Lately I've sensed an increasing number of Christians who feel that something important is missing from their church experience, their personal experience of God, or both. They often can't put their finger on what it is, but the number of people who feel this way is significant. I've seen it in many conversations and situations I know of first-hand, as well as sensing it as a subtle (even background) theme in much of what I read.
And what's interesting is that it's coming from within evangelical Christianity. I expect non-Christians to find Christianity somehow wanting - that's probably why they aren't Christians. But I'm talking about people who believe the Gospel of Jesus, and who participate in church regularly.
Below is a short video in which I share some of my observations about 4 places they're often going to look for "what's missing." And more importantly, what the answer is. Because in short, yes: I think something is often missing from our experience with God (as it has been from my own life for a long time). And better still, I think the Bible provides the answer to what it is. The answer hit me like a freight train this past Fall, and I discuss it in the video below (with a brief cameo appearance from Rosie the dog at the 12 minute mark!):
For some related thoughts on problems with the emergent church movement, see The Adrift Church?
For some related thoughts on how big (and sometimes small) evangelical churches tend to miss the centrality of the Gospel, see The Glitzy Church?
Is Something Missing In Church?
The Control Room Blew Up
Have you ever felt totally incapable of making something happen? Like you're stuck in some small pit, penned in a closet-like space by circumstances beyond your control. Sure, you can still do things. But the things you do really don't seem like they'll ever result in you breaking out of the pit. Your efforts feel like they amount to running in circles around the bottom of your little pit. No real hope of anything useful -- like, oh you know, actually getting out -- but at least it beats sitting on the floor doing nothing. I guess.
I've had three such experiences this week. That's big. Especially for a control freak like me. And yes, I am a control freak. A classic, bona-fide, getter-done achiever type. If there were a 12-step program to cure people from control freakishness I'd be a fantastic candidate for attending. Except that I'd ruin the process by trying to take control of it. I can just see it now: as soon as I stood in front of my circle of fellow high-strung neurotics and said "My name is Matt Guerino and I'm a control freak", I'd immediately turn around and begin researching everything about how to stop being a control freak, so that I could grab this control-freak thing by the horns and whip it into shape.
Yeeeeah. Feel free to re-read that last sentence and savor the irony.
This is what made my three "impossible pit" scenes last week so hard. First up: last weekend was Sanctity of Human Life weekend. And truthfully, I had no plan for Sunday's services. I knew it was coming back in November, but the Christmas holidays were so packed with things at the church that I had zero time to think about this significant weekend. Zilch. Nada. And by the way, whomever picked January for such an annual emphasis sure didn't consult with me. You can talk about the anniversary date of Roe v. Wade all you want, but coming on the heels of Christmas makes for a brutal time for pastors to get anything planned! Remember, I like my control here people.
But the weekend approached, and as it did so did the conviction in my mind and heart that we needed to focus on abortion. I prayed. The conviction grew stronger. I had no plan. The conviction grew stronger. I had no time to pull a big shin-dig together - to control what the weekend was going to look like. How do you broach so emotional a topic with the right balance of grace and truth, especially if you don't have 3 months of planning (control) behind it? And I told God all this. Really, I did. But he didn't listen. The conviction grew stronger. Then all in a flash (well, over a couple hours anyway) I came across several things that made the weekend message quickly fall into place, including my friend Diane's testimony which I hadn't read in several years. The service was done, the message was given, and I believe grace and truth carried the day. Without my control. Hmmmmm...
Next up: a friend with a large family and modest income got hit with a big surgery bill, and a mere 4 days later was also told by his tax preparer that instead of getting a couple thousand dollars back from Uncle Sam, he owed a couple thousand. Over $5,000 in new debt slammed him almost at once. I felt horrible. We talked. We brainstormed. We sought control! None could be found. So, trapped in that familiar pit I simply prayed. I actually asked God to drop $5,000 out of the sky in one form or other, because I didn't see how anything would change otherwise.
The next day he discovered an error the tax preparer had made, and it turns out that a small refund is coming as he'd originally thought. That was a $3,100 swing, just like that. There's another possible mistake which could result in a larger refund, and some hope on the medical bill front also came through unexpectedly that day. Wham. Without my control. Hmmmm...
Finally, Amy's had a rough week. She was fighting a flu which inflamed her chronic pain and also resulted in a bizarre new back muscle pain problem, all of which finally culminated in a searing headache. She hadn't slept well, and I was powerless to fix any of this. Stuck at the bottom of a very familiar pit. I can tell you, it stinks. On second thought, I really can't tell you how badly that stinks.
I put Tommy to bed that night and we prayed that God would give mommy a good night's sleep - just that - although I figured that was virtually certain not to happen. She slept for almost 8 hours straight and over the next couple days made remarkable progress on all fronts. All without my control. Hmmmm...
What is the point? He is the breakthrough. Not me. The common factors in each situation were that I had zero ability to make anything happen (though I had a role to play). I prayed - as did others - and things happened.
