Episode 71: On Canceling Church
Is it ever okay to cancel church? During this episode of Pastors Talk, Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever discuss whether or not it is acceptable to cancel a Sunday service. They ponder the call to keep the Lord’s Day holy and rest while answering if it is a sin to miss church. To end the conversation, they apply their previous answers to the context of the persecuted churches around the world.
- Is it Ever Okay to Cancel Church?
- Keeping the Lord’s Day Holy
- The Problem with American Evangelicals
- God’s Sovereignty in Church Services
- The Persecuted Church
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Jonathan Leeman:
Hi, I’m Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever:
Mark Dever.
Jonathan Leeman:
And welcome to this episode of 9Marks Pastors Talk. 9Marks exists to equip church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources for building healthy churches. Learn more at 9Marks.org.
Biblical Vision Informed by the Bible
Mark Dever:
You say biblical vision. Do you mean really just our thoughts about the church? Informed by the Bible?
Jonathan Leeman:
I hope we’re getting it from the Bible.
Mark Dever:
Okay.
Jonathan Leeman:
Ephesians 3:10.
Mark Dever:
There are people who love the Lord who disagree with us.
The Church Displays the Glory of God
Jonathan Leeman:
Bible, the church is displaying the glory of God. Isn’t that what we’re trying to pitch?
Mark Dever:
Certainly.
Jonathan Leeman:
That picture is right there.
Mark Dever:
But who disagrees with that?
Jonathan Leeman:
I don’t know if people, I think our goal is to help people who haven’t thought about it from the Bible.
Mark Dever:
That’s certainly true.
Jonathan Leeman:
Here’s what I want to, speak of, here’s what I want to talk about. I want to have a conversation with you, Mark, about canceling church services.
Mark Dever:
Oh, my goodness. This is from those tweets where Charles Hedman texted me and said, you got to say something. And I uncharacteristically said something. Right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Now, this conversation is not about the interactions that you had with that brother, J.D. Greear.
Mark Dever:
So is that why you’ve got them all listed out in front of you there?
Jonathan Leeman:
I have a bunch of Bible verses listed out in front of me. It’s not about that. It’s about the fact, though that, yes, that precipitated this conversation.
It’s about the fact that I see more and more churches doing this. I was at a church planter, quote-unquote, boot camp a number of years ago in which the speaker was saying, “Hey, we cancel church one Sunday a month so that we can go be on mission in the neighborhood” sort of thing.
Mark Dever:
Monday to Saturday is not good for them?
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, that was my question. But it does seem to be a growing trend. And so I thought, Hey, let’s have a conversation about this. What do you think? Do you see this happening more and more out there?
Mark Dever:
It’s ironic that I got a note from your own pastor today about you all canceling services this coming Sunday. I mean, the irony is deep, Jonathan.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. Well, he said we might have to cancel because snow conditions closed down the school that we met in.
Mark Dever:
And you contacted the custodian directly and he said, yeah.
Is it Ever Okay to Cancel Church?
Jonathan Leeman:
In fact, he, in fact, John did do that. Okay. So is it ever okay to cancel church services?
Mark Dever:
Of course.
Jonathan Leeman:
Like when?
Mark Dever:
Like what you’re doing in Cheverly this coming Sunday, maybe.
Jonathan Leeman:
Sometimes you can’t help it.
Mark Dever:
Well, if it’s a necessity, yeah. Our ancestors, when they were settling in the North American continent, would often be able to have a church service only once a month because they just, couldn’t get a preacher anymore often.
They couldn’t make it to a common meeting point anymore often. So of course.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. Well, what about, however, this growing, what I perceive to be a growing practice of planned, cancellations for reasons of rest, reasons of being on mission in the neighborhood, reasons of, hey, it’s the holidays, we’ve had a lot of extra church services. Thoughts on that?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, yes, I do. Rather than being misunderstood to beat up on a brother or sister’s motives, when I’m going to assume they have the same motives that you and I would have, or at least I’m going to assume there’s a galaxy of folks who would, I’m sure some wouldn’t, but there would be many who would.
Jonathan Leeman:
Amen.
Mark Dever:
I’m going to assume there are some probably theological assumptions that you and I bring to the conversation about (a) the nature of the congregational meeting, and (b) even the Lord’s Day, which, and perhaps about other things that apply to tangle up with those nature of membership discipline, the baptism of the Lord’s Supper, that is going to influence and affect and cause
Jonathan Leeman:
How we view this.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, well, and cause their different decision to pop out. So it’s not that we read Hebrews 10:25 and they don’t.
Jonathan Leeman:
“Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together”.
