One of the main reasons the church is seen as irrelevant is because we have confused who we are with what we want to accomplish. We have lost our true purpose as the bride of Christ. Ironically we often tell those in our congregations that faith is about who they are in Christ not what they try to accomplish for God yet our identities as a church are largely about what we do rather than who we are. We really don’t know why we exist. If we say we exist for some type of win or task, we are basing our identity on what we do rather than who we are. In order to be relevant, we not only need to know who we are, we need to know why we are. What if for the last several decades we have been looking in the wrong direction?
Many churches developed a list after Rick Warren talked about the Purpose Driven Church. Often a church will develop 3 to 5 core values and a mission statement as to why their particular congregation exists and what their values are. They may be along these lines:
- To evangelize their community and / or the world
- To create fellowship opportunities for believers or a community of believers
- To disciple and strengthen believers
- To worship God
- To be a moral guidepost in the community
- You fill in the blank _________________________________________
Churches will often include most of these values to some degree but most often a church falls into one of three models. Think about it for your church. If push came to shove, there is likely one model that would rise to the top. Churches are either:
- “Seeker” motivated – Evangelism driven
- Discipleship driven – Bible study focused or
- Community driven – the church primarily is a fellowship mechanism.
This is why we exist. We either exist to bring people in, to build them up and send them out in their faith or we exist to come together and do life/church together with familiar people who share our values. Do you recognize your church in one of these models? Most likely these models will look something like this:
Seeker Motivated – Evangelism driven: You will usually see a strong emphasis in making people feel welcome and comfortable in church. Emphasis is placed on greeting people as soon as they hit the parking lot and making sure the service has something for everyone. Though people may be challenged, we do not want to offend anyone. There will generally be very contemporary music, a significant investment in sound, lights and video production, careful attention to the timing of the service and a topical message about a felt need of people.
Discipleship Driven: In this model you will often hear the pastor teach expositionally or exegetically (digging deeply into a passage of scripture often going verse by verse) through the Bible. There is emphasis on learning the Bible and growing people up spiritually. Often there will be a missions emphasis as well. Growth is not only for growth sake but to lead others in to a relationship with Jesus. Less emphasis is placed on production technology and guest services and timing of the service. Not that these things are ignored but they are just not as high a priority.
Community Driven: This is generally a church that has been around for a while. The pastor shepherds the current congregation and preaches for life as it is in the current group. Most people know each other and they often do life together outside of church as well. This is a very familial feel in the church.
Do you recognize your church in any of these models? Likely you will see some of all of the models but one of these models will typically rise above the others in your experience in any church you walk into. Another attribute you may recognize in any church is a consumer mentality. People come to church for what they can get out of church and they will typically settle into a church model that they are most comfortable with. This further cements the church model because if the pastor deviates from the norm, he knows there will be pressure in some form or another to come back to the place where people are acclimated and comfortable.
Humor me for a minute. What if we have this all wrong? Seriously, what if none of these models is what the church was intended to be or at least not HOW it is intended to be. Of course we are tasked with evangelism, of course we must disciple and of course we must be in community but what if we have completely switched the cause and effect of the church. Each of the models above is quite different yet there is one thing in common in all of them. In each model, the focus of the church is on people. It is a horizontal focus or an others focus. If we are the bride of Christ, that cannot be. Our cause, our focus, our primary purpose must be for the groom, not for other people. We will dig into this cause and effect inversion a little later but let’s put a pin it that for now.
I have lived in a couple sports towns. These cities are insanely (I might even say pathologically) enthusiastic about their sports teams. In one of these towns it was a regular occurrence to fill a stadium with nearly 93,000 people for a football game. But that was only the culmination of the town completely transforming for the entire day. In the other city, basketball arenas were consistently sold out and fierce rivalries were the normal way of daily life. Yet I have never met an apologist for a sports team that has tried to recruit me to be a fan. Their focus is on the team and they could not care less about my thoughts. However, their enthusiasm is contagious. They are evangelists for their team simply by their loyalty and their passion. Their praise for their team says it all. There is no need to explain to me the logical and practical benefits of being a fan of their particular club. Such an exercise would be frankly irrelevant. Being a true fan is not about anyone around, its about the team.
