THAT Was Never the Intention!

In a previous post, I stated that we would look more closely at how we view the church. But first, we need to look at how God views the church. Ephesians 5 speaks in great detail about Christ’s love for the church. He loved it so much that He gave his life for it. He presents it to himself without it having a spot or wrinkle. It is holy and without blemish. God took steps to insure that His church would prevail eternally. He will defend it vehemently. I will not be one whom He must defend it against.

But let me be clear, the church is NOT a building, a program, an agenda (political or otherwise), or a concept. Somewhere along the way we have lost track of who we are. I remember as a child putting my hands together in such a way as to be able to say: “Here is the church and here is the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people.” The church does not exist because of a building or its steeple. It is the people. And sometimes people stray.

I am constantly finding myself challenged to define what I think church should be. I think I am pretty clear on what it is…what it has become, but what should it really be? The inappropriate wording of that question is driving me bonkers. Let me correct it. What should “we” be?

Like many who are or have been in professional ministry, I have studied every new paradigm within the church for the past 20+ years. We (the American church) are absolutely fantastic at replicating whatever formula we deem most applicable. The result is that we either change our identities at a fervent pace, or we stay exactly who we’ve been since 1946.

But the church was originally an unstoppable force. In its current form, it is very stoppable. It can be stopped by something as insignificant as a change in musical styles or as trivial as improper placement of memorial flowers in the sanctuary. (Some of you actually think I’m kidding.)

At the end of Acts 2, we discover the original recipe for church growth:
“Everyone around was in awe- all those wonders and signs done by the apostles! And all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each persons need was met.” Acts 2 The Message

Can you imagine that? I’m not sure which part is more amazing: that the believers had wonderful harmony or that they forsook personal wealth for the benefit of the whole. They were able to do both because they took seriously (and obeyed) the Lord’s teachings about loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind and loving your neighbor as yourself. They were able to pool their resources because they knew that everyone else cared as much about their family as they did. That is our first departure.

We have become selfish and untrusting, perhaps with valid reasoning. We have learned that “church people” (which is a bit like saying “chicken poultry”) are hypocrites who cannot be trusted. We would gladly consider giving more, though certainly not all, if the people were more worthy. The truth of the matter is that your issue is not with the people but with you…and mine is with me. Our discontentment is neither with the building where we “go to church” nor the people who go there with us. Our discontentment is internal. The church is hypocritical because you are hypocritical. (In my case, I am both hypocritical and hyper-critical.) Our departure causes us to distance ourselves from the bride that Jesus finds unblemished.

Another departure from the original church is the way in which we divide ourselves. We are not living in wonderful harmony because we do not hold all things in common. It used to be that we divided ourselves into Catholics and Protestants. Then we further sub-divided into denominations. Now, we split denominations because of our political leanings (liberal/ conservative) or our worship style (traditional/ contemporary). We do these things because we want our churches to “fit” us. We create or join whatever is most comfortable to us. When it becomes uncomfortable, we shop for another.

Never once do we count the cost of our “religious” consumerism. Never once do we realize that we do not grow past a certain point spiritually because when we get uncomfortable, we change churches. We don’t question our discomfort. We don’t stop to consider if our discomfort is from God so that we might change our character, not our church. God’s purpose for the church was NOT to “fit” any person or group of people. His plan and design called for people to find an undeniable, unquenchable love that provoked them to sacrifice everything in order to “fit.”

In Ezekiel 34, God tells Ezekiel:
“I will surely judge between the fat sheep and the scrawny sheep. For you fat sheep push and butt and crowd my sick and hungry flock until they are scattered to distant lands. So I will rescue my flock, and they will no longer be abused and destroyed. And I will judge between one sheep and another.” (NLT)

This is a great picture of what churches can look like. We go to church expecting to be “fed.” We sit and soak. We rarely act on the knowledge we gain; we just accumulate more and more knowledge. We end up fat and arrogant with our knowledge and self-righteousness. We battle each other for prime positions on committees or other service positions. It’s like we are building church service resumes with which we intend to circulate to whoever will listen. We have reduced church service to a line item on a resume or worse. Now no one is listening. We have the greatest message in all of history. It is disregarded largely because we deserve to ignored…not the message, but the messenger.

Our answer to this is to create churches that are cutting edge and relevant. However, the more I study current church methodologies, the more I realize that we are changing the exterior (the practices, methods, and programs) without addressing the problem. Practices, methods, and programs NEVER reach people. People reach people, and if we are unchanged internally, then no amount of cutting edge, relevant “window dressing” is going to make an impact. The problem with contemporary church is that nothing is sacred. The problem with traditional church is that everything is. And when everything is sacred, then nothing is. We have to realize that God himself is sacred…period! Everything else is preference.

The design of the church was not to create relevancy and edginess nor was it to remember our history and preserve our heritage. It was designed to create community and facilitate change. But the change that it facilitated was not in political or social arenas but in people, more precisely, it was in individual persons. We fail to realize how great our departure is from the original model. We have damaged the world’s image of Christ because we’ve departed from His unblemished bride.

In fact, after reading Malachi 1, I am left wondering how God feels about our unworthy sacrifices. God says that He wishes someone would shut the Temple doors so that these worthless sacrifices could not be offered. I wonder, for some of us, if our ultimate act of worship would be to “shut the doors to the temple (church building)” because we (the local church) have so dishonored our God by our worthless sacrifices. I say this because we have lost focus. We spend so much time and effort on trivial things. We debate theology and hermeneutics while the world, that we are supposed to provide light to, darkens.

In Matthew 25, Jesus is telling of the final judgment. He separates the sheep from the goats. “Depart from me, I never knew you,” he says to the goats who never fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, sheltered strangers, clothed the naked, cared for the sick, or visited the prisoners. “Lord, when did we not do these things,” they asked. They didn’t even notice. I’m sure they weren’t all negligent. Some were just too busy offering worthless sacrifices.

The sheep, on the other hand, when confronted didn’t realize that they had met needs either. “When did we do these things, Lord,” they asked. Funny thing! They didn’t notice either. They simply did. It was second nature. It was character reformation. When commanded to love, they obeyed. When a need arose, they met it because they had met the Master. They willingly sacrificed, not to build a service resume, but to build a kingdom.

The church is truly an unstoppable revolutionary force. It was designed that way. It accomplishes through love what military men can’t accomplish with armaments. It betters societies and destroys social barriers. If your “church” doesn’t do these things, then it’s time to change…yourself, not your “church!”