Antidisestablishmentarianism?

For some of you, this is old hat. But I've been pondering the state of the church for a long time now, and I think it's worth revisiting an idea I first encountered in about 1991 that has revolutionized my thinking about the church since that time.

It's a question of history. To oversimplify:

After the initial era of the apostles, the church settled into a basic pattern. Churches met in homes, and a "congregation" consisted of a dozen or a couple dozen people who met together each week. The fact that their religion was officially illegal (though public opinion varied from support to persecution and back) kept them growing closer together and supporting each other. Their fellowships were intimate groups of people who shared life together, caring for each other's needs, eating together, and loving each other. This pattern of care spilled over into the larger community, and these "Christians" (an insult thrown at them from the wider community who mocked them for following the crucified "Christos") soon got a reputation for tending the sick, helping the poor, and taking in the outcasts. So their fellowships grew, and soon larger cities would have a network of congregations meeting in homes scattered throughout the city. Sometimes these networks had a leader, an "overseer" (episkopos in Greek) who watched over a group of several house-congregations.

These tiny knots of Christians met, worshipped, and lived under the radar of the wider society for the most part; yet in other ways they were very public. They were not afraid to speak to others about their faith in Jesus Christ, except during times of active persecution. They actively worked to provide means to care for the sick and the outcasts. From time to time some of their leaders wrote and spoke boldly, either appealing to the wider population to consider Christianity, or to defend Christian faith against unreasonable attacks, or to rebuke others who claimed the name of Jesus but distorted his teachings.

All of this changed about 280 years after Jesus' death and resurrection, when Constantine became emperor of the Roman Empire. Up until Constantine's reign, various emperors had tolerated or persecuted Christianity, but it was always officially an illegal sect. (The Romans distinguished between a religion, which had time and tradition behind it, and a sect, which they considered simply a deviant religious movement. They classified Christianity under the heading of "sect".) Through a complex series of events still much debated by historians, Constantine became a Christian and declared Christianity a legitimate religion in 313 AD with his "edict of toleration." A short time later, in 380 AD, Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity not only a legitimate religion, but the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Now the church faced both a great opportunity and a great problem. Until now, persecution and public scorn had kept complacency in the church to a minimum. Those who converted to Christianity knew they were stepping outside the accepted boundaries of Roman society; conversion was a counter-cultural move. After Constantine and Theodosius, however, the church had Rome's carte blanche to proselytize, evangelize, missionize, preach and invite the public to consider the claims of Jesus. The sheer number of Christians grew by leaps and bounds, but the level of commitment of the average Christian dropped dramatically. Instead of being rooted in tight, highly committed fellowships, the church existed in giant congregations. Somewhere along the way, someone got the idea that one professionally trained leader could manage a larger congregation, and soon one shepherd was expected to manage and lead a congregation of hundreds of people. Instead of meeting in homes, churches built separate buildings and created an administrative structure modeled after the Roman government itself, complete with an emperor (pope), prefects (cardinals), and governors (bishops) to oversee the priesthood. Church became closely allied with government, and church leaders got concerned with public policy more than with individual piety and community life. In short, the cost of following Jesus had just been greatly reduced.

Now the average Christian was asking new questions. Instead of asking, "What is this life of following Jesus like?" converts began to ask, "How much do I have to do to go to heaven?" Instead of asking, "What do my brothers and sisters in the church need?" the average Christian began to ask, "What time is church?" and "Is the preacher any good?" Certainly there had been complacent believers over the past 300 years, but suddenly these questions became the norm rather than the exception.

This alliance between the larger society and the church is a state of being we call "Christendom" -- the kingdom of Christ allied to the kingdom of this world. So throughout Europe over most of the last thousand years, to be part of society meant to be baptized; to be a citizen meant to be part of the church. The two were one and the same. So when Martin Luther's followers were ejected from the church of Rome in the 1500's and they needed some kind of oversight for their churches since they no longer had a network of bishops, Luther turned to the secular princes and gave them the (what he thought was temporary) role of leading the church. Thus developed the state churches, where each nation had an official church, and the alliance between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the world reached a new level.

