Before I started this outreach, I thought my struggle would be with the secular gay community. No, that has not been the battle front. There is a gay civil war in the Church. Those that stand up for truth are few and ill-equipped; we have almost no support from the hierarchy. Meanwhile the gay-affirmative side controls entire parishes and LGBT ministries in almost every major archdiocese…

Joseph Sciambra is an angry man. He has plumbed the depths of the homosexual subculture. He has suffered for his involvement in promiscuity, pornography, drug abuse and self-abuse. He is still paying the price, in physical and psychological suffering. He has watched one friend after another die of AIDS. Now, having rediscovered his Catholic faith and reformed his life, he watches in frustration as Catholic priests encourage young men to explore the same path that nearly led him to ruin, and Catholic bishops refuse to intervene.
In his book Disordered [Amazon carries only the Kindle version; hard copies are available through the author’s web site], Sciambra tells how he became immersed in the reckless life of San Francisco’s notorious Castro district. In sometimes graphic detail he describes the degrading sexual practices that were accepted there — practices that were driven by emotional desperation. (This book will stay on a high shelf; I would not want impressionable young people to discover this sort of moral squalor.) In full confessional mode, Sciambra does not spare himself; he details his own sins. At the same time he manages to give the reader a strong sense of how horribly unhappy he was. This book vividly illustrates how serious sin leads to a life of desolation.
Finally this self-destructive young man reaches a point of no return. His health breaks down completely; he is near death, and not terribly interested in staying alive. But he calls out for help, his mother responds, and he begins the long road to physical recovery and moral reform.
For this reader, the spiritual conversion came just in time; I could not have stomached much more of the gut-wrenching tour through a world of joyless perversion and exploitation. But Sciambra’s story is not over by any means.
For one thing there is the story of the conversion itself. It is always fascinating to see how the “Hound of Heaven” chases down an errant soul. In Sciambra’s case, there is the gradual realization that for all of his life he has longed for an intimate relationship with a man he can admire and trust, until at last he encounters the God-Man who alone can fill that aching need.
But there is more to it, unfortunately. Sciambra cannot forget that when he first began to explore the homosexual life, he was encouraged by Catholic priests.
I will never forget how, during a failed dinner party intervention organized by my parents, the habitually happy priest they invited to set their wayward son on the right path — patted me on the back and said I was doing just fine; I belonged in the Castro with those who understood me.
This was not an isolated incident. On several occasions, priests to whom young Sciambra turned for counsel gave him the same sort of advice: to embrace his homosexuality, to continue doing the very things that were torturing and corrupting his soul.
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There is nothing inherently good or evil about church size. It is the coveting of size and status that is the wellspring of evil. The underlying deception is that godliness is a means of gain. But Paul’s solution is to see that godliness is in fact a means of gain (I Tim 6:5-6). The question is, what do you want to gain? A life of faithful, godly ministry is loaded with gains. You gain life, immortality, joy, peace, and closeness with God. There’s no prohibition against wanting those things. You’ll never covet access to God, no matter how much you want it. In the end, the solution to coveting is wanting the right thing.

You shall not covet… — Deuteronomy 5:21
“Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor” (Ecc 4:4). Really? All toil? All skill? All driven by envy?
What would that say about your ministry? It would say that your ministry (yes, yours), is in your own human, fallen way, driven by envy. You want reputation, or accolades, platform, or influence. In other words, you want the same things everyone wants, and ministry is a tool to get it. That doesn’t mean godly, Christ-honoring ministry is impossible, through God’s grace. It means that those engaged in Christian ministry (which, at some level, includes every genuine Christian) need to be aware of our covetousness and the direction it will try to see us.
The phenomenon of the megachurch serves as a useful foil in exposing the particular bent of our covetousness. The proliferation of megachurches in America, combined with the advent of the digital age has brought the issue of covetous comparison much closer than ever before. The country pastor can no longer pretend that he is the only voice that can be heard for miles around.
The country minister’s experience is much like living in a remote and forgotten suburb that is going through rapid gentrification. It is not as if there are suddenly more wealthy people everywhere, while your standard of living has remained flat. It is rather that you feel a heightened proximity to large amounts of wealth. Similarly, it is not as if there are suddenly more godly, brilliant, or charismatic Christian leaders in the world. It’s simply that the celebrities feel much closer.
Our visceral response to the megachurch kicks out in two directions.
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God’s people must take care in how they worship God, for he has said, “Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified” (Lev 10:3). May we be found faithful.

Communicators, especially those within the evangelical community, love to use alliteration. It can be a helpful literary tool for impressing the points of a sermon or other spoken or written work upon the minds of an audience. Then there are those times when forcing alliteration leads to some sticky messaging. Such is the case with the phrase “worship and the Word,” often used by church leaders to cleverly describe a gathering that contains music and preaching—“Join us this Sunday for worship and the Word!”
At least two things are problematic with this description. First, it creates a false dichotomy by equating worship with music, as if preaching is not worship. Second, such distinctions either elevate these items over all other elements of worship, or worse, limit worship to music and preaching, to the neglect of other biblically-ordained worship activities.
An appropriate understanding of these terms, however, does not create a dichotomy, but rather, unites worship with the Word. This union recognizes that the Word of God should regulate, provide, and inform the elements, shape, and substance of corporate worship.
The Word Regulates the Elements of Worship
The first step in exploring the marriage between worship and the Word is to determine exactly what elements should be included in corporate worship, which raises the question of whether God cares what we include or not. All can agree that what God forbids should be excluded, but much debate exists between including only that which God has commanded (the regulative principle of worship)1 or allowing anything that God has not forbidden (the normative principle of worship). Several arguments can be made for why the regulative principle is the most biblical conclusion. One such argument is found in the outcome of Nadab’s and Abihu’s attempts at worship in Leviticus 10:1–2:
Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord.
Previously, God had both initiated worship and commanded the instructions for worship, to which God’s people were obedient (Lev 8:1–4); yet here we see Nadab and Abihu initiating worship apart from God’s command. The error was not simply that they were worshiping in a way that God had forbidden, but that they had offered “unauthorized” worship, “which he had not commanded them.” In our worship, then, we should submit to only that which God has commanded or shown in his Word.
Because Christ’s sacrificial death fulfills old covenant worship practices, we specifically look to the New Testament for instruction in corporate worship. Here we find seven elements of worship:

Reading of Scripture (1 Tim 4:13)
Preaching (2 Tim 4:2)
Singing (Col 3:16; Eph 5:19)
Prayer (Matt 21:13; 1 Tim 2:1)
Giving (1 Cor 16:2)
Baptism (Matt 28:19)
The Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:26)

While we may have noble reasons for including other elements in worship, the best way we can be faithful to worshiping God as he desires is to limit our worship to that which he has revealed to us in his Word.
The Word Provides the Shape of Worship
Once we have determined what should be included in worship, we are then left with the task of putting the service in a particular order. Unlike the elements above, we do not have a biblically prescribed liturgy. However, we are instructed that our worship be orderly (1 Cor 14:26–40), and Scripture does reveal to us a common pattern, seen at a macro level (the whole of Scripture) and at micro levels (specific passages throughout Scripture). Consider Israel’s first service of worship:
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