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. 

Sheep Feeding

I came across a quote from C S Lewis' book Letters to Malcolm in Richard Foster's book on prayer  "Jesus told Peter,  'feed my sheep,' not 'try experiments on my lab rats.'"

How true!  Pastors often forget what a pastor is. Basically, we are keepers of the sheep. 

We are called to feed them, care for them,  help them.  We are not called upon to drive them like a team of horses,  or experiment on them like guinea pigs, or to use them as fertilizer by a leader to grow a church.  We are called to care for the sheep God has given us.

Pastors frequently come down with the disease of "holy ambition."  I say "holy" because that is how Christians leader typically excuse their own ambition.  If we want a bigger church,  we can justify it as winning the lost.  If we want a big career with lots of followers, we can justify it as utilizing our gifts.  If we want to remake the church as images of our own egocentric vision, we are just fulfilling our call.  It's easy for us assume that the people we serve exist for the purpose of serving our purposes and not theirs.

But Jesus didn't call us to feed sheep.  To me, that means two things.

First we are called to acknowledge that the people we serve in our churches are  our flock, and not our servants.

Suppose you had a dog, but you decided you wanted cat.  You could staple whiskers on him, stick him in a tree, and teach him to say "meow"  it would not be a cat. It is by nature a dog. 

No amount of training will make lambs into lions.  Only God can do that.

Sheep do not have a purpose in life beyond being sheep. They will give their wool, but they are not treated like cattle or hunting dogs.  Most of all to be left alone in green pastures and still waters.

But what about the Great Commission (some will say)?  Jesus called us to go into the world and make disciples--that is, sheep of Jesus.  The Great Commission is not a call to build our own kingdoms, but to introduce people to the true, good Shepherd.  Church leaders will seldom lay down their lives for the sheep, but often leave the flock at the first hint that things may not go their way.  But the Good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep, whether or not they do what He says.  He doesn't leave because some bigger flock is calling. 

Second, our job is to feed them that means to preach, teach, minister, and visit for their benefit, not for the benefit of others.

If we want to know what sheep need, look in the Bible.    In  Psalm 23, one of God's sheep lets us know what the Good Shepherd ought to do.

• I shall not want--The shepherd has my needs and wants in mind.  I have security,  knowing that the shepherd is doing his best to provide my needs and wants.

• He leads me in green pastures and still waters--the food he gives is pleasant and easily accessible. I don't have to work hard to get it.  He lays it out clearly and easily.
• He leads me in righteousness--He keeps me from straying the wrong way.  He doesn't let me go to far up the mountain, so I  lose my fooding, nor does he let me stray into the valley, where I can be devoured, but he keeps me on the straight an d narrow.  Step by step, he shows me the right path through life.
• He keeps me from fear--when I am in scary places in life,  He walks with me.  He doesn't take the danger from me, but he defends me and comforts me when I am in danger.
• He assists in my healing.  Anointing oil is medicine. Is presence is medicine to me,  and comforts me in trouble. 

• He uses his rod and staff.  He's not always gentle, but if I need it, he can give me a lashing.  More often, though he draws me back from danger, not drives me away.

• He stands with me in danger.  He recognizes that I live in a dangerous world, but he teaches me not to be afraid.  Instead, gives me valuable advice to sustain me in the rough patches of life.
• He takes me to my final destination. Nothing about the journey matters if I wind up in the wrong place.  Thanks to the Shepherd, I am going to make it home safely.  That’s what shepherds are for.

Feed God's sheep. Don't drive them, don't beat them, don't use them. Let God take care of them, they way He takes care of you. 

We don't "do" church

Some time ago a church sign caught my attention.  The sign announced a new sermon series entitled  "Why do church anyway?"

I understood what the preacher was driving at.  We often go through the motions of faith without thinking.  We come to church, sing songs,  go to Bible studies, all without a clear end in mind, because those are things seem to be expected.  It certainly makes sense that we should think how we should do things at church.

But do we "do" church?  Really?

Church is not a verb. It is a noun.  It's not something we do; it's something we are.

