The Face of the New Church

In my last blog, I wrote my belief about the contemporary church--that it is sick, perhaps dying.  This is because we are obsessed with institutional success and worldly reputation. 

When it comes to our mission, the church has just about compromised itself into irrelevance.  In our passion to reach the world, we have spent our time trying to copy its means, its methods, its likes, and dislikes.  We've been so busy trying to "reach the lost" that' we've forgotten why we’re reaching for the lost.  Instead of bringing people to Jesus, we've made it our business to bring Jesus to them--in a safe, sanitized version that wouldn't offend anyone.  When we see churches that have athletic programs and day-care centers that are bigger than the church, we really have to ask the question whether Christ died on the Cross to give the world athletic programs and day-care centers.  We've made a safe, comfortable niche for ourselves in a society that allows people to be comfortable with us,  satisfying ourselves that we are somehow of use to an increasingly pluralistic or secularized society. 

This isn't new.  The church has been at peace with the society which contains it for most of the last seventeen hundred years--and for the most part, we've been successful at it. The Charlotte Chamber of Commerce calls itself the "city of churches."  Our nation has a National Cathedral, but no official God.  Clergy open meetings of the Senate and House, and pray at inaugurations.  Clearly, we have nothing to fear from such pluralistic tolerance, and no one much fears us. 

The world is changing though, more than we are.  The world is looking at us, and discovering that Christianity doesn't go with perfect tolerance.  We actually have a stand against homosexuality, adultery, and other things. 

It was such intolerance of the secular society that made Christianity the first forbidden religion in the Roman Empire.  Today's universal culture, which mirrors Rome in so many ways, has no tolerance for intolerance, either.  They are rejecting the church, and the Christian religion as being intolerant and exclusive--which (in fact) we are. 

I don't want this to be downbeat, though.  In fact, I'm very upbeat about the church as a whole.  Jesus said about the church that "the gates of hell will not prevail against it."  It may be that the institutional church is dying, but the spiritual church will never die.  Rising out of the old church institutions is coming a new church--smaller, leaner,  less institutionally driven, but closer to what Jesus had in mind.  This new church does not focus on buildings or programs, but on serious disciples of Jesus. 

Faith is the rock on which the church is built--more than belief, but a living relationship with Jesus. The outer shell of worldly institutionalism may die, but the inner core of the committed will go on.

 This is not my idea, nor am I saying anything new.  It's coming from everywhere, from Fundamentalists, Evangelical, mainline Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians-- from black churches, white churches, contemporary churches, traditional churches, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Catholic--all across the board.  Arnold Toynbee said that one of the great lessons history teaches us is that where there is darkness, the stars come out.  As the old church fades, the lights of the new members of the new church will truly shine.

What will this new church be like?  Personally I don't think it will be "like" anything. It will be diverse in its views, practices, and traditions. But the new Christian church which survives will have certain characteristics.

1.       It will have a passionate faith in Christ. It is not enough to believe in Jesus--we must also have faith in Him--that is, Jesus must be our ultimate concern.  The new church will first of all seek to get closer to Jesus.  Any other pursuit is irrelevant.

2.       It will be a church filled with God's Spirit.  Its members will seek a relationship to God and seek His guidance in everything from the way they get up in the morning to their lifetime goals.

3.       It will seek out spiritual disciplines. Before we were called Christians, followers of Jesus were called People of the Way.  This referred to the Christian discipline of life--prayer, fasting, gathering, forgiveness, giving, and so forth.  The earliest writings of the church outside the Bible were about such things. The Methodists were called Methodists because they followed a lifestyle or method for doing everything.  The Puritans were Puritans because they sought pure lives.  Richard Foster said that spiritual disciplines are not important in the Christian life--they are the Christian life.  The new church must make the spiritual disciplines a real priority.

4.       It will show the love of God to the world. Roman society could not understand Christians. They did not understand why they adopted babies left to die of exposure, why they opposed abortion, why they believed in the equality of slaves and masters, why they evangelized single women, why they refused to go to gladiator games, or why they showed mercy to their enemies.    They did it because they loved. They were willing to die for that love, and they did.   The new church will have to love in the same way, not promoting its own importance, but quietly loving behind the scenes.  The new church will have to follow the old church in this.  We will still be fishing for men, as we do today--the difference is that the only bait we have will be ourselves.

5.       It will seek to live by a corporate rule of life.   The early church adopted rules of life, which were not about laws, but attitudes: charity, chastity, temperance, simplicity, tolerance, honesty, integrity, and forgiveness.  These were a corporate ethos that was strongly taught, and which all new believers were expected to practice.  The new church will need such attitudes in the increasingly secular society of the future.

As I said, there's nothing new about any of this.  It's just a matter of actually being sincere and dedicated followers of Christ.  What's going to be different in the future is that there will be little opportunity for the church to be anything else. We can no longer survive on our sterling reputation as one of the pillars of community life.  We will have go to back to being a small group of radicals in society, without political influence or society respect,  just living for Jesus and for Jesus alone.

I think this is the future of the Twenty-first century church.  And the gates of hell will not prevail against it.