All this changed in 1789, at least in terms of the West. (Missionaries in many other parts of the world had been living at the fringes of non-Christian societies for years, of course, but they were most often sent from nations that considered themselves part of Christendom, and part of what they hoped to bring to these "heathen" societies was a version of Jesus ruling over society.) In 1789, the fledgling United States of America ratified its new Constitution that included a Bill of Rights which specified a division between state and church. Suddenly Christendom was officially broken, though the consequences of this breakage have taken more than 200 years to take effect. In reality, it is only since the 1950's that this separation has become visible to the naked eye, as American culture has drifted farther and farther from the church. Church leaders are no longer assumed to have standing in the secular marketplace, and Jesus-followers begin to find themselves scorned for their faith. In Europe, where the state-church system held sway for so many years, the decay and disintegration of Christendom has been more rapid and more thorough. The pinnacle of complacent Christianity may have been expressed by the Archbishop of Sweden while that country debated about voting to end the state church system (which they did) in the 1990's. When asked about the vote, the Archbishop said, "The church in Sweden is much like the Post Office. No one thinks very much about it, but where would you be without it?"

So here we are in 2010, living in the tumbledown ruins of Christendom. In many ways it's like we're marching backward in time past Constantine, back into a post-apostolic time when the church existed at the margins of society, without political power, without automatic authority, but with growing commitment and with great opportunity to do good and reach people who are outcasts, disillusioned, and disenfranchised. Question for us is, what will we do with these opportunities? Should we try to retake society, re-establish Christendom? Or should we seize the chance to see commitment among Jesus-followers increase and seek to form knots of Christians sharing life together, meeting in homes, caring for the needy in their communities?

A different view of the church ... !

From Total Church, pp. 109-110:

"[Christians] are not to think of themselves, first and foremost, as citizens of the Empire. They are 'citizens of the gospel.' They are to ask themselves: How do citizens of the gospel live? How can our ordinary lives and mundane decisions express the gospel? The net result will be a gospel identity and lifestyle in which they are 'contending as one man for the faith of the gospel' (Philippians 1:27).

"At present the military and economic might of Western nations is struggling to counter the threat of international terrorism. It is proving difficult to defeat an enemy made up of local cells working toward a common vision with high autonomy but shared values. They are flexible, responsive, opportunistic, influential, and effective. Together they seem to have an impact on our world far beyond what they would if they formed themselves into a structured, identifiable organization. Churches can and should adopt the same model with a greater impact as we 'wage peace' on the world."

Vaccination

I want to develop an idea that I threw out in passing. I've been pondering this one for years, and it bears some thinking / blogging time:

It's the whole "vaccination" idea. Edward Jenner developed this to combat the scourge of smallpox. Smallpox is deadly, highly contagious, and passes most easily through close relationships. Jenner noticed, however, that people who contracted a mild disease known as cowpox became immune to smallpox. So he tried taking some of the pus from the sores of a person who had cowpox, and injecting them into a healthy person. The injected person got a mild case of cowpox and from that point forward, they were immune to smallpox. Voila! The modern practice of vaccination was born. We have standardized and industrialized this practice so that now we manufacture dead or weakened versions of viruses which, when injected into a patient, spur the body to build defenses against that particular virus. We have vaccinations for everything from smallpox to the flu.

Great. But what I'm going on about here is that too often, the church has taken on Edward Jenner's task, and we have vaccinated the world against Christianity. You see, true authentic Christianity is a lot like smallpox. It is spread through close relationships. It is highly contagious. It demands death -- that is, the call to follow Jesus is a call to take up a cross, to die to ourselves, and follow Jesus. As the Apostle Paul said, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."

