“I beg you: Show me Your glory.”
Exodus 33:18.

The New Testament does not prescribe a specific model of church governance. Faithful Christians have organized themselves in many ways. It doesn’t dictate architectural styles for buildings. Some are simple and utilitarian, some are overly ornate and superfluous. There were no programs mentioned in the Acts, nor were meetings scheduled in Galatians. But there were commands and burdens that these people obeyed and bore.
Buildings for churches didn’t exist for more than 300 years. The early church did not market their meetings. They didn’t offer classes to order the mess of lives lived in sin. But what they did was to know God and to learn to live in his presence and to see him as great and holy and glorious.
Churches today look at the biggest, the fastest growing (the most alluring) churches in the land and even the smallest churches lust to be big.
The early church (as evidenced in the New Testament) was about Christ’s glory, and his exaltation of the glory of the Father, by means of the Holy Spirit — and that focus was the power and the light of the churches, of the people of God.
Churches today (not all, but most) have become service centers. They have become focused on people, rather than being people focused on God. You cannot imagine the disappointment I experienced when I began serving as a pastor in 1977. The tedium, the pointless meetings, the endless vacuity of what was to be done, and most disappointing, the view widely held, of God as One who needed them, their money and their time. A view of God as One who was lucky to have them show up an hour a week. The view of God as One who was there to make them happy, or content, or wealthy. But with few exceptions, there was not a passion for God, neither in the local church nor in any church or gathering. There was a toleration for God. As though his presence was a complication and an inconvenience to the plans and contrivances of people.
But the Scriptural faith first shows Jesus Christ overcome with passion for the glory of the Father (see in Old Testament and New). His entire life was focused on glorifying God. And those who followed Christ saw Christ as glorious, glorious in the extreme. They knew him and were overwhelmed by his Majesty, to the point where they would give their very lives for him.
Many churches today would complain about extending worship by 5 minutes; what would they say if they were to give up their very lives for the One they worshiped?
There is a disconnect in American evangelicalism between the faith that is witnessed in the Bible and the faith that is experienced in the worshiping community. This gap must be closed.
Who God is must drive all that is done. What God has said must fill our worship experience. What God has commanded must be heard and paid attention to by those who dare to call themselves believers. For God is not our guru, he is not merely our helper and provider, he is the Glorious God, deserving of all praise in life and in worship. There is nothing that the church should do that is not glorious. To say it positively: All that the church must do, and nothing else, must be glorious in praise to God alone.

For almost three years I have been working on a book on the glory of God. This began as a study to balance out a painful but eventually liberating work on the sin nature in the life of the believer, called Sin Less.
But as the study of God’s glory grew there was an expansion and solidification of some deeply held commitments in my heart that the church today has largely lost focus of the glory of God in what we do and in why we exist. As a pastor, much of what I did was to run programs and to manage the calendar and money. My call to lift high the majesty and glory of God was overwhelmed by the sea of inconsequential and wholly unnecessary activity.
The study on glory and a five year hiatus from daily pastoral responsibilities watered my thirsty soul and renewed my longing to engage in something far more significant than what I had been spending my life doing for more nearly 30 years.
The study of glory put in sharp focus why the church exists and what it ought to be about. Reading and contemplating glory simplified a view of ministry and it created limits to what ought to be central in the life of local worshipping church and what should be left undone.
This is not intended to criticize others nor is this wanting to impugn their motives or sincerity. But the glory of God is so overshadowing that it rises to challenge anything of lesser importance and has become the driving passion for ministry and the compelling longing to see how it might be recovered as the non-negotiable essential of Church life. The recovery of glory in the church is all the more important in the day when marketing, not evangelism, entertainment not discipleship, and self-help not growth unto spiritual maturity are what draw the time and talent of God’s people away from God’s glory.
Glory is not just a composite of church life. It is the life of the church.
Glory is not just a subject. It is the subject of all we do. If an action, a worship service, a mission, a class is not about the glory of God in some important way, the church has lost its purpose.
The one thing that the church is equipped to do, shown how to do it, and given the example of The Lord Jesus Christ and taught by apostles to do well and extensively, is to glorify God. Yet in our day we scarcely know what that even means.
It is time to focus on glory.