By the way, there's a wrong lesson that can be drawn from this. The point is NOT that God will do what I want if I just ask him. If you read this and think I'm saying "just ask God to take your problems away and he will," then I'm not communicating. That's not it at all. He might, he might not. He is God. He does what he does, not what I want him to.
No, the right lesson is this: God is the one who both determines a path and enables progress along it. Not me.
I sit here writing this at 5am. I've been up since 3:15. Couldn't sleep. Like a lot of pastors, I suspect, I awoke in the middle of the night with concern for my church and the spiritual growth of its people flooding my mind. Couldn't get back to sleep. I'm encouraged by the example of the Apostle Paul (another control freak, by the way) who said that concern for the churches he planted was one of his heaviest burdens. So it goes, I suppose, in this church leadership thing.
So I prayed for a while, realizing that I'm doing everything I can and should be doing that I'm aware of, but that in the end I cannot make people grow in faith. That is not my role, it is God's. He is the breakthrough.
Maybe this energetic go-getter needs to learn that so that I don't contend for his glory, even unintentionally. Maybe the worst possible scenario for a church isn't that it goes nowhere, but that it goes somewhere in our eyes and people get the credit for that instead of God. He is the one who makes life change happen, and he gets the credit (glory) for it. It's his church after all.
Only a control freak would want it otherwise.
It Isn't Ours To Change
I've been thinking a lot lately about truth. Biblical truth to be exact, in this truth-allergic age.
I just finished another edition of the comparative worldviews course I teach at George Fox University, and this group of adult students was interesting. They were a very bright and active group and they had a wide variety of beliefs. And just like a lot of people these days, this group really struggled with the idea of truth. I mean, really struggled. Many of them just couldn't get their heads around the idea that any one way of looking at the world might be more accurate than the other ways. In other words, these intelligent and hard working people just couldn't understand how one view of life - any view - could be true.
But many Christians seem to be in the same boat. Truth just doesn't compute these days, and maybe that's what so many evangelical Christians are responding to. There seems to be this all out rush to redefine Christianity; to get our truth-allergic world to see Christianity as not "truthy." We're pouring forth a nearly endless stream of books, blogs, and videos proclaiming "Hey! Check us out! Jesus is allergic to truth as well!"
Increasingly, Christians are down on the church, down on doctrine, and down on religion (even though that's what following Jesus is, contrary to popular opinion). These days we love questions, but we hate answers. We celebrate ignorance (mistaking it for humility), and despise knowledge. We're up on the journey, but down on the destination. In fact, it is now so popular to bash religion within Christian circles that one of the quickest ways to become influential with today's Christian generation is to write criticisms of theology, church, and Christianity itself.
What is this all about? Christians working hard to define themselves as not Christian? This isn't crazy, we're assured. In fact we're told that Jesus himself was down on truth and religion. We have drunk deeply at the well of this idea. for example, I recently saw a Christian describe their faith by saying "I rejected Christianity in order to follow Jesus."
Huh? Respectfully friends, I think we're confused.
It's one thing to critique how we run our churches, do our theology, and practice our religion. There is much to critique, as I've written here and here for example. To a point this is healthy - even necessary. But often I think we're identifying the wrong problem. Whatever the church's faults, being the church and standing for revealed truth are not among them. We're constantly taught the value of truth (Proverbs 23:23), of sound doctrine (Titus 2:1), and of the word of God (Matthew 5:17-18). And we're taught that Jesus is the Lord and head of the church (Ephesians 4:15-16), so apparently whatever its faults, it means something to him.
And that's what I'm really driving at, and what I think so many Christians these days are missing. To follow Jesus means to follow him his way. To be a part of his kingdom means he is the king. He makes the rules, calls the shots, and determines what matters. Being his follower means learning to accept this from him whether we like it or not. Actually, it means more than that: it means learning to like it too.
Our efforts to redefine Jesus as non-truthy and following him as non-religious are not only misguided, they are also overstepping our bounds. We're not free to change Christianity. It is the Way of Jesus. It is living life by his rules, traveling the road he marked out, for his glory. If we abandon this road, we have abandoned him.
We can't change Christianity. It isn't ours to change.
Christianity Ceased Being A Religion... When Exactly?
We've all heard it before, probably hundreds of times:
Now give me a minute before you chew me out or write me off! Surely many of us have said this ourselves, and you may feel there's an important truth behind those words. So let me say right off that there is. I get that. And I agree with it.
What many Christians are trying to say when they make that statement is that the Gospel of Jesus is not a man-made attempt to earn God's favor by being sufficiently good. And they're saying that when we try to be good enough for God, what we end up with is cold and lifeless legalism, which is not Christianity. And they're right. (image source)But I don't think substituting "relationship" for "religion" is the right way to communicate that truth. Here's why.
Welcome to Me-World
We're living in the Postmodern era. You know, that worldview that insists that no one has access to truth as it really is, but instead all we have is our own perspective. Since no one can know real truth, all I can know is "truth for me," or what seems to be true from my perspective.