The church is the visible Body of Christ on earth. It is not a voluntary association like the Lions club or the Rotary or even the Republican party.  It does not exist a purpose, any more than our families exist for a purpose.  It exists because it exists,  just like you and I.

Suppose we substitute a person's name in the sign instead of the word church?  Suppose we say why "do" Mary,  or why "do" John?  The only time  "do" in used in such a context is crude slang for killing or having sex.  Either way, they become the object of either anger or desire.  To think of the church in such utilitarian terms is to depersonalize it, to deny its essence,  the very essence which makes it the church. 

We don't "do" family--we are a family.  We don't "do" church, either--we are the church, existing as a community because God put us here.  We are related by blood--not our own, but Christ's, and that means we are responsible for and beholden to each other in a bond that is greater than that of our own flesh. We are fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers in the Lord,  called to love each other in Him.

The church is not a means to an end, not even a good end like evangelism or social justice.  It  is an organism, not an organization.  Organizations exists for a purpose.  Organisms exist because God made them for His own glory. 

The problem with the modern church is that it thinks it must  have a reason to exist.  If we applied the same utilitarian standard to infants,  the elderly, or the handicapped, it would be horrific.   If the bonds between brothers and sisters, fathers and sons,  were only important if they furthered some greater  purpose,   then the world would be a horrible, loveless place.  So why should the bonds between Christians only exists for a greater purpose?  Why can't a church just be?

The modern church, both in its traditional and  contemporary forms, has been often guilty of treating its members as mere utilities.  Contemporary church leaders in their zeal to win the lost, have often seen their members as unimportant in themselves  unless they further the cause of church growth and evangelism.  The preferences and comfort of older members are often cast aside in favor of the new, the experimental, and the innovative.  We spiritualize the abandonment of the old, calling it "pruning the dead wood" or of "throwing out the old wineskins."   C S Lewis once commented that Jesus told Peter "Feed my sheep" not  "perform experiments on my lab rats." 

The traditional church is no better, in fact it may be far worse.  Traditionalist want nothing to do with  "do" church in a differently, confusing outward form with inward conviction,  freezing the church in whatever era they feel most comfortable, allowing church ritual and expression to become increasingly irrelevant and archaic.   They, too, favor the members who can best maintain our institutions,  pay for our preachers, and bring prestige to our tarnished denominational names.

The church isn't something we do.  It's a family--a fellowship of men, women, and children in which everyone is loved, everyone is important and everyone is cherished.  When the church is viewed as a means to an end, it ceases to be a family and becomes an adornment to our egos.  It becomes  a way for pastors to prove their superior worth by performance instead of by  humbly accepting God's gift of grace. 

With all due respect and to Rick Warren (who I really do admire), I've seen the "purpose-driven church," and frankly it sickens me. I would rather have a church which goes nowhere but loves everyone than one where its members are merely means to an end. 

If there is an a way to "do" church then it should be with love, and grace,  praising God and being in favor with one another. 

What;s Right With the Church, What's Wrong With It, and How to Fix it

The other night, I attended a banquet where the featured speaker was a well known local radio personality,  who is on a one-man crusade against the organized church.  Although a committed Christian,  he has been so burned by the organized church that he rails against it on a regular, weekly basis. 

After the banquet we fell into a long conversation.  To my surprise I found myself agreeing with most  of what he had to say.  Although my experiences have been slightly more positive than his,  much of what he says is true.  Christ's church has ceased to be an organism and has become an organization,  with all the political and material demands of being an organization.  The church as it exists on earth has to deal with money,  power,  and appearances, which means it is continually falling into corruption, greed, and power politics.  It has become for many a bureaucracy of the soul,  a Department of Motor Vehicles with better music.

If you are reading this and saying "Yes, that is true for the church down the street, but not mine." Think it over.  Who says that a small church cannot be just as impersonal and  vain as a big one, or that a church which flees the trappings of traditional spirituality cannot get caught up in the same machinations that sapped the life out of the medieval church? Do we really think Presbyterians or Baptists are so pure of heart that they cannot forget why they rebelled against the Catholics in the first place, and become like them in Spirit if not in appearance?  American churches often remind me of soccer clubs in other countries,  voluntary organizations which seem to exist to compete against other organizations for bragging rights to the city.  For the truly lost and truly hurting, the church is often just one more building on the street, between the bar and the Walmart.

