MOTHER KIRK

Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ Jesus in which we may participate.¹

—DIETRICH BONHOEFFER IN LIFE TOGETHER

It can be difficult to trust God even though He is trustworthy and dependable. It is infinitely harder to trust people who are not always trustworthy or dependable. One of the greatest tools for good—and weapons for bad—the world has ever known is religion. As C. S. Lewis once said, “Of all the bad men in the world, religious bad men are the worst.”²

If this is the case, in a world full of broken people, how do we come to understand the role the local church is supposed to play in the life of someone who is following God? I once heard it said that we see Jesus a lot like we see Elvis—we love the man, but his fan club scares the hell out of us.

Some of the most common types of people I’ve encountered in my ministry over the past two decades are people who want to follow Jesus but cannot handle church or who have been hurt, abused, or repeatedly let down by those who claim to be Christians. In this context, there is great debate about the decline in the American church. There is nuance depending on the sector of the church you’re looking at or the segment of the population you’re talking to. However, one thing not disputed is that overall, religious affiliation is declining while non-association or nonreligious spirituality is increasing. A recent study by Pew Research reveals that religious affiliation in America is very fluid and that America is on the verge of becoming a minority Protestant country. For example, people unaffiliated with a particular faith today is double the number who were not affiliated with a particular faith as a child.3

This is paralleled by a rise in goodwill looking for expression outside the church. In fact, at the time I wrote Pursuing Justice, 90 percent of the nonprofit organizations in the world had been created in the previous ten years. We have begun to find ways to replace through nonprofits, parachurch organizations, and other community organizations, a lot of the good in the world that the church was supposed to do.

Everyone seems to be asking, “Can’t I just have Jesus and not the institutional church?” You could just hang out with Elvis back in the green room and not have to spend time with his crazy fan club, so it seems obvious we could just hang out with Jesus without His followers. Paradoxically, however, the gospel seems to say we can’t have Jesus without His people—messy as they are.

WHERE TWO OR THREE ARE GATHERED

People who have attended church for a long while and know scripture often generate arguments for disengaging from regular attendance and church affiliation using Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”

If we don’t need the local church with its buildings, programs, and pastors to have fellowship with Christ, do we really need the church? If church is such a big part of the problem for so many people, isn’t there a better solution? Is not the endgame, after all, simply my own personal relationship with God and doing His will?

But Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:20 were not referring to the gathering of believers at all. Actually, just by ourselves we carry the Holy Spirit and can commune with God; we don’t need to gather together for that to happen. In this passage, Jesus was actually speaking to the process of how to resolve interpersonal conflicts in the body of believers by referencing the Old Testament legal system.

Under Mosaic law, a testimony of two or three witnesses was required in legal or judicial decisions. Jesus was telling His followers that He trusted them to handle disagreements and conflict resolution with maturity. By promising His presence, He was encouraging them by vowing that if they waded into the deep waters of reconciliation and conflict resolution, in His name and for His glory, then He would be with them in that work.

This teaching has absolutely nothing to do with church affiliation or what constitutes the minimum quota for calling a group of friends “church.” Nowhere does Peter or Paul say that it’s okay to reject the church because of two to three people with whom to meet instead. Being the people of God is not about taking the minimal way out; it is about a community together for God’s glory.

WHAT IS THE CHURCH?

God wants you in a local church. The New Testament is resoundingly clear that believers are called to affiliate with a local church assembly. The body of Christ is not merely the invisible church (a term introduced during the Reformation to speak of all those who are truly united with God); it is also manifest in the local church or visible church. Yes, as Christians we are members of the invisible church, but this is neither a replacement for nor an excuse from participating in a local church.

As Robert Saucy has written in The Church in God’s Program, “As for membership in an invisible church without fellowship with any local assembly, this concept is never contemplated in the New Testament. The universal church was the universal fellowship of believers who met visibly in local assemblies.” He went on to say that “each individual assembly is the church in that place,” and that the “local assembly is the one body of Christ particularized in a certain locality.”4

Neither Jesus nor the apostles imagined a scenario in which believers were not part of a local assembly. The Greek word ekklesia is translated as “church” in the New Testament. It appears in the New Testament 114 times and refers to the local assembly 90 times. The word, coming from Old Greek, refers to an assembly that was regarded as existing only when it actually physically assembled. Josephus (who wrote history at the same time that the New Testament was being written) also used the word ekklesia 48 times, always referring to an official gathering.

The church is a visible, active community gathering together—an actual, literal assembly that God designed us to participate in. First Corinthians 12:27 could not be more explicit in saying, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

WHY THE LOCAL CHURCH?

Why do we need the local church and not just a group of our Christian friends? When I was a college pastor for ten years near Biola University, I was asked this question all the time. Biola students were required to attend chapel three times a week, and because they had Christian roommates and a Christian community, they often felt they didn’t need to attend a local church in addition to everything else they were doing.

An honest conversation about following Christ—about being a disciple of Christ and walking by faith—when approached biblically necessarily means addressing faith and discipleship in the context of community. It requires understanding what it means to grow in Christ with people in front of us, behind us, serving, supporting, and encouraging us—and with us doing the same in return for them.