So to many people nowadays, life is a highly individual, customized journey of discovering what will be true and meaningful to them, and them alone. It is a way of seeing life that begins and ends in one place: me.
Relationships in Me-World
And what happens to relationships when life is seen this way? They exist for, well... me! We want the freedom to enter and exit relationships as we see fit. We want to move from relationship to relationship as freely as we move from job to job. That's why increasingly we're just skipping that whole get married thing altogether. After all, what's the point? We'll be with him or her as long as we both choose to be together.
Relationships in Me-World make fewer and fewer demands on us. For example, I once worked with a never-married 40-something lady who had been living with her boyfriend (she referred to him as her "partner") for several years, and insisted that they were quite happy together. I innocently asked her if they had any plans to get married. Ooops. Wrong question. She snorted (literally) with disdain at the thought of marriage and replied, "Why would we? I don't want the state to be able to tell me what to do." She felt the relationship might become less satisfying at some future point. And if it did she wanted to have the freedom to just grab her stuff and move out without having to go through all the legal hassles of a divorce. (image source)And The Gospel?
Such is the reality of relationships in our beloved Me-World. So what happens when an innocent, well-meaning Christian, who has been involved in church and studying the Bible for years, proudly and emphatically claims that Christianity is really just a relationship? Mr. Christian is probably trying to say that it's not a legalistic, works-driven way to earn favor with God.
But is that what the citizens of Me-World actually hear? Or do they hear an entirely different message? "Christianity isn't a religion..." Well, to Mr. Me-World "religion" usually means someone like God (or in reality the church) telling me what to do and how to live my life. Me-World is allergic to anyone telling us what to do!
But "relationship"? Ah, we know what relationships are! They're those voluntary associations we enter into with others for mutual benefit and pleasure, but over which we still exert final control. And Mr. Christian is telling me that Christianity really just a "relationship" with Jesus? Fantastic! I'll go to church or whatever and Jesus will love me? Sounds great. But let's not have any of this talk of theology, sin, atonement, hell, election, sovereignty, wrath, or anything else that makes it sound like God actually rules the roost here. That's not a relationship.
God Most High
Well, it's not according to Mr. Me-World. But Christianity is exactly that according to the Bible. God is the Lord of Hosts, the Maker of heaven and earth before whom mountains tremble, and in who's presence the prophet Isaiah fell down as one dead and cried out "Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips!" (Isaiah 6:5) He is the Ancient of Days, the Lion of Judah who calls all men to repent and demands from his people that we be holy for he is holy.
We are not in a relationship with this God because we chose to enter into a non-binding contract for mutual benefit. We know God only because he broke into human history and revealed himself to us, and has summoned us to be his people by his means, on his terms, and for his glory. The God who by his supremacy and authority commands all men everywhere to repent is the God who loves his people fiercely as a husband. (image source)Mixed Messages
Do you now see why I cringe? This is Biblical Christianity! But none of this comes across to the ears of Me-World when we use the term "relationship." And when we reject the term "religion" we think we're rejecting dead legalism, but Mr. Me-World probably hears us rejecting any notion of God as One who is above, supreme, over us, and who places legitimate demands on our lives.
So my plea to my fellow believers is, stop distancing the Christian faith from the idea of "religion." If the Bible doesn't (James 1:26-27) then neither should we. If we continue to do so, we'll likely distance Christianity from the very sovereignty and transcendence of God, and his claims to define what is true and authoritative for us.
A New Label?
Now, when I said all this at a recent staff meeting one of my colleagues rightly pointed out that the word "religion" is a loaded term for so many both inside the church and outside, that we shouldn't try to rehabilitate it. I actually agree with her, and I'm not suggesting we use the word "religion." Just that we stop disparaging it.
Perhaps we need a new term. One that adequately captures and honors the "other-ness" of God, that communicates his status as the High King of Heaven, and the one to whom all glory is due. I do not know what this term should be, and I'm accepting suggestions. I'm advertising for a new label! Suggestions are welcome in the comment section. :)But please, brothers and sisters, let us be sure that the Messiah we are putting before the citizens of Me-World is the Messiah of the Bible: the one sent from the God of the universe, who commands our allegiance, our lives, and our destiny. (image source)
The one who came to earth to die for us, motivated by his unstoppable love, and who now sets the terms by which we rebels must surrender and devote ourselves utterly, completely, and irrevocably to his glorious self.
Bring me to my knees, Lord I lay me down
Rid me of myself, I belong to You,
Lead me, lead me to the cross.
--------------------
I'm captured by Your holy calling
Set me apart, I know You're drawing me to Yourself
Lead me Lord I pray
Take me, mold me, use me, fill me
I give my life to the Potter's hand
Hold me, guide me, lead me, walk beside me
I give my life to the Potter's hand
Community: Now Only $14.95 Per Person!
I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately. And I’m not the only one; community is high on the priority list for most people who attend a church in America today. But while community is important to almost everyone, that’s about where the commonality ends
It seems there are as many different opinions of what church community should look like as there are people. The church I pastor, like many other churches, is made up of all sorts of different people. We have different church and denominational backgrounds (including many with none at all), different personalities, and different life experiences. This can lead to different ideas about how “community” should function.
