A Prayer for A New Church

I claim no divine revelation.   I am just observing of the times in which I live.    You may see it differently--that's your privilege.

The way I see it, the church as the institution I have known for fifty years is dying--or at least very, very sick. It would take a miracle to restore the American Protestant church to the health it once enjoyed.

What is the reason for its ailment?  Secularism--not the secularism of the general society (that is expected) but the secular spirit within the church.  The church  has traded its soul for secular importance. 

 The Christian church was born in the fire of the Spirit, launched by belivers who committed their whole hearts to  Christ,  and copied Him all things.  It was a disciplined network of disciples, dedicated to following his ways.  

Somewhere along the way,  it changed.  It lost its taste for the sacred.  Instead, the church reinvented itself, seeing itself as a worldly institution, seeking its reputation in the world as part of the power elite.  Instead of following Jesus' mandate to bless the weak, and the poor, and the hurting,  we became a tool of the rich, the powerful and the self-important.  

The seeds of the church's malaise was with us even in the time of the disciples.  While they followed Jesus, they badgered him wanting to know which of them would be the greatest.  Jesus answered that greatness and earth and greatness in the Kingdom are not the same. 

We're still asking this question.   We concern ourselves with who has the biggest sanctuaries, the nicest choirs,  and loudest praise bands and the hippest members.

For the first three hundred years, the church seemed more focused on the Spirit.  We were a persecuted minority. No one in their right mind would want to join a church  unless they believed in Jesus and wanted to find Him.

Then the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, and everything changed.  Suddenly, anyone who wanted the emperor's ear became a Christian as a way of currying favor with the emperor. The power hungry, the glory seeking, and the opportunists flocked to the church. In no time,  the church  became just another path to success.

For the last seventeen hundred years, not only has the  church been a visible presence in the world, but the world has been a visible presence in the church--with the rich and famous on the front pew.  The church built mighty cathedrals in every town,  took part in inaugurations and coronations, had the invocations at sporting events,  and  generally became the safe, civil religion of Western society.  As a result, the fires of the Spirit burned, sharing  its space with the ambitions of the powerful.

The church is not evil, though. It has done many good things in the world.  It has evangelized much of the world,  build hospitals, schools,  universities, etc.  But  there has always been another side.  Church leaders lust for societal respectability, to be the biggest church in town, have the most expensive sanctuary,  the most important members,  the most professional choirs, and have the most eloquent preachers.  Our desire to be important requires big budgets.  In order to impress the world, we must be the world. We have adopted the worldly standards of success.   

Pride has been the downfall of the mainline church--pride in their social status and cultural suavity. They enjoyed being the big churches downtown for.  They feed the poor as long as they don't have to give up anything to do it. They share the gospel, as long as it doesn't offend.  They never saw themselves as compromised, but as sophisticates.  They became what they are supposed to be transforming. The mainline churches and denominations which dominated America today are the sideline,  abandoned  and irrelevant.

Ambition will be the downfall of the megachurches, too--the temporary successors to the mainline.  They are not bound by the traditions of the past. Instead, they are create  new power structures, no less proud or secular.   Their desire to reach a younger generation for Christ is being superseded by  the pursuit of budgets and numbers.

 The world is changing, though.  The big, powerful churches are falling out of favor with the world.  The overall rate of church attendance in America has been declining by some estimated at a rate of one percent per year. 

Every year it becomes more obvious.   The secular world is abandoning us. 

It's not all bad news,  though. There is, I believe,  a new church emerging out of the ruins of the old.  It is not an organization, but a movement. It is not the formation of new denominations,  but something that is emerging within all denominations.  It is not a threat to the power structure, but a movement that regards the power structure as irrelevant.  It is instead, simply  a desire to  get seriously  get close to God. 

Across denominational and cultural borders, there is a growing sense that something more is needed in an indifferent and hostile pluralistic society. The early church succeeded not by superior organization or publicity, but by building on the character of its followers. It invested heavily in the building of disciples.  The earliest books  outside of the New Testament reveal that the early church was far more concerned about making disciples than making converts.

