Church Signs

On a church near where I live, someone had put on the marquee:


Heaven doesn't have walls, it has a table.


I'm guessing they were trying to make a pithy political point. Too bad they didn't have a Bible in their church.


Whatever your thoughts about walls between nations, Revelation 21 is very clear that heaven will have walls. And I honestly don't really know why because we're also told that those walls will have twelve gates that don't close. I'm sure this is imagery that will be more clear once we're there, but for now, the Scripture is very adamant that heaven has walls.


And there's no clear indication that heaven will have a table. There is eating that goes on in heaven (praise God!) in Revelation 22, but no mention of a table. Jesus also told the disciples at the last supper that he wouldn't eat of that meal again until he ate it with them in heaven, but still there's no mention of whether a table will be involved. Maybe we can infer one ... or maybe we'll just sit out on fields of heaven the way they did when Jesus fed the five thousand.


It's just a church marquee, and maybe it's handled by someone in the church who doesn't have a rudimentary grasp of Scripture while the rest of the people are Bible-strong, but what does it say about a congregation when they use a publicly visible venue to declare something that's exactly opposite of Scripture?

Withering Church

Was in a small, west Texas town last week to see some patients and came across the 1st Christian Church of That Town . I had wondered where it was, as I had had some dealings with it before, sort of. Back in 2010, I attended a meeting of what was called (I think) the Panhandle Evangelism Association, which amounted to two people from our church, the minister from That Town, and an old college alum of mine (who was ministering at a church in Amarillo at the time). So I had wondered if the church of That Town still existed.

Having taken a wrong turn in my effort to get to the nursing home, I spotted a building with a sign out front that proclaimed (in muted tones), "1st Christian Church." Nice-looking little building, and there were two trucks pulled up out front so I thought maybe someone was there mowing the yard. I stopped and went in and was met by two elderly gentlemen whose names I don't remember. They greeted me and I told them who I was and I found out that they were 2/3 of the church. On Sunday mornings, one of them brings his wife. And they live more than an hour away. He told me the Church of Christ had tried to buy the building from then and my thought was, "Sell! Sell!" but he was born and raised in that church, he father was a founder, and he can't bear to let it go.

[I say the sign proclaimed the church in muted tones because while it had the name spelled out, it did not have the service times anywhere on it. So, if Joe Smith decides one Sunday morning he would like to attend 1st Christian ... how's he going to know when to show up? I asked them that in a polite way and they took it kindly, though acted like they had never thought of anything like that. The building itself is in OK shape, though it smells musty and the interior is definitely from the 1970s. So, from a strictly superficial standpoint, the church has 3 strikes against it before a service could even start.]

That Town is a dying, rural town. Doesn't even have a grocery store anymore. Just a Love's, another convenience store (which is across the street from the Love's), a Subway and a Sonic. A dozen Mexican food restaurants (which is a really low number for a town of that size in west Texas). The town square is just a square of empty shops around a courthouse. There's an old, closed movie theater on the square that I would love to see the inside of. So, even if you had the wherewithal to--say--sponsor a church-planting team to come in and take over the building, canvas the area, etc., what are the chances of it taking off in a town like that? I'm sure it COULD be done, but I wouldn't bet on it BEING done.

This Town (the town where I used to minister) is not a dying town like That Town, but I could sure see the church where I used to serve following the path of that church in That Town. Maybe it won't, but there is very little in the church's current makeup to make one say, "That'll never happen here!"

On the other hand, I think churches/congregations may be like plants. Some of them are designed to be planted, grow for a while, then die off. It should only be sad if we prolong it long past the sell-by date, holding onto a building more than onto our Lord. We should probably rejoice in the time it had and the lives it affected when it was supposed to.

Normally, I think cultural fads flow from the big cities outward, but I wonder if this particular flow--while it may be coming from the cities (I could write more on that later but probably won't)--is most clearly visible in the rural areas: the church model of 'if you build it they will come', sometimes called more formally 'the attractional model', is nearing it's end. Our culture bombards everyone--but especially our young--with attractive enticements. Many churches have tried to jump on that bandwagon and are meeting with a season of success, but I think that season is closing. For some, it already has.

There are think tanks in the world of science and politics and art (and maybe every discipline) who try to predict "the next big thing". New methods of propulsion. New mediums for art. Demographic changes that make old methods of polling obsolete.