With so many different opinions, how do we experience community at church? In fact, what is God’s ideal for church community? Interestingly, the Biblical phrase most frequently used to describes community is “one another.” As in pray for one another, bear one another’s burdens, encourage one another, be kind to one another, exhort one another, teach one another, admonish one another, be patient with one another, and love one another. Two things stand out in my mind as I examine this Biblical list of “one-anothers.”
First, Biblical community is all about, well, one another! Community does not mean a few insiders reaching out to the masses. It isn’t mainly about the few pastors or elders of a church pursuing each member, which would make community a top-down thing; something done to us. Rather, the Bible is describing community as all of us reaching out to all of us. Biblical community is a delightfully organic thing, engaging every person in a thriving dance of giving and receiving. Because community is not a one-way thing, the person who walks in to a church, sits down, and waits for community to happen to them is going to be waiting a long time. And the person who goes from church to church doing this, evaluating each one on how relational the church is will almost assuredly never find what 
Which leads me to the second thing: a direct implication of the “one-another” language in the Bible is that community is not something you find. Community is something you help make. Many people bounce from church to church looking for community the way we might hop from store to store in search of just the right plasma TV. But because of its one-another nature, community can’t be boxed and put on a shelf for discovery. Community is not something we find at church; community is something we bring with us to church.
Community happens when I determine to be a one-anothering kind of person, and I seek opportunities to share love, grace, patience, encouragement, and burden-bearing with those around me. It does not require me to have a socially outgoing personality. Rather, it requires me to spend enough time getting to know people that I know what needs they have, and what will encourage them. Then it requires me to take a little risk, by stepping out and meeting that need.
At that moment, you’re touching another person’s life powerfully. You become Jesus to them, you begin a strong relationship, and you make God’s church a little bit more like what he wants it to be.
And that’s way better than anything you can get from a store.
Book Review - Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne
I picked this book up because my friend Seth asked me if I had read it, and if so what I thought. At the time I didn't really know anything about the author, Shane Claiborne. In fact I had only heard of him from a couple youth pastor friends who had seen him speak at youth ministry conferences, and they basically said he was an edgy dude who lived in some sort of inner city commune and talked about being a serious Jesus follower. Sounded like a Jesus hippie to me -- I figured he was part of the emerging church movement and didn't think much else of it, until I got Seth's e-mail.
The length of this post is due to the way the book pleasantly surprised me. My assumption when I started reading the book was that I'd like a lot of it and not like a lot of it. I figured that, like many emergent guys, he'd be asking a lot of good and needed questions about the apathy of the American church. But I also assumed he'd proffer some dubious and typically-emergent answers, such as downplaying the study of orthodox theology and questioning whether anyone could know truth. I planned on being about 50/50 on what he was saying.
Well, it turns out he does live in a commune. But to my pleasant surprise, I ended up being about 80/20 on what he says. Really. (Don't worry mom: I got through my Berkeley years without joining a hippie commune and I'm not about to move your grandchildren into one now...)
The book (in a really small nutshell) is an attempt to wake up an affluent, apathetic American church and call her to a lifestyle of serious Jesus-following. He makes several different points in support of that goal using lots of stories from his personal journey interspersed with some free-flowing pontificating-on-paper. I won't recount all of his arguments (he already wrote the book, so I don't need to do it again!) but the core principle is to call Christians to a lifestyle of "radical love" which Claiborne sees as the only Jesus-ordained way to change the world. He's real big on Tony Campolo, Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Theresa, and he's real not-big on George W. Bush, Marketing-driven evangelical mega-churches and Pat Robertson. Come to think of it I'm not a big fan of the last two myself, even though I don't really go in for everyone on his list of heroes.
What I like
There's a lot of detail I could agree and disagree with, but I think the book's main strengths boil down to three major ideas.
First, unlike the worst of emerging church voices, Claiborne still takes the Bible seriously. I can't tell you how refreshing this was to see, and it allowed me to take his ideas more seriously than I would have otherwise. I could let his ideas challenge my own understanding of the gospel and agree or disagree with his perspective as with a brother in Christ, fellow truth lover and follower of Jesus. This was a way different experience than reading the postmodern nonsense that spews forth from some Emergents.
Now, his book does strike me as just a bit selective with Scripture. He's quick to quote any passage that speaks of liberating the poor and the oppressed, to the point where there wasn't much other Scripture quoted that I recall. To be fair though, that is essentially the thesis of his book and one can never say everything in a single volume. And there is a lot of scripture that speak of not befriending (or becoming) the oppressive rich & powerful. I also liked the fact that he didn't only quote from the gospels and the words of Jesus, as some Emergent guys are wont to do. Whether one arrives at all the same conclusions as Claiborne or not, one has to give him a lot credit for not losing a high view of Scripture as he re-thinks the American Christian life. I almost screamed in shock and joy when he said the way to correct bad theology isn't with no theology, but with good theology.
