All churches love certain things. Some love
fellowship, some worship, some prayer. Those are good loves. Some are neutral
loves. Some are not. Other churches love their building, their history or their
strategy.
Those can be good or bad, depending on what we
mean by love and how we value those things. But, some things that churches love
hurt their mission and hinder their call. Here are three I've observed from my
work with thousands of churches.
1. Too many churches love past culture
more than their current context.
It's remarkable, and I've said it many times: If the 1950s came back, many
churches are ready. (Or the 1600s, or the boomer '80s, depending on your
denomination, I guess.)
There is nothing wrong with the fifties, except
we don't live there anymore. We must love those who live here, now, not yearn
for the way things used to be. The cultural sensibilities of the fifties are
long past in most of the Nigeria. The values and norms of our current context
are drastically different and continue to change. The task of contextualization
is paramount to the mission of the church because we are called to understand
and speak to those around us in a meaningful way. We can learn much from the
Apostle Paul's example recorded in Acts 17:16-34.
So, a church on mission — in this time and
place — engages the people around it. Yes, in some ways, it resembles its
context — a biblically faithful church living in its cultural concept.
But, if your church loves a past era more than the current mission, it loves
the wrong thing.
2. Too many churches love their comfort
more than their mission.
The fact is, your church probably needs to be
less focused on what makes it happy and more focused on what pleases Jesus.
This is an easy trap to fall into because it happens very subtly.
Most churches have worked hard to get to a place
where congregational customers are happy -their needs are met. The problem is
that we are not called to cater to customers. We are called to equip co-laborers.
When we win the affections of those inside our circles, it becomes hard to pull
away from the affirmation we receive. Again, this only becomes a problem when
the affirmation of those on the inside works to the detriment of our mission to
those on the outside. It is a lot easier to settle down with the people who are
like us than to reach the foreigner or alien among us.
So, a church does not exist for the comfort of
its people. Actually, the Bible reminds us again and again that we are to
"provoke one another to love and good deeds" (Hebrews 10:24), to
"bear one another's burdens" (Galatians 6:2), and more. But, if your
church loves its comfort more than caring for others, it loves the wrong thing.
3.
Too many churches love their traditions more than their children.
How
can you tell? They persist in using methods that are not relevant to their own
children and grandchildren. Far too often, church leaders, in an effort to
protect the traditions of their congregations, draw lines in the sand on nonessential
issues.
This
is not to say that "tradition" is wrong. It depends on how you define
it, but I think most will know what I mean. Christian scholar Jaroslav Pelikan
said, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the
dead faith of the living." Churches that love tradition that way will
choose their traditions over their children every time.
Too
often, churches allow traditions to hinder their ability to humbly assess their
missional effectiveness. Moreover, they allow traditions to trump the future
trajectory of their demographic. I know of several young pastors who have been
exiled from their local congregations because they didn't fit the mold of what
had always been the ethos of the leadership. Sometimes this is because
impatient pastors try and force change too quickly. Other times it's because
settled churches resist change so forcefully.
Undoubtedly,
there are always times to defend the traditional stances of essential doctrines
in the local church. But we should not have a cultural elitism that hinders
passing the torch to a new generation of leaders. If your church loves the way
you do church more than your children, it loves the wrong thing.
It's
time to evaluate your church.
Love
is good, and everyone wants a loving church. However, loving the wrong things
leads you the wrong way. Loving what is good, including our context, Jesus'
mission and the next generation (to name a few things), moves the church in the
right direction. The church should be always reforming, that is, humbly looking
at itself and assessing its ability to reach people with the good news of
Jesus. Sadly, many of the people Jesus devoted His time to would not feel
welcome in our churches.
What
about your church? What does its posture, behavior, practices and activities
communicate to your community? I think all of us want to understand the culture
and community we are ministering in so we can communicate the gospel with
absolute clarity. To do this, we need to ask ourselves the hard but needed
questions.
- Who are we reaching?
- Are we primarily reaching
people who are like us?
- Are we primarily reaching
people who are already believers?
- Are we primarily reaching
people who understand Christian subculture and taboos?
- What about the people who don't
have a church background?
- What about the people who are
unfamiliar with Christian beliefs?
- What about the people who don't
understand church subculture and behavioral taboos?
To
say we are unable to reach the lost because of our traditions or preferences is
simply unacceptable and antithetical to the mission of God.