THE CHURCH
INTRODUCTION
Where do I begin? In a world of scattered thoughts, beliefs and values, it is hard to find a green light to “Go” on! I want to talk about so many items concerning the church, yet which topic has merit and which does not? Which topic is the best use of your time?
In recent weeks I have been studying the history of Christianity and all of the multi-faceted directions in which it journeyed. This history is a deep rabbit hole with many, many tunnels so it is understandable the question of where to begin. With that in mind, I thought it expedient, if nothing else, to begin with the need.
THE NEED
There are many books available today that address the issue of our day, modern vs. postmodern thinking. With the volumes upon volumes of authorship trying to figure out what is so different about the Post-modern generation; it is easy to see that there is something happening. A disruption in the “force” so-to-speak. A new paradigm has erupted causing discomfort and fear. Even worse, it has dislodged what was once a seemingly sound identity. I am the Minister for a small congregation of forty souls in a resort community in the southeast corner of Saskatchewan. Many of the members are second generation Christians within the, debatably, ninety-eight year old church. As far as I know from my brief tenure in this location, the congregation has consisted of this many souls for at least twenty of those ninety-eight years, evidenced in that the picture wall has not changed since the move to the resort six years ago. The younger generation of Christians has been well grounded in the methods and means of the previous generations teaching. They know where we have come from but do not see it as where we are going. Our services consist of the usual a cappella singing of six to eight songs, communion each Sunday, a message, a collection and a couple of prayers. The same as it has been done for the last ninety-eight years. There is an acceptation to this rule, however; our congregation has shifted from scheduled leadership to leadership teams allowing for a team of people to take charge of the service. The elements of the service are still the same, but now the method of deliverance has changed. Sometimes we’ll have the sermon first then the Lord’s Supper, and other times the opposite. Sometimes we’ll sing during communion, sometimes we won’t. The service is ultimately unchanged, and in the minds of many of the newer generations, has become stale and unwelcoming. More actually, it has become a reason to apologize to visitors for the lack of charisma and sometimes even sincerity during our morning activities.
I have spent the last eight years of my own personal ministry trying to specifically identify just what it is that has changed. I read various books theorizing what makes the next generation different from the last; I have reevaluated the reasons why I have believed as I have, I have all but thrown the proverbial “baby-out-with-the-bathwater” when it comes to my preconceptions and misinterpretations. I have allowed myself to be lead and to wander into new understandings and deeper insights, yet I feel very much as though I am only scraping the surface on what I think I know. Even now, some of my more recent conclusions are up for debate. This is, indeed, our human condition, yet it does not answer why my ninety-eight year old church has consistently maintained a membership of twenty to forty souls. What is the barrier keeping us from growing , from becoming what the world deems as a “successful congregation?” I believe the answer may lie in our identity, or lack-thereof! It seems abundantly clear to me that we want to have an age old identity, to look like we did consistently over the last fifty years, and yet grow!
I recently received this quote from a friend: It was taken from When Better Isn’t Enough: Evaluation Tools for the 21st-Century Church, by Jill Hudson. In the forward, Roy Oswald writes:
“... Jill Hudson explodes two myths we find in many congregations. The first is that, “We can grow without changing. ...” The second myth congregations hold on to for dear life is that, “We can change without conflict.”
Hudson later writes:
Everything has a cost. We know this in our heart, and yet we try to avoid it. We want the "old" church just as it was, with comforting hymns, informally claimed pews, and familiar liturgies. We also want the benefits of the "new church," full of young families and hope for the future. We want new believers who are mature in Christ and share the responsibilities of church membership. We don’t want anyone mad -- ever! We want it both ways. We want the comfort of the past and the promise of the future without alienating anyone.