These sports fans are exactly opposite of how we do church. They wear stupid clothes or paint their bodies, they speak condescendingly to those of us who do not share their passion, some of their announcers are excruciatingly irritating, they even sing songs at their events from decades ago that are irrelevant to today’s culture. Parking is a huge problem, no one is at the gate to welcome you, they are all about money – ridiculous ticket prices, outrageous concession prices and they even charge you for a program that is self serving and has already been paid for by advertisers. In the end none of that matters because these fans’ first love is their team and they express it passionately, out loud and without apology. The rest is just tangential. What is happening is actually worship.
Remember in Revelation 2 what Jesus says about the church at Ephesus?
“‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, . . . I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.”
What if we as Christians worshiped Jesus as enthusiastically as sports fans “worship” their sports teams? What if our focus, our passion, our loyalty was so keenly on Jesus that people were drawn to Him simply because they saw that we were 100% convinced that He is our everything and He is worthy of absolute devotion? What if our praise to Jesus carried the passion and excitement of a game winning red zone drive with 20 seconds left or a 3 point buzzer beater? The truth is that when we focus on seekers, when we focus on disciple making or when we focus on community, we have already lost the game. Athletic directors know that focusing on parking or concessions or even graphic design on the program is of very little value. What is of supreme value is the team. Lest there be any confusion, the team I am speaking of is not the church staff. It has nothing to do with the church organization. There are only 3 members of this team. Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Unless our sole, passionate, relentless, undivided focus is on our triune God, we will miss what the church was designed to be. When God is our cause, the effects will be more people coming to Him, more people growing in Him and people growing in community. When we put any or all of those three effects as our cause, we will never achieve them effectively and we will miss an essential relationship with God in the process. When we focus vertically on God and get to know Him deeply we are consumed by Him. As a result, we have more and more and more to share with those who do not know Him. When we focus horizontally on people we encounter God less and have less to share with others. The kingdom of God is paradoxical. Jesus said, “If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.” Matt 16:25 NLT The paradox is no less applicable to the church. If we focus on people, we will lose them. Want proof? Just look at the Barna and Pew Research numbers from the past 50 years.
From another angle, imagine a new wife who loved her husband. In fact she loved him so much that she wanted to tell everyone about him. Whenever she was with her friends she talked about him and built him up. Her social media was full of posts about her husband and how great he was. In fact, this wife became obsessed with telling people about her husband. She would travel and tell people about him. She even wrote a book about him. However, the result of all this praise and adulation was that she spent less and less time with the man she loved. They even began having separate lives and they became distant. What she knew about this man became shallow because she simply lost touch with him. While she began showing her love and admiration for this man by telling as many people about him as she could, she eventually became just a shallow admirer rather than a true lover of this man. Can you imagine a husband ever being honored by such actions? Of course not! A husband enjoys the admiration of his wife and that is important to the relationship but what he really wants is the relationship with her. He wants to be with her and do life together with her.
The church is the bride of Christ. As ridiculous as the example above sounds, it is how we behave as the church. How much more authentic would this young bride’s love be if she extravagantly loved this man through the normal course of life and focused her love on him. All those around her would still see her love for him but they would see that love in a daily, authentic and passionate devotion in a constantly growing relationship. That example is far more powerful than a hollow spoken tribute. What if we made so much of Jesus and we were so enthralled with Him that those around us were attracted to who Jesus is simply by our exuberance in Him? This is the bride of Christ. This is who we as a church were intended to be. If our true worship of God takes first place and center stage, the rest will fall into place. If we get it backwards, the house will crumble on shifting sands. Remember the church at Ephesus. Again, Jesus said, “I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, . . . But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.” Rev. 2:2-4 ESV.
But that leaves us with a problem. We have to truly believe. We have to be 100% convinced and committed. We have to be all in, not distracted by the things around us. We must be completely and unalterably transformed.
Prologue
Relevant?
Defining Church
The Purpose of the Church
The Radiant Bride
Worship
Worship in the Church
Holy Huddle