7.2.08
Two weeks ago, we talked about community and the Church, and it has left me feeling a little unsettled. (download June 22, 2008 sermon) We began the morning by asking the question, “What should the Church be doing?”
I wonder if we think of church as a place to go, or as something we are. Is Church merely a place to go once a week, to worship God…or is worship something we never stop doing? That when you walk out the front doors of the church building, you haven’t left church because we are the Church. If you ask a child (or an adult for that matter) to draw you a picture of a church, they undoubtedly will draw a building with a steeple on it. If this is our definition of Church, it may be time to throw the word out completely, and use words that better exemplify what Jesus had in mind for us.
Paul says in 1 Cor 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. It astonishes me that the Church is called the Body of Christ. What types of things do we see Christ doing in his life? Healing, loving unconditionally, befriending sinners, serving, praying, etc. And we, the Church, are to be his body?! We are to be his hands and feet, those who are continuing his work and mission? When Jesus ascended into heaven, his work did not end. In fact it had just begun. He left us with the Holy Spirit and sent us out as “little-Christs (where the word Christian is derived)” to continue his ongoing mission. To love the unloved, to heal the broken, to paint the unpainted, to care for the poor, to bring God’s shalom to our lost and dying world.
I don’t want us to sell ourselves short. I think many of us have become disillusioned with “playing church” and going through the various motions of a church routine. I think that the attractional model of church is a broken machine. By attractional, I am referring to a Sunday morning gathering that we try to make as polished and as entertaining as possible, so that when people step in the doors, they want to come back to the doors the next week. Where the Christians’ job is to try to find ways to get people into those doors. Once they get in the doors, we let the pastors and worship band work their magic, hoping people will like the show enough to come back. The problem with this approach is that it leaves out key elements of Church: relationship building, accountability, social justice and service projects, caring for needs, to name a few. And what about all of the people who will step into the doors of a church building no matter how many mailers they receive or billboards they read? Did Jesus want us to bring people to church, or to bring Church to people? I don’t want to simply put a prettier dress on the machine, which is easy to do. We try to be hip, trendy, and contemporary, still hoping people like us enough to come back. It’s not that this approach to Church has been a failure, because God certainly has and is still using it. It’s important that we notice how our postmodern culture is changing though, and how this approach does not embody the “sending” mission that Jesus gave us. Instead of taking the church routine that’s been handed down to us and rubber stamping it for today’s culture, we need to carefully take apart the machine, keep the parts that are good, throw out the parts that aren’t, and attempt to rebuild it together to embody Jesus’ mission. I don’t mean to say that we’ll ever get it perfect, but hopefully we’ll always be humble enough and willing enough to be a part of this process.
If we are all pastors, as Scripture tells us in 1 Peter 2:5, 9, what does it look like to live on mission with Jesus? Has the current model of Church allowed us to become passive spectators rather than active participants in Jesus’ mission?
I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I appreciate being part of a community where I can ask these honest questions. I am also grateful for my Sunday morning worship experience, but I pray that it is only a part of who a church is, and not the definition.
Further questions to consider…
-In what ways can we bring Church to people rather than people to church?
-How does being a Christian affect the way we build relationships in our everyday lives?
-I am called by Jesus to love my neighbor…what does this look like? Is this active or passive
On the journey…
-Noah