Is Church Considered Rest on the Sabbath?
Mark Dever:
It’s that we put that together with Paul’s assumption that the Corinthians are meeting on the first day of the week in 1 Corinthians 16, that John refers to the first day of the week as Kyriakos, Lord’s Day in Revelation 1, that we see an unbroken history of Christians meeting from the earliest time on this first day of the week. All of those things together make it seem obvious to us that while it’s certainly true as we read in the epistles or Hebrews that Christ is the fulfillment of the law and that he is our Sabbath rest and that some people think that different days have different significance and others don’t, we would have a kind of traditional Baptist view, not of Sabbatarianism.
Jonathan Leeman:
Because you’re not a Sabbatarian.
Mark Dever:
No. I think that the Hebrews passage is especially important in understanding the fourth commandment.
Jonathan Leeman:
I don’t want to sidetrack. You keep going.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. But I would be referencing those earlier verses I just mentioned, a Lord’s Day guy, like our own Southern Baptist Faith and Messages. You know, I do think that there is a significance to the day the Lord rose from the dead and that I am not to set that aside for things other than Christian worship.
Now, unlike my Sabbatarian friends, I don’t feel if somebody then has to go to work at 2 o ‘o’clock at CVS that they are necessarily in sin by that. They could be for other reasons, but they’re not necessarily.
Whereas if they’re choosing to have a job that necessitates them missing on when the saints gather together on Sunday morning, I don’t think the answer is, well, let’s just have a Saturday night service or let’s meet on Thursdays or Friday before work. You know, I would say the answer is for you to not do that job if that’s at all possible.
There will be exceptions. Works of mercy and necessity are only accepted. So medical work.
Jonathan Leeman:
So would you say the person who willfully chooses not to attend church on Sunday, regularly, is in a qualitatively, if not quantitatively, but qualitatively similar position as the person, as the church that says, hey, let’s cancel the service between New Year’s and Christmas. They’re doing the same sort of thing. They’re not…
Mark Dever:
Well, I’d be loath to say that because I think the individual who’s making that decision, one, is just an individual, and two, they seem to be pretty clearly flying in the face of obvious scripture references.
Jonathan Leeman:
But I thought you were saying the church is doing that too.
Mark Dever:
But the difference is that a brother like J .D. Greer is going to read the same scripture references. He’s going to assert the same authority we would understand they have. He would just understand their meaning differently.
And I’m not trying to give him cover, but I’m just trying to say, look, the brother’s motive is that’s different in my mind than a guy who looks at it and says, yeah, I mean to not do that. Or I don’t care about that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well said.
Mark Dever:
I don’t think our brothers are counseling services, at least not the kind of guys we’re talking about. I don’t think they’re saying that at all. I think there are these other different understandings, which I would say on their part is a misunderstanding of what congregational worship is.
It’s not just one of seven services over six locations on any day. I would say it’s when the local church is assembling together. The whole church, and I know that people are absent and people are in childcare and I understand what I mean. You know, intentionally the whole church is able to assemble and is invited to assemble.
And that’s the context in which we hear the word preached and we baptize and we have the Lord’s Supper and we enact discipline according to Matthew 18. And that when you begin to see multiple services, multiple sites, multiple times, multiple locations, I’m not surprised you begin to not see in the same way the significance of that congregational gathering. That’s part of a larger conversation.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, it’s interesting. One staff member at a particular multi-site church in conversations said he said he personally wouldn’t do the cancellation.
Canceling the service, he said, is hardly the main issue. There’s an inherent theological compromising as you go multi-site that makes this decision of cancellation a pragmatic byproduct.
Mark Dever:
I agree with that.
Jonathan Leeman:
As I said, he said, we’ve essentially canceled corporate gatherings every weekend of the year.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I think that’s true.
Jonathan Leeman:
Interesting. You keep mentioning the scripture references. Let me flag them briefly.
What struck me as I was looking this up beforehand is all four gospels have that phrase first day of the week Matthew 28: “Now after the Sabbath as the first day of the week began to dawn Mary Magdalene the other Mary came to see the tomb”; Mark 16: “Very early in the morning on the first day of the week they came to the tomb”; Luke 24: “Now on the first day of the week very early in the morning they and the other woman with them came to the tomb”; John 20: “On the first day of the week Mary Magdalene and came to the tomb” John 20:19 “And then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week when the doors were shut and the disciples were submitted for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst”. That’s now the resurrected Jesus.
Okay, we’re not church services yet, but then you get to Acts, Acts 20:7. Now on the first day of the week when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight.
Presumably, they gathered in the evening and he spoke to midnight. 1 Corinthians 16, on the first day of the week, let each one of you lay something as something aside, storing up as he may prosper, that there may be no collections when I come.”
