The Church Cannot Die: Poetic Figures, Misunderstanding, and Reality
This is taken from A.W. Tozer’s book Man - The Dwelling Place of God.
Poetic Figures vs. Reality
The language of devotion has helped to create the impression that the church is supposed to be a band of warriors driving the enemy before them in plain sight and with plenty of color and drama to give a pleasing flourish to the whole thing. In our hymns and pulpit oratory we have commonly pictured the church as marching along to the sound of martial music and the plaudits of the multitude.
Of course this is but a poetic figure. The individual Christian may be likened to a soldier, but the picture of the church on earth as a conquering army is not realistic. Her true situation is more accurately portrayed as a flock of sheep in the midst of wolves, or as a company of despised pilgrims plodding toward home, or as a peculiar nation protected by the Passover blood waiting for the sound of the trumpet, or as a bride looking for the coming of her bridegroom.
Misunderstanding The Church’s Role: Wincing & Sanctioning
The world is constantly lashing the church because she has no solution for the problems of society, and the religious leaders who do not know the score wince under the lash. Every once in a while some churchman in an acute attack of conscience does penance in public for Christianity’s failure to furnish bold leadership for the world in this time of crisis. “We have sinned,” cries the frustrated prophet. “The world looked to us for help and we have failed it.”
Well, I am all for repentance if it is genuine, and I think the church has failed, not by neglecting to provide leadership but by living too much like the world. That, however, is not what the muddled churchman means when he bares his soul in public. Rather, he erroneously assumes that the church of God has been left on earth to minister good hope and cheer to the world in such quantities that it can ignore God, reject Christ, glorify fallen human flesh and pursue its selfish ends in peace. The world wants the church to add a dainty spiritual touch to its carnal schemes, and to be there to help it to its feet and put it to bed when it comes home drunk with fleshly pleasures.
Speaking In It’s True Prophetic Voice
In the first place the church has received no such commission from her Lord, and in the second place the world has never shown much disposition to listen to the church when she speaks in her true prophetic voice. The attitude of the world toward the true child of God is precisely the same as that of the citizens of Vanity Fair toward Christian and his companion. “Therefore they took them and beat them, and besmeared them with dirt, and put them into the cage, that they might be made a spectacle to all men.” Christian’s duty was not to “provide leadership” for Vanity Fair but to keep clean from its pollution and get out of it as fast as possible. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
The Church Cannot Die
We are in real need of a reformation that will lead to revival among the churches, but the church is not dead, neither is it dying. The church cannot die.
A local church can die. This happens when all the old saints in a given place fall asleep and no young saints arise to take their place. Sometimes under these circumstances the congregation ceases to be a church, or there is no congregation left and the doors of the chapel are nailed shut. But such a condition, however deplorable, should not discourage us. The true church is the repository of the life of God among men, and if in one place the frail vessels fail, that life will break out somewhere else. Of this we may be sure.
Missional: Is it a good word?
Reflection & Influence
Christians love catch-phrases and keywords. Making fun of or lamenting “Christianese” or the Christian subculture is a relatively easy and lazy thing to do. The more fruitful approach - the one that would hopefully build up the church rather than armchair quarterback it - is to lovingly critique it.
How we use language is something that really interests me. It’s something that’s important to see and think about because, while I’m not a linguist, I can see that language carries with it two big factors. First, language is a reflection of what we think, believe, and value. Secondly, language influences what we think, believe, and value.
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Blurred Definitions
Which brings me to the word I want to bring up in this blog article: missional. “Being missional” or “to be missional” has been a descriptive or imperative catch phrase for about the last five years, particularly among younger Emerging churches. It’s a word that I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable with because of it’s relative ambiguity (but that’s another article).
A recent Q&A video from John Piper helped me see more clearly the restlessness I felt about the word. In this clip he makes a very good distinction between “evangelism” and “missions”.
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Cause & Effect?
I’m left with a couple questions:
1) Do churches and Christians use the word “missional” because they are afraid of the word “evangelism”?
2) Though it claims to do otherwise, will this North American emphasis on being “missional” negatively effect global missions and the global Church by affirming (instead of challenging) our culture’s narcissism and producing culturally insular Christians?
