Why church? Well, I think as people we have to admit we are social creatures. We love other people, even when we can't stand other people. In God's Kingdom, we have the church. It is such a beautiful, and precious gift for His disciples. Oh, how I love the church! Yet, she is pretty wobbly and dysfunctional at times. I don't know what to do about it, but I want to keep swinging at the problem where I can. So, if you'll humor me a bit, here is another opinion piece regarding the church.
1. My Kingdom.
There is an attraction to the idea of having a church that is something. It's your club, your way. You get the feeling of being part of something special, something bigger than yourself. I feel it. I get it. There is also an attraction to being important, needed, and powerful within this system. I believe that this motivates us more than we realize with all the different styles, types, denominations, etc of churches we have started and participated in. It also leads to this only right church doctrine that you see in some circles. It forms a club, it's your kingdom inside God's Kingdom.
2. What about me?
What if you have been rubbed wrong or sorely mistreated by someone else's kingdom that they call a church? There is a big desire to just fellowship in a way that you like. You eschew the accountability, authority, etc, and just live life on your own, fellowshipping with others on a "what do we feel like doing now?" basis. So, this kind of churching has its advantages over the 1st kind in my view. Depending on how cruel or abusive the first kind is, this is an upgrade. Yet, you would have to be pretty dishonest or uninformed to claim that this is the complete enchilada of church experience as lived in the New Testament or by the early church.
3. Making God's Kingdom visible.
Here's a novel concept: What about we try to make God's church, Christ's bride about Him? Let's take the notion of God's Kingdom. If one is to take the teachings of Jesus seriously, one would have to conclude that Jesus spent most of His teaching energy on preaching a gospel of the Kingdom with a capital K. It's an invisible Kingdom that asks for our loyalties over the demands of this world. With that in mind, the whole paradigm of church changes now doesn't it? The first 2 were ultimately, at the end of the day, selfish. This take is about God. So, we start with God's Kingdom. This is our foundation. This is what Jesus taught as recorded by the 4 gospels. Then we turn the page to Acts, and his disciples, now apostles filled with the Holy Spirit made disciples and churches started. So, the Kingdom of God became visible in the form of the church. How does this look if we do it again now? I don't know. I think it depends on the area. With the first 2 types of churches, the question is easily answered with a follow-up question, "What do you want?" However, if it is in fact about God, which this 3rd option is now we must ask, "God, what do YOU want?" I am asking that for west TN because that's the part of the world I live in.
A note about copying the apostles' church planting efforts: Marc Carrier went to Africa and planted wonderful churches that very much resembled what we can understand the early church to be, I commend him for that, and will be interested in seeing what he does here. Others have done this as well I'm sure. Yet, one key thing that seems to be common here, they found unsaved people and led them from an unsaved state straight into discipleship with Christ. I believe that there is much to learn from the apostles when one seeks to be a missionary to the lost. I believe that is the New Testament way, but, here I sit in the Bible belt, we have more churches than I can count all full of Christians who profess Christ. How in the world do we do this here without just starting another denomination of Christians and ending up back where we started again?
Here is a diagnosis on west TN based on what I know so far as of 06/2022, but this is subject to change based on further understanding/wisdom which I always need more of. We don't need more churches. We need the people in the churches we have already, myself included making these trades.
1. Trade in our complex theologies that explain away hard-hitting verses from Jesus' teachings for the bare unvarnished power of the Kingdom message. Did you know that just war is not something the early apostles knew anything about? When there was a war that needed fighting, they thought that was a dispute between world Kingdoms and had nothing to do with them. Are we absolutely sure that the government-sanctioned killing of bad people is ok for members of God's Kingdom? If so, can it be supported with a simple reading of the New Testament or does it call for a cobbling together of Old and New Testament concepts, personal theories, and cherry-picked verses into a complex theology for it to work? In short, we at times tend to embrace the art of theology so that we don't have to look at a principle we don't like. This should be repented of.
