Now, don't get me wrong, I've got a whole hekuva lot of respect & admiration for a certain Megachurch Pastor near Chicago. He seems like a really nice guy, and there's no question that he's had a massive effect both on Evangelicaldom in general, and on the lives of individuals, famous and not-so-famous. I've been privileged to attend a spectacular Evangelism Conference of his, as well as two of his Church Leadership Conferences, all of which were exquisitely produced, full of delicious intellectual content, and which made me excited to get out and do [fill in content of conference here]!
But I have one problem with one of the messages coming out of this epicenter of the evangelical church. (Which message I have now heard in other places, including both my previous & current church.)
That message is: "The Local Church is the hope of the world." (This message is sometimes amplified with, "and there is no 'Plan B.'")
It's clear to me that what The Pastor is trying to say is that the Local Church is a main & normative place where people can come to know their Gracious Heavenly Father, revealed in his Son by the Spirit. The Local Church is the gathering of Believers, and in this gathering Jesus Christ dwells by his Spirit.
He is also doing his best to rally the troops to leadership in their Local Churches, thus energizing & empowering churches to be more available for outreach and evangelism.
But taken at face value, a quite reasonable thing to do, the phrase "The Local Church is the hope of the world," contradicts that other, more Biblical, truth: "Jesus Christ is the Hope of the world." In fact, when anyone says anything with the formula, "X is the hope of the world," and X does not equal "Jesus Christ," most evangelicals get rather bothered. So I'm continually amazed when I hear this phrase repeated in theologically respectable circles.
Of course, there are ways to explain why one can get away with saying, "The Local Church is the hope of the world," without veering near unto heresy. "I mean that Jesus uses his Church to bring people to him." Or, "I mean that, within the Local Church, people can find Jesus!" Or, "Well, the Church is Jesus' Church, so that means that I'm really saying that Jesus is the hope of the world."
But the point of theology & preaching is to make the things of God and Salvation clearer to the average person, not confuse the issue of who/what is actually our hope. (Besides, the old hymn just doesn't sound right the other way: "My hope is built on nothing less, than the Local Church and smiling greeters.")
Interestingly, the point of the phrase is not actually to educate. Rather, it is to motivate the folks in the Local Church. If it were to educate on the matter of hope, then The Pastor would use it when he is telling someone the Gospel. But when it comes to the Gospel, the Gospel is preached: Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior.
The "Local Church as world's hope" sermon is used internally to motivate folks to leadership & service within their churches. And here we see it's main usage: the actual sermon goes something like this:
A - the Local Church is the hope of the world
B - the Local Church's work is dependent upon it's members
C - You are a member of your Local Church
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Therefore, You are the hope of the world.
Some preachers feel that this is not persuasive enough, so they add an additional Premise:
D - There is no "Plan B."
This is kind of the rhetorical exclamation point, to say: "No, seriously, You are the hope of the world and if you screw this up, the world is screwed."
All sorts of bells ring in my head on this: it sounds vaguely like something one would hear from a pre-Reformation Catholic Church, "The Church is the gatekeeper to salvation"; or like the pre-Babylonian captivity Israelites, "This is God's Temple! His only plan!"
Fine company, I'm sure, but The Pastor, the pre-Reformation Catholic Church and the pre-Babylonian captivity Israelites are all wrong on this point.
Jesus Christ alone is the hope of the world. He does normatively use the Local Church, and he does normatively use we local churchmembers in his hope-bringing work. But the glory of God is that his work of bringing many sons and daughters to glory will not be stopped, neither by stinky local churchmembers, nor by bad preaching, nor by a lack of Local Churches.
[Editor's Note: Your usual Piebald Life poster, Alex, is off at Chapter Camp for one more blob-filled week. As a tawdry substitute, Macon is guest-blogging. Macon's normal walking styles are Left-Right-Left-Right, Right-Left-Right-Left, with the occasional Right-Right-LeftRight-Left-LeftRight (especially when he encounters hopscotch). He also limps along at the Stokes Kith & Kin blog. ]
7 comments:
A related contradiction to the idea of the local church being the hope of the world is the Great Commission. The local church's message is essentially "Stay and help build this local church". The Great Commission is "Go and make disciples." Or is this too simple a juxtaposition? Look at Paul's missionary journeys. He was always being begged to stay and build this local church or that one. But he went. (We would counter-argue: Paul is special, right? I'm not, and I am comfortably busy in my local church, so leave me alone.)
Todd, thanks for your thoughts. I agree that there are too many moments of poor motivation coming at us from The Beloved Church.