We need to discuss church, if for no other reason, to figure out once and for all who we are, nay, whose we are! Huge questions have been posed that need answering, questions like: Why does it matter where anyone goes? In our case, why commute on Sunday morning when there is a body of believers located within our general proximity? Why do the younger generations want to change everything? In like manner, why does the older generation not tolerate change at all? These are all valid questions, yet in many cases, the accusations and judgments are flying as to the motives for change and vice-versa, accusations like: “They just want to be entertained when they come to church” or “They don’t respect us older folks, and don’t listen to us” or even “They don’t care anymore about the truth.” I recently read an article by Phil Saunders in the Gospel advocate periodical . The article was an attempt at describing what is happening with this younger generation –as has been the efforts of many authors in many books and articles. He states that “the emerging church denies the presence of any absolute truths,” and they “believe there is no foundation for any beliefs: therefore one cannot know absolute truth.” There are many blanket statements like this throughout the article. These may be an attempt to put a face to the new thinking of the postmodern people, or to justify actions. Later Saunders states that “Emergents constantly put experience above religion.” This is likely a true statement, and from experience (pun intended) I can confidently say that the Emergents are saying the opposite toward the traditional people, “They constantly put religion above experience.”
It is precisely this schism that is stunting the spiritual and physical growth of congregations across the board. Harsh judgment and aggression toward each other is the tone. Assemblies are being divided, people are walking out, and others are saying good riddance! Does it strike anyone else as odd that our conflict is with each other and not our real enemy? I can almost hear the retort already, “Oh, no Rolland, you misunderstand, we are fighting against our enemy because he’s trying to infiltrate our church!” Too late! He’s done this a long time ago, but what a good way to tear people away from Christ than to have us fighting over how to “do” church! This is not a new issue arising, in fact, nothing is new. I strongly believe that we are simply at another cycle of change and growth as has happened through every generation of Babel builders. The restoration movement is two-hundred years old, and we have sufficiently built our church, God has simply changed the language. One portion of culture speaks fluently in tradition while the other speaks change, it is no wonder that we are struggling. How many times does God have to shake us back to flat-out trust in Him through Jesus Christ? When are we going to learn as a people that God is the builder and we are the bricks; that God is the head and we are the body; that God is God and we are not? So long as we work toward building a great church to have a great name, to facilitate what the world deems as success, God will continue to bring us to our knees.
CHAPTER 1
BABEL
"Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." Genesis 11:4
Recently, I have found myself reading Genesis 11, the tower of Babel. The story goes that all people on the planet spoke and understood clearly the same language and began to build a city to “make a name for” themselves. They engineered a tower that was supposed to reach the heavens, a flag to the universe that they are significant. God drew near and saw what they had accomplished because they all understood everything they said to each other. He saw their motives, how they were unreasonably interested in the legacy and title they would have from their incredible accomplishment. So, He confused their language and cancelled the project! A nice tale that, upon first read, has nothing to do with our topic at hand, right? That is the reason that I dismissed this as just another biblical story which has nothing to do with the church today! I was surprised, then, when I was once again drawn to the tower! I re-read the event, and began to challenge myself as to what it was that I was reading. Maybe it did mean something more! What challenged me is the relationship that it had with the church. I asked myself, could we be Babel builders today? Isn’t it the desire of many a religious group to make a name for themselves, to show the world that they, sometimes they alone, are reaching to God with a tower of doctrine and understanding? These questions scared me. Not us, we are not all about a legacy, a name! We are people trying to be the church that Jesus built, we are simply Christian! Yet we stand apart from other religious groups, we hold to different teachings than they, and we want people to prefer our assembly than that of another. One denomination says, “We’re right,” and another says “whoa, you aren’t we are!” So ensues the battle of the better Babel! We build our buildings and our sanctuaries; we formulate and engineer a new program, a better way! We proclaim our teaching is more pure, sounder, and more righteous than the others. Much blood was shed on the denominational battlefield for the better Babel. Our name is better than your name, our teaching is better than your teaching, our service is right and yours is wrong. It was the previous generation(s) that fought in this war, winning us the right to call ourselves Christian. It was on that Babel field debaters and philosophers swung swords of doctrine and teaching, jockeying for the higher ground, the position of prominence, the name and legacy. Religion has become the rule, and the denominational face you wear has become your identity!