Second, Claiborne works hard at maintaining and conveying humility. This is no small feat in a book that aims to prophetically criticize much of church life. For instance, he admits at one point that he got caught up in the "rage against the machine" liberal activist culture which thrives on anger and hubris. He eventually recognized that arrogance can never undo arrogance and disowned his angry liberal activism for something more mature. Kudos to him for not only learning the lesson, but trying to teach it to others. He's still involved in more protesting and confronting than I personally care for, but this feels like a difference of emphasis to me rather than a completely different mentality. And while it's pretty obvious that he thinks more Christians should do what he's doing, he doesn't come out and say that we're not serious Christians if we don't.
One more thing I liked, and which I think is the most important contribution in this book, is the way he links reaching out with relationship. I think this is huge, and I've come to completely agree with him here. The idea is that our philanthropy and charitable giving are often mediated by massive public and private institutions, so when we give we often never see or know who is being helped. But when we spend time with the poor, the oppressed, and the washed-up we learn their story and come to see them as human beings made in God's image (which they are) rather than as losers and statistics (which they're not). The hooker working the corner, the addict and the abuser are the ones Jesus sent us to love and preach the gospel to. When we take the time to build relationships in this way, helping "the poor" becomes helping Joe Donatello, Mary Sanford, or her kid Jessica. Grace becomes personalized.
This is how generosity works, by which I mean it's far easier to get people to part with their money for the good of others when they know the "others" who are being helped. For example, we've sent about 10 people from our church to Boma, Sudan over the past year to help build and operate a school among other things. My good Kenyan friend Rosemary Khamati from SEA Partners recently came to Harvest and told us of some of the clothing needs for the school kids in the cool rainy weather. After her presentation I overheard one of the past team members tell Rosemary that no matter what the funds would be raised, and this lady had a determined fire in her eyes when she said it. Did this fire come from a general "bent toward philanthropy" or from being goaded to give by one of my amazing sermons on money? No way. It came because this woman has been to that school and has loved, served, and taught those kids herself. Relationship produces a Jesus-honoring desire to part with our own money for the good of others.
A Swing And A Miss
One thing I think Claiborne whiffs on is capitalism. He's not super clear on his vision for global economy, and seems to lump all economic systems together. At one point he declares he's neither capitalist or socialist, but after reading his book I have no idea how he sees the big economic picture; he doesn't explain how he thinks it should work. Now to be fair to Claiborne, many much smarter people than he (and than I) have fundamentally missed the essential genius of democratic capitalism including most of the people he's read and been mentored by. It's an easy mistake to make when so many intellectual voices shout down the perceived evils of the "greedy system." I hope some day Claiborne picks up a copy of Michael Novak's The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism which is an unfortunately difficult read that nonetheless contains a better view of reality.
Claiborne is extremely concerned about the plight of the world's poor, and rightly wants to live a life that loves them in Jesus' name. But it is too easy to decry the gap between rich & poor, as he does many times in his book. This simplistic look at the world's economy is not entirely off base, but it misses a much deeper and more important point: both the rich and the poor have been getting richer in the West because of one system: democratic capitalism. For example, Novak notes that in non-capitalist France during the 1780's, 4 out of every 5 families devoted 90% of their income to buying bread - and only bread - to stay alive. And French life expectancy in 1795 was roughly 25 years. Compare this to capitalist England which saw real wages double between 1800 and 1850 and again between 1850 and 1900, all while the population was increasing. Here's the point: anyone interested in seeing poverty driven back should be interested in capitalism, for as Novak puts it "after five millennia of blundering, human beings finally figured out how wealth may be produced in a sustained, systematic way."
The key insight is that democratic capitalism is the only political/economic system that respects the beautiful human spirit created in the Image of God - that's why democratic capitalism works. Claiborne misses this point, but again in fairness so do a lot of people. Capitalism entices creative people to create, innovative people to innovate, and as a result wealth is created and even the non-innovative and non-creative benefit. Is the world's wealth distribution sick? Of course it is. But what democratic capitalism needs is a strong moral vision for life that provides guidance and moral backbone to its wealth-creating potential. And Christians are well suited to provide such a moral vision. In fact that vision is precisely what Claiborne's book is all about, and his stories are quite effective at getting it across. This makes his predictable criticisms of wealth inequality a double shame because his vision contains the seeds that made capitalism thrive in the first place, and which can make it do so again to the benefit of all. We Christians should be urging a moral vision onto capitalism, so that more wealth can be created and better distributed to alleviate the suffering of the world's poor. Claiborne seems to get the latter point, but he misses the former point altogether. A couple examples from his book come to mind, but this post is getting long already and I don't want to risk sounding more critical of the book than I actually feel.