“Unselfishness” vs. Love
I was familiar with the last two sentences but I’d never read what preceded it. I need to read more Lewis apparently because in a time of nuanced language, insight like this is needed. Thanks to Slice of Laodicea for the quote.
“If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
-C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Many in the new seeker-sensitive experiment in “doing church” have seen only the surface habits of this postmodern world and have not really understood its Eros spirituality. Theirs is an experiment in tactics in which innumerable questions have been asked about the ways the Church can become successful in this culture and they are all prefaced by the word how. How do we get on the wavelength of Generation Xers? How do we do worship so that the transition from home to church, from mall to church, and from unbelief into a context of belief, is seamless and even unnoticed? How do we speak about Christian faith to those who only want techniques for survival in life? How can we be motivational for those who need a lift without burdening them? How can we say what we want to say in church when the audience will give us only a small slice of their attention, especially if we are not amusing? And what is emerging, as the evangelical Church continues to empty itself of theology, is that it now find that it is tapping, wittingly or not, into this broad cultural yearning for spirituality, and capitalizing on that disposition’s inclination not to be religious. Evangelical spirituality without theology, that even sometimes despises theology, parallels almost exactly the broader cultural spirituality that is without religion. Evangelical faith without theology, without the structure and discipline of truth, is not Agape faith but it is much close to Eros spirituality.
This, however, is not understood. Church talks about “reaching” the culture turns, almost inevitably, into a discussion about tactics and methodology, not about worldviews. It is only about tactics and not about strategy. It is about seduction and not about truth, about success and not about confrontation. However, without strategy, the tactics inevitably fail; without truth, all of the arts of seduction which the churches are practicing sooner or later are seen to be the empty charade that they are; and because the emerging worldview is not being engaged, the Church has little it can really say. Indeed, one has to ask how much it actually wants to say. Biblical truth contradicts this cultural spirituality, and that contradiction is hard to bear. Biblical truth displaces it, refuses to allow it its operating assumptions, declares to it its bankruptcy. Here, indeed, is an anti-god, dressed up in the garb of authenticity, but whose world is a world of fiction. Is the evangelical Church faithful enough to explode the worldview of this new spiritual search? Is it brave enough to contradict what has wide cultural approval? The verdict may not finally be in but it seems quite apparent that while the culture is burning, the evangelical Church is fiddling precisely because it has decided it must be so like the culture to be successful.
Why We’re Not Emergent: A Gift To The Church
I’m a little late posting about this book (it came out last year) because, well, Amazon doesn’t ship to M*ngolia. For all of 2008 I kept a running list of books I wanted to get when we came back to the States and Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck was near the top. I finally picked it up after Christmas and read it in about two weeks.
I really could not recommend a book more highly for my generation at this moment than this one. Like Phil Johnson, I found myself saying “Wow.Wow.Wow.” in every chapter.
The book is written by a young pastor and one of his congregants (who happens to be a sports writer) who, as the title says, should both be ‘emergent’. The book is a wonderful combination of entertaining, thoughtful, concise, profound, analytical, encouraging, humble, and corrective all at once. I sincerely believe this should be required reading for Christians between the ages of 18-35 or for anyone interested in the current state of the Church. It is a book that goes against the prevailing wind of our culture and against many of the loudest voices in Christianity and, in doing so, it challenges what you (as a Christian!) believe in a way that is both prophetic and pastoral. I say prophetic because the book challenges and corrects current errors in The Church with clarity and vigor in a way that points people to Jesus; and I use pastoral because it is done with a deep care and love for God’s people.
As a bit of a teaser, here is a sample of some of my favorite quotes:
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“[Regarding the emergent church’s emphasis ‘the journey’] Because the journey is an experience more than a destination, the Christian life requires less doctrinal reflection and more personal introspection. The postmodern infatuation with journey feeds on and into a preoccupation with our own stories. If my parent’s generation could be a little stoic and not terrible reflective, my generation is introspective at a level somewhat between self-absorption and narcissism. We are so in-tuned with our dysfunctions, hurts, and idiosyncrasies that it often prevents us from growing up, because maturity is tantamount to hypocrisy in a world that prizes brokenness more than health” (34).