This new church is not some new organization but a new attitude, where being biggest or first does not matter,  but being servants and disciples does. It does not seek to supplant the old church. It will exist within the organizational church, supporting it, praying for it, working alongside. But when the old church collapses into oblivion, the new church believers will be there,  filled with the spirit and ready to serve.  Then the church will be renewed by the Spirit of Christ, and the world will again be transformed.

Let’s pray that the church comes to its senses soon, and stops its rush to be rich and powerful.  It is a path to destruction. Instead, let's pray that God's people will seek God again, and devote ourselves to living as disciples of Christ.

How can the Old be Born Again?

It’s time we faced facts--our church is aging. We are not alone in this. Many congregations are aging, too. What will it take to rejuvenate our church? In order to rejuvenate our church, we have to first rejuvenate ourselves. Unless we change, the church will not. It isn’t the young people we don’t have. it’s the age of the people we have that is the problem. Jesus said in John 10:10, “I have come that we might have life, and have it more abundantly.” Jesus came to extend our lives. He did not come, just to take us to heaven, but to extend our lives on earth, not just in length, but in quality. He came to grant us eternal life which springs like living water from an ever youthful Spirit. John 3 tells us how we get that eternal life, and how we can come rejuvenated—through Jesus. John 3 begins with Nicodemus paying a call on Jesus. That was probably not his real name. Nicodemus means “ruler of the people.” Nicodemus was a code name, to protect his status on the Sanhedrin. There are two interesting things about the way Nicodemus approaches Jesus. First, he comes by night, for fear of being seen. Nicodemus was impressed with Jesus, but not enough to risk his status by letting the gossips see him come. Though he was cautious, he could not deny Jesus’ power. He said to Jesus, “We know you came from God.” He did not say “I”. He said we. Who is the “we?” The Sanhedrin, or at least a part of it. There were many highly placed men who knew that Jesus could not do what he did unless he was from God. Where were the others? They were playing it safe. They were not going to risk their positions, even for the revealed and manifested Son of God. Notice also that Nicodemus never actually came out and said what he wanted. He was being cautious. He had learned from a lifetime of experience to be careful what he said. Jesus does not wait for Nicodemus to beat around the bush. Instead, he framed Nicodemus’ question. Jesus was in charge of this conversation and there was something he wanted to say. “Truly, I say to you, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless youa are born again.” Born again! No passage in all the Scriptures so defines out belief as that simple phrase. Even so it is well to remember that Jesus said it only to once, and Paul never said it at all. It was something Jesus said in the context of a particular conversation. This statement is really a set-up. Jesus is waiting for Nicodemus to ask the next question. So in the next verse, verse 3, Nicodemus asks “How can a man be born again when he is old?” We cannot overestimate the importance of this question, for Nicodemus and for us. He is not asking it literally, Nicodemus was smart enough to realize that Jesus was not talking about physical birth. He really means, how can we start over ehwn we are old? How can we reboot our lives? As a church, we ask that question. We’ve seen out church turn gray, and yearned for youth. We’ve seen So many we love pass on. We’ve seen so many young people pass through. We wonder how much longer we can continue. We must be reborn as a church or face institutional extinction. How can a church be born again? If you could go back in time, and you could live in any age of your life, where would you live? Childhood, perhaps? Your twenties, or your thirties? It seems that many of us spend our lives trying to get back to some golden age. The same is true for churches. We remember a time when the halls were full of young people, and the sanctuary was filled, and we say “Why can’t we be like that now?” But we can’t go back to then. Times have irreparably changed. Just as we can’t go back to our childhood, we can’t go back to some previous time when we were strong and youthful. But Jesus doesn’t say we should go back in time. He says we need to be born again. He is not talking about regenerating our old life, but starting a new life. So it is with the church. We have no business trying to recapture the past, when he wants us to receive a new future. We must be regenerated, not restored. We cannot pour old wine into new wineskins, neither can we just repeat what worked in the past and expect to get the same results. So how can we be born again, when we are old? Jesus answers that two ways:. First, New birth is a function of the Holy Spirit. He says this in verses 5-6 5 Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. There are three kinds of age—physical age, psychological age, and spiritual age. Physical age is the age of our bodies. Clearly we cannot be born again physically. We just have one physical body. When it wears out, we can’t trade it in on a new one. Psychological age is the age of our minds. Our minds are the product