And then Revelation, you mentioned, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day”. So it’s not commanded as such, it’s just assumed.
Mark Dever:
Well, it’s an example though, I would say in the way we see.
Jonathan Leeman:
Exampled and assumed.
Mark Dever:
The uniformity of early Christian practice is yet another thing to show how the first Christians understood it.
Keeping the Lord’s Day Holy
Jonathan Leeman:
You said you’re not a sabbatarian, but does the Ten Commandments, have any bearing on that? Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Here you have a sign of the old covenant.
God hardwires it into creation and then he reaffirms it for the sake of his people as a sign of the covenant, Sabbath rest. Does that have any bearing on this conversation?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I think it shows us a pattern that we’re not surprised when we see an approximation of it in the new covenant. So we’re not surprised that given the earthly life, the Lord has called us to live, given the fact that the word is creatures inside time, given the fact that time is measured in the Bible from the very first chapter in weeks and days, it’s not surprising that God has allowed there to be a significance to a particular day. And it’s not surprising that it’s the first day, it’s the first bit of our time that we set that aside as a symbol of the fact that he owns all of our time.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, I think that’s right. And as I was meditating on this, I was asking myself, okay, we have those examples from the New Testament. It’s the unbroken precedent through church history.
Is there a theology here? And I think I kept going back to creation. Creation got hardwires into our lives, this seven-day cycle.
And he tells the people they must do it, rest on the seventh day. But then Jesus declares himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath, which means Christians fundamentally find their rest in Christ.
No longer bound by the rules of the Sabbath. Nonetheless, the New Testament treats and church history affirms the fact that the first means
Mark Dever:
When you say no longer bound by that specifically because they’ve been fulfilled…
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, I would say we’re not directly bound by I would say they’re indirectly bound to be cut by because they’ve been fulfilled. Yes.
Mark Dever:
So we are in Christ who has fulfilled the law.
Jonathan Leeman:
Absolutely. And then the Lord’s Day becomes the defining time marker for new creation. Our new covenant, new creation lives should be regulated by the weekly church gathering.
So I don’t want to create new legalities. But I do want to acknowledge new creation realities.
Is Continually Skipping Church a Sin?
Mark Dever:
So if you are choosing to go fishing because you need some time alone after a very stressful week at the office and three out of four Sundays, consistently throughout the sort of fishing season wherever you live, you’re deciding to do that instead of going to church. I do think you’re in sin.
I think you’re in disciplinable sin. I think you’re disobeying what God has revealed in Hebrews 10:25. And the mere fact that you turn up there very regularly one Sunday a month, so you are there monthly, so you are there regularly, I don’t think gets to the point of what we’re reading in Hebrews.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay, so let me push it.
Mark Dever:
And furthermore, Christians in the past have not understood that gets to the point of it. They would agree with what you and I are saying.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay, so for that individual making that decision, you’re saying he’s in sin. What category are you placing this conversation about canceling church on Sunday?
Is this a wisdom thing? Is this a sin thing? Is the church in sin?
The Problem with American Evangelicals
Mark Dever:
Yeah, one person on Twitter, had really just a legion of examples of poor logic and a lack of charity in their responses. One person said, Hey, Mark, you’re making this a closed-hand thing when it’s really an open-hand thing.
And I’m going to, okay, first of all, closed and open-handed doesn’t really exhaust our ability to reflect theologically on what’s in scripture. There might be other things besides those two speeds. So even that response in my mind is one of the biggest problems with American evangelicalism.
The fact that they’ve got, these two speeds. It’s either essential or it’s unimportant. And I would go, well, you know, I don’t know.
I’d need to think about that more. I mean, are we saying for salvation? Well, then to use that language, it’s definitely open-handed.
But are we saying for having a church? Okay, well now then it might be closed-handed or at least close to closed-handed. Uh, I would just want to say, I just, need a lot more speeds than those two.
And I would just exhort that brother or sister, whoever was saying that, you need some better vocabulary if you’re going be a more faithful reader of and teacher of God’s Word. You don’t just want two speeds. You want a whole bunch of speeds, and you want probably longer conversations and not make assumptions about what somebody else means because they raise a question.
How Important is Church for Your Righteousness?
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. Okay, but we’re having that conversation now and I’m trying to ask you, how important is this?
Mark Dever:
Well, if we’re saying how important is it for my salvation?
Jonathan Leeman:
No, no, no, no, no. How important is this for the life of the church? Is this a matter of wisdom? Is this a matter of sin and righteousness?
