A Never Ceasing Church

I see a lot of churches, they have their hours; 10-3, 9-2, 12-4, and so on....Now it's not that there is an issue with these hours, but I find them personally to be a little limited. I know there are circumstances (cost of running the building, staffing, etc.), this however is beyond those things.

I'm not here to "fix" the church, or tell it what to do, but simply to share what's on my heart.  I hope that is plain, simple, and clear, right off the hop.  My heart is to see a 24 hour place of worship established though, a place where schedules don't hinder people from getting together with believers to be encouraged and learn.  Where people can be taught and equipped in their giftings to share the gospel and make disciples.

I work weird hours personally, I can work from 11am to some time in the evening, or start or four in the afternoon and go until the wee hours of the morning, usually four am; this can create difficulty when the majority of my hours are on weekends, which is also when church is.  One thing I've learnt in the 22 years I've lived, is we don't all get Monday to Friday 9-5 jobs, some of us get jobs that are decent enough, the hours are simply, erratic.  My Dad worked in the oilfield for over a decade; he could work 14 hour days (or more) sometimes 14 days straight, and something I learned from my own time in the oilfield, is that getting up early in the morning when you don't have to go to work, can be a challenge ( my Dad had a wife and two kids (teenagers at that) in there as well).

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a place that was able to accommodate a wide variety of schedules.  With my current schedules, Church in the middle of night seems far more feasible than (what seem to me) super early mornings.  For instance, it's currently 3:00am local time, humans need 8 hours of sleep, I've been home form work for maybe an hour.  If church started at, let's say 11:00am, even if I went to bed when I got home, (assuming I don't wash up, eat anything, or change) it'd be about 2:00am going to bed, 10:00am getting up for that exact 8 hours (although most people I know don't fall asleep that fast).  I have 60 minutes to get up shower, get dressed, get breakfast, and be in my seat at church.  Supposing it isn't a charismatic church that starts at 11:00...ish (I hope this is taken as the joke it's meant to be, I'm a member of a Charismatic church).

This may seem like I'm just looking for an easy out, or for everything to be my way.  Don't misunderstand my heart in this.  I have friends that work jobs with little flexability, that's not their fault, I know single moms that need to get all the hours they can to support their children (some churches ostracize them for being single mom's, another reason they avoid churches at times, but I won't get in to that right now.) and so that can see them with an evening and weekend job, and as I recall, Sunday is a weekend.  Another issue faced with single moms as well with younger children is a lack I've noticed, with adequate child care, or, an unfortunate and heartbreaking apathy towards child care.  Once again, a random tangent I won't tackle at this time but just something that bothers me personally.

Back to this never ceasing church....

The church is more than a building, when I think of church, I think of the Book of Acts.  The church was a community of believers that were together teaching, encouraging, mentoring, praying, and worshipping the Lord.  If our church building burnt down tomorrow, WE WOULD STILL BE A CHURCH.  My heart for a 24 hour church goes beyond a building that doesn't lock it's doors, it goes in to a complete lifestyle.

I've seen so many churches, we go, we leave, that's it.  I heard one man's story; he left a bike gang, got saved, but found no family or community in the church, but the acceptance he found in the gang found him falling back in to that life.  In my own life I got saved at 19, but didn't find a sense of community or family, I would leave church and was back on my own with no one.  And within 8 months I was getting back in to my usual habits and almost ended up in fatherhood again.  When I felt I was a part of a family, like I was accepted, I wanted to be a part of it.  And we model what we surround ourselves with.  Now, back to those things I mentioned before...

Here's a simple break down of the things I listed:
TEACHING:
Both in small groups and corporate pastoral preaching.  This would be the teaching and discussion of scripture and so on.
ENCOURAGING:
We all hit hard times, we all mess up, it's having people to help pick us up, correct us (Proverbs tells us the wisdom in accepting rebukes), and help us in our walk. (Iron sharpens iron as Proverbs says).
MENTORING:
As a man in my twenties I find teens coming to me in relationship advice, school advice, and the like having on average about six years on them in age.  I'm old enough to have learnt from my experiences, and young enough to recall clearly.  Mentoring is walking with a person through things in their life, being an ear for them, and also a teacher.  I have a few older men in our church I consider mentors, they're married, with kids (my age ironically), good jobs, and what the world would call "successful lives".  I often spend hours speaking with these men, learning from them, and taking in from their experiences and wisdom so I'm faced with my decisions, I'm wise enough to make the right one.  There was mentoring in the New Testament church, Paul had Timothy for example.  Paul wrote two letters to Timothy (I,II Timothy) which shows how he mentored Timothy.
PRAYING
My friend and pastor Nathan Williams' wife has been known to say, quite frequently, "No Prayer, No Power".  And this is echoed in Matthew when Jesus tells us that we will accomplish certain things through "...prayer and fasting".  In Thesselonians we are told to pray without ceasing, and at another point in Matthew (ch18) we are told that when two or more of us gather and are in agreement, God is there, and hears our prayers.
WORSHIP
Psalm 150 is the favourite verse of a friend and fellow worship musician.  All through the old and new testaments there are verses talking about worship.  Simply put, worship is an act of glorfying God.  It goes beyond our Sunday Morning Karaoke.  There's nothing wrong with our corporate worship, but I fear we have created a consumer worship event and have lost the whole focus of what worship was meant for.  The theologians, I feel, had it right, "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." The author of Romans puts worship as a sacrifice, a sacrifice of our being.  


Church goes beyond a building, it goes in to our being.  Does how we live, express the emmense love and mercy God has poured fourth?  Teaching each other, being encouraging, mentoring, praying, worshipping; none of it actually requires a building or a program.  If we started loving each other as Jesus has told us to, we would see ourselves transformed.  


I could go further in to all this, but I don't want to have this longer than necessary either, as the longer something gets, the less and less one is likely to read, and quite possibly, miss context, or misunderstand something.  Please know, I am not a Pastor, I have not attended any formal education in bible teaching, I am not a theologian or scholar.  I am simply a man with a passion, that I feel others may share.  This post could have been expanded on more, but I feel that would not be an effective use of time beyond this.  


If you're reading this, and thinking "I want to see a 24 hour place of worship" start at your home.  Pray without ceasing, when you're in your car, pray for a moment; pray during a break at work; there are lots of moments in the day we let slip by we could have prayed during, I'm just as guilty of this.  If we started spending more time in prayer, we would see more happen.  If anything I wrote is theologically incorrect, PLEASE let me know.  I do not wish to make false statement or lead others astray, the bible is clear on the consequences of that.  I accept rebuke, assuming you back it up with scripture (in context).