starts. In North Carolina, Elevation Church leaders removed a boy with cerebral palsy from church because he was disrupting the service. The incidents raise the issue of how to respond to disruptions in worship. Should churches try to minimize disruptions in services?
When the Elevation Church incident took place, I remember reading blogs that criticized Steven Furtick for how his church handled the situation. I wondered if the critics had ever been put in that kind of awkward situation before. In every church I’ve served in (including the ones in Romania), we’ve had disruptions. Most of the time, it’s been an unruly child. But we’ve had the occasional heckler, drunk, and even the “elderly man having heart palpitations” problem as well. Each situation required a different response.
At the heart of this question is the tension between the purpose of the church gathering and the people in the church gathering. On the one hand, we gather as a church in order to hear the Word proclaimed. Anything that disrupts or distracts from the centrality of the Word can be a hindrance to the church fulfilling its purpose. On the other hand, we gather as church people – in all our glorious messiness. The ideal worship service inevitably runs up against persistent reminders of human fallenness.
So, in response to Christianity Today’s question, I provided this answer:
“I want to see disruptions minimized so that the Word can be proclaimed with clarity and without distraction. Even so, churches should be hospitable to all, including those who engage in behavior that seems ‘disruptive’ to others. In the end, we should embrace this tension rather than resolve it. Each local church should continually rely on the Holy Spirit in order to know instinctively when the disruption is detracting from the Word or when the disruption is a divine reminder that we are called to minister to the people with us, not the idealized church community in our minds.”
I don’t think there’s an easy way to solve this issue. The Holy Spirit must be our guide. So, by all means, try to put an end to distractions that hinder the church’s mission. But let’s always be open to the Holy Spirit convicting and confronting us through the disruptions that come up from time to time.
Read the rest of the responses, which run the gamut from Will Willimon to Mark DeYmaz.
