Men's Meeting - Length of Worship Service

Hi Fellows,

When the printing press was developed there was a concern that if machine-printed manuscripts were widely available, students would not have to memorize lectures or even listen to them. If they had a question, they could just look it up in their own personal collection of cheap machine-printed manuscripts. Wouldn't this lead to lazy students who can't remember anything?

They were right. Christians generally are lazy when it comes to reading the Bible. The person who does not read has no advantage over the person who cannot read. It is equally true the person who does not read the Bible has no advantage over the person who does not have access to the Bible.

When we consider men died making the Bible available to the most common among us, not reading the Bible makes us look like ingrates or possibly just shows us to be the ingrates we are.

With the advent of the printing presses and wide distribution of copies of the Bible, public reading of scripture in our assemblies declined. The simple, lengthy reading of scripture is not usually a part of our services. A short reading, usually as a text or starting point for the sermon is common. It is also common for there to be no reading apart from what is done in the sermon. Contemporary or traditional makes no difference; little attention is given to the Bible and the only explanation can be is it takes to much time and is boring. The people don't want it.

Surveys show individuals owning several copies of the Bible do not lead to regular Bible reading.

If time is of the essence maybe we need to first decide why we meet at all. If reading the Word of God takes too much time, if we spend too much time talking with God, if the Lord's Supper takes too much time, if singing all the stanzas of the song takes too much time, if the people complain the sermon is too long, the question might well be why get together at all? Think of all the time and money that would be saved if we never met.

Doesn't make sense does it? Maybe time is not as important as we think.

Regards,
John Jenkins
865-803-8179 cell
Gatlinburg, TN
Email: jrjenki@yahoo.com
Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com/
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

Entropy, It ain't what it used to be.