To talk about the life of faith in a vacuum—as just between God and me—is equivalent to saying, “Love the Lord your God,” and skipping the rest of the commandment, “and love your neighbor as yourself.” I love God by loving others, I learn to love God by loving others, and others learn to love others and God through the same activity. The one cannot be divorced from the other.

When we isolate our discipleship from the church, positive resources that God has provided—scriptural teaching, community, worship and prayer, and the meeting of needs through both giving and receiving—are lost.

We also grow through those negative aspects of church that we’d rather not acknowledge. We grow in Christ and grow in love by learning to work with challenging, negative people and stepping into leadership when necessary in order to pour time and wisdom into those less mature in their faith. Tilling the soil is useful toward the harvest, and breaking down a muscle makes it stronger. Much of what can be beautiful through community exists first in the messiness of community.

When we realize the community is imperfect, we also realize that we are part of the imperfection that damages other people. It is easy to hide the junk in my own life that hurts other people when I just make my relationship with God purely about my solitary relationship with Him. In community, my imperfections are reflected back to me.

These negative things—which we sometimes use as excuses for opting out of church—are actually part of the reason we need to be in church. As we learn how to respond to hard people and situations—how to forgive people, how to redeem situations, how to extend grace—we grow more in Christ. When other people extend grace to me and my faults, I see Christ in and through them.

Being part of a messy spiritual family helps me remember that the whole story is much bigger than me. When I live in community, I am forced to make it about the kingdom of God for all people and not the kingdom of God purely for the benefit of me and me alone.

If the conversation is truly about following and becoming like Christ, then we will love His church as He does.

PILGRIM’S REGRESS

In his allegorical novel The Pilgrim’s Regress, C. S. Lewis used Mother Kirk as a metaphor to describe the role of the church in the life of the believer (kirk is the Scottish word for church).

When the main character, John, first learns of Mother Kirk, it is through rumors about her, most of which center on the fact that she is a little bit crazy. When he actually encounters Mother Kirk on his journey, she offers to help him along the way, but he rejects her help. He refuses to be put under anyone else’s authority and believes, because he has made it thus far, he can certainly do it all on his own. Plus, she is obviously insane.

Sound familiar?

But eventually, after John has tried everything to complete the journey on his own, he humbly returns to Mother Kirk.

“I have come to give myself up,” he said.

“It is well,” said Mother Kirk. “You have come a long way round to reach this place, whither I would have carried you in a few moments.”5

John had tried everything of the world within his own power and reason to reach the end of his journey, but Mother Kirk could have led him there so much sooner had he just given up his own will. That is what the church teaches us and calls us to do. The church does not save us, but it does play an important role in guiding and connecting us to the One who does save us—the church leads us to Christ and keeps our focus on Him.

TERMINAL CHRISTIANS

There are people who call themselves Christians who are on an inevitable path to walking away from the church and God.

I call these people terminal Christians.

In the past, when America was a much more culturally Christian nation, there was really no reason to give up church or Christianity. This was true even if a person wasn’t really a believer (we’d say he “isn’t walking with the Lord right now”). A person who had no faith would simply live one way on Sundays and holidays and a different way during the week. Hypocrisy was a coping mechanism.

In today’s culture—certainly in the Northwest, where I live—if someone doesn’t really believe in God and have a mature relationship with Him, there is no reason to attend church. Church has come to be seen as a hierarchical and patriarchal institution that uses people, abuses people, and applies guilt as a means of controlling people’s moral lives.

Thus, when I see someone in the church who is beginning to develop a critical view of church (essentially, to adopt culture’s view of church), I know I am looking at a “terminal Christian.” That individual might not be dead yet, but she is on a trajectory that leads to separation from the people of God, and separation from the people God has identified with will ultimately mean separation from God Himself.

And separation from God is death.

Don’t get me wrong: if someone has a real faith, then I believe that faith will continue to grow and develop. What I’m talking about are people who have simply been a part of the herd, but who will soon find their way out. The frustrating part is that terminal Christianity also exposes just how many people in our churches have never really “gotten it.” They have followed pastors or teachers and have been entertained by programs and music, but they have never truly become disciples of Christ (what is meant by the word Christian).

Jesus said, “Seek and you will find” (Matthew 7:7). He meant to convey that our honest pursuit of God will be rewarded.

I realize, by watching terminal Christians, that the opposite is also true. If someone is looking to find his way out of church and away from God, that person will find plenty of excuses to leave. We will find what we seek.

An article in Christianity Today entitled “When Are We Going to Grow Up? The Juvenilization of American Christianity,” details some of the historical trends in culture and the church that have led to immaturity in faith. According to this article it began in the 1940s and 1950s, when churches and other groups developed youth programs to capture the passion of youth so future generations could guard and redeem American Christianity.6

A large portion of evangelicalism was largely successful in this effort, and certainly positive things have come from it. However, the negative side effect has been a generation of Christians who have grown up still possessing an adolescent faith. They see their faith as a means to make them feel better, cope with stress, and bring personal fulfillment.

