I don’t know about you, but I sure have had my share of church over the years (37 to be exact-yep I counted from birth!). I have been in small churches, big churches, churches with no purpose and churches with too much purpose. I have even been in a Cowboy church! I have been blessed to be under great pastors and leaders and damaged to be under the human condition of sinful leadership.
Ever ask yourself, “How did we get here?” Well, I won’t even try to explain the thousands of schisms and changes that have impacted the church since Jesus left. And I won’t attempt to state that I know which ones were good or bad. All I know is we are where we are and we can either make church community simple or complex. It either works or it does not, there is no middle ground. But as simple as that sounds, it’s not that simple. There are major differences between the two and what keeps them at arms is “reasons”.
We have our reasons as to why we have made “church” a place we “go to”. We have our reasons why we consumer shop the church. Those reasons keep us from commitment, from each other and ultimately from God. And these reasons have created a massive amount of spiritually disoriented Christians. Some can’t see straight, some are about to throw up, others are nauseated at the constant spinning. Few are unaffected, spiritual sickness is pandemic. Health is the exception, not the standard.
Over the years I have heard the cries, “lets return to the New Testament way of doing church”, or “we have never done that before”, or “its’ working”. Most just sit back and lob spiritual grenades from their grand stands of electronic anonymity, too consumed in their own pain, bitterness or hurt. Some do care and do their best, but it is all like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The answers don’t lie in others or in the institution, they lie in you! The answer lies in your understanding that church is not nor has ever been a man-made thing. Sure its run by mankind and has worn different clothes throughout the centuries, but so has your Bible and that book is not a man-made text! Church is a community of believers whose ONLY connecting point is Jesus Christ. Church is a “God we belong to” and people we live to serve. CHURCH IS A SPIRITUAL REALITY NOT A HUMAN IDEA. Until we understand that fundamental truth we will struggle with great disillusionment in others, ourselves and even in Jesus. Sooner or later our church will collapse.
We dream about what we think church should be, putting our message on Christ’s methods. This is especially true if we are hurt by it. Our efforts to change it, to attend it or stay away from it generate human ideas that actually cause more pain. Church will never be what God wants when the source of solutions comes from human ideas. Instead we are to get out the way and let that which is already there flourish. “He must increase and I must decrease” (John 3:30) is the cry of the spiritual reality.
“Every human wish, dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial…By sheer grace God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world.”
Deitrich Bonhoeffer
