The Church
Cultural or Biblical ?

On 01 May 2006, I worshipped in the Reformed Baptist Church of Padova, Italy. Services are held at the IFED, the only evangelical Bible school in Italy. [More about that in a future post.] Dr. Woodrow Kroll preached on the “ancient landmarks” of the faith. That is, those non-negotiable beliefs that our delineated in Scripture as essential to Christian faith, without which you have no Christian faith and from which all other principles of Christian faith flow.

At the service we celebrated the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Just as in India, we partook from a common cup of wine. We were also advised that the sacrament is celebrated every Sunday. It set me to thinking. Why in the modern American evangelical church do we us grape juice in individual cups with wafers? In instituting the sacrament Jesus broke bread. He passed a common cup with wine for each to partake. Which procedure is closer to the Biblical mandate?

Many would argue it’s cultural. The Italians live in a culture of wine drinking. Here in the West we are concerned with health issues, so we have individual cups of grape juice. While such rationalizations seem plausible, they are superficial explanations. And, that is the problem with the methods of the western contemporary church…they are lacking in theological and Biblical substance. Individual portions of grape juice and individualized wafers point to the individuality celebrated in western Christianity, especially USA style. By partaking from a broken loaf and single cup, there is recognition of unity in the sacrifice of Christ and the unity in those who believe.

In Ephesians, Paul emphasizes the unity of believers through the Holy Spirit, Son and Father and the responsibility of Christian believers to maintain that unity [Eph. 4: 1-6]. And, he emphasizes that the gifts given as diversity within the unity is for the purpose:
To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” [Eph. 4: 12, 13]
Unity and maturity in the faith are not attained by being a Lone Ranger Christian. We have lots of churches and lots of denominations, but disunity and immaturity reigns in the Christian community of the 21st century US. This is the result of cultural instead of Biblical Christianity.

In Paul’s teaching on the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, he says this is what you are doing:
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes again. [1 Cor. 11:26.]
In essence, the sacrament is a proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by all of God’s people. As His redeemed, why should we not want to enter into such proclamation each and every time we gather corporately to worship the God of salvation? In the spirit of the consumerism of the age, the contemporary church has made its choices. It would rather sing 5 praise choruses or have a dramatic presentation than proclaim the Gospel through the sacrament.

It is long overdue for the church to examine what it is doing. Does it reflect the culture or the Scriptures? Is it driven by an individualistic view of Christianity or the unity of the faith commanded in the Bible? The Italian Christians in Padova are surrounded by a culture dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. They have intentionally set out to be a Biblical church, a counter-cultural community shaped by Gospel values. Sadly, that is missing in the western churches. Imagine what would happen if churches in the USA adopted views and practices mediated by Scripture alone? Can you say…R_e_f_o_r_m_a_t_i_o_n?