If you’re like me you often find yourself pondering things that church leaders are fearful to let people know they even think about. For me, on Thursdays I’m going to make my dangerous ponderings known. For those who have been courageous enough to climb out of the denominational box, the local church box, the box of legalism, and the cultural Christian box, these musings will create a healthy conversation. For those who find their identity in or make part of their income based on the topics and ideas that I’m pondering, these contemplations may create some tension.
Please know that I am not attacking any ministry, ideology, or person. I’m simply scripting questions that I myself am wrestling with.
Today’s question is, “Are we so far separated from biblical church we no longer know what it is?” I gotta confess, writing this blog post was more painful for me than most. I realize we must meet people where they are and create an environment that is conducive to their journeying into conversations about Christ. And I am more than aware that the topics I use to illustrate where the church is today are where many of us live because of contextualization. Remember, I’m only thinking out loud, not declaring an answer to the question or insinuating any church’s rightness or wrongness. And I am most certainly not attacking you or your church.
Back to this Thursday’s question, “Are we so far separated from biblical church we no longer know what it is?”
When I look at many churches today she doesn’t look much like what I see in Acts. Acts seems to be a movement driven by the Holy Spirit with the primary goal being to… “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19 – 20) Today, many churches seem to be driven by the vision and personality of senior leadership with the primary goal being to “grow a big church.” We tend to base our success on number of attendees, budgets being met, and buildings being built. There is a movement toward the making of disciples but many church leaders find themselves sustaining a community of fellow followers who are not only intent on, but who demand that church leaders start and oversee programs that they enjoy, marry them to one another, counsel them in difficult times, and bury them, but should never ask them to commit to or guide them into a disciple’s lifestyle.
In the Acts church, “many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.” (Acts 2:43) It seems some church leaders ridicule and find hilarity in churches today that anticipate and expect God to do the miraculous. Miracles are fodder for jokes between the ecclesiastical brotherhood rather workings of God to be celebrated. And while most pastors don’t make fun, many don’t seem to find it important to create an environment in their own church where the miraculous is part of the church’s DNA.
Another example… In the New Testament, money seems to be mostly used to feed the poor, care for one another, and to send to other believing communities who were in need. In today’s church we seem to have a penchant for paying impressive salaries, hosting elaborate websites, building buildings, and buying technology that makes life easier or that aids in making the already elaborate production even more exciting and interesting. What many churches pay a graphic designer for one initiative would pay the salary of 10 or more pastors in Guatemala for a few months. And if the costs of buying the technology used in worship today were taken into consideration, one western church could establish a full-time disciple-making pastor in some third world countries for many years.
Has a new paradigm, a paradigm so different than the first century church, become the only norm that is fathomable? And because of this are we unable to envision anything being church other than what the church is as we know it today? Is it possible we’ve wandered so far from the church as Jesus envisioned it that our eyes are unable to get a fix on it? Is it possible, if a church looked like the Acts church, we’d think it a renegade band of over-zealous fanatics giving the rest of us a bad name?
I wonder, “Are we so far separated from biblical church we no longer know what it is?”
I don’t know the answer to this question. I’m just thinking out loud.
What do you think?