Surely there are think tanks for the church. I wonder what they are predicting? I firmly believe that God will always preserve a remnant, but it may not be anything like what we expect a "church" to look like.

An Open and Honest Discussion

                Or, “Give me what I want, not what I asked for.”

It happened again.  Another article about some person who has left the main-stream church—or, in this case, church entirely—and is hoping that their speaking out will cause churches to finally talk about the issues, or have a dialogue, or some such contemporary catch phrase.

Yes, I am treating their desire lightly.  Because I have serious doubts that it’s what they want.

Telluride in the summer

Years ago, I saw a documentary about a prominent and popular singer who had a reputation for, shall we say, something less than sobriety.  He was a professing believer, or so he professed, and used to even teach Sunday school but had quit the church because they had some kind of wacky objection to him being high while teaching the youngsters.  He was convinced that the attitude was the church’s problem to overcome rather than his own.

And he’s such a good singer that, well, we’ve got to listen to him, right?

The more recent article was about another singer who had left the church because she had decided to engage in a sexual lifestyle that ran counter to what the church she had been attending taught.  She claimed to only want said church to have an honest and open dialogue about her proclivities.

Call me skeptical.  I don’t know the woman—which is one of the reasons I am not mentioning her name here—but I have a sneaking suspicion that she only wants a dialogue if she’s pretty certain the outcome will favor her and her lifestyle.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe she’ll sit down one day with the leaders of that church and they’ll all have a calm, reasonable, loving discussion about the issue.

How will she react if the church finally says, “Ms. Entertainer, we have enjoyed getting to visit like this with and we love you, but after careful study of Scripture we still believe the lifestyle choices you have brought before us are sinful and, therefore, we cannot condone them.  We humbly entreat you to repent of them and we would love to be here to help you fight these temptations—just as we would like to have you help us fight ours.  However, if you cannot admit that these actions are sinful and refuse to make any effort to submit them to the Holy Spirit, we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”

I realize that last paragraph started with a question, so there should be a question mark somewhere, but I’m not sure where to put it.  How about here?: ?

Anyway, how do you think she would react?  Is it unreasonable for a church to behave as I have just described?

What I have found is that a lot a lot of people want a middle ground.  They don’t mind if the church teaches that their particular vice is a sin, just so long as no one calls them personally on it or does anything about it.

So they go in search of a church that will uplift them (somehow) with appreciated music and encouraging speakers but won’t ever trouble them with any kind of “thou shalt not”s.

Now personally, I am not a fan of the pulpit-pounding-brimstone version of church oratory.  I like to be encouraged.  I like uplifting tunes.  I am also a great believer in and fan of grace—that free gift from God that none of us can earn.

What if, however, having accepted God’s grace and submitted to the Lordship of his son, there is an expected life to be led?  Not in a “how close can I get to the edge without falling out of God’s favor?” but as in a “how close can I live to God?!?”

What if these churches are not trying to be nefarious but are actually doing the best they know how to lift their people closer to God?  I don't deny that there have been abuses in the name of God, but in the modern era I am convinced that such infractions are the vast minority.  Unless you are of the opinion that anyone who tells you "no" is somehow infringing on your rights or just harshing on your mellow, the most harmful thing done to anyone today by the church is probably to leave them alone.

Living better involves eliminating some things from our pre-saved life and I just don’t think a church that doesn’t encourage all it’s members to strive to live better, to daily climb back up on that altar and offer ourselves as living sacrifices, is worth being a part of.

My reply to some wonderful comments (below): Thanks C.D. and D.S. for great comments.  We live in an age when more and more people are turning hostile to the gospel, while claiming it was the gospel that turned hostile to them!  For a case in point, read this article I found just this morning: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-ferraro/dont-judge-a-catholic-sch_b_6714886.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592  The author is honest enough to admit, though, that if the church changed she probably still wouldn't attend.  Could that be because she knows that a church that waters down it's message to meet a fickle public isn't worth the bother.

If Your Church Went Away

I have gotten in the past an advertisement that begins with a question like, “What if your church went away, would anyone notice?”  The implication is that my church is so inconsequential that no one would.  Therefore, I need to buy their product (or program or whatever) which will revitalize my church so that my city would notice it (if it went away).

