This week's 'thought' comes as a needed corrective to our sometimes alarmist notions about the church and what the future holds. It's especially helpful in the midst of a church culture that spends a lot of time critiquing itself.
It comes to you from Kevin DeYoung, and is found in
his book, "Why We Love The Church." It's a
helpful reminder to Christians who sometimes forget the authoritative decree of Jesus: "Upon this rock
(Peter's confession of Jesus as the Christ) I will build MY church
(not the church of Peter or any other person, group, or
denomination), and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Matt 16:18).His words help temper the frequent predictions that the church Jesus loves is somehow going down the tubes and will soon cease to exist. To a people we sometimes seem to put more weight in the results of the most recent religious poll than the sovereignly spoken decrees of our all-powerful and church-loving Redeemer (Eph. 5:25), this thought comes as a helpful reminder. Enjoy.
"One of my criticisms of the evangelical church is that every decade or so a new round of voices emerge to tell us that the church is about to implode and there will be no Christian presence left for our children unless we change everything, like, right now.
I’m not old enough to recall many of the fads that have come and gone. But I do remember when seeker-sensitive churches were all the rage and a contemporary worship style would supposedly solve everything. So we plugged in the guitars, turned up the lights, and made the sermons more practical. Trinity Church became Apple Blossom Community Church, and First Lutheran became Celebration of Life Church. Today, missional is all the rage and we’re told that a little more attention to Starbucks culture will supposedly fix what ails the church. We've plugged into liturgy, turned down the lights, and made the sermons more dialogical. Christ Church has become 'The Journey' and First Baptist now holds a 10:03 Fusion gathering. This too shall pass.
According to George Barna, “The window of opportunity for reaching Americans with the gospel appears to be closing rapidly.” The fascinating thing is Barna wrote this back in 1990. The window must almost be shut by now... For Barna, the church always seems to be failing, which in turn always necessitates doing church differently, or in the case of 'Revolution,' the latest Barna offering, not doing church at all.
But for the life of me I can’t figure out why so many evangelicals got
their knickers in a twist over the latest trends. We need a little perspective.
What’s hot and new now will, unless it is the rediscovery of something old and
biblical, end up being embarrassingly out of date and unhelpful in just a few
years.For example, in his “classic” Frog in the Kettle, Barna argued that responding to “felt needs through highly personalized messages” was the answer to declining attendance figures. Now hardly anyone talks of felt needs and personalized messages. This kind of preaching is seen as stale, recycled self-help psychology, and out of touch. The services in 1990 were supposed “to shed existing attitudes of piety and [solemnness], in favor of attitudes of anticipation, joy and fulfillment.” Such a service would seem inauthentic by today’s standards. Now the worship service is supposed to be in touch with the raw, authentic pain of our doubting selves.
Among the achievable goals for the 1990's were “restoring self-esteem”
and “championing Christian morals” by making the legislative, judicial, and
administrative ends of our government responsive to a higher order of thoughts.
Today, admitting our dysfunctions is the thing to do, and few things are more
lampooned by the cutting-edge missional folks than attempts on the Religious
Right to legislate our morality. In 1990, Barna argued that “whatever barriers
and difficulties may face the Church today, having enough local churches is not
the issue.” He figured (incorrectly) that there would be a net gain of fifty
thousand churches in the 1990's. Today, there is hardly a church executive out
there who isn't making the case for more churches and hardly a denomination of
any stripe that doesn't consider church planting one of its top priorities.
I don’t mean to pick on Barna, but because he has often written about
how the church needs to change, he provides a nice test case. And very often,
his descriptions of the present and prescriptions for the future do not pass
the test. The 1990s were supposed to be “a time in which the Church will either
explode with new growth or quietly fade into a colorless thread in the fabric
of secular culture.” Wrong and wrong. The church did not explode in growth and
it did not fade into oblivion. By conservative estimates, there were 52 million
people in church on the weekends back in 1990 and there were 52 million in
church each week in 2005 (see chapter 1)
This book is... a plea for realism. Things are not the worst they've ever been. The end of the church in America is not nigh upon us. There are
grave failings in the church, in the evangelical church as much as anywhere. We
need better preaching, better theology, more love for Jesus, more involvement
in our neighborhoods, more evangelism, more cross-cultural missions, more
generosity, more biblical literacy, less worldliness, less trend-tracing, and
better discipleship. The church in this country will always have something-many
things-to work on.
But
in the midst of our struggles, we need to guard against wild hyperbole. We need
to exercise more caution before we pronounce the end of the church as we know
it. We need a little more humility before we announce everything must change.
And we need a little more wisdom before we reinvent the church yet another
time, let alone pitch her to the curb altogether."
Realism. Sometimes in our personal swings between can-do-optimism or
disappointed pessimism, we need a healthy dose (as DeYoung reminds
us) of good old fashioned realism. A realism sustained by our
faith in the decrees and promises of an all-powerful God, who will make
sure, for the sake of His own glory, that what He has said, will, in an
unthwartable fashion, come to pass.
As Job said at the conclusion of his long and severe trial, "I
know that you can do all things, no plan of yours can be thwarted"
(Job 42:2). What a soul-sustaining truth! The way things look to
us, and the way things truly are, are often light years apart -- especially
when considered in light of a God who is in full control. Pastor Jeff