But for all its faults, the church has got a lot of things right, and we need to acknowledge it.  

First of all it has God on its side.  The church is still the only organization dedicated to getting out God's Word and leading people into a relationship to Him.  Can you think of another organization capable of leading people to a better life?   I can't.  Winston Churchill once said that democracy was a very bad form of government, but that all the others are so much worse.  The same can be said of the church.  Education,  entertainment,  publishing, mass media and all the other institutions that form modern society are infinitely worse, and every bit as hypocritical.   How does  government (for example) have the gall to say "we're here to help you," when everyone knows they are here to buy votes, so our elected officials can have great influence and get fat pensions.  Or how does the news  media--any news media-- have the nerve to say they are here just to report the news objectively? 

No, all of human society is corrupt, to one degree or another.  Where there is the potential for corruption, corrupt people will go. But that is a long way from saying that churches are only here to be corrupt.   A horse has a purpose and it has flies, but it does not exist for the flies.  Churches are sinful and corrupt as well, but they do not exist for that purpose alone.  When we scrape away the dirt of the world,   underneath there are still congregations of ordinary people who love God and one another, read the Bible,  and do the best they can to live clean in a dirty world.  Like a dirty child, underneath that disheveled mess  is something  beautiful and worthy of praise,  which the world cannot fully drive way, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against.

But my friend is right.  The church is deeply flawed, mainly because if has forgotten it's initial purpose.  What went wrong with the church is that it forgets that we are not of this world, and  relies on worldly programs rather than heavenly realities.  We lose our focus on heaven and  look after earthly things. Then we become obsessed with keeping our institutions running.  We pay big money for things we do not need, in order to put  on an attractive and prosperous image.  Then we must maintain that image at all cost, and we lose our passion for God.  We are a real Body of Christ though--we just act phony.

Look at the architecture of a typical church.  They are designed to create the illusion of  transcendence--high ceilings,  high pulpits,  and stained glass windows that are intended to make us look holy and grand.  If a person  dressed with such grandiloquence, we would call them pompous.  Modern churches who deliberately avoid such "churchy" designs do the same thing with  lighting tricks,  video screens and smoke machines.  All this is intended to fool the eye, and make it seem as if God were there, whether He is or not.  When you think about it, it isn't much different from a witch doctor putting on a wicker mask and dancing around a village.  We pretend to a greater intimacy with God than we actually have.

Ultimately, there is no cure for the institutional church. Those who try, wind up recreating it in some other form somewhere else.  There is, however a cure for those who are inside it.

First, we  can stop being phonies.  Let us admit that we do not have all the answers, that we are still looking for God's will, struggling to live out our faith as best we can.  There is no point in condemning our leaders, just as there is no point in following them blindly.   Let's all just be honest and open to the Spirit.  We don't know all there is to know about God, but we can seek Him.

 Second, we can quit substituting programs, which do not work, for relationships.  Jesus taught his disciples to love the lost, not develop marketing strategies. 

Third, we can love one another.  Jesus told Peter to tend His sheep, not fleece them.  Let's care more about one another as people rather than what they can do for the church.  Then maybe we'll actually start looking and acting like Jesus' church.

A Church or a Chapel?

The word “chapel” was believed to have derived from a holy relic—the capa or capella of St. Martin of Tours.  This relic was carried into battle by the French army as a token of God’s favor. The priests who carried the relic were called capellians, or in modern vernacular chaplains. Later, other holy relics went with them.  When these totems were not employed in battle, they were stored in a reliquary called a chapel.  In time, these reliquaries became the main place of worship for the noble families.  The keepers of the reliquaries performed religious services for the benefit of the nobles who owned the buildings, doing their weddings, baptisms, funerals, and other services.  In time these priests, called chaplains, became very powerful.