“Young people will give their lives for an exclamation point, but they will not give their lives for a question mark, not for very long anyway. Once the protest runs out and the emerging church has its own blogdom, and conferences, and church networks, and book deals, there will be no exclamation point, and all that’s left will be ethical intentions and passionate appeals for kingdom living. This will not sustain a movement - the protest will for a while, but once that’s gone there will be no great vision of God, no urgent proclamation of salvation, no eternal judgment or reward at stake, just a call to live rightly and love one another. That message will sell on Oprah, Larry King, and at the Oscars, but it won’t sustain and propel a gospel-driven church, because it isn’t the gospel.” (127-28)
“The main problem in the universe, according to many emergent writers, seems to be human suffering and brokenness. Make no mistake, suffering and brokenness are a result of the fall, but the main problem that needs to be dealt with is human sin and rebellion… Christians don’t get killed for telling people that God believes in them and suffers like them and can heal their brokenness. They get killed for calling sinners to repentance and proclaiming faith in the crucified Son of God as the only means by which we who were enemies might be reconciled to God (Rom. 5:10).” (194-95)
“[Regarding all the angst and shame about the church’s track record when it comes to the arts:] I’m still a little unclear as to the reason. Is it because churches aren’t displaying art on their walls? Neither are insurance companies, but nobody is up in arms about that. My hunch is that there is this feeling that churches aren’t adequately “supporting” artists (musicians, writers, visual artists) in their midst. However, I don’t exactly see churches “supporting” software designers, salesmen, or farmers either. That’s not the church’s purpose. And it seems that the artists who are making the most noise about “not being supported” are the ones who may not have the talent to really cut it in the marketplace anyway. I don’t know of any working artists (musicians, actors, writers, painters) who complain that their church doesn’t “support” their efforts. Art is tough. Making a living at art is tough. It’s tough on families and marriages. That’s simply the nature of the game.” (143)
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You can buy it new, buy it used, download a chapter online.
I’m curious if you’ve read the book as well. What did you think? What did you gain from it or disagree with?
Culture & Natures
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I was reading the interestingly-titled and well-written “Why Are There Never Enough Parking Spaces at the Prostate Clinic” by Carl Trueman at Reformation 21 and a sentence in his last paragraph had an important conviction/reminder for me as a Christian who somewhat of a cultural commentator.
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Trueman says, “Alternatively, I could try to move out of my own little world, start thinking less in cultural and more in biblical terms. I could become less obsessed with particularities and more concerned with universals. I could engage less with the accidents of culture and more with the substance of nature.” [emphasis mine]
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That is something I wanted to bring up, especially among all of the cultural conversation on this site. We can get so busy scanning our culture like iTunes’ “cover view” feature or flippantly analyzing every cultural flash in the pan and completely miss the point as Christians. As Christians our lives are lived in view of eternity, in view of the one and only God who creates and sustains and who has revealed Himself to us in the Bible and continues to do so every day. These facts carry with it some fundamental truths that we, in all of our contextualizing bluster, can skim right over: God has a nature and we have a nature. That is exactly where the greatest Christian missiologist/apologist/evangelist started his Gospel presentation in the last half of the first chapter of Romans.
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As we look at our culture, are our spirits provoked (ESV), distressed (NIV), or troubled (HCSB) as Paul’s was (Acts 17:16) when we look at the idols that are created, bred, and worshipped all around us? When we offer insights or diagnosis, are they done so through the lens that Paul uses in Acts 17 and Romans 1 where he begins his analysis with a view of who God is and how we’ve looked to other gods, other saviors? I think that having that Biblical view of the world is our true north and keeps us looking to, thinking in light of, and living faithfully in the eternal framework we believe that we are in. More so, it keeps us directing the gaze of those who hear us upwards and outwards, instead of downwards and within as our Western culture demands.
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If we miss that, we’re just contributing to the noise. If we miss that, we won’t understand our need for Jesus - and therefore others won’t either - and our cultural analysis will be a dire misdiagnosis. If we miss that, all of our talk of culture and contextualization is about as consequential as Wayne’s World.
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