Saturday 4 February 2012

Church Isn't Working - Part 2

Most churches in the UK are quite small – less than 50 adults. Increasingly they comprise an elderly and ageing population meeting in old and costly premises. Their focus has narrowed to paying the bills and maintaining a programme of services and meetings. There is little energy for anything new, and less appetite for it anyway. There is a fear of change and almost no direct contact with the world, unless it chooses to come into the confines of the church. They fear the world, fear the inevitable; the loss of their own minister, the dwindling congregation, “shutting the doors”. Often they are characterised by a sense of impending defeat.

At the other end of the spectrum we have the newer churches; meeting in school halls, converted warehouses or refurbished older buildings. Full of enthusiasm and excitement, the numbers give a sense of success, of victory against the odds, which translates into upbeat worship led by gifted musicians in rock-concert style performances. There are enough people to staff multiple programmes and plenty of entrepreneurial leaders to initiate them. There’s generally enough confidence to risk occasional forays into the world; special events, ‘missions’, outreach programmes, Alpha. It all generates a self-sustaining stream of income, newcomers and vision in a broadly optimistic context.

At one end fear and age deter genuine engagement. At the other end self-sufficiency, comfort and busyness mitigate against it.  Looked at in the light of its God-given purpose – to be the mechanism by which the gospel is communicated and the nations discipled, it has to be said. Church isn’t working.

There will be those who dispute that assertion. They will point to Africa and parts of Asia which have seen explosive conversion rates. Over half a million new churches in 11,000 new denominations in Africa in recent years. But two things mute the enthusiasm. It was in just such an African nation, with over 90% of the population Christian that saw the genocide in Rwanda. Secondly, I don’t live in Africa. I live in Europe, in Britain, where Christianity is in retreat. Let me repeat. As a vehicle for communicating the gospel or discipling nations, church isn’t working,

Meanwhile, the perception of the church by those outside it is that  it is an irrelevant relic of a long-past age. Worse, it is characterised by bigotry and hypocrisy;  self-righteously pronouncing judgments against a sinful world. Even those parts of the Church that retain some respect for their social compassion (The Salvation Army for example) are seen as anachronistic and twee.

At a time when people are more open to spiritual concepts than for many years and where the government is flinging the doors wide open to the involvement of religious groups, this is tragic. With more emphasis being placed on care in the community – the bread and butter of the Gospel - the opportunities for demonstrating the love of God abound, at the very point that energy is being diverted into self-serving maintenance.

Again, I hear about the hard work, I know the long hours, the commitment, the years of faithful service. I know the challenges, the difficulties, the setbacks.  I know the stories; the one's and two's who came to faith, the occasional healing, the marriage saved. These are genuinely good and worth rejoicing over.  But it can’t possibly be enough. There are too many in our street, our work-place, our school who are dying inside and who have no clue as to why or how that can change. There are too many for whom Christ died in vain for this level of effectiveness to be acceptable. The truth is that church as an institution isn’t working.

How did this happen? How did the dynamic, life changing, society transforming, Spirit energised community that is church change into something overwhelmingly designed to serve itself? True, it might be an environment in which we can worship together. It might be a place in which we can receive. There may be times when the big gathering, the inspiration of the many coming together is important. But when did the notion that church is designed to be a hospital for the Christian sick or a place to go for training, equipping and evangelism become so accepted?  In the Gospels and Acts, healing happened in the home, the workplace, the street whilst teaching and training happened on the job. Jesus modelled it, explained the bare minimum and sent them out, empowered to do it.  If our faith has become dependent on input from experts and our strength for the work based on a weekly pit-stop, then, literally, God help us – a church built like that cannot ever accomplish its mandate.

Church is supposed to be dynamic, visible, living communities of people passionately loved by God, radically loving one another and their world. No more, no less. It leads to transformation, to explosive growth and in the process to non-conformity, to diversity and inevitably to the possibility of heresy - either actual or  perceived. In order to minimise this risk, church has become an institution, an organisation, codified, bound by tradition and paralysed by orthodoxy. We are so concerned with preventing anything ‘going off the rails’ that the rails have become prisons.

Of course, if we take the risk of non-orthodoxy, of new things in new ways,  the enemy of our souls will breed discord, competition and drive groups towards the margins and beyond. But at the same time the Holy Spirit will be leading into all truth, revealing Jesus and saving many.

Often it will mean new leaders, young, untested leaders who aren't so entrenched in the existing ways. This is also unsafe, but in truth, the leaders in the early church weren’t trained, often they weren’t even long-time believers. They weren’t from the right background, they certainly weren’t ‘safe’.  The believers didn’t  meet once a week for a quick fix of God before going into all the world and they didn’t meet in insular and exclusive groups to study and pray for a world with which they never engaged. They didn’t know all the theory, have all the books or go to all the conferences. They did have the Holy Spirit and a passion for Jesus. And they did change their world.

Church isn’t working when it excludes or restrains those with non-conformist vision and passion. How would those first believers or apostles have fitted into our church?

Let's 'think allowed'. Is the above a fair reflection? If not, defend! If it is, why and what do we do?

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