Concluding Thoughts
In fact I'm much more high on this book than I thought I'd be. It was useful to have read it while in the midst of Novak's book, and right after I had finished David Wells' The Courage to be Protestant. I think orthodox protestant Christianity needs a new/old vision moving forward: new in the sense that it should be different from the big-ticket, me-centered world of Marketing mega-churches, and old in the sense of being grounded in the theological orthodoxy and redemptive vision that has characterized the Christian faith for millennia. I don't personally think Claiborne has all the answers (he probably doesn't think so either) but I do think he has a different enough perspective to jolt the church into asking some big (and good) questions, yet orthodox enough to be worth listening to. He did so for me.
Good job Shane!
Book Review - The Courage to be Protestant
Sometimes you hear a speaker or read an author who's saying all the things you've always believed, but they're stating things so well that your whole heart just screams "yes!" the whole time. Such was my experience reading this curiously titled book by David Wells. If anyone ever wanted to know how I believe church should be done or gain insight into my philosophy of ministry as a pastor, this book effectively states it all.
In the first part of the book Wells succinctly describes how the evangelical movement began back in the 1930s with a simplified dual commitment to Biblical inerrancy and the cross of Christ. This simple core had advantages, like allowing Christians from different traditions (such as charismatics and non-charismatics) to join the movement. But it had two key weaknesses: the importance of doctrine was diminished, as was the role of the church. This lead to a fracture in evangelicalism - a trend that very quickly became all the rage in the 1980s and 1990s, which Wells calls the Marketing trend.
I've blogged about the Marketing trend before, but in a nutshell it is this: following the lead of the Willow Creeks and Saddlebacks of the world, evangelical leaders began approaching the task of the church the same way a business approaches the sale of a product. The gospel is the product, the unchurched are the target demographic, and the question is "how do you get them to buy?" Employing all the latest know-how from the world of marketing, these churches started looking less and less like churches and more and more like bookstores, coffee shops, concerts, and other successful retail operations. The original weaknesses became glaring: both the role of church as an authentically spiritual and other-worldly community and the prominent role of doctrine in the life of the church became virtually nonexistent.
This Marketing trend gave rise to another major fracture: the Emergent trend (which I also blogged about before). Emergents recognize many of the shallow faults of Marketing evangelicalism, but their corrective measures often fall far short improvement because they're too wed to postmodern thinking. The role of the church as an authoritative community in the life of the believer is lost in the postmodern malaise of "journey" and "conversation." And doctrine? Few things are met with more disdain in postmodern thinking than doctrine, with all its arrogant self-assurance about being right.
In both cases the heart of what the church is, and what it believes, are lost. Marketing churches often put all this is the "back room" so to speak where few find it, whereas Emergent churches dismiss it altogether and replace it with a vague, self-oriented spirituality that's more about journey than destination.
So here we are, with evangelicalism fragmented into three major camps (with lots of nuance and detail in between, of course). Wells proceeds to accurately diagnose and expound why these current trends are missing the core of Biblical Protestant Christianity - information I think every Christian, and especially every church leader, needs to know.
Where do we go from here? Wells wisely recognizes that evangelicalism cannot be "un-fractured." Humpty Dumpty will never be put together again. However, and this is where my heart really resonates with this book, he urges us to move forward with the core of what Biblical Christianity has always been at the forefront of our minds. Whatever the details of church life end up looking like, he urges us to forge them out of the truths that have always defined Biblical Protestantism. He challenges us to have the courage of our convictions, the courage to buck the tides of our surrounding postmodern culture and adhere to Christian orthodoxy as taught in the Bible. In other words, as he puts it in the book's title, The Courage to Be Protestant.
I do not think Wells could be much more right than he is in this book. And I think every Christian will find his descriptions of current church trends eye-opening and extremely helpful. I highly recommend this book, and it's the first book in over a year that I've added to my blog's Bookshelf as a book I think every Christian should read. I'm that high on it. And if you consider Harvest your church home, I'm all the more asking you to make some time soon to read and digest Wells' message, because it's at the heart of where we're going as a church body.
Heart & Mind - Art in the Service of the King
We've had an outstanding discussion going here on the nature of how we do church, considering both the Marketing and the Emergent trends that are prevalent in evangelical churches right now. But Dana's comment on the Marketing post got me thinking about where the arts fit in to the task of doing church. If using "glitzy" programs as a way to market the gospel is not what we want to do, then does this diminish the role of the arts in church? Is there no, or very little, room for things like music, drama, and visual arts? No way! I actually see the arts as gifts God gave to his church for use in accomplishing his purposes.
Consider first that much of what we consider to be classical art was developed by Christians for use in church. The Sistine Chapel, for example, is a church; but it's most famous for the stunning Michelangelo painting that adorns its interior (left). Or take music: many of history's most famous compositions were written for use in church services and other spiritual functions. Or how about architecture: a visual art form that Medieval churches used dramatically to lift worshippers' hearts toward God. And we could go on - drama, sculpture, poetry, and even more contemporary activities like film-making are all artistic forms that can and should be used in the service of Christ's kingdom.
The "Glitzy" Church Again?
