Here’s a free cooking tip: You must use a wooden spoon to make a perfect sauce.
That’s what Thomas Ellsworth says Mrs. Jones taught in her cooking classes. Well, not exactly what she taught, but it’s what her students learned.
After sharing secrets for preparing perfect sauces, Mrs. Jones would send her students to the stoves to practice with this final instruction, “Be sure to use a wooden spoon.”
Most people would just follow the instructions without wondering why it mattered that the spoon be wooden. Some probably taught others to make sauces, including the mandate that a wooden spoon be used.
As Ellsworth stood stirring, he wondered if a wooden spoon had different heat conduction properties than a metal spoon. He decided to ask.
“Because,” Mrs. Jones explained, “if I had to sit here listening to all your metal spoons banging against the pots, I’d go nuts.”
Not the reason you were expecting?
What about the answer to this question: Why do churches do what they do on Sundays? It’s remarkably standardized, you know. While the styles of music vary, along with a few other things, most churches do most of the same things Sunday after Sunday.
I saw a cartoon that showed two men entering a church building. On the brick wall by the door was a list: “Invocation, Two Hymns, Prayer, Offering, Hymn, Sermon, Benediction.” One man in the scene is explaining to the other, “That’s the order of worship.” In their case, it really was written in stone.
Why?
Could it be that’s what churches do because that what churches do? Are we just doing what it seems we've always done? Some “cooking teacher” back in history said it should be done that way, and it’s been passed down through the generations?
The Biblical guideline for what Christians do when together seems to be “for the strengthening of the church” (1 Corinthians 14:26) – to “spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24). What would happen if that became our guide for determining what we do at church? Might the sauce be just as good – or even better?
Quite a few would insist, “No! We are following the Bible’s recipe for Sunday.”
Are we? Is there some place in the Bible that lists what Christians should do in church? Or could we be just stirring with a wooden spoon because that’s the way somebody in the past liked it?
Commentaires