PUTTING AN END TO WORSHIP WARS - Elmer Towns

The New Testament is different unlike the rule-keeping ways of the Old Testament.
Jesus made people want to serve Him, rather than demanding outward conformity. The new
translation of scripture called The Message translates it, "I tried keeping rules and working my
head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a "lawman" so that I could be God's
man. Christ's life showed me how and enabled me to it. I identified myself completely with him.
Indeed, I had been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important
that I appear righteous for you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress
God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine" but it is lived by faith in the
Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:19,20, The Message, Eugene
H. Peterson, "Colorado Springs, Colorado; Navpress Publishing Group, 1993.)
Sometimes our young people are rebels. They rebel in church because they don't like our
outward services. They mock a hymn that they don't understand. Because they read about a
minister that has fallen, they have questions about the pastor down the street. Because they don't
get anything from the sermon, they call it boring and uninteresting. Because they are angry when
the man of God preaches against sin in their lives, they lash out at the church.
Why is it so natural for young people to be rebellious? They baby is born with a clenched
fist, and its cry seems to say, "No!" Like a rock on a string that is flung around the head, with
centrifugal force they fly away from God. Yet at the same time, God's compelling love is a
centripetal force that pulls people back into harmony with God. Like water that flows toward the
center of a whirlpool, people are pulled into the presence of God.
And so young people rebel, and are confused as they cast off restraints. Their nature and
culture pull them away from God, while inner thoughts and fears drive them to seek God.
The young rebel would like Jesus Christ. He was as anti-bureaucratic as they are. He
condemned religious sham of His day, as young people condemn the empty worship sham of
their day. Jesus was anti-establishment and anti-form. In both His teaching and His life, He cut
through man-made form to get back to the simple relationship of God and man. But the problem
is that the revolution of Jesus Christ against the dead formalism of His day has forgotten its
revolutionary roots. The movement that was to become Christianity has become outwardly a
monument.
The church that should be anti-establishment and revolutionary has become what it was
originally against. Jesus took His movement out of the buildings (i.e. the Temple and
synagogues) and made it a movement of the streets. Now we have taken it back into buildings
and hidden it behind stained glass barriers. It's not that buildings are wrong, for these must be
protection from the elements and there must be a location for the ecclesia to assemble, but, we've
made the constructed buildings the central core of who we are and what we do.
Christianity is not its buildings, nor is it religious meetings, or our forms of worship.
Jesus would still tell us,