When I was a teenager, I attended a church that seemed, to my youthful perceptions, to have a core group of people that never changed. Members outside this group came and went, but this core group always seemed to stay intact … several of them were there when I started attending, and were still there when I left. So I was very much surprised, years later, when I spoke to one of those people and he told me that he had left too. And, while we were talking, he shared with me that many other of those I thought would never leave had left as well. The reason? The music changed from traditional hymns to largely contemporary Christian music, and they didn’t care for it. It wasn’t a matter of doctrine: the culture of the church moved away from what they were comfortable with. And the change was enough that they felt they could no longer worship there.
In the course of my Christian life, I’ve attended a fair number of churches. I’ve found that, outside of doctrinal differences, it’s the church culture that makes people comfortable or not. There are many churches with good preaching and acceptable doctrine that do things in very different ways, and most of those variations in the style of worship are still worshipful. Some people are naturally going to be more comfortable with one style over another, and they will be more productive as a member of the church whose culture most closely matches their own. And that’s all right. As long as the Lord is truly being worshiped, and people are truly growing in Him, those kind of differences don’t matter.
But another thing I have seen, with alarming frequency, is when a church’s culture becomes more important to its members than the church’s purpose. Now, put simply, what I believe the purpose of a local church to be is to provide a place to worship God, learn about Him, and fellowship with those of like mind; it is a place where Christians meet together for strengthening and encouragement in their faith, and to be ministered to by both the Holy Spirit and each other, so that they may become more like Christ. Implicit in the idea of becoming more like Christ is learning how to minister to others as well. And all of this can be accomplished within various church cultures. Where it falls apart is when the participants are just playing at church: they do and approve of the things their favored church culture does, and they frown at everything outside it. Christ, and Christ-likeness are no longer the center, the culture is.
Let’s consider the friend I mentioned at the start, and move to the hypothetical. He never said anything to me that led me to believe it was anything but a matter of personal taste that led him to leave his church and worship elsewhere, so I assume his was a valid decision. But let’s say he thought the church’s move to contemporary music was a sign that church was no longer walking with the Lord and had become heretical (let me be very clear, this is hypothetical, he said no such thing). That would be an example of what I mean by people playing church. True worship is not the main criteria considered, but how the worship is conducted. There is a judgment on style and method that presumes one way is right, and another is wrong. This attitude is common in American churches today.
And more frequently than not, the attitude is subtle. There isn’t exactly a censure of different styles, but there is an air of disapproval. Churches that don’t line up with the favored church culture are looked down upon … not overtly shunned, but anyone who would go to a church like that couldn’t possibly be a “good” Christian. And it happens within churches too. “Good” Christians sprinkle “praise the Lord!” within all their conversations. “Good” Christians don’t watch secular movies, or read “non-Christian” books. “Good” Christians read their Bible every day, or that’s all they read. “Good” Christians have regular “quiet times” (which, interestingly, are not always defined). There is a mindset that takes a human view of what a Christian really is, and puts that mindset above and beyond what Scriptures say a Christian really is. The things approved are not necessarily wrong, and can in fact be very good things, but the focus is on those things themselves, and not the goals they are meant to attain. And a person within a church that doesn’t engage in all those things, or behaves in a way not included by them, is looked down upon. They are targeted for correctional talks and shunted out of positions of influence and prominence. Often, it is couched in terms of sin and disobedience. It boils down to, “if you don’t act the way we think you ought to, you must be in sin.” In those cases it doesn’t matter if the area of disagreement is something that a Biblical argument could be made for either viewpoint; it only matters if the side of the argument you fall down on agrees with their accepted version of Christianity. If you don’t play church the way they play church, you must be in error.
Even Christ had to deal with this kind of attitude, and He didn’t have anything good to say about it. In Matt. 12:1-8, we read a story when Christ and His disciples were walking through a field on the Sabbath, and helped themselves to some of the grain because they were hungry. That was a perfectly acceptable thing to do in their time and culture normally, but the Pharisees had something to say about it because they did so on the Sabbath. In their particular version of godly culture, a good Jew would never “work” by separating grain by hand on the Sabbath. So they considered this action a sin. Christ threw it back at them by saying not only was their precedent in the Life of David, but He was the Lord of the Sabbath anyway, and their zeal was misplaced. He went on to do several more things that offended their sensibilities, and they claimed He must be operating in the power of the ruler of demons (Matt. 12:24). Their insistence on putting their human concept of godliness before true godliness actually led them into a far, far greater error than the one they were trying to correct.
And that is the real problem with playing church. It’s not a harmless affectation, it’s a genuinely dangerous attitude. And if a Christian really wants to be like Christ, he or she needs to lay that attitude down permanently. As Paul wrote, we must “… not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is,” (Eph 5:17). It is far easier to “play” church than to truly be godly and Christ-like. Being human, we gravitate towards easier solutions. And part of “being wise” needs to be an awareness of this tendency. Christians must stop playing at being Christians, or we run the risk of not being like Christ at all. Historically, it has happened many times. This is precisely why there are so many denominations that call themselves Christian, but are not. This is precisely why many people of our world curse the name of Christianity, and organized churches. They have been ostracized and even persecuted in the name of a church culture that was only playing church, and not really doing what a church should do. There is a link to the name of Christ, but no connection at all to His real commandments and purposes. It is an insidious and deadly spiritual trap because in it’s beginnings, it looks like proper zeal. But in the end, it’s the very mouth of Hell.