Reminding You

Should You Learn Anything In Worship?

One of the odd liturgical moments during my time in ministry has been whiner elders talk. Being raised in churches of Christ, ministers — and the church — were governed, not by policy, and sometimes not even by scripture, but by elders. Elders were men (most of the time) selected by the congregation for whatever reason the congregation wanted to select them. There are both good and bad outcomes of this system, but one of the worst is that almost always congregational worship carved out a moment for one of the elders to talk.

For certain, this was not based on giftedness, but rather a sense that it was good for an elder to lead a closing prayer or announcements or add to the prayer list. Honestly, it wasn't always terrible, but neither was it always good. At any rate, most of these elder proclamations came after the sermon. In bad churches, an elder might use this time for a short rebuttal to what he didn’t like in the sermon. In good churches, an elder thanked the preacher for “the reminder.”

I always hated THE REMINDER comment. It felt to me as if they were saying, “I already knew this. I have gained all insight and all wisdom on all subjects and the best anyone can do is remind me.” It was as if the sermon were a phone notification or pill box with each day marked. Someone, in this exchange was being too proud. Either me for bristling at the thought that I had something to teach or the elder for assuming they had nothing to learn.