Chapels, were not churches, though.  In fact, in many ways they were the opposite of churches.  The Greek word for church—ecclesia-- means a group of people called by God to meet together, to seek Him and do His will.  God brought His people together without regard to race, status, education or background.  In the early church, anyone who wanted to could come together and seek Him.  Farmers and lords met together on equal footing.  Not only that, but they also had an equal calling to do God’s work. The early church was called the Body of Christ, an organic structure in which God distributed His spiritual gifts and divine personality,  for the purpose of furthering His kingdom on earth.   The people who met together were not related by blood or nationality, but by faith and love. It was an army, not a hospital, dedicated to doing and finding His will together.

Chapels in the medieval context were not for all people—but for the private use of the royal family. The blessings of the chapel were not for everyone, but only for those who the royal family said ought to be blessed.  Power and authority did not flow from God to the king, but from the king to God, or at least to the representative of God’s house who he commanded to be there.  The chapel existed for the king’s benefit. The church exists for God’s.

Now for the big question--which churches are churches and which are chapels?

Looking at the religious landscape there are churches on every corner==many having only one or two families attending.  Most of their people have the same last names.  Many have less than seventy attendees on a Sunday. 

Big churches are not really that different. They may have more last names on the role, but there are usually a few influential leaders who have real power.  Often, it is a single, lordly pastor who controls everything.  On paper, they exist for lofty goals—winning people to Christ, transforming lives, feeding the poor and the hungry, but practically they are institutions whose real goal is to stay alive as institutions, supporting big preachers, big programs, and a big organization, that must constantly be fed with people and money to stay alive for the purpose of being whatever the lords of the church want it to be. 

Before we can decide whether a church is a chapel or a church, we need to ask what conditions are necessary for a church to be a chapel.

Before a church can be a chapel, there has to be the assumption among its leaders that there is nothing unique about it. If we think we are the only true church in town, it is harder to be a chapel. Our consciences would convict us that we had better open our doors for anyone, because there is no one else who will.  However, if we think we are just one of a hundred other churches, who have no unique message, then we can assume that some other group will take care of the rest.  Like the segregated churches of the old South, we can assume that someone else will minister to the inferior people, and we do not have to do it.

Second, we have to assume that the reason our church exists is for our comfort.  It exists for the same reason our living room exists, for a place we can relax, be ourselves and do whatever we want.  Our living room is not for refugees or for the homeless, but so that we can feel comfortable at home.  We can say “this is mine, and I’ll do whatever I want here.”  Only if we think of the church as our own private property can we think that we can get away with keeping outsiders out.

Third, we have to assume we should have nothing to do with the rest of the world except to impose our will upon it. When St. Francis of Assisi had the audacity to go preach to the Muslims instead of killing them during the height of the Crusades, the church in general was highly displeased.  The only time the medieval priests went forth was to wage war on their neighbors. Then they would trot out their holy relics as a sign that God was on their side, not the enemy’s.  Others were the enemy, not the mission field.  It is not much different from churches who march against abortion and gays, but otherwise stay within their walls.

Finally, in order for a church to be a chapel, the flow of power has to be from the church to God, not God to the church.  In other words, there must be a higher source of power in the church than the Bible and the Holy Spirit.  In a chapel, there is always a king or noblemen who wields the real power, while the other peons sit back and let them. 

The church is God’s instrument for doing His will on the earth. The chapel is an instrument for legitimizing our work in the eyes of God.  Maybe we need to ask whether the place where we worship is a church or a chapel. 

Four Visions of the Church

The vision of the Christian Church is to establish an ancient dream in a modern world.  Jesus said   "Upon this rock, I will build my church."
Two thousand years later, we cannot even agree on the shape of  the edifice that was supposed to go on that rock.  Will it have stained glass windows and arches?  Will it be a plain wooden box? Will it even have walls?  There has never been a definitive answer to that question.  We can only speak of a variety of answers--thousands of permutations and designs. 
I believe there are four basic church shapes,  based upon the intentions of the people who dwell in them. The true church lies somewhere in between these four shapes.
These shapes are a continuum between two intersecting axes--the cultural and missional axis.  The cultural axis is how they see themselves. The missional axis is how they see their mission to the world.  They represent four separate visions of the church's place in society.

