Perceptions from a Pewboy

For what kind of church are you praying, believing, and living?

These days, I am praying and believing that the church will become more faithfully the church that God is calling it to be. That will mean many things:

1. It will mean that the church’s people become stubbornly resistant to cynicism and chronic negativity. Nothing corrupts the joy and vibrancy of the church’s ministry faster than a grumbling spirit and a cynical heart. I am praying and living for a church whose people recognize possibilities instead of settling for disparagement, thereby becoming instruments of prophetic joy and hope.

2. It will mean that the church’s people stop pretending that racism is no longer an issue for us and acknowledge that it is still a heartbreaking sin that all too often finds expression in our sanctuaries, our institutions, our attitudes, our language, and our presuppositions. I am praying and living for a church in which people name racism instead of denying it; repent of it instead of accommodating it; stand against it instead of giving it a place to live and grow.

3. It will mean that the church’s people begin to take an honest and critical look at their buildings for the purpose of making certain that those buildings are in alignment with the ministry that God is calling the church to do. While it is important to be sensitive to the time-tested sacredness of our sanctuaries and the precious memories that are linked to our fellowship halls, we must also be sensitive to the danger of becoming idolatrous about buildings that are no longer maintainable or practical. I am praying and living for a church that is more passionate about strategic location than it is about preserving an architectural albatross.

4. It will mean that the church’s people become uncompromising in their commitment to reaching people in the margins of life: the margins of poverty and hunger; the margins of malaria and killer diseases; the margins of loneliness and isolation; the margins of domestic violence and addiction. I am praying and living for that kind of a church—a church that regularly looks into the eyes of hurting and marginalized people and sees the eyes of Jesus looking back at them.

5. When all is said and done, becoming more faithfully the church will mean that the church recovers its foundational conviction that it’s all about Jesus. His ministry. His justifying and sanctifying grace. His life, death, and resurrection. His Way. His love. His righteousness. His call. I am praying and living for that kind of a church—a church whose people are willing to subordinate every portion of their lives to the Lordship of Christ. That is discipleship. That is the church at its best.

For what kind of church are you praying, believing, and living?

These days, I am praying and believing that the church will become more faithfully the church that God is calling it to be. That will mean many things:

1. It will mean recovering or re-emphasizing the urgency of biblical theology and sound doctrine.

Even as I type those words, I can hear some of you asking “What do you mean by ‘biblical theology and sound doctrine?’” It is not my intention in this post to establish the theological and doctrinal boundaries in that regard. After all, the Articles of Religion have already accomplished that in good fashion.

I do, however, want to make the point that, for the church, theology and doctrine are not expendable lambs to be slaughtered at the altar of pluralism. Quite the contrary, they are the time-tested disciplines through which the church has determined both the content of its proclamation and the nature of its practice.

Is there room for differing theological and doctrinal opinions in the church’s ministry? Certainly. The shadow of the cross covers a good bit of ground in that regard. Therefore, I am not calling for a cold theological rigidity that truncates exploration, or a doctrinal myopia that prevents us from thinking deeply about the history and implications of our doctrines. I am simply calling the church to recognize that, in kerygmatic matters, it is the steward of an existing story and not the crafter of a new one.

To be a faithful steward of the story that has been entrusted to it, the church has no choice but to be a community that takes its theology and doctrine very seriously.

2. Becoming more faithfully the church will also require the church’s people to begin to recognize afresh that tearing one another down is antithetical to the spirit of agapic love in which we are called to live. To be certain, followers of Christ are called to hold one another accountable. But accountability is for the edification of both the individual and the community, not for the creation of rancor and alienation.

Put simply, the church stops acting like the church if its people become comfortable with disparaging one another, especially when the ones disparaged are not present to defend themselves. We are called to be a different kind of church than that.

3. Becoming more faithfully the church will mean that the church’s people embrace ever more deeply the truth that starting new churches and new communities of faith is not simply a passing fad but an urgent necessity. If the church is to reach new people, then it must become the church in new ways, in new places, through new ministries and new communities of faith. If churches could become more entrepreneurial than provincial, more missional than protective, then forming new churches and new communities of faith might become a joyful way of life for us instead of an occasional impulse.

That is the kind of church for which I am living and praying these days—a community of sound theology and doctrine that is stubbornly resistant to disparagement and passionately devoted to being the church in new places and in new ways.

For what kind of church are you praying, believing, and living?

These days, I am praying and believing that the church will become more faithfully the church that God is calling it to be. That will mean many things.

1. It will mean that the church’s people recommit themselves to the Way of Christ and to the practice of the spiritual disciplines of prayer, worship, the study of Scripture, solitude, community, confession, repentance, and frequent celebration of the Lord’s Supper. These are the time-tested activities through which the Holy Spirit has historically ushered people into a deeper attentiveness to the presence of God and a transformational obedience to God’s will.

Not surprisingly, one does not have to delve too deeply into ecclesiastical history in order to discover that a re-emphasis upon the spiritual disciplines has been a crucial part of every season of renewal and reformation that the church has ever experienced.

2. Becoming more faithfully the church will also mean that the church’s people will practice an extravagant generosity in their giving—not for the purpose of meeting a budget, but for the purpose of honoring Jesus Christ, who is himself a relentlessly extravagant giver.

How would the church’s ministry broaden if the disciplines of tithing (or growth either TOWARD or BEYOND tithing) became the congregational norm instead of a rare exception? How might the spirit of the church deepen if the church’s people gave boldly and sacrificially to the church’s ministry, as though they believed that the church of Jesus Christ deserved their very best offering? How might Christ’s goodness be more vibrantly illuminated if people’s giving truly reflected the belief that the church is Christ’s precious Bride to be honored (as opposed to a common prostitute to be trifled with)?

3. Finally (for this post, anyway), becoming more faithfully the church will mean that the church will become a place of healthy and holy balance. Balance between hard work and Sabbath. Balance between community and solitude. Balance between reaching inward to the hearts of people who are already present and reaching outward to those who have not yet found their way. Balance between acts of piety and acts of mercy.

That is the kind of church for which I am praying and living these days—a church in which spiritual disciplines are joyfully practiced, in which extravagant generosity finds frequent expression, and in which a Christ-honoring sense of balance is fervently sought.

For what kind of church are you praying, believing, and living?

These days, I am praying and believing that the church will become more faithfully the church that God is calling it to be. That will mean many things. It will mean that the church’s people recognize that loving God with heart, soul, and mind is not a shallow sentimentality but a passionate and fully invested way of living—a way of living in which disciples of Jesus begin to care for their body, spirit, and mind with reverence, as through they truly believed every segment of their life could become a song of praise to the One who created them.

That is the kind of church for I am praying and living—a church that loves God relentlessly and comprehensively (rather than selectively and sporadically).

I am also praying and believing that the church’s people will become people of integrity.

The word “integrity” is a derivative of a Latin word that means “intact” or “whole.” People of integrity, then, are people who commit themselves to authenticity, wholeness, and ethical intactness in their relationships, their administration, their self-care, their communication, and their personal conduct, thereby bringing honor in all things to Christ and his Way.

Where is my integrity lacking, I wonder? Where is yours lacking? Where are we failing to be a Christ-centered people of integrity?

At any rate, that is the kind of church for which this humble pewboy is praying and living these days—a church in which “integrity” is not a spiritual sound bite but a way of life.