What’s the church gathering like where you go?

From what I’ve seen, most modern churches do something along the lines of

welcome
song
announcements
3 more songs
sermon
farewell
see you in a week

Does that seem Biblical to you?
When you read about church gatherings in the New Testament, does it sound like that’s what they did?

We do want to be culturally relevant, but we also need to watch out for those parts of our culture which are not Christian coming in and taking over. Honestly, it doesn’t matter if non Christians don’t like the way we do church. It’s not for them.
We need to be going to them and reaching out to them with God’s message. And then they will want to come to our gathering regardless of its form or style.

Usually only a small handful of people are actually involved, the rest of us are just watching.
The music is usually very contemporary, with a quite professional sounding band. It’s kind of like you’re at a music concert.
But whether you sing along or not doesn’t really matter.

When I read about gatherings in the New Testament it feels like everyone is involved. Everyone has some kind of part to play. Not all “out the front” but all part of it, and if you’re not there it won’t be the same. Just like if even a little bit of your body is cut off, like a toe, or a finger, … it’s just never the same.

They even seemed to eat together most of the time.
And the church I was part of when I first became a Christian used to do that every week. It was a fantastic opportunity to get to know everyone, and to share encouraging and edifying things with each other (not just to talk about the weather, or sport). And definitely not for the younger people to sit around antisocially playing computer games on their mobile devices.
But now it’s too much hassle. We might do it a couple of times a year. Or not at all for most of the churches I know.

Our focus these days seems to just be “Send them home happy”.
And we seem to run it like a club, or a business. So coordinated, so organised.
Why are we so scared to ask the holy spirit to run it for us?
What if he wants to go for 3 hours this week? What if he just wants 5 minutes of our time and sends us out empowered?

And recently I’m hearing of churches becoming community centres with game areas, craft groups, cafe’s, … again just to attract non Christians, and make us look better to the community.
Who cares what non Christians think about church. It’s not for them.
We only need to care what God thinks about our church. If he’s happy, then what others think is totally irrelevant.

We also have churches running schools where anyone can attend.
But then the non Christian parents insist that we can no longer say that being actively gay is sinful or that gender is physical.
And then we’re so dependent on their financial contribution that we give in and stop saying it.

Yeshua said that where we gather in his name, he is there among us.
Imagine if Yeshua physically walked into your church gathering. Would it change? Or would you all ignore him and keep going with what you normally do.
Of course we would change.
So why don’t we realise that he’s always there … and change it to be for him instead of for them?

Please mail me if your church is NOT like that. I really do want to hear about it.