Bishop's Castle, Colorado

Leaving aside the value of the offered program, I have been thinking about that question of, “If my church went away, would anyone notice?”

I think the answer is: it depends on how it goes away.

First off, are we just referring to the building?  If my church(building) [hereafter referred to as the CB] were to go away because someone torched it, that would probably be noticed because there are people living nearby.  It might even make the news, especially if it could be proven to have been a “hate crime”.  But the news would soon fade away, except that the local news might come back later and run a paragraph and a picture about the grand re-opening.  Otherwise, the story would soon fade from the collective consciousness.

The same might be said by other, more mundane methods of losing a CB: faulty wiring leading to fire, drunk plows his car into the building, neighborhood rezoned and plot of land turned into a Quick Quack (car wash or emergency care center).

Now, if the CB were taken out by something that was clearly an act of God—like a fireball from heaven plowing into the building leaving said CB as nothing but a smoldering hole in the ground while the rest of the neighborhood stays intact—that might be noticed a little more.  Might even make the national news—especially if there were people (hopefully not me, personally) inside at the time.  But, soon, it would disappear from the news and the minds of everyone except for those people who run those “end times” conspiracy websites*.

These scenarios aren’t really what the ads were talking about, though.  The church they are talking about going away is actually the group of people who meet in the CB.

Where did they go?  And did anyone see them leave?

The implication is that the answer to the second question is “no” which makes the answer to the first question, “Who cares?”

According to the fliers—either implied or stated outright—we churches have lost influence in our neighborhoods/communities and, if we go away, we won’t leave a hole there, physically or spiritually and I don’t argue with that assessment.

With one caveat: are we talking about one church going away at a time?  This does happen from time to time and this is what the flier-writer knows and is trying hedge against (make a profit off of).  Second Church of the Lower East Side used to be quite a going concern, with a choir and a youth group and all but, over the years, it shrunk numerically.  Maybe the neighborhood demographics changed, maybe the whole town changed, or whatever, but it grew smaller and smaller until—like those grotesque and cheaply produced puppet aliens at the end of the Star Trek episode “Catspaw”—it just dried up and blew away.  No one—or almost no one—noticed because the influence was long since gone.  Some people may remember that church fondly and kind of wish it were still around, but a] it’s not a big deal to them and 2] there are lots of other churches around now.

Which may be a big part of the story of Lower East Side.  When first founded, it was not only the only church in that part of town, it was the only thing going at all in that part of town.  In the years since, several other churches have moved in and—in addition—the focus of the people of the neighborhood has been pulled away by their kids’ athletics, cable & satellite TV, the Rubik’s Cube and a general desire to sleep in on Sunday mornings.

The flier wants to provide a remedy (often at some expense) to this malady and show me how to “double my Sunday school in six weeks” or “create a rockin’ worship experience” or whatever.  Some of them even have ground-breaking—nay, even revolutionary!—ideas, like returning to the concept of the sufficiency of Scripture.

Without getting into the value or validity of their offers (in this blog, anyway), I’m still wrestling with that question of, “If the church goes away, would anyone notice?”  [The astute reader will notice this isn’t exactly the question as written earlier in the blog.]

Again, how is it going away?  A collection of fireballs that wipe out each individual church member (we’re not talking CBs here!)?  The rapture (as some envision it)?  I’m going to answer this question by saying that either yes, they would notice because this is a large portion of the world’s population suddenly turning up missing or no, because the non-millenialists were right and this was the end of the world, in which case there’s no one or no thing left to do the noticing.

If I’m “doing church” to be noticed, or if I judge the efficacy of my church (or CB) by the metric of being noticed, I am probably doing it for the wrong reason.  Like the guy Jesus talks about whose prayers are lifted up so he may be noticed by men and his reward is on earth (and, by implication, not in heaven), having my church noticed on earth is at best a side-benefit but likely a hindrance to what should be my goal (pleasing God).

Should I worry about the church going away?  No.  God’s pretty clear on that: there will always be at least a remnant on this planet until he sends his son to come and get us.

Should I worry about my church going away?  Again, that may be the wrong focus because 1] we’re specifically told not to worry and b] my focus should be on God and serving him.  If I am doing that, it will probably strengthen my local body.

