Theme: What does the ideal church look like?
Is the church dead? Is there such a thing as
the perfect church? Is the current model of congregation and membership really
viable in our modern age?
Mark Zuckerberg suggests that Facebook, now
with over 2 billion users, can become the new church. It can fill in for giving
a person a sense of community and togetherness that the decline in churches has
left vacant. This line of thinking illustrates several problems:
1) The idea that
church is only valuable if I get what I want out of it. Becomes self-centered.
2) The idea that
church is only about giving people a sense of togetherness and something to
share with each other.
3) Much more is lost
in church decline than is gained in Facebook popularity.
The sad thing is that many Christians are the
ones who first introduced these ideas about church. Like those closest to us,
parents and siblings, church has become the easy scapegoat for pent up anger
and bitterness. It’s always easiest to lash out against those closest to us and
ever since America has existed we have had the church right beside us. People
are taking advantage of this and apathy is the result. Churches now have to
compete for attention and end up selling theology like used-car salesman.
Factional rivalries between denominations often overshadow the gospel. People
join and leave churches over petty, non-doctrinal issues, while ignoring the
actual substance of soul-care they receive or leave.
Some are so fed up with all this they just
choose a path of isolationism. Like progressive monks and nuns they still claim
to be Christian but they isolate themselves from church. They say things like:
“I can be spiritual without being religious.” “I don’t need to go to church to
be close to God.” In their minds, the church has failed, and often they have a
point, even if their response is foolish and dangerous.
Is the church viable? I continue to say yes,
and not just because of my title or this robe I’m wearing, or because I’m
standing here talking to you. I say this because we know the church has worked
in the past, under much harder circumstances, and I say this because God willed
the church into existence as His model. To summarize the ideal church, we look
at a single passage from the book of Acts:
Acts 9:31 So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee
and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the
Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.
The book of Acts tells us about the formation
of the Christian church after the Ascension of Jesus. There are several
sections we could look at when contemplating what the church should be like.
The verse before us came a transition point. The church had been firmly
established in the regions that are mentioned: Judea, Galilee, and Samaria.
However, this was still a relatively small section of the populated world of
that time. God had bigger plans.
One of the main reasons why the church’s global
growth was stunted was because of Jewish persecution, led by Saul. This verse
from chapter nine came immediately after Saul’s conversion. Now that God had
brought Christianity’s foremost enemy into the fold, the time was right to
expand with missionary work among the Gentiles. And God would use Saul, who
became Paul, to do this work. But, despite the persecution that the Jewish
Christians endured, they still had strong churches. They would use their model
to bring the message of Christ into Asia Minor, North Africa, and eventually
Europe. Soon enough, a new form of persecution, this time from the Roman
Empire, would arise. But, just like the persecution of the Jews, it would only
serve to build the resolve of the Christians.
This was certainly a tumultuous time for
believers, but God used these circumstances for their benefit. They were strong.
They relied on God for everything. They were eager to serve others and the
share the gospel. To summarize, they knew what was important in life.
The church was a simple thing for these Christians. It was a spiritual haven.
For many who were beaten down in life, both physically and spiritually, the
church was a welcome relief and comfort.
In our age, we are thankful to be spared of
major persecution. Many Christians still face it today, but not in America. But,
there’s a tradeoff to this blessing. We often get lazy and apathetic in our
faith. We tend to forget what is most important in life. And as a result we
often lose the true vision of what the church is. In the book we’re using as
the basis for our sermon series, the author lists several things that church is
not, but what many people think, or what many churches promote. Listen and see
if any of these resonate with you, or if you’ve ever experienced any:
·
Church is not a social club for gossip,
albeit with pews and a slightly odd smell.
·
Church is not a place where you go to
observe a whole bunch of rules that have no connection to everyday life.
·
Church is not a political organization
dedicated to the preservation of “what America used to be” or to a social
agenda overturning traditional beliefs.
·
Church is not primarily about feeling
better, thinking more positively, achieving your best self, spiritually
“winning,” or getting healthier.
·
Church is not a place where some people
go during the week to observe some old rituals that nobody understands but that
are considered valuable because they create togetherness and make people feel
special.
·
Church is not a place where people who
look like one another congregate and do all they can to keep others who aren’t
like them out.
·
Church is not a spiritual smoothie bar
where you go when you have a sudden and unexplainable rush to get close to God,
only never to return.