Mark Dever:
Well, I think it’s a matter of sin and righteousness. But I can understand why many of my brothers and sisters don’t perceive it that way.
Jonathan Leeman:
What are the dangers?
Mark Dever:
Of not meeting?
Jonathan Leeman:
Of canceling every so often.
Mark Dever:
Well, people don’t know when you’re meeting and when you’re not. It seems to suggest there are other factors that are more important. It seems to suggest that you don’t understand yourself to be under a divine mandate to meet weekly, to gather weekly.
It seems to suggest that you think gathering in your homes, and again, another person on Twitter thought, so you Christians can’t worship their homes? No, Christians can certainly worship their homes.
Churches can meet at homes. That’s not the point. The point is should the congregation as a whole meet together? And that’s what I think is probably just a category that’s missing from a lot of the people we’re having this conversation with.
They don’t have a special category for that body, which disciplines being the same body that admits to membership, being the same body that you’re a member of in a local sense, being the same body that assembles regularly. We’re trying, to assert the identity of those four things.
They’re all the same thing. And some of our friends we’re having this conversation with would not believe that or understand that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, and that goes back to where you began, which is when we enter this conversation, we have different assumptions about what the gathering is, what membership is, and how discipline works. And it’s not surprising we arrive at different places in this conversation.
Mark Dever:
I just want to say what we’re saying, I think, represents all Baptists from antiquity to 1960 or 70. So if it sounds like a weird 9Marks position, it’s the position that I’m sure was intended by the Baptist Faith and Message in every iteration by the New Hampshire Confession that preceded it, by 1689, I mean, it’s just like, this is what we’re saying sounds weird today just because we’re in such a weird day.
But what we’re saying is actually the non-weird thing to say. It’s, uh, it’s the other opinions that are, I think novel.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, and I hope we’re not just being picayune. I do think there’s a glorious theological backdrop.
Mark Dever:
I think the word picayune is picayune.
Jonathan Leeman:
And it may be a little.
Mark Dever:
So I think you just shot yourself in the foot. Why don’t you say picky?
Jonathan Leeman:
Picky. Picky. There used to be a newspaper there may be still called what is a new Orleans Picayune.
Mark Dever:
That’s referring to a geographical location. Anyway, keep going.
Jonathan Leeman:
Um, I like the name of that newspaper though. Uh, I also like it the way when you go down a rabbit trail, that’s fine. But when I go down that rabbit trail, you tell me to move on.
Mark Dever:
No, you often grab me by the square from my neck verbally and bring it back.
Life Defined by the New Creation Cycle
Jonathan Leeman:
The glorious reality I think here is that new creation, I’m sorry, creation in its seven-day cycle has been absorbed and reformulated for the church a new creation, seven-day cycle. And the church gathering marks that off, right?
Our lives as believers are now defined by, in terms of time, this new creation cycle. And in the first creation where six days were spent anticipating rest, now in new creation, we know that that rest has been accomplished.
It’s been won by Christ’s work. And we celebrate that on the first day. And so Sam was helpful for me in thinking about this.
We celebrate that on the first day. And then the six days of work following emerge out of that new creation rest. And so when people talk about, oh, we want to give our church a rest, I’m like, new creation rest.
Mark Dever:
The gathering of the church is the rest
Jonathan Leeman:
That is the rest.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Precisely.
Jonathan Leeman:
And so there are glorious realities I think we’re losing sight of in all of this.
Mark Dever:
And also probably just simply expresses the way people experience church.
Jonathan Leeman:
What do mean?
Mark Dever:
Well, if you experience church as more work than rest, maybe that goes to how you’re doing church.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. I think that’s especially the case in the holidays. Something I’ve heard from pastors is, hey, look, we…
Mark Dever:
If you do everything for Christmas that scripture requires, you’ll be fine.
Jonathan Leeman:
What do you mean by that?
Mark Dever:
Scripture doesn’t require anything.
Jonathan Leeman:
What do you mean by that?
Mark Dever:
You’re not going to exhaust yourself.
Jonathan Leeman:
What are churches doing?
Mark Dever:
Putting on lots of extra services, extra everything.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, hold on. So you’re against that now?
Mark Dever:
No, but I’m just saying if we require things of our members that scripture doesn’t require, I’m sure we can exhaust them.
Jonathan Leeman:
I heard you say in another context that you think we’re giving too much attention to the liturgical calendar over and against the weekly calendar. Do you want to flesh that out?
Mark Dever:
Well, that’s exactly this conversation. We ourselves do special things here around Christmas, so I don’t think we’re wrong to do it. But I think we don’t want to do it in such a way that it exceeds or interferes with our ability to obey those things that God has laid down in His word, which I would understand Hebrews 10:25 to imply at least weekly worship, weekly gathering for worship, if possible.