of our times and upbringing. Our tastes were formed in our youth and rarely change throughout life. That is why generations differ in their music, humor, and taste. These are not easily changed, if at all. Our physical ages and psychological ages vary from person to person, even of the same age. They are not changeable, because they are the product of time. Our spiritual ages, however, is different. Our spirits may be young and new, even turned back to the beginning. But what about spiritual age? Ask yourselves these questions. Ø Are you stuck in the past? Do we spend our time reliving days gone by? Ø Are you curious? Is there anything we are trying to learn, master, or understanding? Ø Are you spending more time in grief or hope? Jesus is not just talking about the human spirit, of course. He is talking about the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit connects with the human spirit. He does not say, keep your spirits young, but have your spirits reborn. The Spirit is the only part of us that can be reborn without experiencing death. Unless we face the future with hope and expectation, the Spirit cannot lead us. “The wind blows where it will,” Jesus said, “So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” In our youth, we look forward to the unknown with hope. We revel in the idea that the Spirit can blow us anywhere. In age, we like safety, regularity, and caution. We like coming to church and seeing the bulletin, and knowing that things are going to happen I a certain order every week. But when we allow the Holy Spirit to blow through us, regularity goes out the window. We cannot predict what He will do in us. It is a joyful mystery. We cannot be born again until we first yield to the Holy Spirit, and let Him lead us forward. But the Spirit of itself does not cause us to be born again. We need something else, too—Jesus. 9 "How can this be?" Nicodemus asked. 10 "You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things? 11 I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven — the Son of Man. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. 16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Now, Jesus brings up one more aspect of being born again—eternal life. Most of us think we’ve got eternal life figured out. We live, die, and go to heaven. So we think eternal life is just going to heaven. But eternal life does not wait for death. It is the rebirth of the Spirit. It is not just an extension of this life. It is a life of a different quality, running concurrently with the remains or our earthly life. It begins when we surrender our past to Jesus. Most of us love this life as we have known it. We loved our childhood. We loved the way we looked when we were young. We love our family and our friends. So when we think of eternal life, we basically think it’s going to be like this one, only forever. We get to heaven, and our family and friends are there. Our bodies are back the way we were. We get a house like the old homestead, etc. But we have it backwards. Eternal life is not an extension of this life. When we are born again, eternal life begins then. What we see of it in this life is a foreshadowing of a greater blessing before us. It is not a time of continuing, but beginning. Part of the problem with our view of eternal life is that whatever happened that was bad in our life gets carried over too. We say, “how can this be heaven if my life heer is so miserable? How can I go to heaven if I lived such a miserable life before> You can’t. But then, you can’t take the good things of your life to heaven, either. It is the beginning of something much, much greater than that. So how does eternal life begin? It begins with repentance. Repentance is to stop clinging to the sins or the guilt of the past. It is to recognize we have been on the wrong course. It continues with forgiveness. Forgiveness is necessary for us to break loose of our old life and start anew. The blood of Jesus cleanses us not just from our sins, but from our past as well. We begin a new life in Him. Baptism symbolizes this, being washed from the dust. It continues by trusting him. This is what Jesus was saying to Nicodemus. Be born again in Jesus. Begin a new life as a new disciple. The reason we feel old when we have already trusted Jesus is because everything we have received from him is old news. Sometimes God upsets our lives, so that we can receive something new. Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick begins with these words. “Call me Ishmael. Some years ago -. . . I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. . . . Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially (when) it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.” Ishmael is describing the universal antidote for aging—begin in a new direction. When our faith in Christ is weak, when our life in Him seems dull, when God is a distant star instead of a burning, inner flame, it is time for us to be born again, to start the adventure all over. It is time for us to go down to the cross, which is the port of our souls, from which we launch into the adventure of the Spirit. God loves you. He offered Jesus for your sins. When we trust in him, we begin this new kind of life—this eternal life in him. We have a life that lasts forever, and following him is living as if we have a life that lasts forever, not the old worn-out life of he body, but the ever-changing and ever renewing life of the Spirit