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What happens when someone argues that their own private times with God are more important than the corporate gatherings that you are working so hard to pull together?
Each of us, I'm sure, have heard those who have questioned the necessity of corporate worship, thinking that it is less "spiritual" than their own private times of reading and meditation.
Well, R. Scott Clark, professor of Church History and Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary in California, has recently written saying that a strong case can be made from Scripture that public worship is more important than private.
He writes:
"We know precious little about God's clearly revealed requirements for private piety. What we have are clearly revealed requirements, in the typological revelation about attending to the divinely appointed feasts and other corporate gatherings...In the 18th and 19th centuries, however, the relation between the public and the private became reversed under the influence of pietism."
Clark argues that private practice of devotion and worship should be secondary to the public: "It is through the public reading and preaching of the Gospel that God has promised to bring his people to faith (Rom. 10). " He adds that communion and baptism are administered in public services. People are disciplined (or ought to be) for failing to attend to these public gatherings.
He continued:
"Remember, universal literacy is relatively new. Universal bible ownership is relatively new. That doesn’t mean that people couldn’t have recited passages or even whole books from memory but it means that, for much of world history, God’s people could not have had “devotions” in the way that we think of them.
Private piety and devotion is important. If we neglect private prayer and meditation on Scripture we deprive ourselves on important benefits and blessings. There is probably a correlation between private devotions and maturity but they are not the public means of grace. When it comes to piety, the private flows from the public. The latter is not the joint expression of a hundreds of private religious experiences. Whatever private religious experience we may (or may not) have our Christian life is grounded in the preaching of the Word, especially the gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and public prayers in the context of public worship services."
His full article can be found here.
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2 comments:
It is a challenging thought to read that public is paramount to private. The argument makes sense from a practical stand point as displayed in the article: universal literacy, etc.
With that said I would put for your consideration that universal literacy was the norm for men in the time of Christ. The Jews trained up a child in the way he should go and were very faithful to educate their sons. So an argument based on the 18th and 19th century does not hold much water for me. And here is why:
As I survey history and come to the dark ages I can see that previous to the light being extinguished it was the public for of worship that led the masses away from private devotion when the church went to a priestly class that was “the” interpreter of scripture. Private devotion was completely done away with as the result of this educated priestly class.
I do not believe that this is what is being purported.
Private devotion is superior to the public devotion. When we examine the life of Christ is was His private devotion that was most important to Him. I too want to be like my king and therefore I will follow in His steps and hold private devotion superior to public.
The purposes of the preacher’s public proclamations are: exhortation, equipping and reprove. The saints then in turn privately pray, fast, and meditate on the word of God. Simple public expressions of piety have led to only public expression of piety. This is the cultural norm. This is the battle I am facing in central Virginia; the custom and the tradition of the people is public expression of piety and those exposed to it but finding no Holiness but only hypocrisy are rebellious to participate in any form of public piety.
Just ask anyone in Central Virginia if they are a Christian. What you will find is that more than 9 out of 10 will say yes. But when you dig a little further you cannot find 1 out of 10 that can name the Ten Commandments let alone name them in order.
We are to meditate on the word, Psalm 119:97-99. It is to be our joy, our life, our source of strength, it is to be our all in all, spending time mediating on Christ the word incarnate. BTW- You do not need a Bible to meditate on God’s word.
So as for R. Scott Clark’s article – I’m still not sure of his point, but if his point is to hold up public piety over private piety then I think he is off base because history, and practicality both say clearly that public piety only leads to hypocrisy and a priestly class. And as for Pietism as mentioned by Clark, here too is another problem in historical Christianity that we can glean from and not repeat. As the people turned inward, they stayed inward… That was it, they stayed inward, there was no outreach.
Similarly is a major problem today in many churches, “us for and no more,” it is all inward.
The purpose of inwardness is for the upwardness to God so we can go outwardness to the people.
Richard Foster states, “The Movement inward comes first because without interior transformation the movement up into God’s Glory would overwhelm us and the movement out into ministry would destroy us.”
As for me I do not want to be destroyed on the battlefield – so I will prepare in the closet, on my face, in His word, reaching for His Glory so that when I step onto the field I will be found in battle faithful and true, equipped, readied, in full battle array.
And if He then decides to show up in the Public expression of piety, I’m not in His way, I am His vessel.
Today, while I was looking up something quite unrelated for this Sunday's sermon, I came across this quote by Donald Whitney:
"If you had asked me during my first decade of pastoral ministry which was most important, private worship or corporate worship with the church, in a heartbeat I would have said private. But after reading one sermon - "Public Worship to be Preferred before Private"- I completely changed my view. David Clarkson, assistant to and successor of the prodigious Puritan theologian John Owen, preached this sermon in the 1600's. Clarkson's work still speaks centuries later, and it greatly influenced my publications on worship." (From "Give Praise to God" pg. 289).
So I looked up Clarkson's sermon and you can find it at Puritan Library (www.puritanlibrary.com) in volume 3 of his works.
Clarkson preaches on Psalm 87:2 "the LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Judah."
I commend it to you for your consideration.
-Doug
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