Monday, July 11, 2005
A Fundamental Question
I do not doubt that we are called, as Christians, to gather and organize ourselves. We are to participate communally in the sacraments, we are to feed the poor and widows -- there is a well established scriptural derived list of activities.
I do not doubt that as a Christian, my "job" is to become the person God wants me to be, and that part of that is to find a role in the community of faith and play it.
Those are statements of principle, but the reality is oh-so sticky. There are so many different communities of faith, with so many different views of things like sacraments, and things like what my role should be in their community. This fact alone raises a terribly important question -- Which community is closest to the community that God actually desires for us?
But there is another question, of perhaps equal importance. My working within that community, and my working at my role in that community is supposed to be part of me working out my sanctification. Yet it seems like all that is ever discussed at church is how to help church, not how to help specific people in it.
At best, we endeavor to identify the "need set" of an individual and then advise them of the "program profile" that would best serve those needs. The whole thing strikes me as rather de-humanizing.
This is, in my never to be humble opinion, the heart of where the church is no different than the culture. And right now I ache over that fact.
Jesus never wrote a mission statement, nor did He define a program for the apostles to follow. Even the epistle writers never laid out a strategic plan -- they wrote much about handling specific situations with which they were confronted, but that is just it -- they dealt with the situation, not some abstract conceptualization of a hypothetical happenstance.
If you want to find where the church is going wrong these days, any church, I don't think you need to look any further than what I am discussing right here. And I am going to say this plainly -- it is a leadership problem.
When in a position of leadership it is so much easier to deal in the abstract and the programatic than it is with real people. Here is an example. (HT: SmartChristian) It's an interview with Rick Warren. He talks about "changed lives," but he does not cite a single example. He says it's about Jesus, but he doesn't name a soul in his congregation. He is full of statistics and samples, and survey results. Programs are ordered and bounded and defined and statistical. People are complex, and messy, and often ugly.
Now, for all I know Warren is very intimately active in the the lives of am immediate closer circle. I am not commenting on Warren personally here, only on the idea that I think all the "tools" he is referring to take us a step back from the human touch.
And here is the real rub. When we, as leaders, hide behind our programs and plans and documents, we don't let all those messy people touch us. At best we hope they are all getting messy with each other but we can stay satisfied with where we are and who we are in terms of working out our sancitification. The only person that ever walked the planet that was not in need of that sanctification was also the messiest -- He mucked about with prostitutes and he was killed for His ministry. Don't you think we should follow His example?
I do not doubt that as a Christian, my "job" is to become the person God wants me to be, and that part of that is to find a role in the community of faith and play it.
Those are statements of principle, but the reality is oh-so sticky. There are so many different communities of faith, with so many different views of things like sacraments, and things like what my role should be in their community. This fact alone raises a terribly important question -- Which community is closest to the community that God actually desires for us?
But there is another question, of perhaps equal importance. My working within that community, and my working at my role in that community is supposed to be part of me working out my sanctification. Yet it seems like all that is ever discussed at church is how to help church, not how to help specific people in it.
At best, we endeavor to identify the "need set" of an individual and then advise them of the "program profile" that would best serve those needs. The whole thing strikes me as rather de-humanizing.
This is, in my never to be humble opinion, the heart of where the church is no different than the culture. And right now I ache over that fact.
Jesus never wrote a mission statement, nor did He define a program for the apostles to follow. Even the epistle writers never laid out a strategic plan -- they wrote much about handling specific situations with which they were confronted, but that is just it -- they dealt with the situation, not some abstract conceptualization of a hypothetical happenstance.
If you want to find where the church is going wrong these days, any church, I don't think you need to look any further than what I am discussing right here. And I am going to say this plainly -- it is a leadership problem.
When in a position of leadership it is so much easier to deal in the abstract and the programatic than it is with real people. Here is an example. (HT: SmartChristian) It's an interview with Rick Warren. He talks about "changed lives," but he does not cite a single example. He says it's about Jesus, but he doesn't name a soul in his congregation. He is full of statistics and samples, and survey results. Programs are ordered and bounded and defined and statistical. People are complex, and messy, and often ugly.
Now, for all I know Warren is very intimately active in the the lives of am immediate closer circle. I am not commenting on Warren personally here, only on the idea that I think all the "tools" he is referring to take us a step back from the human touch.
And here is the real rub. When we, as leaders, hide behind our programs and plans and documents, we don't let all those messy people touch us. At best we hope they are all getting messy with each other but we can stay satisfied with where we are and who we are in terms of working out our sancitification. The only person that ever walked the planet that was not in need of that sanctification was also the messiest -- He mucked about with prostitutes and he was killed for His ministry. Don't you think we should follow His example?