The difference between our Babel and the Babel in Genesis 11 is this; we don’t speak the same language! We don’t even understand ourselves if we are all speaking English. As I write this, I wonder how many of my words are being read differently than I intended them. I have been in arguments in which we both were saying one-and-the-same-thing, but misunderstanding each other. As an orator, and minister, I have said things from the pulpit that have made eyebrows furrow, and arms cross in disapproval. These words were then clarified when the angered hearer approached me with their “bone-to-pick”. Misunderstanding, judgment, anger, frustration, and lack of good communication have brought us to a place with this one agreement; we are going to disagree! I wonder how long after God confused their language in Genesis 11 that they gave up trying to build! Here we are today, in constant disagreement, trying to build a religious organization; naturally we are not going to have a unified structure.
The image of building is not unfamiliar to the text though, is it? God tells Moses to build his tabernacle; David plans for the temple, Solomon, then, builds it. Jesus tells Peter that upon his foundational statement of faith; “Jesus is the Christ the son of the Living God” that He would “Build His Church!”(Matthew 16:18) Peter, in his first letter (1 Peter 2) states that Jesus is the Living Rock, the chief cornerstone that we, His church, His living stones will be built on. Jesus talks about the wise and the foolish builders in Matthew 7:15-29 and that the wise man who builds his house upon the rock will be able to withstand the rain and winds, but the foolish builder who built on the sandy foundation would lose his house in the storm. Jesus is the Foundation of the church; it is upon Him that it has been built, not by human hands, but by the power of God almighty! He builds the church, we are stones in its construction, part of the City walls. Yet we have drawn up battle lines and sounded the battle cry, “We are right and you are wrong!” We have composed blueprints and plans for a religious structure, and organization, a program. And we have set out to build, fighting along the way over doctrine, and opinion, over attitude and misunderstanding.
If, indeed, Christ is our foundation, and we are being built solely on Him, then language is not necessary. We only need communicate one theme; Grace and truth! “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). It is the in the same faith that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God that God is building us into His structure, that is His church. We know that it is God who adds to the church (Acts 2:47), that He is the master builder, and yet we continue to attempt to build our religious organizations. That we have so many varying denominational beliefs comes down to this; people, misunderstanding each other, attempt to build a church that was never intended by God. Perhaps even make it better! (Incidentally, this is an argument I’ve heard for both sides of this issue).
“OK, now you’ve taken the “building” analogy too far!” I can almost hear these words in my ears as some of you protest. “You can’t say that about us, we are trying to restore the first century church!” These words themselves contain the image of building! When my Dad wanted to restore his 1971 GMC custom half-ton pickup truck, he intended to rebuild it to all of its glory on the day it rolled off the showroom floor. It was His work that would have brought the truck back to its original beauty, but someone else put the truck together in the first place. He wanted to rebuild its motor, and refinish its seats, and restore its vinyl, but he may well have added a CD changer and better sound system, improving upon the original. He may have replaced the old headers with new chrome headers, and a shiny new carburetor, exceeding the quality of the original design. He may even have replaced the original 305 big block engine with a more powerful 454. I know for a fact that its brown paint job would have been replaced by a new metallic lime green (definitely not an original colour) coating. But it would have been his work, his accomplishment. What a name he would have had as the “restorer” of that beautiful machine. It is now a status vehicle, no longer a rust bucket! But he didn’t build it, he just made it better.
We are simply this, restorers. But the argument goes that our understanding of restoring the first century church is greater than theirs! Our bigger, shinier, better church is superior to the other denominations surrounding us, so you should come here! This thinking is flawed at its very core! Surrounding it is the belief that how we “do” church matters more than anything else. It is in our “doing” that we are identified. Our core doctrines are clearer, more concise than others. I’ll talk about this more later on.
THE BETTER BABEL!