2. Trade in the things we deem most important like good music, and entertaining lectures for the things that Jesus deemed important like authentic worship in the presence of God, communion, and bold, honest teaching of truth. Nothing is wrong with good music and entertaining speakers. However, the emphasis should be on authentic worship, fellowship with God, and teaching of the truth. If the music is good, and the speaker is entertaining after the authentic worship and truth have been discovered, that is awesome!
3. Trade in our religious traditions and do's and don't lists for the Kingdom Lifestyle. Some of our churches have do's and don't that we don't understand. Those should be scrutinized against the New Testament, and we should pursue a Kingdom Lifestyle. The kind that comes from abiding in Christ and producing His fruits for Him with the power of the Spirit He put there. There very well could be do's and don't that a body should agree to on some level, but they should be intentional, Spirit-led, Kingdom motivated. In short, we at times tend to take certain of Jesus' teachings extremely literally and ignore others to fashion a religion of our own making, which should be repented of. Embracing the gospel of the Kingdom and all its principles is good enough, and far better than any religion.
4. Trade in our religious rituals for spiritual disciplines. While it is a little hard to explain, there is a difference between regularly going to church, praying, and reading your Bible because you "have to" as opposed to doing it because it's something you desire to do, to improve your relationship with God. To learn more from Him. To receive more of His Spirit etc. This is what spiritual discipline is about, it is exercising ourselves spiritually to become the kind of person who naturally acts like God would act if He were living our life in our body. Religious rituals are all about superficially doing boring things to check off the "good Christian" box. I hope the difference is being conveyed here...it is a little hard to explain for me.
5. Trade in our shame-based culture of looking right and making sure others do too for genuine loving co-submission to one another as brothers and sisters. Man sees the outside, but God sees the heart. (See Samuel 16:7) Shame-based culture teaches us to hide the problems and look good on the outside. We wear a smile to church when we are dying inside. Shame culture accepts those who look right and rebukes those who don't. Co-submission culture isn't as interested in the "look" of a person, or even the fruit as much as the direction of the journey. It accepts those who repent and rebukes those who don't. Study carefully the steps laid out by Christ in Matthew 18:15-18. Do you see how the person who is rebuked by the church has been given 4 opportunities to repent? 1. At the Holy Spirit's convicting. 2. At the time of confrontation by the person who was wronged. 3. At the time of confrontation by several. 4. At the time of public rebuke in the church. If a person still does not wish to repent, then, they are marked as a heathen, or this is my opinion but to put a finer point on it, someone who cannot be trusted due to a lack of repentance. Heathens, (non-believers) don't repent either you see. Now, in written text, it's easy to make such a thing sound brutal and procedural, but that's not my intent, it must be done out of a heart of love for Christ and our siblings in His family.
6. Personally and corporately, trade-in our constant need for noise and activity for times of nothingness, silence, solitude, waiting on the presence of God, for revelation. Left to our own devices, we seem to want to solve our own problems, talk, or be talked to. We keep looking for soul food, things to do with our will, things to study with our mind, and experiences to feel with our emotions. Yet, we so often give up on the simple things, turning off the noises, being quiet, and seeing what God might want to say for different problems we face. What if, instead of having meetings and debates, followed by meetings about our meetings; we would come together corporately in quiet meditation and prayer before God? What if the reason many of us think God is silent is simply that He is a gentleman who lets us do all the talking when we pray? So, when we pray and decide not to do all the talking, we might find that God does still communicate, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Back to the top, we really should be interested in church on God's terms, the 3rd reason for church. If we aren't willing to church for the right reason, I am prepared to admit that I personally don't think we should really bother with churching anymore. If we are interested in doing things God's way, then, the next 6 points probably do matter to some extent. I know and believe that there is much more to Kingdom living than those 6 points, but, if those of us who both go to church and care about it would seek after God with these 6 things corporately, I can't help but think it would help. At least, it would be a start.
No comments:
Post a Comment