Is the church meeting for non-believers

There is a trend today to bring in non believers into the church to evangelise them. Consequently, there are a significant percentage of non-believers in the Sunday worship services.

Let's evaluate this trend by looking at some of the common arguments:

• They may hear the gospel message and be saved
• They will hear the bible being taught and might learn something 
• We should never drive non-believer away and should make the church meeting inclusive

Let's go back to basics. What is the purpose of the Sunday worship service?  Is it for believers to meet together to sing songs of praise as a body, listen to the word, and encourage one other?  Or is it for the purpose of evangelism?  I would contend that it is the former. The church worship meeting is primarily for believers.

We were called to go out to all the nations and make disciples. We were not call to bring them into the church and pass that responsibility to the church.

So do we ask non-believers to leave?  No, I don't think that is right either. In the New Testament church, there were some non-Christians in the church meetings as can be seen in some of Paul's writings.
However I do not believe that a focus on bringing in non-believers into the church worship is healthy.

Is God pleased with such worship?  As long as the non believers have rejected Jesus Christ, their worship is hypocrisy. How can you worship God and at the same time refuse to receive the Lord Jesus Christ?  They are heaping sin upon sin when they sing praises to God.

The church will have to cater for the non believers, for example, dumb down the sermon or focus on an evangelistic message instead of teaching believers. I've seen this happen in many churches with the reason given that the sermon is too difficult for non-believers to understand. The result is that believers lose out on the teachings from the pulpit.

After a while, the non-believers will start talking the talk i.e. their conversation will mimic a Christian's conversation. Words like 'Praise the Lord', 'Let's pray about this' will be adopted by the non believer unconsciously.  They will even pray in a group prayer meeting.  There will be little to distinguish them from the believers they mix with.  One University worker told me that he cannot tell if they are Christians or not just by listening to them talk.

What is better, IMO, is for the church to organise separate meetings for 'seekers', if I may use this term. Then the meeting can be focused on the seekers - sermons can be evangelistic week after week, testimonies given in meetings, etc. This way, the morning worship meetings can be devoted to worship by believers and teaching from the word of God. It won't end up being a 'seeker sensitive' church where things are dumbed down to the lowest denominator.

But even better still, get out of the nice comfy church building and start sharing the gospel. That's what Jesus said 'Go..'