11/12/10…One
of the churches my wife and I visited recently was interesting. Not from the
aspect of whether or not people who went there were being spiritually fed,
because I think some % were, just like in most churches. The % is probably
different in every church and I would be curious if it follows the bell shaped
curve, but that is another blog. The interesting aspect was hearing the pastor
talk about his struggles regarding religion, some may say legalism. In this
particular case, the struggle centered on wearing a suit and tie to church.
Growing up, he said it was embedded in his mind going to church meant honoring
God by wearing a suit and tie (by the way, there is no passage in the Bible
saying all men must wear suit and ties). This was just one of those unwritten
rules everyone followed, more so culturally than anything else. Unstated peer
pressure probably had something to do with it too (adults experience this just
as much as kids, except when you get beyond 70 I think).
As
this pastor finished seminary and subsequently began pastoring churches, he
wore a suit and tie in the pulpit. It was not until God started working on his
paradigms about who He really was, that this area came into question. Seems
like such a trivial thing, but if you have ever grown up in an environment
where this sort of thing is almost ingrained in your DNA, it becomes a huge
thing. As this pastor began looking to start up a church for this generation,
one of the legalistic rules God wrestled with him on was this idea of dress. To
him, any church he led meant he had to be in the pulpit with a suit and tie.
God impressed upon him it was not the dress that mattered but the heart.
The
pastor told us humorlessly how he wrestled with this seemingly trivial item.
One week he would come to church with a tie, the next week he would not. The
following week a tie, the next week not. At one point he laughed about this and
said he thought people in his congregation probably thought he had lost his
mind or was schizophrenic.
The
end of this story is the pastor now wears blue jeans with an untucked long
sleeve shirt and casual shoes, and seemed to be quite proud of being able to
overcome this legalistic hurdle in his mind. The pastor wanted to impress upon
people the legalistic rule of dress, i.e. suit and tie, really does not matter
to God, and if we get caught up in this, we miss the point. It is about a
relationship with God, not what we wear. I agree. After this encounter I
thought nothing more about it until my wife and I visited a satellite location
of this same church. The satellite location was a lot smaller and had a site
pastor there. The worship was live but the message was broadcast from a central
campus. What was interesting was the site pastor wore the same thing as the
senior pastor, blue jeans and an untucked long sleeve shirt.
What
I thought of was this. What if the site pastor showed up wearing a suit and tie
every week?
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