Too often, the church has infected people with a cowpox-like strain instead. We've made Christianity a religion of one hour on Sunday and a commitment to try to be nice. We drop our kids off at Sunday School so they get a taste of it, sort of like making them take a Flintstones vitamin. I'm not sure it does them a bit of good to chew that thing, but I feel better. Later we force them through a Confirmation program so they can become a voting member of the church we don't attend. And they get infected with a cowpox version of Christianity that effectively prevents them from ever catching the real thing.

Now, I'm sure that sometimes it seems like I'm just harping on the church. I don't want to be a whiner. I believe that the church, with all its faults and problems, is God's plan to bring the world to know Jesus, to bring it out of darkness and into light. So I am passionate that the church must figure out how to begin to do what we are called to do! I get frustrated because I see so much in the church that is ALMOST what we are supposed to be, nearly what God hopes for. And believe me, I include myself in this -- that so often I fall far short of what God has designed me to be and to do.

What would a "smallpox" church look like? I think the book Total Church is a good beginning, because this kind of church would be laser focused on Jesus, passionate about the Bible as it bears witness to Jesus, and it would live in authentic gospel communities where the love of God was not a concept but a way of life, and sinners are loved toward holiness.

That's what I want.

Lutheranism -- where are we headed?

An interesting blog by an interesting guy -- David Housholder's take on Lutheran demographics.

Fake Christianity

Moralistic therapeutic deism. That's what the CNN article I referenced a week or so ago labels the fake Christianity that so many teens -- and by the way, adults -- buy into instead of the real thing.

Moralistic. It's about being good. Nobody's against being good -- but so often our attempts to be good are a childish attempt to make God love us, just like we tried to make our parents love us, by doing the right things. This is fake because in the end, Christianity is only -- ONLY -- for those who cannot be good enough to please God. We call these people "sinners." If you're not a sinner, Jesus has nothing to do with you.

Therapeutic. From the Greek word "therapeuo" meaning, "to heal". We go looking for something that will be healing for us. Certainly there is healing for the wounded in Christianity -- Isaiah 53 says, speaking of Jesus, "By his stripes we are healed." Amen. But when my faith becomes about me, about me feeling better, about my therapy, I have given away the heart of Christianity and bought a bowl of self-centered pottage.

Deism. Yes, this fake religion is about God, or at least a god, but he's really beyond us and we really can't know him, so we make him in our own image. He's a Really Nice Guy. This fake Christianity doesn't seek to know the invisible, invincible God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified and rose from the dead. It just talks about "God" as though we all agreed on who God was. True Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God, the full revelation of the unknowable deity, who makes him known. (See Colossians 1:15 and John 1)

In the end, so much of our false Christianity serves just to innoculate, vaccinate, us and our children against ever catching the real thing. It's sad. A vaccination gives you a weakened or dead strain of a virus so your body builds up defenses and you never catch the real thing. We've done exactly this with Christianity.

Be good and feel good. Both good advice if you can manage them, but they are not Christianity.

Short & sweet ... or at least short ...

"The theology that matters is not the theology we profess but the theology we practice."

-Total Church, introduction, p. 18

Lifeboats

Here's an interesting article that offers a different take on the task of the church. It's worth the time to read, then ask yourself: Is this the way most churches operate? Biblically, should this be what churches do? What prevents churches from functioning in this way? What prevents my church from functioning in this way?

Good News!

We ordered a dozen copies of Total Church, and the book is now in the bookstore at Central. I'm reading slowly, chewing on lots of really good insights about Christ-centered community and what it really looks like.

I'm hoping to gather a group of people together to read and talk about this book sometime during this fall. If you have an interest in being part of such a discussion, let me know. As Central moves toward gathering people into smaller communities this book will be an important part of the strategy. We're still talking about what shape those communities might take -- Bjorn Dixon, our Director of New Worshipping Communities, and I had the privilege of meeting yesterday with Peter Churness, who among other things helps lead Life Together Churches, a networking resource organization that helps churches of whatever size or shape grow into true communities.