This is different from what I referred to before as the "glitzy church" in some important ways. Marketing churches certainly tend to put the arts front-and-center (especially music and drama), but the presence of the arts is not what defines the Marketing model. Rather, this methodology is defined by marketing the gospel of Jesus in the same way businesses seek to sell products. Thinking of church in these terms leads us to use anything and everything that will catch people's attention and help a church "gain market share." And any medium that works is fair game: anything that attracts people, including multimedia technology and some artistic endeavors, is capitalized on. Any medium thought not to be attractive is jettisoned. The point is, the Marketing model is not defined by the presence of the arts. Rather, the Marketing model determines if, how, and when the arts are used in church just like it determines if, how, and when certain things get preached from the pulpit and if, how, and when everything else in church life happens.
So non-Marketing churches will utilize the arts, possibly even a lot. But the way they're utilized and the thinking behind using them is markedly different. To start exploring how this is so, let me focus on the inter-dependence of two of the church's most important functions: preaching and the arts.
Why Preaching Needs The Arts
Preaching - the declarative, clear explanation of what God has said - is God's ordained method for bringing sinners to salvation (Romans 10:14 - just hover without clicking to see the verse pop up). It is also God's primary way of making his will known to the human race (Titus 1:3), and the command of God for church members (2 Timothy 4:2). Preaching is so critical because if we don't understand God we can never know him or follow him rightly. So many different ideas exist in the world that knowing how God wants us to live can be bewildering, which is why all things of value to our relationship with God begin with right knowledge. Doctrine is the foundation of the Christian life, and accurate preaching is how we establish ourselves in accurate doctrine.
But a foundation by itself is not a whole building. Preaching is aimed largely at the mind, but right knowledge is only the beginning of the Christian life, not the end. God made us not only intellectual beings with a rational mind, but emotional beings with a heart. And it's at the level of heart passion where so much of human living takes place. What good preaching needs is something that can reach beyond the mind and touch the heart, stirring the imagination and drawing out the emotions. How can we do that?
Why The Arts Need Preaching
But by themselves such emotionally evocative experiences are un-anchored, un-tamed, and perhaps inaccurate. People can be made to feel fear when there is no real cause for fear. Similarly, we can be made to feel calm and reassured when perhaps we should be very afraid. We can be made to feel angry at times when anger will only be harmful, and we can be led to trust people who are not trustworthy. Perhaps greatest of all, as the great Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards explained so powerfully in his book The Religious Affections, the love of our hearts, designed and fit for God alone, can be made to rest on lesser things.
And this is why the arts need preaching. They need to be steered, harnessed, and guided so as to ensure that the feelings they evoke accurately reflect who God is, and what he wants from us.
Preaching without the arts is like a boat with no throttle lever: you can point it in the right direction, but it has little power to go anywhere. And the arts without preaching is like a speed boat with no steering wheel: fire it up and it'll go, but you have no control over where it ends up -- and no way to avoid crashing into the rocks.
So where does this leave us as we think through how to do church? Speaking for myself, it leads me to value the role of the arts and to even want to explore further ways they can be utilized to further the purposes God has given his church. (Are there art forms we don't use enough in church? What would it look like if we did so? Interesting things to think about...) But music, drama, painting, lighting, storytelling and architecture never self-justify. That is, they don't exist in the church for their own sake, but rather because they partner with the full declaration of God's preached word to draw the community of faith deeper into the truths that God has given us to live by.
I don't know many things more able to do so than well-planned, and well-executed, art.
The Adrift Church?
I discussed the dominant trend in evangelical churches today (the Marketing trend) in my last post. But this isn't the only trend, and in fact it's already being fast supplanted by a very different way of doing church: the Emergent movement. Most have at least heard of the trend referred to as "the emerging church." This is a general, umbrella phrase used to describe a wide variety of ideas that can be very different from one another, but nonetheless share some common bases.
Great Questions...
It is interesting that the emerging church movement grew largely from opposition to the Marketing church movement. An increasingly large group of Christians, consisting mostly of younger generations, looked at the Marketing churches that their Baby Boomer evangelical parents have built and concluded that these churches are shallow, superficial, and (one of the hip new terms) "inauthentic." This generation, already characterized by cynicism and saturated with image-is-everything culture, has increasingly concluded that the big personalities, big buildings, and big programs of the Marketing churches are missing something essential to the Christian gospel.
In other words, they have many of the same criticisms I have about Marketing churches. Emergents are asking great questions about things like the nature of biblical community (being authentic), and the impact of the gospel on how we engage with the problems and challenges of our communities (being missional). Anyone who knows me knows that I think these are extremely important and well-timed questions which the church needs to be asking.
...Not-So-Great Answers
So then, would I classify myself as part of this emergent trend? No, not really. And the reason is simply that while the movement began with some well-timed questions, major portions of it have proceeded along the road of some very dubious answers. To understand why, one need go no further than understanding postmodernism, which is the cultural ocean in which emergents are generally swimming. Postmodernism is explained more fully here, but at its heart is the belief that no one can ever really know what's true in any objective sense. We don't have knowledge, all we have is opinion. And in an effort to "do church" in and connect with a postmodern culture, many of the leading voices in the emerging church movement have begun with postmodern assumptions and sought to understand Christianity from that vantage point.
