Church Rules

How many of you have heard, "You need to wear your best clothes on Sunday morning?" I know growing up a Southern Baptist I heard that all the time. In fact, if I didn't wear a nice skirt on Sunday morning to church then I was pretty much out of place. Somehow though on Sunday and Wednesday nights I could wear jeans. I guess the rule only mattered for that Sunday morning.

But I wonder how that rules really came to be. I mean did we take God telling the Israelites to bring their best offering as today being wear your best clothes to church? In my Sunday school class back then I remember our youth pastor trying to hound into us to treat outsiders as family. He would use the illustration of a guy coming in with dirty overalls to church and ask us what we would do. The answer we always gave was to welcome that person in and that it shouldn't matter what he was wearing. But our Sunday morning dress code didn't say that at all.

While I was looking at some blogs, I saw Tim Stevens and this postcard thing they are doing with their church to let people share their story. You can check it out here.

But I happened upon something very interesting. I saw this postcard. And then I thought about my home church. What if a person like this pulled into the parking lot on a Sunday morning and made the statement, "God, if one person goes by with jeans on I'm going in." They sure would be waiting a long time cause I doubt anyone would have been wearing jeans.

I feel like my attitude has kind of changed about church over the years. Back in my youth days my thought was church is here to replenish me and other sound believers, but now it's also a place where a non-believer may happen to come in and will get his/her 1st impression of church and Christians. It is my thinking that nothing else really matters except bringing lost to Christ. What can we do to make non-believers know we won't judge them and to show them our only aim is about helping them find Jesus. Do we really want our dress code to be what holds them back? Or even if they came in with their jeans on, do we want them feeling self conscious about what they are wearing instead of instantly feeling loved and at home? I love how this person felt. He/She was a paper plate transformed into fine china. All because someone walked past the car with jeans on. Kind of crazy.