Toward a Better Church

‎Recently I was directed to "My Next Church" by Kent Williamson. It's an article expressing what Williamson views as the ideal church and all of the faults in many churches. Faults most of us can relate to.

He proposed an admirable goal for his next church:

My next church will actively engage the culture. It will not wait patiently for seekers or the lost to wander through it’s doors. No, instead it will prayerfully seek them. It will not abandon the arts, but instead will actively pursue them, both in creating them and experiencing them. It will attempt to live culturally relevant lives, not to be seen by the world around us hip or in, but in an attempt to become all things to all men so that more may come to know Him.

Finally and probably most importantly, my next church will be about the great commission and the greatest commandments. It will actively pursue making disciples (not merely converts) of all men. It will actively be about loving our neighbor as ourselves. And it will actively attempt to love the Lord our God with all our heart soul and strength. The message of my next church will not change, but it’s methods will."

That is what church is about, but the ideal church he projects gets distorted in the midst of pointing out his many frustrations with the church. He wrote that his next church "will discourage argument for arguments sake over the finer points of theology that have divided so many for so long."

Will it not have enough time to talk about finer points of theology because it will too busy dividing and condemning others on finer points of ecclesiology? I'm not picking on Williamson. I believe that he expresses thoughts that many discouraged and disillusioned Christians have about the church. But in barraging the church with such vitriol, people who desire the church to be more than it is substitute one poisonous, divisive fruit for another. It is just as detrimental to divide over lesser points of theology as it is to divide over lesser points of church structure.

Williamson writes:

My next church will meet in the community. It may gather at a coffee house, a restaurant, or a neighbors yard today, and a playground, a theatre, or a parking lot next time, but the focus will not be on meeting to cloister ourselves from the world. 

Williamson would have to meet at an everchanging venue to find his goal of a church being about the great commission and the great commandments. Having an established building to gather in rather than a mobile, spontaneous gathering is irrelevant to us reflecting the Kingdom of God and being the people we are called to be. The Church can be found in a mega-church, a small rural church, and a group of Christians that don't want a formalized community and choose to meet in a coffee house one week and a parking lot the next. Praise God for His diversity and glory in His victories all around.

I hope that Kent Williamson finds the Church, but I also hope that he hasn't missed the Church around him because of his strict ecclesiology.

What I see in a lot of the "sanctuary church is evil" conversation is that the argument is based on an ideal structure that is not given in Scripture. 

The hermeneutics that would be needed to state that a church should not have a building is the same hermeneutics that leads some groups to think that baptism is essential, participating in the Lord's Supper must only be on Sunday, and instruments cannot be used in the weekly worship gathering. It is the idea that if something is not explicitly stated in the New Testament or wasn't in practice with the early church, then it cannot be implemented today.

Personally, I wish the church where I was a pastor at didn't have a building, but we have tried to transition the building into being a missions center for the community rather than a place that is only used on Sunday mornings. We now house a Kid's Clothes Closet to provide clothes to children in need. We have invited in a daycare that will be able to provide childcare to families in need and also help pay for the building. We are open to more uses of the facility that can bring God glory. A building is a big expense. We must realize that it is only a tool. It is an expensive tool, so we better get a great use out of it for Jesus' glory. We must never forget that it is just a tool, neither moral or immoral by itself. It's moral or immoral based upon what we use it for. 

The hermeneutics that are against having a paid minister goes contrary to Scripture. I was an anti-paid minister person for a while. It was something I had to wrestle with when I felt God calling me back to the ministry for my livelihood. I didn't want to do it because I strongly felt that ministers shouldn't be paid. That was me forcing the Scriptures to say something that it doesn't say because I wanted the church to be something other than what it was and is. Once we start forcing the Bible to agree with the pain in our past from abusive Christians, we can miss the bigger picture. Let us not fool ourselves. These abuses can occur in the institutionalized church or in a freer form of church. 

A clear church structure was not given in Scripture. I would presume that was intentionally done by God because we would get legalistic and divisive over our interpretation of it. Instead, we are given the Holy Spirit who guides us and works all things for the good of those who love Jesus, the head of the church. The key for a healthy local church is to have the people who gather together living with Jesus as their head. When that is the case, the arguments over structures become meaningless. Hence, a local body can be mega, mini, transient, or some other structure.

We see through the epistles that God works locally. This means that what would be a vibrant community in one area might not connect with the people in another. The church cannot be cookie cutter, but it must be diverse. There are some elements that should never change from church to church, but most of what a church appears as is cultural. Cultural elements can change. It is essential that each local church is under the Lordship of Christ, or the church will just become a comfortable club (usually not social). I am happy to see people connecting to God in exciting ways in different settings. All believers are God's people no matter what structure or non-structure they find themselves living in community with other believers in.

We could have the best structure or non-structure in the world, but without the people who call themselves followers of Jesus really surrendering to His Lordship, it would all be meaningless. It is through surrendering to Jesus and living radically that lives and institutions, including faulty churches, will be transformed into His image. Let's get to surrendering.

What is a pastor? Are You considering ministry?

I've been given the opportunity to teach a career class this morning on what a Pastor does for his job.  I'm going to talk about the basic things like education, spiritual disciplines, and the untypical work week, but my heart comes back to two things.