Paul, I think that the counter-argument there is that the best way to accomplish the Great Commission is to work in your Local Church, or to be a Local Church Planter.
It very well may be that this is the case: I'm not prepared to argue for or against a particular philosophy of Evangelism.
But what is in all cases a terrible thing is when we, as Todd says, "sacrifice the truth or what's real in order to motivate." (Todd, thanks for the nod to my previous post!)
The witness of the Scriptures is that our motivation (our reason for action) only properly comes out of a response of gratitude and joy for what the Lord has done for us. That is the beginning, middle, and end of proper motivation for the believer, whether it's "right living" or evangelism, or church planting, or raising a family.
(I say, "Beloved Church," with no malice or irony. The Church is Beloved, even when we get frustrated with it.)
I just remember a recent worship service where the chairman of "buildings and grounds" was given about 6 minutes to harangue people for not helping with the sprinkler system. I don't recall 6 minutes being given at the worship service to local church evangelism in quite some time.
I think you're right on Macon . . . Jesus is our only hope . . . and that's an awesome thing because the church and its members fall way short of God's desires and purposes all the time. I don't think hope would be quite as wonderful as it is if it depended on us. Besides, the world looks at Christians all the time and says "so what's the big deal, they all live just like us." That's why Jesus needs to be (and is) the hope of the world . . . because he's different and he can offer the world what we simple church members cannot.
In regards to church ministry, I think you make very good points. I am hesitant, though, to be completely satisfied with a vision of local church ministry alone. Perhaps it is closest to our experience and is the community in which we live out our faith, but I struggle with this all the time. What does the kingdom look like, or how should it look? Is it composed of many local congregations doing their own thing and how are these local congregations united in the larger church? Just things I've been thinking about.
THIS is the glorious goodness-type of stuff that I was hoping for when I begged and pleaded for Macon to be the guest-blogger.
I think the tension that I feel in this even as I'm here at camp/resort Rockbridge training small group Bible Study leaders is that I want them to be motivated to do what we're telling them to do. Finding creative ways to motivate that are not manipulative is pretty tough. In fact, I might have some repenting I should be doing right now instead of typing a comment on this post. Some of this probably belies my lack of faith in the reality (truth?) that God's goodness is big enough in this task.
I wonder, though, Macon, about your comment in response to Paul's comment about gratitude being our primary motivator in obedience/service. I think that's the standard fall-back of how we talk about it, but I think that John Piper makes a pretty compelling argument that gratitude is essential in worship and in our relationship with Christ but it's actually not talked about much in conjunction with obedience in the Scripture. It's a feeling, ergo it's too precarious a thing to load the whole freight of our motivation on. Faith, it would seem, is the primary motivator given in Scripture to move us to obedience. But maybe that's another conversation for a future post next week whilst I'm recovering from two weeks of sleep deprivation and frisbee golf and mass-produced (yet truly and really yummy) food.
Man, Macon, will you post on my blog so that people comment instead of silently stalk/read?
re: AK's post about gratitude and faith. Alex, I am smelling what you're stepping in there, BUT I may have to disagree on a couple places and agree on others. First the disagree - if gratitude is a feeling, and it is essential in our worship and in our relationship with Christ, then I think that a lot of us (me included) are in trouble. I don't always feel gratitude when I worship, yet I don't believe that I shouldn't worship at those points. I don't always feel gratitude in my relationship with Christ, yet I don't believe that I need to wait until I feel that to talk to him (and I know that you would agree with me here).
So, as I write, I begin to wonder, "IS gratitude a feeling?" Or is it sometimes a feeling and other times a response to truth? I can choose to be thankful and respond in gratitude for my food at dinner each night, even though some nights I FEEL more thankful than others.
I also don't know that I agree that faith is a MOTIVATOR to obedience. Faith seems more like a response to something that motivates me. I obey in faith in response to love/God's goodness. (I guess it could be a motivator in the sense that because I believe X, I respond by doing Y). My response to God's love or goodness is not necessarily a FEELING that God is good or loving but a choice to believe in truth, being transformed by the renewing of my mind, bringing my emotions and my will in line with what is true/real about God and who I am in Christ. (Perhaps I have said "For Christ's love compels us" too many times in the past two weeks).
Emotions will come and go, I agree. But I can choose to be thankful and live in faithful obedience out of that, just as I can choose to forgive someone and not FEEL perfectly OK towards them afterwards.
All I can say at this moment is:
But I can't fight this feeling anymore, I've forgotten what I stared fighting for, it's time to bring this ship into the shore, and throw away the oars, forever!
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