* Which are kind of fun to visit and read, though they often have a grasp of scripture somewhere south of Joel Osteen (but still ahead of Rob Bell).

Is Church Relevant?

The little churches are declining.  The big churches are, often, getting bigger.  Now, in the little churches, we often complain that we’re getting smaller because the big churches are getting bigger.

But I’ve looked at the numbers—at least in our town and other towns I’ve been in—and the statement doesn’t hold true.  Yes, the little churches are getting smaller, and the bigger churches are getting bigger, but there’s not a direct correlation.  If I were to estimate (and why not? It’s my blog, right?), I would say that for every 100 people who have left the little churches, less than 25 are being added to the big churches.

I look at the people that we, as a small church, have lost over the 7 years I have been here and I can only think of one couple that went to a bigger church.  Some died, some are chronic church-hoppers and we knew from the beginning we didn’t have them for long … and some have just stopped going to church.

This is a small town.  I still see these people around town and I talk to them.  I’m friendly, they’re friendly, and they usually tell me something like, “Yeah, I need to get back into church, but … “  For the sake of this blog, there’s no need to go into the specifics of the second half of that sentence.

See, they don’t hate the church; they would never in a million years tell me they hate God; they just don’t have room for either in their lives right now.

So, what has the church usually done to try and address this problem?  Newer, hipper music.  Video screens.  Youth programs.  Gymnasiums.  Let me stress: there is nothing wrong with any of these things.  I see no evidence that any of these things is anti-God in any way.  And sometimes, they even help (though that’s not a guarantee, either).

Travel back in time with me for a moment.  A time when Sunday morning service involved hymns, sung from hymnals, and the sermons were generally expository (and long).  What was it people used to call the Wednesday night service back then?  “Prayer meetin’.”  And you know what?  The church was a vital part of the community and the churches were growing and every denomination was planting and growing new congregations and—

Wait, this isn’t a call to go back to hymns, unpadded pews, women’s hats and men’s ties.  While I’m a big fan of expository preaching (or “ex-poz”, as we pronounce it in the biz), I don’t know that it is the answer over topical sermons.

But I’m thinking that one thing we need to stop trying to do is “be relevant”.  Because the more we try to be “relevant”, the less impact we seem to be having on our culture.  The more user-friendly we’ve tried to make the church, the less users we’ve had in the church.  We lost the culture a long time ago and I don’t think we can recapture it.

At least, not on culture’s terms.  I’m glad there’s Christian music and Christian movies and I’ve even tried to do my part to add to the library of Christian novels and all these things may have a place, but I don’t think they are the answer (because, for the most part, they are encouraging the faithful but having little effect on the unsaved).

For one thing, let’s travel back in that time machine again.  Back when the churches played a much larger part in the life of the average American, was life perfect?  Nope.  Not only did they not have satellite TV, they also had crime and poverty and all the vices we do today.  Divorce may not have been as prevalent but there were still plenty of loveless, Godless (but I repeat myself) marriages.

C.S. Lewis said that he noticed that chapel attendance at college decreased when it stopped being mandatory.  While there has never been a country-wide command to be in church here in America, there used to be some societal assumptions and pressures to get in a church when one came to a town.  At some point, though, that ethos ceased to be passed down to the next generation.  Church went from “something you better be a part of” to “something that’s a good idea to be a part of” to, now, “something I can’t understand why anyone would be a part of.”  Those of us who go to church are thought of as harsh and judgmental and uncaring and … and you know what?  The facts have no impact on this argument.

We can blame that on the media or the past transgressions of the church, but the real reason is that the god of this age has blinded people to the truth.  And then he’s convinced them that he doesn’t exist and the one, true God is either a fable or a doddering old man, a vestige of a bygone, unsophisticated age.

What do I think needs to happen?  I think we need to stop worrying about being relevant.  I don’t think the style of music matters nearly so much as what is sung* or the length of the sermon is as important as what is said.  (The Apostle Paul preached so long a dude fell asleep and died—and then, after raising the fellow—Paul went and finished the sermon!  But Jesus’s entire Sermon on the Mount can be read out loud in about 12 minutes, 20 if you’re in the south.)