While these elements are certainly benefits of a relationship with Christ, we cannot neglect the fact that it is we who follow Christ, not the other way around. Discipleship means submitting ourselves to Christ for the long haul, not for a quick fix or emotional high. We do not just go to church for therapy. A relationship with Christ is bigger than our felt needs.

CONSUMER CHRISTIANITY

As a culture of consumption takes root in churches and Christianity, our view of church and the value placed on our commitment to the local body is effectively distorted.

In The Screwtape Letters C. S. Lewis uses Screwtape (a fictional devil who tries to teach his devil nephew how to ensure a man’s eternal damnation), to highlight truths by showing how culture often matches what the devil would advise. In one section where Screwtape is coaching his nephew on how to prevent a human from going to church he writes, “Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for the church that ‘suits’ him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches . . . [for] the search for a ‘suitable’ church makes the man a critic.”7

Unfortunately, doesn’t this describe perfectly much of modern churchgoing?

When we become connoisseurs of church, it is no longer about the stewardship of our gifts and influence. It is no longer about building each other up and growing together into maturity and knowledge of Christ. We become self-focused and make church exclusively about our experience. We criticize people, services, worship styles, and sermons rather than loving others and looking for ways to grow and equip one another as Christians. Or, as Eugene Cho has put it, we become guests rather than hosts.¹

In Ephesians 4:11–13, Paul shared Christ’s goal for the church: “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature.”

He continued with his dreams for the church, “speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (vv. 15–16).

Quite the opposite of a consumer Christianity, Christians are to help each other reach unity, become mature, and grow into the fullness of Christ.

In a unique and profound way, God uses the local church to speak to us and shape us; likewise, He uses each one of us and our individual gifts and wisdom to shape the church as part of our service to others. My participation with a church cannot be divorced from my influence on others and their influence on me.

The church is not just a mechanical or spiritual device. It is a family with all the fullness, mystery, and beauty that can only exist in a sacred community. God’s idea and our opportunity is to go beyond taking the church purely as an individual or consumer. The church is meant to be a group of individuals, diverse across all spectrums, including gender, race, socioeconomic status, and age, coming together as a family.

When we treat the local gathering of believers lightly and elevate other organizations above it, we devalue the spiritual family God envisioned and created in His great love for us. We must put down deep roots and have a deep enough conversation to work through the issues of the church rather than avoiding the church and its complexities.

BURNED OUT ON RELIGION?

Eugene Peterson is a Greek and Hebrew scholar well known for his paraphrase of the Bible called The Message. He began translating the Psalms because he saw that the English translation often sanitized the energy, desperation, and cries in them. After translating the Psalms, he moved on to the rest of the Bible.

I love his translation of Matthew 11:28–30. The passage became a major building block of our goals as we started Antioch: “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

This passage continues to shape me. The phrase “burned out on religion” has grown in importance for me over time.

When I was studying engineering, I did an internship at a company that manufactures flow meters. One semester I helped them update their quality assurance documents in order to stay compliant with various guidelines and maintain a quality business rating. As part of this work, I spent weeks writing hundreds of detailed policies for different departments.

The head of our department would walk around and shake hands with everyone once a day. One day he stopped me and said, “I got to see your presentation on the things you’re working on. It is well written, creative, and detailed. But it’s not good at all.”

He pointed out that I was missing the big picture. Making too many guidelines that weren’t necessary would make business that much harder for everyone. The goal wasn’t to create more to-dos and check boxes, but to pare it down to the essential things required to meet quality and compliance standards.

It is the same thing we do with church and Christianity. Churches often come together and try to keep everyone compliant with their dominant values. Churches like this end up wounding the people they are supposed to help.

But Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary” (Matthew 11:28). He came to bring grace instead of judgment, but often when people come to church, they don’t find grace and rest.

As the body of Christ, we assist in bringing people to the head, who is Christ. Sometimes we help in that process, sometimes we get in the way of that process, and sometimes we do damage in the process.

Life is messy. We don’t always get it right, yet in all of the messiness, God is faithful. God uses us to love each other and minister to each other. In spite of the challenges of church and faith, we can introduce people to the One who is the source of life and salvation for all of us.

One of the most difficult paradoxes of faith is that in some strange way, we need to be around unhealthy people to get healthy. We need to be around messy people to begin the process of becoming clean.

CHOOSING CHURCH

Maybe you have suffered in the church; maybe you have given up. Your pain is real, and I understand that and grieve with you. But the church needs you, and you need it—both in the universal and local sense.

No church is perfect because it is made up of imperfect, sinful people. Antioch Church is not perfect, and I am sure we have unintentionally hurt people along the way, but we exist believing that we can redeem the local church and create a healthy community. We believe it’s better to find ourselves in a family, even if it is a bit dysfunctional, than to find ourselves alone in the world. We believe that our opportunity to serve and influence others is every bit as much of a consideration as our own experience or felt needs with regard to church.

People ask me why I continue to champion the local church. At the end of the day, I don’t think we can fully experience the Christian life and the greatest of God’s blessing if we neglect the local church.

I love the local church not because I am a pastor; rather, I am a pastor because I love the local church.

Together, may we find a renewed passion for how we can lead and redeem the local church in America.

On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done.

—ACTS 14:27