Jonathan Leeman:
Does the emphasis on evangelism and services dedicated to evangelism have anything to do with this, especially around the holidays?
Mark Dever:
Sure. And that as long as there’s any lost person out there, you can always say that we should be doing more evangelistically. But at some point, you have to say, you know what, it was the Holy Spirit who turned Paul from Bithynia to Macedonia.
And you know what, it’s not that the Holy Spirit doesn’t care about the Bithynians, but oh, look at that in 1 Peter chapter 1, where are some of those Christians? They’re in Bithynia. So the Lord has ways beyond your single instrumentality.
So that’s not counseling indifference, it’s just saying there has to be a speed in between, I’m responsible for everything and I’m responsible for nothing. I would say a normal, humble, human amount of responsibility is probably good for a pastor and good for a church.
Jonathan Leeman:
Can I read you something from Tom Ascol?
Mark Dever:
Sure.
God’s Sovereignty in Church Services
Jonathan Leeman:
This is in an article called 14 Decisions in the Face of Persecution. What will I do? I’m going to read this and anything else you want to say on this, great, then I’m out of questions.
Here’s Tom Ascol. “Do not stop gathering together. Under no circumstances will we stop or give up gathering publicly, especially the corporate worship of believers on Sunday.
God’s sovereignty is higher than any secular authority, and the Church’s mission and the Bible’s teaching on not neglecting to gather together is higher than any secular law. Regardless of whether the Religious Affairs Bureau and the police take administrative and forceful measures towards Sunday worship, whether or not their enforcement follows due process, I will resist by peaceful means.
I will not cooperate with the police banning, shutting down, dissolving, or sealing up the Church and its gathering. I will not stop convening, hosting, and participating in the Church’s public worship until the police cease my personal freedom by force.
Our Chinese brothers refuse to give up under persecution which so many American Christians voluntarily neglect or dismiss under ease. Could it be that we enjoyed gospel privileges so long that we have taken them for granted?
Could it be that we have affirmed the authority of God’s word so long that we have come to assume that we are submitted to it when in reality we don’t think much about it at all”?
I thought that was striking. Let’s have this conversation in a persecuted Christian Chinese context, right? Suddenly everything looks a little different. Any thoughts on that brother or this overall conversation?
The Persecuted Church
Mark Dever:
Well, I mean, if I’m saying that to a bunch of people who agree with you and me, I’m fine with that. If I’m saying that to a person who conscientiously loves the Lord, has been a missionary in a Muslim context for two years which J.D. has you know well believes the exclusivity of salvation through Christ alone, and is willing to suffer for him, I’m loath to make it seem like there’s just a lack of willingness to step up or value my guess is J.D. values the gathering of the saints existentially like you and I do and then he simply is thinking that Scripture does not require this and I think canceling is more respectful to the people who just gave it all their time over the Christmas services.
It’s going to lead to other good. He sees it as an option, whereas you and I, as Christians traditionally have, would understand that kind of gathering as an obligation. So I want to be very careful not to sound like I’m going to motives or going to judge someone’s…
Jonathan Leeman:
Trust in scripture.
Mark Dever:
Well, or willingness to suffer for the Lord. Yeah. And I just, I don’t, that’s not, that’s not what’s in… That’s not the conversation we’re having. There might be people with whom you should have conversations like that. I don’t think those are our friends probably in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Honestly, I don’t think I was thinking of J.D. in particular with that quote or frankly in this conversation in general. This is something my eye’s been on for a little while. And I do think that quote is helpful in helping us to realize, hey, look, we take that Sunday gathering for granted.
Mark Dever:
I agree, brother. The irony after I just read that little Twitter thing and then at church praying for Victor’s church as it has freedom, we pray, to meet in China, where they’re willing to be thrown in jail. So, yeah. I appreciate the irony.
Jonathan Leeman:
And I think if we took it for granted and recognized how precious it is, there might be slightly less likelihood that we would willingly surrender it. I think that’s the point.
Mark Dever:
Possibly. Again, I would just want to go to theological understandings.
Jonathan Leeman:
Anything else on this topic?
Mark Dever:
It’s an important topic. And I think the blessing and the joy of understanding the assembly and of understanding it as being such a life-giving thing is important for the Christian life. So I’m glad we’re having the conversation, and I hope we can encourage others to have this conversation with those you agree with and those you don’t.
Jonathan Leeman:
Amen. Good word.
Mark Dever:
Thank you, brother.
Jonathan Leeman:
Thank you.
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