Any good engineer would tell you clearly that any good structure must have a great foundation. We’ve already made reference to this when we spoke about him being our foundation. The Church is built on Jesus Christ the Son of the Living God. Our Bible is clear that God planned a plan from the beginning of time, before the foundations of the world, to save mankind. He accomplished this by the truth of mercy and grace through Jesus Christ, making Him the chief cornerstone and foundation of His new Kingdom. One could even say that it was God’s intention, from the beginning that the world would become like Jesus, that we would become bricks, living stones in His kingdom. We see this brand new Kingdom in Acts 2, in love with God, moved by Grace and truth, empowered by God’s Spirit. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread (be it a feast or the Lord’s supper) and to prayer. They sold their possessions and gave to anyone as they had need. It was a beautiful time, and God’s Kingdom was growing daily as He added to their number. Pure, undefiled, perfect! It is no surprise that we would mess something like that up is it? For example, when my family and I first moved into our new house, each room was set up exactly how we thought it should be set up. There was no clutter, no mess and all was in order. Within the first few weeks my children’s (and my own) rooms accumulated clutter and mess. The house’ original condition melted away into clutter, it went from new to lived in very quickly. The church began as a clean house, and once having been lived in for a short time, people tried to personalize it. In fact, it only took two chapters to describe how we added a chrome header! Barnabus, the “encourager” took his money and instead of giving it to anyone as they had need, laid it at the Apostles feet for them to distribute. There was nothing wrong with this in and of itself; however, it did create a dilemma for this brand new Kingdom. The Apostles had to create a program to distribute the funds, or purchase food. They then had to create a program to meet the needs of the people. Later on we see them realizing the error of this and appointing others to run the program so that they could do what they knew they needed to. We also see a couple named Ananias and Sapphira observing Barnabus’ actions. Perhaps they covet the praise Barnabus received from those who witnessed his gift and they try to emulate him. They sell some land and pocket a portion of the coin but lie saying that they are giving all of the proceeds to the newly founded church. We know the end result ! In two short chapters we see the pure church move from a single structure built on Christ to a renovated building boasting a new “sunroom” program for the distribution of funds. All throughout the letters in the New Testament we see Peter, or Paul, or John or whoever authored the letter to the Hebrews working hard to help correct structural issues surrounding the church. These structural issues were primarily relational, but on the odd occasion they were regarding how church was to be done.
I have several neighbours who are renovating their houses right now. One neighbor has built a great big Shop on his land, another tore down a port to build a double car garage, and another still is creating a new entrance way on the front of their house. In each case, the add-on is to enhance their current structure. Also, in each case, the new addition to their structure requires the pouring of piles and a new cement pad to properly support the structure. Should they not follow protocol, and dig the piles, the new add on to the structure, while looking nice, could easily become unstable. Certainly, in a storm or earthquake the new addition to the structure could break apart from the existing building. As the first century church became the new Kingdom of God, renovations were quick to follow. But the structure was over reaching the foundation. An additional teaching to the Grace and truth of God, the foundation, has been added for the benefit of the kingdom. Perhaps a new front porch or veranda, maybe a new doctrinal garage or car port has been built in to the current kingdom. What is most interesting about this is all of these renovations are what has been battled over for nearly two millennia. From John battling the Gnostics to Luther battling the Constantinian church and the re-baptizers to the denominational and doctrinal struggles today, the doctrinal war have been waged. The problem is not the foundation; it is the add-ons to the structure that God built on Jesus Christ. Seldom do we fight with the evangelical, ecumenical world over whether or not Jesus is the Christ the son of the living God, and rarely if not ever within our own fellowships, yet over the doctrinal opinions and stands do we have casualties.
If the modern church were a physical structure with Christ as the centre, then at every corner and along every side is a doctrinal pillar on which we stand. Be it they type of music, or the role of certain genders, or whether we have two songs before the sermon or three. How we “do” church has become our doctrinal pillars. The next generation, with a low pressure system of different thinking meeting up with the southern high pressure system of the last generation, has met and caused a storm, shaking the Babel that has been built. Whether this is intentional or not is beyond me to judge, but it is doing one thing for sure; it is breaking lose some of the additions and renovations done throughout history to the Kingdom that God has built. How we now respond to this is entirely up to us, but we must recognize that this storm is not new at all, it has happened time and time again throughout history. The cycle of weather throughout the church has shaken religion from the beginning.
