Sunday and the Triumph of Mammon

https://evangelicalfocus.com/life-tech/11589/us-one-in-four-protestant-churchgoers-works-at-least-one-sunday-a-month

If these people want to impact culture, this isn't the way. This isn't being salt and light. This is capitulation. I'm not a Sabbatarian though I will say the Church has always met on Sundays are there are doctrinal reasons for doing so. It's not essential as the Church can certainly meet on other days as well – and should. But Sunday worship, the first day of the week in connection to the Resurrection, is ancient and found in the New Testament itself.

As I've written elsewhere it's possible to make an argument that in other cultural contexts the Church might have its 'main' worship on another day. Ideally we would meet more than once a week. But that's not what's happening with Evangelicalism.

What's happening here is yet another case of mammon and its practical service overriding and taking precedent over Church life. Dominionist thought which tends to equate the mundane with the holy has also played a role in this. For that school of thought, maintaining a witness in terms of income, lifestyle, and the ability to be plugged into the mainstream culture are just as important as regular and faithful church attendance. Security and respectability have been enshrined. The values of the Middle Class are equated with gospel witness. This mammonism has also opened the gates to feminism which now dominates the Evangelical sphere. Contrasting themselves with Twenty-first century varieties of feminism, they continue to attempt to divorce themselves from the label – but this is dishonest. The feminism once rightly excoriated by Bible-believing Christians in previous generations is now mainstream belief and practice in Evangelical and much of the Confessional world.

In contrast to this, the New Testament teaches that we are strangers and pilgrims, a peculiar people, that stand as witnesses to the world and will be hated by it. We don't seek that hatred but it will happen – if we're faithful. If we're faithful to New Testament ethics we will not thrive and flourish in the world – especially in the wicked culture of the post-Enlightenment West and its twisted ethics and usurious consumerism. The Church should expect cultural disenfranchisement and second class citizenship should be understood as normative.

Once the New Testament is applied we are freed from the proverbial rat race and both the pressure and the temptation to 'succeed'. Indeed as New Testament Christians we must reject cultural attitudes and definitions of concepts like 'success'. We don't think in the same terms and yes, if our families and children are faithful we're going to be on the receiving end of raised eyebrows because we're not going to walk the same paths we do. We won't make sense to them. They'll think we're pursuing paths of foolishness and they will even hate us and call us evil because we're not 'signing on' with their Babel-vision and Babylon project.

Not so with today's Evangelicals. They're fully on-board and thus they're forced to have these falsely premised discussions. The world works on Sundays and certain fields such as retail have their most lucrative days on Sunday. And yet as Christians we cannot work on that day. Again, not because it's the Sabbath but because it's the day the Church meets. It's the one day we can count on all Christians getting together for worship and hopefully for fellowship. No Christian would want to take a job that requires Sunday work. Some of us will not under any terms. There might be a once in a blue moon situation, an emergency in which you might have to break with the norm but it should never be normative.

Rather than accommodate these churchgoers who are missing church, they need to be rebuked and told to take a stand and quit their jobs if need be. And the Church would do much better in ceasing to waste its money on buildings, grounds, endless parachurch endeavours, superfluous and extra-Scriptural staff and ecclesiastical models and use the surplus money to help those in the church. They can help that young family that has taken a hit in income due to mom quitting a job in order to be obedient. God-willing that supplement won't be long-term but it might help that young father find something else. There are many such examples but they are virtually out of bounds and barely able to be conceived by the acculturated Evangelical mind which in many cases has fully embraced the cold, godless, dog-eat-dog ethic of capitalism.

Lifeway (an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention) is a corrupt and misguided organisation and their guidance here is a case of blind leading the blind. They have a proven track record of disregarding Biblical doctrine and ethics and of putting profits ahead of truth and integrity.

If you want to 'broaden impact' then be faithful and make a stand. The gospel is about conviction of truth and a message of hope in the face of condemnation. It's not about catering to the lost world and discovering new marketing angles.

Once again, mammon is the primary driver of the discussion and let's be candid – Ecclesiastical structures are corrupt. From denominations to parachurch ministries, money drives all and the notion that a congregation might be poor (but faithful) is not very appealing to the now entrenched bureaucrats that run these systems.