Having worked in the paid full-time ministry, then outside the paid full-time ministry, and now back in the paid full-time ministry, I am so grateful for the people who have set me apart to do ministry.  What a privilege I have to study Scriptures, pray, write, plan service opportunities, and visit with people for a living.  Although I believe that every Christian has the opportunity to be a full-time minister in whatever career they are in, I find it liberating to have as my sole focus bringing about God's will in the community I live in.

But with liberation, comes responsibility.  Paul wrote,

"For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery...For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love...For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”  (Galatians 5:1,6, 13-14). 

It is a great honor and freedom to be set apart to do ministry full time, but it is also a freedom that we need to make sure we do not abuse.  All freedom should be used to become servants one to another.  Freedom becomes dangerous when it is morphed into meeting selfish needs.

The second thing that stands out to me is that because the people, in the church we serve or outside of it, who support us in our ministry have granted us this freedom, we have a tendency to try to please them and not focus on pleasing God.  Pleasing churchgoers and pleasing God seem like they would go hand in hand, but there is a slight difference that is more than just semantics.  Pleasing people might lead us to not challenging them and helping them grow because we don't want to rock the boat.  Pleasing God will lead us to doing the tough things even when they are unpopular.

I read a great fable on this over at another blog: The Nightingale and the Crow.  I could not find this on any other sites, so it might not be public domain like Aesop's Fables.  It's a touching fable that deals with a beautiful nightingale submitting herself to the judgment of pigs on whether a nightingale or a crow can sing better.  The moral of the story is to not let pigs judge you.  If we let anyone other than God judge us, then we are going to struggle in ministry because people are particularly cruel to ministers at times.  We would do well to remember who will always provide for us.

These are also good principles to live by in life outside of paid ministry.  We need to be grateful for what God has given us; we need to focus on ministry at every opportunity; and we need to please God when men are crying for the opposite.  No matter where we find ourselves in life, those are good teachings to be reminded of.

On Frank Viola's Pagan Christianity, Non-Instrumentals, Paid Ministry, and Following God's Calling

I received the following question from my friend Shannon:

Years ago when you were so anti-paid ministry and buildings, etc..., was much of that motivated by Pagan Christianity? I remember that being very influential. Now that you have moved into paid ministry, is that still a book you recommend?

I have feared reading it (though I have heard good things), because I wonder if reading how "everything we're doing is wrong" would do more to discourage and confuse me than to challenge and invigorate me. You know what I mean?

Here was my reply:

I actually had not read Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices or any Frank Viola book at the time when we planted the house churches in Lansing, but I have just read Pagan Christianity. I started to work through it for Sunday School with the intention to show that most of our practices are not essential and can be changed to whatever is effective. It was way too divisive. I dropped it after week one. I can understand why some think it is divisive, but I just find it so liberating.

We did go through the chapter on sermons, The Sermon: Protestantism's Most Sacred Cow, in a preaching class I taught for people who would like to preach in our church. Viola is against the sermon. I agree with him that it can be a somewhat ineffective form of education, but it can also be a useful well to present a well, thought-out case for a subject. I shared Viola's chapter in the class to show that we have liberty to do whatever we think would best convey the Scriptural message in our sermons. We need to choose effective, yet Christ-like methods where we are not given a Scriptural command. Now some will say that the Bible tells us to preach the gospel, to them I would say read Viola's chapter on the sermon. Our form of preaching was not even around when that was written. Just because we use the same translated word, does not mean we are doing the same practice.

My problem with Viola's book is that Viola is like a non-instrumentalist when it comes to his method of deciding what is a right or wrong practice in the church. For those who do not know what I mean when I say "non-instrumentalist", it is those who believe that practices cannot be in the church unless they were expressly taught in Scripture. In the Restoration Movement, which I am happily a part of, there was a division over the instrument. Some argued that churches should not use instruments in worship because they are not used in the New Testament. Others argued that there is liberty where the Bible does not expressly teach something. If it isn't in Scripture, Viola presumes, like the non-instrumentalist, that we should not do it. I think that if it is not in Scripture, then we have liberty to do what is most effective. On a side note, I have seen many instrumental Churches of Christ/Christian Churches who take this non-instrumental approach to Scripture on all issues except the instrument. There is an old saying that our movement adopted: In Essentials, Unity. In Opinions, Liberty. In all things, Love.

Viola's book is a great read. It puts modern church practices in perspective, but you just have to realize that his conclusion is different because he comes from that non-instrumental (although I'm sure that he is from a different background) strain of interpretation.

As for paid ministry, it's effective in some areas. This town I am ministering would not accept a non-paid minister. In other areas, I would still advise tentmaking. The key is doing what is effective. The problem people, like me, have is that we often confuse our calling with God's universal truth. At the time of my dislike of paid ministry and buildings, my calling was for me to be a tentmaker, and I mistakenly thought that everyone else needed to be a tentmaker. Now my calling is different. God has room for both paid ministers and tentmakers, for buildings and houses, for praise bands and pianos, etc. We need to be sensitive to what God is calling us to and realize that everyone does not have the same calling.

In all of this, we need to remind ourselves that God calls us to be faithful, not effective.