What is the difference between most churches and a Jesus-focused community? Here's what I was reading in Total Church this morning:

"It is in the family of God that I am able to care and be cared for, love and be loved, forgive and be forgiven, rebuke and be rebuked, encourage and be encouraged -- all of which are essential to the task of being a disciple of the risen Lord Jesus. Too often, however, churches are not contexts for making disciples so much as occasions for acknowledging relative strangers. Experience teaches that there is also an inverse ratio at work: the larger the group, the more inevitable is the superficiality of our relationships. Instead of churches growing beyond the point of being able to sustain meaningful life-on-life family relationships, an alternative (and maybe essential) strategy would be to begin new congregations through church planting ... Philip Yancey says, "We often surround ourselves with the people we most want to live with, thus forming a club or clique, not a community. Anyone can form a club; it takes grace, shared vision, and hard work to form a community." We might also add that it takes a miracle that only God himself can perform. But it is in such a community that disciples are made. To be a community of light from which the light of Christ will emanate we need to be intentional in our relationships -- to love the unlovely, forgive the unforgivable, embrace the repulsive, include the awkward, accept the weird. It is in contexts such as these that sinners are transformed into disciples who obey everything King Jesus has commanded." (112-113)

Fake Christians

Set aside ten minutes and read -- really read -- this CNN article.

Now, what do you think? I would love to hear some feedback on this one. Make a comment below (preferably, so others can see your thoughts) or email me.

Another generation

Been reading and rereading Judges 2:6-15. We've been working our way through the story of Joshua at Central this summer, and this coming Sunday is the end of the series. This reading from Judges about the death of Joshua and what follows is sobering.

Last Sunday we heard Joshua stand up and say, "Choose this day whom you will serve ... As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!" How bold! How inspiring! We put this up on plaques and sell them in Christian bookstores. But we don't often read what came after.

Part of the problem is, Joshua never commissioned a leader to follow him. Joshua was Moses' successor, but he never found a successor for himself. It was a different time; the Israelites were in the land now, scattered throughout Canaan and each (as verse 6 tells us) working on cultivating his own inheritance. Perhaps they didn't need a centralized authority anymore. Maybe Joshua thought that a group of elders would be enough for this settled people. Maybe he figured that they had all committed themselves (see Joshua 24) to follow the Lord, and that would be passed down the generations. Whatever Joshua thought, once his generation died out "another generation grew up who did not know the Lord." The Israelites began to go after the local gods, the gods who you worshipped if you were concerned about getting enough rainfall for your crops, the gods who promised you the good life. They abandoned the God who had brought their ancestors out of Egypt, who had given them this Promised Land, who had made a covenant with them at Sinai.

Not so different from our own times.

Take Lutherans, for example. In the early 1990's, a study of Lutherans in America indicated that there were approximately 13 million self-identified Lutherans in the United States. Totaling the Lutheran denominations' membership added up to about 8 million who had their names on the membership of a Lutheran church. And of all these, about four million ever attended a worship service. So, according to the statistics, the "average" Lutheran never attends church. A generation of Lutherans has grown up that does not know the Lord.

This is not so different from the general population. There is a generation within easy commuting distance of the churches in this country that doesn't have a clue about Christianity, about Jesus, about the gospel. They are contentedly living lost lives without a clue what they don't have.

Joshua and his generation bore the responsibility for passing on the covenant to a new generation, and they missed it. The church of Jesus Christ bears the responsibility of passing on the good news of a relationship with Jesus to a new generation. This good news will not take hold of them because of our political statements, our doctrinal stances, our policies. Preaching will reach a very few who happen to visit worship on a given Sunday. Sunday School and Christian daycares and schools will reach a few.

Like the Israelites, we are scattered, trying to take advantage of all the blessings God has given us. We are more focused on God's promises to me, and not enough focused on God's call to us as a people.

If the average Christians don't get a sense that God is calling them to live like salt and light in the world, to love people who are far from God, to build life-giving Jesus-focused communities that are like candles in the world's night, we will fail in the trust God has given us. People are not drawn to church buildings. They are drawn to churches -- that is, to groups of Jesus-centered people who live the life of Jesus in the world.