I want to reflect on a topic that I have brought up many times over the past three months in my home assignment deputations messages: What is the church and how can it be more effective in our day? Church leaders have debated this question, many authors have written numerous books about it, and pastors continue to struggle with changing paradigms and expectations. I cannot offer anything new that has not been stated somewhere by someone before. I will just offer a few ideas based upon the past three months of talking with over 50 pastors and many lay people.
First, the church has not lost its focus on the central mission of making disciples, but it has grown weary in its battle against culture and complacency. Many pastors seem tired, almost ready to give up, but still optimistic that God is at work in the world today. Every church fellowship must continually refocus and keep at the forefront the mission to which we are called. It is too easy to slip into the maintenance mode of having “exciting” meetings of contemporary music and an uplifting message. The pressure is high on pastors to be successful, energetic, people-oriented, and produce uplifting sermons. Churches feel they need to hire the most talented children’s and youth pastors, but funding is tight. Striving for excellence is good and important; we should never sacrifice quality in what we do. But if we find our source for this energy from ourselves or even the people around us, our spiritual and physical batteries can easily become defeated. We must find this energy from the mission to which we are called. Churches and pastors must always keep the mission focused. How? The basics of worship, study, prayer, and fellowship.
Second, the message of heart and life holiness found in Jesus Christ must remain the central goal of all we do. One of the values of the older revival mentality, especially in the Church of the Nazarene, is that it called for decisions, often visible with emotions and altar calls. Culture, or at least church culture, has seemed to have moved beyond this to other forms of decision making. But I wonder if something is lost in this move. What may be lost is the call to decisive decision, or crisis encounter with the Holy Spirit, and the public testimony that followed. Complacency is the cousin to cultural comfort, which may be lurking in the shadows of many of our worship services. Do our sermons articulate a clear understanding of holiness, and do they call people to decisive and authentic decisions?
Third, methods are not as important as message, but engagement must remain central. The message does not change although the methods need to be continually assessed and updated. Many favorite terms are floating around churches today, such as “life group,” “coaching,” “sermon series,” and others. These are useful and contextual terms, but do they have the potential to drift us from the Scripture and the gospel, which were also contextualized for the ancient world. We have to discern between contextualization and the Bible, or method from the message. Perhaps I will explore this topic in a future blog. The early church offers models that can be applied today, although these may need some adjustment to our contexts. It is worthwhile for every pastor to dig deeply into the New Testament and learn about the motivations and the methods of the earliest Christians, especially the apostles who spent three years with Jesus. Engaging culture is our mission, but how we do this must not compromise the message.
Fourth, pastors must know and keep orthodoxy for the local church. It seems that our day and age is fascinated with intrigue, political correctness to the point of compromise, microspection and debate. This has also entered the church. Anyone can post anything in social media. There are many so-called experts on just about any topic. There are also learned theologians who are straining the edges of orthodoxy in the effort to be relevant to contemporary societies. This has the affect of moving the focus of the church away from its mission as stated above. The target is moving and we never seem to hit it squarely. This leads some pastors to be confused (if they are honest), which filters out to the church. To redefine church, we must know the message well and find our standard in revealed revelation.
Fifth, the contemporary church has tended to become inward focused. There may be two causes for this. One is the effort to preserve what we have in fear of losing it. A term sometimes used for this is “conservative.” There are some people in churches who want to keep the old ways of doing things because they are most comfortable with this. One of the biggest ways I have noticed this the past few months is with music. A second way to become inward is to try to fit into culture in order to attract people. A term sometimes used for this is “progressive.” Some churches attempt to attract younger people through some of the latest pop Christian songs or songs from Hillsong. The tendency in the church experience with this approach is that the Sunday morning worship becomes a concert with a semi-professional worship team leading, but only a small portion of the congregation actually singing. There are other areas where the church has attempted to be contemporary but has ended up becoming in-grown. There is value in both the conservative and progressive approaches, but the battle lines become very evident. There have been several churches on my journeys that have recently gone through “church divisions” over some of these issues. I wonder if people set aside their personal agendas, no matter what these might be, and seek God’s kingdom first, what would God be able to accomplish through them?
Re-envisioning the church today will require a heart felt search for God’s purpose as revealed in the Bible and as needed in our world. Mistakes will be made, but hopefully the major mistakes of previous generations will not be repeated. I am not hopeful on this part, so I pray that God will continue to sanctify His church.
For more pastoral reflections, click here.
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