Ultimately, I think what’s going to save the church is to take the focus off the church and put it on our every-day-lives.  See, I’m convinced that all those people who have drifted away from the church didn’t leave because of doctrinal issues or even the church’s stance on alcohol, drugs, homosexuality, gambling, or whatever.

I think they left because they looked at the people who stayed and didn’t see that church really made any difference.  They heard the Lord works in people but saw no evidence of it other than a few happy bromides, which they could achieve on their own by bailing out on church, sleeping late on Sunday, and getting tweets from Joyce Meyers*.

I think—nay, I’m convinced—that the only way to save the church is to take the emphasis off the church and have Christians living—every day, out in the world—as Christians.

* For those people who are always going on about how much better the old hymns are because of the lyrical intricacies and harmonies and such, I think some of the worship choruses surpass the hymns for the simple reason that they are just scripture set to music.  While I, personally, am not big on all the repetition some of the new songs slip into, over all I would have to say that a direct quote from the Apostle Paul trumps the poetry of Isaac Watts (but that’s just me).

* No offence to Joyce Meyers.  She sends out good tweets, which is why she was the first one to come to mind.  There are also great tweets from CS Lewis, Billy Graham, Max Lucado, Timothy Keller, Matt Chandler and many more.

The Church Must Change

Recently, my attention was drawn, via Facebook, to two different blogs by two separate bloggers (can’t remember if I were sent them by the same person) dealing with the same problem: why the church is losing millennials.  In both cases, they were appended with notes that read something like, “Well-written article.”

And they were.  They both contained nothing but correctly spelled words, the grammar was impeccable, and the syntax was fully paid-up for the fiscal quarter.

They were also remarkably similar.

Not just with each other, but with articles that I was emailed ten years ago with a headline of “Why Generation X is leaving the church”, which greatly mirrored articles sent via snail mail from 30 years ago with titles like, “Why the baby boomers are leaving the church.”  Go back far enough, and someone was probably writing a missive on papyrus about why the Iron Age was leaving the synagogue.

Now, both of you who are still reading to this point, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying that the articles are wrong, I just find it interesting that every generation has to get to the point where they think they’ve got it right.

Take these two articles I was recently made acquainted with (please).  The gist of both was that millenials (a term undefined in either article but we’ll let that slide for now) are leaving the church because they find it irrelevant.  That could be, but it’s also true that for the last few decades almost everyone leaves the church they grew up in between the ages of 18-25 and only a small percentage of them ever come back (to any church).  I do not deny the possibility that this is the church’s fault, but I also think the generation itself bears some responsibility.  And, let’s not forget, there is an Enemy who wants to keep people out of church and those years are an especially vulnerable time for everyone as we try to figure out our place in the world and where in it we go to get married, find a job, make meaningful friends, etc.

Getting to more specific charges (which were also the charges made 10, 30 and 2000 years ago), the millenials don’t want a superficial church (amen!).  They want a church that deals with real issues, like how to serve the poor (locally and globally).  They also (in both articles) want to be assured that the church will treat well their friends who are living in unrepentant sin.

That one bugs me.  It was in both articles, but neither offered a recipe or outline for what the author/blogger was hoping the church would do (just a vague fear that we would inevitably do it wrong).  As a person who fights cynicism on an almost daily basis (some days I just give in to it), what I am thinking when I read such blogs is that they want the church to welcome their friends in no matter what and ignore or rationalize the sin away.  I have a problem with half that statement (the second half).  At the church where I serve, our motto is, “Welcoming everyone, wherever you are, to be a growing follower of Jesus.”  I stand by that and we work hard to make it true.  We try to welcome everyone (and I think we do a pretty good job), but we’re not satisfied to let ourselves or anyone who worships with us stay where we are.  Is the sin in question sexual, verbal, physical, mental?  Doesn’t matter.  We want to provide a loving environment in which the Holy Spirit can help us work together not to embrace sin but to let that Spirit wash it away.  I hope this is what the Millenials want.

As to the poor, I agree that most churches aren’t doing as much as we can to help the poor.  And, if you read back through Jesus’s words—as well as the rest of the Bible—you’ll find that taking care of the poor and ministering to them is a high priority.  I appreciate that these Millenials want churches that will take up that mantel, but I wonder if they realize that most of these churches that they are leaving in droves are ministering to the poor already.  Maybe it’s not in a big way, and certainly, it can be done better, but it is being done.  These churches the Millenials are looking down on and walking out on, they are participating in a soup kitchen, gathering clothes against winter for the underprivileged and taking worship services to care homes and orphanages.

