Worship experiences on Holiday (Pastor's letter by W.J. Seaton)

By this time most of the congregation are eagerly waiting for or have seen their holidays past and gone for another year. One of the most interesting points of topic, I think, after the holiday period is "Where did you worship when you were away?" When this topic comes up for discussion, we find that the experience have been many and varied. Some have ended up in "cold" churches, some in "dead" churches, some in "modernistic" churches, and, of course, praise God for it, some in good, alive evangelical fellowships where the Word of God has been rightly divided.

When we begin to consider how we fared ourselves, however, it should serve to remind us that in these summer months we to have "the stranger within our gates". If you thought the Church you worshipped in while on holiday was cold and uninviting, what have you done to make our own fellowship appealing? If you are still nursing a grievance that the "singing was dead" in the place that you spent two weekends in, are you endeavouring to sing from the heart so that our own items of praise truly ring out like the songs of Zion? And, of course, what I apply to you, brethren, I trust I can take to my own heart also.

During our own holidays, my wife and I spent quite a bit of money in an effort to go and worship in a reputed evangelical fellowship with a good, young evangelical minister. Imagine our disappointment, however when we discovered that the evening service had been turned into a "religious catch-penny" with a group of young folk from Glasgow, and the "minister of the Word" reduced to an M.C. For an hour we were subjected to a trio who sang, but couldn't! A young boy who gave his testimony, but shouldn't! and a minister who might have preached the Word, but didn't! After many weeks in the pulpit, endeavouring, no matter how feebly, to feed others with the Word of Life, it is a great joy for a preacher to sit and have his own soul fed; but a great disappointment to be served with husks when the "Father's bread" is your desire.

In this point, you see, I must speak to my own heart, and endeavour to minister the Word of God faithfully in case some of "the strangers within our gates" are prophets in Israel dwelling under the juniper tree (1 Kings 19 verse 4). God forbid that we should fall into the trap of turning the house of God into a "hailing station" for Christians, but let us remember that we might well "entertain angels unawares'" and let us pray that our visitors may look back to their time with us and "give thanks for our fellowship in the Gospel".

W.J. Seaton (1967)