But what happens when I view all this through the framework of postmodernism, with its denial of knowable truth and its inherent opposition to any over-arching meaning-story? What happens is the whole Christian enterprise as it's existed for centuries crumbles, and gets replaced with a me-centered journey of self-discovery that lacks any grounding in revealed truth. The emphasis shifts from learning to exploring, from the truth outside to the feelings inside, from conforming myself to expressing myself, and from the destination to the journey. Whatever value such an approach may be thought to have, it is not orthodox Biblical Christianity. Such churches are adrift on a sea of postmodern uncertainty, un-anchored to any solid basis from which to make sense of the church's mission.
Oddly enough, despite their great differences, the Marketing movement and the Emergent movement share a couple things in common. First, both are seeking to accommodate the gospel of Jesus to the larger culture: Marketers to the post- WWII consumer culture of the Baby Boomers and Emergents to the more recent postmodern culture of the Gen X-ers. However (despite the fact that both movements contain some outstanding individual churches which are exceptions to this rule) the movements as a whole have capitulated too strongly to the cultures they're trying to reach. It's the classic missionary problem: how do we speak the language of a foreign culture so as to communicate the gospel of Jesus? The trick (which missionaries have understood for centuries) is that one has to be careful not to change the message itself in the process of translation. But this is harder to stay objective about when you're trying to communicate to your own culture. Marketers have granted too many of consumer-culture's basic assumptions about how life works without thinking carefully enough about how those assumptions alter the gospel. Similarly, Emergents have granted too many of postmodern-culture's assumptions, also underestimating how much those assumptions change the very Christian faith they're trying to communicate.
Secondly, both movements tend to make the same mistake: minimizing truth, theology, and doctrine. But they do it for very different reasons. Marketers minimize it because such things are not thought to be wanted by the public. Spiritual seekers aren't "shopping" for doctrine, they're "shopping" for inspiration. So if churches want to "close the sale," they need to box up doctrine and put it in the back room, and place the glitzy programs and inspiring environments in the front window to attract passers-by.
Similarly, Emergents minimize doctrine because it smacks of arrogance. Postmodernism demands "how can anyone know they're right?" Worse yet, such certainty is thought to be the source of conflict and evil in the world -- relics of an uncouth and even barbaric past. Intelligent, sophisticated people have learned to think in "shades of gray" and to admire "nuance" as opposed to crude, unenlightened statements about absolute right and wrong. Definitive statements of doctrinal truth simply stand no chance with such a mindset.
The Glitzy Church?
So, I'm sitting here on a Saturday morning sipping a fabulous mug of Peet's coffee, and thinking some big thoughts - specifically, thoughts about church. That may seem kinda', well, obvious since church leadership is my career! But I mean more than just thinking about next Sunday's sermon, or the needs of our particular congregation at the moment, or the many activities that constitute the church calendar. I mean thinking about church: ho we do church, and why we do it the way we do it.
Think about it: what aspects of Christian doctrine are most likely to be unappealing to a postmodern, individualistic culture like ours? The same aspects that have been unappealing to every culture in every time: ideas like sin, guilt, judgment, and the authority of God in the lives of men, just to name a few. Consider:
- is Jesus our maker, deserving of our submission and graciously offering us forgiveness of our rebellious nature against him, as the gospel has declared for the past two thousand years? Or...
- is Jesus the world's best self-help guru; a chummy chap who stands by ready to enhance our dreams, ameliorate our disappointments, and enable us to achieve our personal goals?
But this is about more than just preaching - it's about how we understand the church's entire mission. And it touches every facet of church life, from how funds are allocated to how the pastoral staff spends its time to what the participation of individual members looks like. If the goal is to market the gospel as a product, everything will be affected.
So why have I been thinking about all this lately? Well, two responses come to mind. First, the big picture always come to the fore when you're about to hire new staff, as Harvest is preparing to do. As our modestly sized church begins the process of seeking a full time associate pastor to work with worship & arts as well as other responsibilities, the "Marketing question" becomes important: how much of this person's time will be devoted to building performance-oriented programs and activities vs. supporting the church's core functions of biblical community, truth-based personal transformation, and serving our community as conduits of grace?But second, the truth is I haven't been just thinking about these things lately. In fact, I've never stopped thinking about them since I first came to pastor at Harvest. As I told the church at that time, God impressed upon me a burden to help build the church in the mode of serious engagement with the Bible, and with the deep questions of life. I came here with the deep-seated conviction that the church marketing experiment of the past couple decades, though begun with admirable goals, has gone largely awry. And it's time to shut 'er down. It's time to get back to a deep, rich, and delightfully counter-cultural Christianity. A Christianity that challenges our natural perspective, and gives a greater meaning to all of human life. In other words, time to get back to historic Biblical Christianity.
So says this one man anyway. But enough of my musings. I'm wanting to hear from all of you too, because I want to engender a discussion here. Please consider posting up a response to this question: what church experience in your own past caused you to grow most notably as a Christian?
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