I would encourage any Millenial (or anyone else) who would like to see their church minister to the poor to a] jump in with an existing ministry, 2] strengthen that ministry, so that they can c] have the standing to suggest ways the ministry can be expanded and improved upon!  It’s a lot easier, though, to either just drop out or jump to another church that already has the program together and all you have to do is plug in.

Instant gratification.  That’s what’s really desired here, by Millenials, Gen-X’ers (which is what I think I used to be—or maybe I was Generation Y, as in, “Y do we keep coming up with these stupid labels?”) and everyone else.  We want what we want now.  No 40 years in the wilderness for me!

This is the real reason people of all ages have left and are leaving the church.  It really has very little to do with style of music, outreach to the poor, or the church’s stance on whatever the sin du jour is.  By it’s nature, any church worth it’s salt is going to provoke its members/attendees/adherents/whatever to be something they aren’t.  To minister to both the poor and the rich, to look out for orphans and widows, to love and good deeds, to take up your cross, to be holy.  But in a culture where we are each told our own personal hearts are the best and final arbiter of what is right or wrong, to go into a building where some man or woman points to an ancient book and says, “Jesus is the way and this is his map” … well, that just ain’t hip, dude.

I do think the church needs to change.  There are things we do only because we have always done them—not because they work (pragmatism), because they never did.  There are things we don’t do for the same reason.  And I want to keep asking questions about these things that are, in reality, just forms, not substance.  I want to find the substance, hidden though it may seem at times.  And I don’t want to leave the church to “find something better” because—from where I sit—it seems that most who do so quickly stop looking and settle for nothing.  I want to stay in the church and try to make it better—not by my standards but by God’s.

P.S.  My spell-checker really hates the first sentence of this blog, recognizing neither “blogs”, “millenials” or “Facebook”.

Church for Liars

Kenny has always loved church, attending with his grandmother as a child and even going on his own during his teenage years.  During college, his church attendance was sporadic, but now that he’s out on his own he’s trying to find a church to really become a part of.

The churches he’s tried so far, though, just won’t accept him.  Really.  It’s all on them.  He doesn’t care about worship style or length of service or any of that.  Couldn’t care less whether the demographic of the congregation skews old, young, rich, poor, black, white or plaid.  He’ll dress up if that’s what’s called for or wear jeans and a T if that’s the style.  He just wants a congregation who will accept him for who he is.

But they won’t.  As soon as they find out that Kenny is a liar, they immediately start to trying to change him.  They quote Old Testament Scriptures at him like “Thou shalt not bear false witness” even though they claim to be a New Testament church.  They quote NT verses to him about truthfulness and honesty, sometimes quite harshly.  Some of them are really mean about it.

Kenny has read many scholars, after all, who say that the New Testament has been mistranslated for almost two thousand years and verses like Ephesians 4:25 don’t actually mean that a person should never lie but that they shouldn’t be vicious in their lies.  And, as is obvious to anyone of a modern, enlightened, mind, John 7:18 is saying that Jesus never lies, not that any of us never do.  Of course, we all lie now and then, so it would be hypocritical to get on to someone who lies more frequently.

Kenny has also found scholars to tell him that John 8:44 was mistranslated in saying that Satan is the father of liars and of lies, though he can’t remember what those phrases actually mean in Greek.  And so what if Titus 1:2 says God never lies, it’s not like God is built in such a way to lie.  He doesn’t have the same urges or needs as we do.

So it has really galled Kenny when he’s attended church and been a part of ministry teams and taught Sunday school—and even played on the softball team side-by-side with the minister, for gosh sakes!—and then, as soon as he’s honest with them and tells them he’s a liar, they want to change him.  Some of them shout and call him names, which certainly didn’t make him want to worship with people like that!  But the worst ones are those that try to pretend they “love him in the Lord” and just want to help him overcome his sin.  Bunch of hypocrites.