·
Church is not a money-raising
organization or a series of weekly seminars on success. The church is not a
personal improvement organization such that you can climb the economic ladder,
get a better job, and become fabulously wealthy just by going there.[1]
I think that in some way, all of these false
perceptions of church apply to our current culture. Some more than others
perhaps, but they all give us insight into why we have such a difficult time
determining what church is, and why many opponents claim that the true church
can never exist or is no longer relevant today. Each of these misconceptions
take away from what God intends church to be, what He intended it to be from
the beginning. When these modern thoughts about church are compared with God’s
description in this single verse from His Word, the simplicity of church
becomes quite clear. Simply put, it is to be a place where the Word of God is
preached, for the peace, joy, and safety of believers.
Simple enough, but is it possible? Even in the
churches that treat the Word of God with the utmost respect, failures are
abundant. Yes, it is not only the mega-churches which emphasis entertainment
over substance that have problems. Every church is operated by sinners, no
matter how kind and sincere they are. Every pastor mishandles the preaching and
application of God’s Word at times. No church has perfect leadership that never
steers the congregation in the wrong direction. And there are plenty of
opportunities to work for the Lord and to increase His kingdom that regular
members fail to capitalize on.
In reality, the church seems to be a very
broken institution. For many, that’s reason enough to not be involved. As we
said earlier, it doesn’t mean people see no value in confessing Christ, just
not in making that confession with others. Isolation is becoming more and more
popular. But, it’s the very brokenness of sinful people that caused God to
create a place for them to gather together.
It’s interesting to note that the Greek word
for church simply means an assembly, a group that gathers together. Contrary to
modern conceptions of church, you don’t need a magnificent building, hymnals,
organs, potlucks and coffee, or community oriented projects to be a church. A
church is just a group of people who gather. What separates the church from
other groups that gather is what they
gather around – the Word and Sacraments. Historically, these two things have
been known as the “Marks of the Church,” that is to say that wherever the Word
of God and Sacraments are used, church is happening – whether that takes place
in a cathedral or in a person’s basement; whether 200 people are present, or
only 2.
The more we focus on what we gather around at church, instead of all the other details
about that gathering, the better vision of church we have. Take Zuckerberg as
an example again. His view of church is that it is present to create a communal
atmosphere. In his mind, church gives people an avenue to serve others by being
kind to one another. And so, naturally, communities on Facebook could indeed
supplant the church so long as they can do a better job of creating this
communal vision.
Zuckerberg’s understanding of church is
completely void of what we gather around. It’s more about what we do.
Therefore, in his vision, there is no place for the substance – for the Word of
God and Sacraments. But, notice what God tells us about the original church’s
source for peace and edification. It was based on the fear of the Lord and walking in that fear. Whenever fear is
mentioned, we need define whether we mean that in positive or negative sense.
Negative fear is terror, positive fear is respect. Well, how do we fear the
Lord?
Both. It is proper to feel terror from the Lord
because He is righteous and we are not. God demands that sin be paid for and if
we have no Substitute we must answer that on our own. But, we also have a
reverence and respect for God because He reveals that we have a Savior who
offered up that payment for us – because He loved us. Depending on what aspect
of our lives we are looking at, there is a place for both kinds of fear.
This is where we get the division of law and
gospel in the Bible. The law leads us to recognize the terror fear of God
because it exposes our sins. The gospel leads us to fearfully respect God
because of the great lengths He went to to save us. Christians need to hear
both the law and gospel and that is why church must be a place to hear both.
They are the what that we center on
as we gather together.
The fear of God is also the reason why God
desires Christians to walk together. One pastor described church like a
campfire. When the coals and embers are together they stay hot, but if you
isolate one on its own it quickly dies out. If the proper fear of God through
both law and gospel is our goal as a church, we can only do that together. The Christian
who believes that they are warmer and stronger on their own is finding strength
from something other than God because that method is completely the opposite of
what God has designed.
The final aspect of our description of the
ideal church really solidifies the need for individual Christians coming
together. We’re told in the final word that the church multiplied. The fact that the church grew shows that Christians
coming together is important. We are not meant to be isolated; we are meant to
grow. You can’t do that on your own. Some today make more of growth than they
should. They make growth the mark of the church, rather than the Word and
Sacraments. They make growth the what
that we gather around. Equally important to being on guard against isolationism
is making growth more than it is, or having it be a higher priority than God’s
truth. Only after the first
Christians had proper fear of the Lord, which led them to walk in the Lord’s
Word and receive comfort of the Holy Spirit, did they have growth. The same
continues to hold true for us.
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