|
For several years now some of us have been giving serious thought to the very make up of how we do church nowadays. I fear that the church has so separated faith issues from life concerns that it has opened up a huge gap between religiosity and reality. In so doing it discourages us from being ourselves in church, since being ourselves is presumed to be other than what’s acceptable. Take for example the way we speak. This religious kind of language is so unintelligible to the man in the street that we have to leave it at the church door when we exit. Preachers sound different to the rest of us. Their religious vernacular sounds like a different dialect. If we were to conduct our business life in this manner we would be labelled as strange, or even slightly queer. This meaningless, jargon-laden preaching solicits alienation and silent rage among the faithful, and is the butt of many jokes among the irreligious.
There’s a sermon for every problem. Prayer fixes everything. God saves the day. The faithful triumph, the good always prosper. But our lives seem more complicated than that. It’s not to say that we don’t believe in the power of prayer, or the faithfulness of God, but the way it’s presented publicly in church services makes it less real than it is. It’s all become rather artificial and Pollyanna. When every prayer is answered, and every testimony has a happy ending, we start to feel a growing sadness that there must be something wrong, because life isn’t always like that for us, or most of our friends.
As we feel increasingly alienated from the faith that’s dished up in church, we have finally come to realize that testimonies don’t build faith but in some cases are just a big put-down. And so over a long time now a silent, simmering kind of rage has been developing among thinking saints. So where is the avenue for the expression of these feelings of alienation and rage? Well it will not be found in the Church. Since we seem to have developed faith communities of silence, many of us must remain mute, and when it’s all over on Sunday mornings all we are left with are our feelings of genuine sadness and disappointment. In other words we must be less than ourselves in church.
You only need three skills to get by in church these days; you have to be able to sing, to listen and to give. Singing, listening and giving, that’s all you ever need to do any given Sunday. It will get you through six worship songs, a lengthy monologue, and save you any embarrassment when the offering is taken up, that’s a promise. If you’re not much of a listener, but more of a talker, I’m sorry but you’ll just have to learn to be seen and not heard. A teachable spirit, they call it. (Have you noticed, that the only people who talk about our need to be teachable, are those who want to do the teaching?)
I am finding, as I travel among Christians of all persuasions, the same feelings of alienation, rage, sadness and silence. It’s as if we’re all looking for places where we, as Christians, can be ourselves and speak freely. And surely it’s only through frank, honest conversation, and interaction, that genuine learning and, personal growth can take place. There has been a resurgence of house or cell groups, which some people say is the place for such interchange; and that may be so, in many churches. But when the public gathering of the faithful doesn’t reflect in any significant way the private life of the community then it’s irrelevant, but worse still it’s deceitful. If the church continues to be a place where some people have all the say, and others have nothing to say, this silent invisible revulsion will eventually explode. People want their voices back. They want their churches back. They want to be part of a faith community and a worship experience that involves conversation, honesty, vulnerability, creativity and consensus. They do want biblical truth; but they seem to think that you can have a meaningful experience of God’s presence, without sitting silently in rows, all facing the front.
If the modern pastor, as we see him today, is as important as he claims he is, then why is this high profile prominent individual who sticks out like a sore toe, not seen frequently throughout the first century church? Ephesians 4:11-13 is the text quoted to establish his bona fides. In rank of importance he doesn’t even make Paul’s list in 1 Cor 12:27-30. In the mouth of two or three witnesses let everything be established. But this man, who believes he has a mandate from God to corral, lead, and be the guiding light of the local flock, cannot be seen even once, let alone two or three times in the entire history of the New Testament church. If he is so absolutely indispensable to the well being of the saints, why is he so conspicuous by his invisibility? The New Testament does not support the exalted position given him in the modern church. He is without contradiction an interloper, meddling in God’s affairs. He cannot be seen in Acts, nor did he ever exist in Paul’s thinking. He has about as much validity as big-foot. You cannot build a case for the modern pastor on one proof text, (Ephesians 4:11-13) or then you become just as guilty as the Mormons, who baptise for the dead.
Such a prominent individual would have to be seen many times, not only throughout the churches that the apostles planted, but there would be many Scriptures to validate his position. Do we have the right to ignore the infallible history of Acts, and the Epistles, in spite of the fact, that some teach that the book of Acts is not reliable for doctrinal exposition? Is the New Testament account unreliable? Or is it possible that our interpretation is flawed? Pastors as we see them today are non-existent in the inspired record. I realize that any attempt to influence pastors to accept the truth, is no more likely to succeed than the attempts of the prophets, when they warned Judah of impending judgment (2 Chronicles 36:16). Jesus never changed the Jewish mindset, (if indeed he ever intended or wanted too), and Luther never changed the Catholics. What did they do? They went out from among them; it was their only course. Hindsight reveals, that change has always been unacceptable to organized religion.
Most churches grow, peak, plateau, and then begin to die spiritually, eventually fading away. You may say yours is different, well I wouldn’t hold my breath, because history proves otherwise. Some ministers have embarked upon self-destructive building programs that all but destroyed their church. Leaving the next generation with a mammoth financial burden, while they move on to greater follies. These ambitious projects stand as a mute testimony to failed human effort, and can be found in every major city around the world. That’s undeniable, because the ruins are there for all to see, while the causes and effects should not be lost to us. Hindsight doesn’t lie.
|