The thing is, Kenny was born a liar.  When it comes to telling the truth or telling a lie, Kenny has no more control over his actions than a male dog has around a female dog in heat.  He just has to lie.  He was created that way and he is absolutely certain God wouldn’t create someone one way then tell them to be something else.  Being a liar is who he is and no one has any right at all to change him.

No, the ones who are even worse than that are the ones who have tried to reach out to him from a sense of their own brokenness.  That one church, he remembers with a wry chuckle, seemed like everyone in it was always telling him about the sins they were battling.  Lust, idolatry, covetousness, anger, you name it.  And then they’d try to tell Kenny that they would like to come alongside him in his journey and pray for the Holy Spirit to help him overcome the sin in his life.

Those people were the worst, because it was clear to Kenny that—ever since that day in college when he admitted to himself that he was a liar—such a peace had come over him that his status as a liar had to not be a sin, but a gift from God.  Why couldn’t all these Christians see that?  They claimed to want a revelation from God, but here was someone giving them a clear one and all they were doing was rebelling and clinging to their old-fashioned notions of Scriptural revelation.

Kenny’s thinking about heading into the city because he’s heard there’s a church there made up almost entirely of liars.  The preacher and his wife are self-proclaimed liars and so are all the elders and deacons.  You can walk right in, they say, and no one will think any the less of you if the way you signed in and the name you put on your nametag don’t match.  They’ll even applaud you for your boldness.

“That’s the way churches ought to be,” Kenny thinks to himself as he walks out of one more failure of a local church.  One more place where the people think they’re sinners in need of grace instead of realizing that God is nothing but love and doesn’t really care what you do so long as your heart’s in the right place.  Kenny, who lies to everyone but himself, knows this is true because his heart tells him so.

[P.S.  My apologies to everyone I know named Kenny.]

Flying Buttresses and Empty Pews

If you haven’t been there yourself, you’ve probably seen the pictures: enormous, beautiful cathedrals built to hold hundreds of worshipers that, now, will see maybe twenty people occupy the pews on a Sunday morning.  The great worship houses of Europe, which once overflowed with people, now sit empty and the people who live in the surrounding villages (and cities) look disdainfully on the buildings and have little patience for anyone who calls themselves a Christian.

“Been there, done that” describes their attitude pretty well.

Could it happen here?

We have, at most recent count, 47 churches in our little town of Dumas.  [Or, one church for every two Mexican food restaurants.]  On any given Sunday morning, an average of less than 10% of our population attends one of those churches.  An interesting topic for discussion could be: “In one hundred years, what will the church scene of Dumas look like?”  Will any of the congregations that now meet still be here a century hence (should Christ tarry)?

There is, of course, no way of knowing.  We are notoriously bad at predicting the future.  For instance, it being 2014, we’re supposed to have flying cars and hoverboards and an American League team in Miami by next year.

On the negative side, it would be easy to prognosticate that, ten decades from now, the churches of Dumas and America will be just as empty and ineffectual as the churches of Europe and England.  We have compromised where we should have stood firm and argued with each other when we should have been united and preserved what should have been abandoned and set fire to what we should have kept.  We’re seen as wishy-washy, old-fashioned, and irrelevant.  We’ve been hoping Huey Lewis was a prophet and it would one day be hip to be square but we just keep getting more square (in the world’s eyes) while we have a sort of hip dysplasia that keeps us anchored to our pews.

On the other hand, praise God that our God is greater than we are!  When Elijah sulked in a cave, wishing for death and whining that he was the last faithful man in Israel, God came to him and said there were still seven thousand people in Israel who were faithful to the one true God.  Not only that, there was still work for Elijah to do!

Elijah did the work he was called to do.  He established a school of the prophets and appointed Elisha to take his place.

And you know what happened?  Israel continued to decline, the people continued to abandon God, and eventually the kingdom fell and everyone went into captivity.

But God used Elijah to sow the seeds of faithfulness in those who would listen.  Eventually, God sent Jesus, the Messiah he had long promised.  Those seeds Gods planted through Elijah helped to make the soil ready for Christ’s incarnation.

So, I keep asking myself: what about me?  Am I going to keep fighting a rear-guard action, just waiting for the church to collapse, or am I going to let God use me like an Elijah: to prepare the people around me for the word of God?

Speculation about what the church might look like in a hundred years may have a place, but what is even more important is this: how will I let God use me today?