Jared Wilson is always one of my favorite bloggers, and right now, he’s really on a roll. I’m particularly struck by a couple of posts which he doesn’t explicitly connect, but which I think do connect on a deep level. The first, “Ever the Cross,” is a riff on this line from C. J. Mahaney:
It is increasingly obvious that people are prepared to tolerate Christianity up until the point that it begins to define its terms.
The Rev. Mahaney’s right on with that, and not just with regard to the world outside the church—this is often the case within the church as well, and especially within congregations that seek to engineer success by accommodating themselves to that attitude. As Jared puts it,
Modern sermons and teaching that do not center or focus on the cross only reinforce this for us. Without meaning to, the church itself can support our error of judging God’s faithfulness to us based on our present circumstances, rather than on the great love he has shown to us in the past. Which is why we must always bring the glory of that past movement into our present worship and obedience. That’s the need for the call to a cross-centered life.
This is a critical point, because any other way of life leads us away from Christ, not towards him:
The call to follow Jesus is the call to die. Following Jesus means renouncing comfort, safety, and happiness in circumstances as the prime virtue of life. . . .What does it mean to remember the cross of Christ as a sign upon our right hand, between our eyes, and in our mouth? It means that Jesus is our way, Jesus is our truth, and Jesus is our life, and when the way, the truth, and the life heads toward crucifixion, we don’t part ways. We remember. We commemorate. We look to the cross like a pillar of cloud by day and to the empty tomb like a pillar of fire by night, the signs to follow. Where the world walks the wide path away from the point at which Christ defines his terms, the disciple continues on the narrow path into the way of the cross.
That’s powerful truth, and profoundly important. Unfortunately, as Jared notes in his post today on the missional reformation of the church, it’s also profoundly unsettling to many, many congregational (and denominational) leaders in this country, and profoundly threatening to their whole idea of how we’re supposed to lead the church, and what we as the church are supposed to be. For all that most of the fights in American churches are over style and programs and other matters that are superficial and therefore clearly visible, the real issues and the real problems are much deeper, and can be summed up in the statement that most churches don’t “remember the cross of Christ as a sign upon our right hand, between our eyes, and in our mouth.” We have not renounced comfort, safety, and happiness in circumstances as our goals, either in the church or in life in general, much less accepted the call to die. As a consequence,
What we are dealing with . . . is not a crisis of programming or style, but a crisis of culture. . . . Because of the state of the modern Church’s collective values and community identity, the call to reform cannot be met merely by offering alternative programming or adding an “emerging” service or what have you. We’re messing with DNA here.
This is long, slow work, which in most cases will not produce dramatic turnarounds suitable for book tours and TV appearances; that’s why so few people have the heart for it. It’s important work, though; I’ll never denigrate the valuable work of church planters, but it would be wrong to focus on church planting and just write off existing congregations because changing them would be too much work. Yes, there are congregations that simply will not change; but there are others that will, because the Holy Spirit is not going to abandon the people of God. And ultimately, the commitment to the work of the missional reformation of the church is not one that can be judged by results alone—even if it doesn’t “work,” that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. The task itself is worthy, whether “successful” or otherwise. As Jared concludes,
It is wearying trying to sell our churches on the notion that what they’ve been selling for so long doesn’t work. It is difficult suggesting that the service-centered approach to reaching the lost has failed. It is a delicate thing to suggest that we have not exalted Christ and we have not glorified God and therefore we haven’t really served the people we’ve claimed to.And yet for some of us inside this culture, slogging away at discipling the culture into a more vital discipleship, it is incumbent upon us to, in our hearts and minds, say “Here we stand. We can do no other.”
To which I can only add, “God help us. Amen.”
I definitely buy what I’m reading here, and I have this in mind when I’m preaching and serving as a leader in a congregation. The only difference I have is that I don’t see a need to focus on the past. In fact, if God only shows great love and grace in the past, then that’s a big disappointment. I think its perfectly reasonable to ask ourselves “What is God doing now?”
If God only acted in the past, then God is just another god, many of whom, for all we know, acted in the past as well. But if God is a living God, then I think a person is justified in asking about God, right here, right now…
Yep. The reason for talking about the past is not to focus on it, but to apply the lessons of the past to the present–i.e., we can trust that God will be faithful now because he’s been faithful in the past.