I recently read an excerpt (funny word) from the book Jesus Mean and Wild by Mark Galli, an editor for Christianity today. It was quite an intense article that deals with something not many Christians think about. I am not sure about the quality or content of the entire book, but the excerpt was very challenging for me, personally.
A large dilemma in evangelicalism today is the constant tension between the efforts to remain relevant ("cool") to our cultural context and the offense that is the gospel of Jesus Christ that saves. In the excerpt Galli talks about how many Christians have betrayed Jesus in the attempt to remain relevant. We have given up the offense inherent in the message of Jesus Christ for success by the worlds standards so as to ascribe the term "cool" to ourselves.
Like Galli, I don't necessarily have a problem with megachurches, but when it comes down to brass tax I think we sacrifice something on the altar of success when we seek after sheer numerical growth. I am, however, guilty of this offense as well (exchanging the glory of the gospel for some sort of cultural "relevance"). Often, while attending a church service, I find myself thinking that the service could be so much better and more relevant if they would just do x, or the music would sound better and more relevant if they would just do x. Sometimes we think it better for the body of believers if the church be made over in our own image. Galli's sentiments shed some light on the heart of a young pastor:
The relevant community of faith we imagine is usually a combination of biblical and cultural and personal expectations, some of them so deeply embedded in our psyches that we assume their inherent righteousness. Because they are dreams,It is a personal struggle that many pastors (not just young ones) experience throughout their lives. This desire to remake the body of Christ into our own image comes from the "old man" and we need to mortify that desire just like all other sinful desires.
they usually have little to do with the reality called the church. When we try to fashion the church in our image, the result is often anger, division, and hostility. As young pastors, we chalk this up to the price of being prophetic leaders. But often it's merely lust for ecclesial success. And we sometimes end up destroying the very community we came to save.
He goes on to quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work Life Together to shed some light on the issue of how we are to act and be as the church, with all its foibles and idiosyncrasies. We cannot, even for a second, be under the illusion that the church is not comprised of sinners and doesn't not suffer from the effects of the tendencies of its membership. Bonhoeffer states it this way:
By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it.What a slap in the face to our modern conception of the church! How often do we find ourselves being run by our own emotions instead of by the all-sufficient truth of God's Word?!
Just to be clear here, I am not getting down on megachurches at all. I'll just let Galli say it, because he says it far better than I ever could. "We are not wise to disparage successful megachurches, which often are catalysts for significant change in the church. What we should repudiate—like Jesus, in the strongest terms—is the notion that these churches represent the true church, the glorious church, the epitome of success."
So, let us pray that our desire to be cool and relevant and successfulul does not overshadow our desire to remain faithful to guard the truth and the offensiveness of Jesus Christ's message. Let us pray for strength and resolve as we "contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). May we be found faithful to the task!
6 comments:
Life Together is a great book. I am just now finishing it for the second time, and I love it. It is interesting to note the perspective and the situation he was writing that book in (ie- WWII and secret seminaries and churches). For him, much more than for people in churches today, fellowship was a stark reality. Whereas, we get all kinds of choices about where we want to go to church, and what 'style' of worship we want, and on and on. Doesn't seem quite as stark, huh?
Stark indeed, Kev! Good point. I think we suffer from "chronic anemia of community" in our churches today. I am not sure I know what real fellowship looks like. With the exception of time spent with you, of course!!
I think when we have real fellowship and community we actual picture the gospel to the surrounding world. It's sad how little that happens. (I am just as guilty of this!)
I agree in substance with your thoughts here and the thoughts of the author but I think it needs to be said that every church reflects a culture. Maybe that culture is 2006 or maybe it's 1956 or 1576 or if it's an Eastern Orthodox church it may reflect a very ancient culture. I think that as Christians we should seek to find and cherish the sustainable and survivable things in as many historical periods of Christendom and in as many cultural settings as possible. Let the local church be an expression of a local community but also recognize the global church and the historical church (all of course without stepping on to many sensitive toes).
And I would agree wholeheartedly, without question. However, I would counter that, yes, while we are cherishing the survivable marks of Christendom long past we must never sacrifice the gospel on the altar of culture. We can't change the fact that we are Christians living in a certain cultural context, but we must remember that above any culture we must be a reflection of the kingdom.
I agree with the fact that every churhc reflects a culture, and this happens naturally. Without getting too postmodern, this seems to be because a lot of who we are is bound up in the culture we are from. However, I think we should be very careful and discerning, examining the culture we are in, because there are certain aspects of the culture which could very easily be considered sinful and dishonoring to God if they 'naturally' come about in the church. One of those things might be the consumer mentality in our churches. Bonhoeffer, in Life Together, talks about getting "to the point where we take joy in" bearing the burden of brothers. He's talking about brothers that we have a difficult time with, or would not normally be seen with. I think it is a shortcoming of our culture that we are constantly thrown in with people exactly like us, and we rarely ever get exposed to people that are entirely different in their personality and attitude. Unfortunately, this is in our churches too, and i think it tends to destroy the idea of one body different members. We never get the joy of coming to (being forced to come to) the recognition that the Cross has real power and is present in people that are not in their twenties and thirties, drink too much coffee, and read too many boring books, ya know what i mean? So I think we need to be careful about becoming relevant when it destroys the unity of the fellowship, which is grounded in the Gospel of Christ, not in any culture.
And now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I just repeated Sean and Tim's last two posts, so I'm going to home to play with my dog.
Amen to that (especially the bit about playing with the dog).
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