Taking Back Sundays
Why Discipleship Starts On Sundays
Paul doesn’t outline a discipleship pipeline. There is no discipleship project.
Why?
Because the Church IS the discipleship pipeline.
And it begins on Sundays and in many ways cultivates on Sundays.
How so?
Old Testament scholar Daniel Block (if you haven’t read him, you’re missing out) divides worship into two categories: cultic and ordinary.
Cultic worship can be defined colloquially as “coming into God’s green room.” While God can be worshipped and experienced in ordinary life—just as a spouse is also a co-laborer and confidante—there is an intimate world that is to be ritually nurtured.
God is a King, and He will be approached on His grounds. So our intimate rituals with God—the Cultic—are on His terms, not ours.
And they must be observed. “Every male must appear before me…”
They don’t show up empty handed. They approach ritually.
And Daniel Block essentially summarizes cultic worship in the Old Testament as “surviving a seance with God.” In cultic worship, the divinity appears as the rituals are observed, and the worshipper experiences the power and presence of the god.
When you lay that beside what is happening in 1 Corinthians 11 and passages like Acts 5, you begin to realize that this is also a New Testament reality—the OT has NT parallels that are worth juicing.
Failure to distinguish between “all of life is worship”—or ordinary worship, where we are called to live lives that honor and glorify God—and cultic worship ignores the obvious realities of how God’s presence manifests itself in both Testaments. And I think this is why many Evangelicals don’t have the theological matrix that Pentecostals do, and ultimately misunderstand Pentecostalism.
If all of life is worship, and there is no differentiation and corresponding value in cultic worship, then Sunday mornings theologically don’t carry the same weight, and ultimately are seen in a sort of utilitarian view. “God is already present in all of life, I can’t have any more of Him than the Spirit’s indwelling. Thus, Sunday mornings aren’t for ‘more of God,’ or God manifesting Himself uniquely as a result of my priestly ministry of the ritual worship, but rather for reaching the world and marginal equipping—helping people know more about God in bite sized pieces.
Now please hear me out—I’m a Bible teacher. If you have heard me teach or preach, I don’t do sermon lite. Chat doesn’t write—and has never written—my gear. I read books, absorb concepts, and democratize theological concepts. What I’m saying is, I believe in the ministry of the Word. And my Dad’s pastor used to tell him, “Don’t crowd the Word with Worship.” Meaning, we don’t let the worship service run amok and then call that the moving of the Spirit. That is to purposely misunderstand the gathering and misappropriate the work of the Spirit. We need the Priests to give unto the Lord (through sacrifices of praise, thanksgiving, tithes, offerings), and then the Saints need to take a passive role in receiving from the Lord through the Word.
Now, I say that Sundays are where discipleship begins and ultimately cultivates because cultic worship—the priesthood approaching God ritually and observing those rituals carefully—is a consistent OT and NT reality.
Cultic Worship is easily the litmus test of a Disciple. It is perhaps the test of a disciple. Because you have Spiritualists and Disciples, really. Spiritualists are self-manifesting consumers that approach God with indifference—everything is about them. They are only interested in Church for its ability to add perceived therapeutic value to their life. “What can God do for me?”—that’s their mantra.
A Disciple approaches God like Abel—observing the rituals both internally and externally; Cain is indifferent to what God has required, and his offering is rejected because his heart has rejected God.
As OT scholar Bruce Waltke says, “Cain’s failure at the altar produced death in the field.”
You have to get the altar right.
Sundays are where Pentecostals disciple disciples into winning at altars. Because when you win at altars, the life of the divinity flows into your life. Even the pagans understood this.
You want the life of God? Partake of communion in a worthy manner. Offer acceptable sacrifices, as Peter says (1 Peter 2:5—it implies there are unacceptable sacrifices) through Christ Jesus.
Pentecostals rightly prioritize winning at altars because they want to “be filled with all the fullness of God.” We rightly differentiate between the indwelling of the Spirit and the ongoing filling with all the fullness that Paul clearly explains. There is more of God. There is one baptism, but many fillings.
And Sundays are where Disciples come to survive the seance, offering acceptable sacrifices. It is where they learn that both their hands and their heart must be ordered. It is where they “appear before the Lord” with what He has required.
Now, here’s another clip from an oft-featured LA pastor who is showing some frustration at critiques that have been made of him recently, and my response:
