An article about what to wear to church is currently doing the rounds. If you want to think through what to wear to church in more detail then you can read this which Steve Kneale has reposted here.
To be honest, the arguments advanced in the TGC article are pretty thin. There’s the good old fashioned argument about “What would you wear to see the King?” approach. I’m surprised that a US audience aren’t thinking more about what to wear to see the President but maybe that line of argument works less well post Zelenski’s visit to the White House. After all, that showed that context mattered. You don’t dress up in fancy suits when your country is at war. The “see the King” line falls down in three ways
- We don’t need to go to church to see God. The church building should not be confused with Temple or palace.
- We are invited and adopted into his family and in his presence all the time not as guests at an occasional garden party.
- The clothes we need are robes of righteousness not posh frocks and suits.
The other thing to remember is that “dressing up for church” had so many cultural connotations. What it means for a Nigerian to dress up is very different to a middle class English person. In reality, the old suit and tie routine meant that middle class men wore their everyday work clothes and working class people were expected to comply with that. Maybe it worked as a leveller.
However, I’m not that much interested in the debate about what not to wear. You see it just isn’t an issue in most church contexts I know. My dad will wear his suit to church and he will stick with that when he visits us – it’s what he is comfortable wearing at church, noone is bothered by that. Mind you, if/when I wear a suit,which I have for specific occasions, people notice and it is a distraction because they are not used to the elders suiting up. Generally though people aren’t fussed about what to wear
And this is really my issue with the TGC article. It reminds me of attending a certain Christian event a few years back and listening to a preacher labour the point about worship songs v hymns to 4000 people. They were mythering about the worship wars, battles that churches were facing and faced and resolved 30 years ago.
So my concern is more this. If you are going to serve the church through conferences, events, magazines or blogs, then you need to stay in touch and actually address the issues the churches are facing. In the same way, pastors/elders and preachers in the local church need to make sure that their application is relevant.
Faithroots 