Fancy, Broken Things

Silently across the nation, as Christianity becomes increasingly irrelevant to the average non-believing American, the church as a whole is shrinking and a treasure of memories, traditions, and heritage are being forgotten.  One would think that Christian leaders would take note and get to the core of what is going wrong, but instead all too often we just make a subtle shift in style, do a quick remodeling of the sanctuary, borrow ourselves into oblivion, and hope for the best. 

In an effort to avoid the decline in attendance, we have lost the heart of what the church was supposed to be all about- making disciples.  We can’t run from the fact that attendance in weekly church activities is substantially down across all denominations and even non-denominations as well.  Instead of facing this fact head on and asking the tough questions, many Christian leaders have sprinted to compete for what Sunday morning saints do exist.  Like a group of people running from a bear in the woods, we have sought to just be one of the fastest runners so that the bear will devour the others first.  All of our changes only prolong the inevitable:  Christianity in America is becoming more and more irrelevant to our culture.  Nothing could be more ironic, for America was founded largely by Christians looking to express their faith without oppression, and it was America who spawned the missionary efforts of the past century that are currently changing the destinies of people across South America, Africa, and Asia.  But in our quest to reach others abroad, we have failed to reach our neighbors next door.

This competition for the Sunday morning saints has caused, or at least fed into, an equally challenging condition in American church culture, a condition called Christian consumerism.  In our effort to get what attenders do exist to come to our events and facilities, we have sought to have the best and brightest staffs, the nicest and newest facilities, and the most cutting edge worship bands.  All of which are noble pursuits on the surface, but when sought after with the wrong motives can cause us to be just a fancier, fresher version of our old, irrelevant selves.  The net effect of our updates is that attenders are just shopping.  When we ask for their support or involvement in the mission, we often get the “no thanks, I’m just looking” response.  Simultaneously, many of us have lost sight of the goal:  taking Jesus into our culture.  We have settled for an attraction model of doing Church where we try to get the world to come see how great our stuff is instead of taking the love of Christ into our culture through our daily lives.  How many of our non-Christian contacts know that we love them and that we care?  This is important to ask because without love, all of our fancy things, biblical knowledge, and our stunning spiritual gifts are just like a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  They are just noise to our world.

Discipleship is messy.  I grant you that, but Jesus didn’t call us to make converts.  He didn’t call us to market the kingdom through slick presentations, multimedia campaigns, and the latest church growth strategies.  He told us to GO and make disciples.  A disciple by nature is someone with whom we spend our lives.  Most of the Lord’s initial disciples took some time after they were invited to follow Him around the country before they understood the message and actually believed.  In the same way, we need to incorporate people who are not yet in relationship with Christ into our schedules and our homes so that they will know we are loved.  Christian disciple making is a process, not an event.  It’s not something that the church organization’s evangelism or outreach department is responsible for.  It’s something all followers of Jesus are responsible for.  The Apostle Paul’s invitation to follow me as I follow Christ gives us a great insight into discipleship.  Each of us is on a spiritual journey, either moving closer to God or further away from Him.  The enemy and the world are attempting to drag each of us away from God, but it’s God’s plan that Christians be loving people closer to Him.  At some point in the process of moving closer to God, each of us passes from death to life when we believe and trust in Christ as our savior, but this a process not an event.  While some of us who have made such a decision can point to a time and place where we recognized that we believed and a decision was made, that decision was preceded by many God encounters wherein He used people and circumstances to love us closer to Him.  We as Christians today need to recognize our responsibility to love and relate to people apart from Christ, for it is our loving relationship with them that paves their way into the kingdom.  Disciple making is by nature all about relationship, so secluding ourselves from the world and criticizing their actions while simultaneously begging them to come to our outreach events, hoping for a conversion is not a plan to succeed.  

Loving God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength requires loving your neighbor as yourself, and loving your neighbor as yourself requires us to know our neighbors.  Being God’s ambassadors requires us to be relevant to and engaged with the people we are trying to reach, and God has given each of us the privilege of being surrounded by plenty of opportunities to relate to people who are His future friends.  It’s time for us to reach out in love instead of doing outreaches in our church.  It’s time for us to love lavishly His most treasured creations.  I’m confident and optimistic that we can succeed because it’s God’s plan and, after all, He never plans to fail.