Surfing the Wave of the Spirit

Joy and I were having a conversation the other day about churches and how they grow. This is a bad time for growing a church. For at least the past ten years, church attendance has been falling at a rate of about one percent per year. It is a time of great opposition and disinterest in religion, especially in Christianity. That, coupled with the recession has hurt all churches, especially ours.


What makes a church grow spiritually? I know those things which keep it healthy--love, the preaching of the Word, sound teaching, etc. These make a church more likely to grow. But there are plenty of loving churches where the Gospel is preached and growth is slow or nonexistent.

There are nonspiritual reasons for growth, too. Churches on main roads generally grow faster than churches on back roads. When a church reflects the needs and desires of a particular portion of the contemporary culture, it will grow, too. (There is really no one monolithic "culture" in our world, just wide collections of many cultures, leaving room for almost every kind of church to find a niche.) But this can happen whether or not God is in it, I'm afraid. Growth or lack of it is no sign of godliness.

There are other factors which are also cited for the growth of churches--relevance, purity, concern for the lost, faithfulness, and many others. All of these may have an impact on the growth of the church but none of them in themselves means that the church will grow.

Look at the Christian landscape today. How many churches are growing--I mean really growing? How many are reaching the lost in any large numbers? What we see are many congregations, offering many different techniques and styles, mostly without significant success.

Now think about the churches that are still growing today. They can be high or low church, contemporary or traditional--they can be very, very different both in practice and theology. But there is one thing they all have in common--a sense that the Holy Spirit is there.

The degree to which a church is likely to grow depends upon the expectation of the people that the Holy Spirit will move in their midst. There have to be signs and wonders, not necessarily in the Charismatic sense, but certainly in the spiritual sense. People have to see that something supernatural is going on.

People are drawn to Christ by the moving of the Holy Spirit, not by preaching or praying alone. We must ask of God, and we must see an answer. In growing churches, there is a full expectation that God will make Himself known. They come to church expectantly, not knowing what He will do next, but convinced that He will do something.

People often use sports illustrations to explain the church. Let me suggest a new one --surfing. Churches grow when they catch the wave of the Holy Spirit.

The church is not built on our own effort. It is not a race, where the strong and the fit succeed. It is not a game requiring strength and ingenuity. Church growth is an enterprise powered by the overwhelming power of God. Its force is irresistable, unstoppable, and inevitable. Our task, if we are serious about growing churches, is to look for that power and ride it. It involves less planning and less study of the world, and more planning and more study of God's intentions and actions today. We need to catch the waves. We cannot create them.

The first wave started at Pentecost. On that one day, three thousand people were added to the church. The disciples rode that wave for some time Another wave came when the church was under persecution, through the underground movement of evangelism. All through the history of the church - the Prostestant revolution, the missionary movements, the great awakenings, the holiness, pentecostal, and Charismatic movement, the Wesleyan revivals, the Moody revivals, the crusades of Billy Sunday and Billy Graham, the preaching of Jonathan Edwards, and so forth, we see the Spirit moving in waves and eddies. None of these movements last forever, any more than waves on the sea last forever. Every movement of the Spirit in the church inevitably is brought down by pride, jealousy, and heresy. The waves may crash; the tide remains. God continues to move in the church, using different people and different names. Even so, the church goes on.

As far as we are concerned today we have two choices, we can catch the wave, or miss it. We can ride the Spirit, or be knocked down by it.

If we are to grow in this generation, we must not look to restore the waves that have gone on. Nor should we try to create a wave, molded to what we think it should be. We should look, neither to the present, past, or future, but to God. We should seek Him out, to try and discern where He is working His signs and wonders today. I don't mean finding the next trend or fad, but we should genuinely seek what the move of God is. We are like surfers in the water, looking for the next big swell. When we find it, then we ride it, allowing the power of the wave to carry us forward.

What will the next wave be and when will it come? I have no idea. It is not for us to know really. But we can seek God with all our hearts, and stand eagerly before Him. If we seek to be moved by God, God will move us, and the next wave of the Spirit will come here as well.