Telling the Truth about ecclesiology in the local church.

After I got back from youth cap last week I spent a couple of days recovering by watching way to much television.  I am the kind of guy who loves commercials, and these new Ally back commercials took the cake.

After a few laughs, I realized that these commercials paint of picture of what happens in the local church many times.  In our attempts at revival style evangelism, we often promise a life that is better than anything else, but is all actuality barely differs from the secular world.  I have never seen hidden print in a church bulletin, or stipulations to what church membership "actually" requires, or a list of social norms that an attender must hold to...but these exist within the church.

When we base our entire ecclesiology (theology of the church) on evangelism and salvation experiences, we are dropping the other end of the ball when it comes to our existing members and others that need care.  Even Willow Creek recognized that they did a bad job of this, and published the findings in their Reveal study.  Ask any average Protestant church member what the purpose of the local church is, and you are more than likely to get an evangelism oriented answer.  You may not believe me, but I am not trying to dog evangelism, but to put it in its proper place within the greater corpus of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Through Jesus a new life is offered, but in the name of organization I think we all to often fail at this.  The quest is to build Churches that are self-sustaining outposts of the kingdom of God, providing the type of caren(physical, emotional and spiritual) that people need.  When new members are brought in (either through salvation or transfer), we must stay attached to them to make sure that they are able to transition from a mode of taking into sustaining.

My church had a woman join about 5-6 months ago.  At first she seemed to be a great member and brought TONS of children into our church, almost tripling our childrens church attendance.  But after a couple of month, she started slowly dropping off and we have barely seen her in 2 months.  We see her children from time to time, and we have kept a good handful of the other kids she brought, but I think we lost her.  She needs more than we can give.  I am not talking about financial help, but the type of sustaining pastoral care that is best brought about by a community, not an individual.  Her not coming isn't a result of her backing down, but us not fulfilling what we promised when she became a member.

Here are just a few things I think we need to learn to exhibit and practice.
1.  Build churches of care-giving.  There is no such thing as sedentary membership.  The days of coming on Sunday and listening to a sermon and that constituting membership are gone.  I love how 1 Peter sets up the idea of a boundary of church membership, and inside that boundary is safety, love and the ability to meet needs.  This is what we need to grow towards.

2.  Define moral boundaries in order to define holiness. In many smaller churches, there is always one member that can get a great fight going.  All to often these are power struggles.  In larger churches, there maybe a different type of problem regarding moral lapse.  Going back to 1 Peter, a clearly defined boundary that can be interpreted today as "church membership" does state what characteristics are examples of Godliness.  These are not set up to have "holy clubs", but to protect leadership and pastoral staff.  If this is enacted, it means that those who are at the margins are not excluded, but constantly encouraged in their faith until they are at this point.  Holiness should always be lifted not as an unreachable place, but an expected goal.  The issue here will be defining 21st century holiness and coming to terms with classic 19th century holiness. 

3.  Build a worshiping community that is focused on God and his actions, instead of humans and our emotions.  The consumer culture of worship has to go.  It promotes experience over embodiment and abiding.  But this also means our sermons, prayers and actions during "church".  I would imagine that this would look like more formal situations and more informal situations of worship, instead of re-working current ideas and Sunday hours.

4.  Be honest about what your church offers.  If you can only pull of a couple of services a week and a few pastoral visitations, don't pretend that you are in the same leagues as the big churches you respect.

These are just a few that came to the top of my head.  I became convicted lately that I don't offer to many answers. 

Comments

[Laura]

There is such a need to re-learn what the church actually is and then struggle together to be that. We go to extra-biblical criteria all too easily, patting ourselves on the back for our efficient structures and engaging programs, all the while, people like the woman with the kids drop off the map because they don't actually find church.

How do we go about correcting the thinking?

[chad]

Laura-I think that questions should be asked alot. I also think that we need to re-work our extra biblical criteria into a honest, communal biblical criteria.

More than anything else, we need to start talking about the elephants that are in the room, and honestly learn what our churches are really existing for.

[Laura]

Chad,

I forget who said it, but a conference speaker once suggested, "Question everything." Now, I think one can get a little over-the-top here, but we're so good at rote Christianity, that overdoing is quite unlikely. Such questioning needs to be done in public and by those whose word carries influence, thereby modeling a praxis (reflective practice) that results in more accurately following Christ.

This can upset the apple cart, for too many leaders work to maintain the status quo. Somehow, we must make it safe for such questioning AND convince people it is safe. How to do this? Ah, there's the rub.