What could be stripped away from your church without your leaving?
Many believe that the church works best when it speaks to culture and society from the outside looking in, as was the case at its inception. For three centuries, followers of Christ were largely marginalized, misunderstood, and persecuted. As a group, they held little or no power, prestige, property, or wealth. Yet, despite all this, their influence was so great that eventually the Roman Empire yielded to the Gospel message. In 380 AD the Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica which made Christianity the official religion of the empire. Unexpectedly, perhaps, that became the first step in a treacherous downward path for the church into the mainstream of society, which gave it access to everything it previously had been denied.
It can be argued that power, prestige, property, and wealth have been the church’s undoing.
As soon it as it became politically and financially advantageous to be a Christian, many people began to find ways to gain and use power and wealth for their own advantage and the church’s ruin.
Today, we live in a post-Constantinian (some say post-Christian) era. In most areas there no longer exists any form of Christendom, which was the merger of church and state that existed for centuries in Europe. More and more, Christianity once more is being relegated to the periphery by those in the “mainstream.” To combat this sense of irrelevancy, the church has in many cases adopted tools of the culture to reverse this trend. In its best light, it might be called finding common ground. In its worst view, it could be called caving to the culture. By adopting mass media and marking schemes and a “seeker sensitive” framework, we may have missed the mark by a rather wide margin, especially when it comes to making disciples, which is our mandate. Some of the largest churches have built their “clientele” around star quality preaching, professionally skilled musicians and singers, franchise quality programs and ministries, and fabulous mall like facilities. One downside of using this method for church growth is that what brings people to the church becomes what keeps people at the church. This begs the question: why do people attend our church? Is it for the right reasons or wrong ones?
What would it look like if prestige, property, and wealth, and all that it buys, were suddenly stripped away from our church? What would be lost? What would be gained? What could be removed from your local church without your leaving?
Let the Demolition Begin
Building
Let’s begin by taking away our church building. Face it, just as men and women are often defined by their jobs, most people identify churches with their buildings. The first question people ask me when they find out I am a pastor is, “Where is your church?” My answer is “all over the place,” which gives me the opportunity to explain why we no longer have a building. Taking away a building can cause an identity crisis for a lot of churchgoers. I have heard some say we are a cult because we don’t have a building. That would make the early church a cult, too, which, of course, the Jews and Romans thought. The early church met wherever they could, often in homes. I am sure that felt a little strange, especially for those who previously attended the temple or the synagogue. Today forgoing ownership or rental of a perrmanent fixed site is both freeing and complicating. The joys of of not having maintenance or a mortgage payment is offset by not having the convenience of a pre-set-up meeting space.
Since for many, a building defines the church, what a church does is also defined and sometimes limited to what goes on in the building. Getting people to come church meetings at the permanent facility becomes the focus of all planning and activity. What would you do if your church announced it no longer has a building? Would it free you to take church outside the confines of the four walls into the community? It did for us. Or would not having a building prompt you to pack your bags and go in search of a church that did?
Programs
Lack of a building can restrict a church’s ability to offer its programs. What if there was no special children’s church, no built in nursery, no special rooms for various classes to meet? What if there was no place for the musicians to leave their instruments and sound gear set up? What if there was nowhere to have a mid-week practice for the worship team? Does your decision on which church to attend depend on the quality and quantity of its programs? Would you continue to attend if the meetings got really simple? What do you require in terms of program offerings?
Worship
If a church gives up its building, it might also have to become “unplugged” for worship. What if your experience of church involved meeting in small groups and singing acapella or with simple acoustic instruments? Would the lack of a big time worship experience be the reason you would look elsewhere? What if every church had to give up the traditional cultural expressions of worship due to persecution? What would happen then? Does your worship depend on externals or are you okay with what you can generate on your own?
Dynamic Preaching
Many larger churches are built on the drawing power of dynamic and charismatic leaders and preachers. What would happen if your church experience were limited to listening and interacting with ordinary followers of Christ, just like you, who spent time in the Scriptures, but were not great preachers. Would that be enough to send you on a search for another church home?
Soul Searching
I hope what I have written thus far at least gives you pause to consider your motivations for attending the church of your choice. Probably most would consider this exercise to be moot, since we presently are not restricted in our church choices. One day that may change, however. We cannot be sure that the current level of tolerance toward faith in Christ will continue. If things “go south” and persecution begins, most people will have to deal with an extreme case of church culture shock. Small groups that meet “underground” cannot do what most churches in the United States do at their meetings. They are limited in the noise they can make, the attention they draw, and what they can offer in the way of programs, worship, and preachers. The small group dynamic forces everyone to accept greater responsibility for their ongoing discipleship journey with the Lord. That is not a bad thing.
It can be argued that simple church is the truest form of Christianity because it requires us to filter out extraneous reasons for following Christ.
Such a church experience does not require anything beyond a gathering of the faithful in the presence and under the direction of God’s Spirit in order to hear and apply God’s Word for the purpose of encouraging and equipping disciples to live for Jesus the rest of the week. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake.
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