When I began my career as an architect, I was employed with a firm which designed a vast number of churches. At this time (mid-1980s), the philosophy in church design was to create facilities which through amenities would attract new worshipers.
Fast-forwarding to today, this concept has been replaced. Now what we are seeing is an attempt to attract new worshipers through the lowering of time-honored church standards, namely dress.
By encouraging people to “come as they are,” we are threatening the reverence of Sunday morning worship. Blue jeans, short pants, T-shirts, tank tops, halter tops and ball caps might be comfortable. However, if someone attended our daughter’s wedding or a loved one’s funeral dressed this way, we would be appalled. But yet we find this lack of proper dress acceptable and actually encouraged in worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ.
For those who defend this lowering of standards, I would like to offer the following. Dressing respectful for church allows one to offer an automatic and effortless witness to the world. Whether you are eating after church, walking to your car or pumping gas, everyone seeing you knows that you have attended church and worshiped the Lord.
And for a second, these people might question where they stand with God and why they have failed to attend worship.
Jim Norton
Huntsville, Ala.
Share with others: