So, is the church in America heading toward cultural insignificance, has it become just another manifestation of our fixation with the temporal, or can it be a place of real, substantive transformation? Why is the church in our own country growing at a rather tepid pace (or in many denominations - shrinking), compared with dramatic, explosive, and sustained growth in many places in the "third world", most notably in Sub-Saharan Africa and South America? Why is it all we read about concerning church growth in America has to do with Rick Warren's latest book, or some Bible-belt Name It and Claim It congregation?
Could it be that we are not listening to the real meaning behind the stories we find in the book of Acts? Tod Bolsinger has started an interesting look at what Christian community really means. Read it, think about it, discuss it with your Christian friends. Perhaps, just maybe, if we could begin to grasp what real, meaningful, Christian community looks like, we could, one church at a time, transform our culture. I have to quote Tod's finishing thoughts today:
Further, Christian Community is not just a shared experience. It's
not people who sit together in pews or a movie theater or a football stadium
(even if they are the audience for a Christian event!). It's not polite
conversation at a potluck or a great weekend together at a Christian camp.
Christian Community is an ontologically irreducible organism. It is a
living reality that is imbued with the Spirit of God. And most
dramatically, it is the very life of the Triune God drawing people into a
covenantal relationship with God and each other. It is God's own being on
earth lived in and through believers for the single end-result of seeing each
person become like Jesus Christ. So that the Community together is a
witness for Christ.
1 comment:
I hope Steve will address the issue of "relevance." He wants the Church to be "relevant." What exactly does this mean? The American Heritage Dictionary defines "relevance" as:
1) Pertinence to the matter at hand.
2) Applicability to social issues (as in: a governmental policy lacking relevance)
No organization made a bigger push to be "relevant" than the National Council of Churches did in the 1960's...except maybe the World Council of Churches. At one WCC meeting in the early 60's their slogan was "The World Sets The Church's Agenda." That's one view of relevance! Look what has happend to the NCC and WCC Churches since then. So, what does "relevance" mean? Does a "relevant" Church tell people they are sinful, or does it resist using such an "insensitive" and "offensive" term?
It's interesting to contrast church growth in America with church growth in China. When the last Western missionaries left China in 1949 there were maybe a couple of million Christians in China. Today it is estimated that there are probably 50,000,000 Christians in China...maybe a little more, maybe a little less. All this growth happened without a single Western Church Growth expert, and with very little money, no seminary-trained pastors, and not a single copy of "The Purpose Driven Life." The most explosive growth is happening in the "house church" movement, where pastors call people to holiness, warn their congregants they will be persecuted, etc.
Overall, the Church in America is growing at a moderate pace, but that growth is misleading. If we believe Barna's statistics, Evangelicals in America differ only modestly from their pagan neighbors in lifestyle, divorce is actually HIGHER in the "Bible Belt" than in places like New York or Boston, many Evangelicals do not believe in absolute truth, and many Evangelicals believe that in the matter of salvation "God helps those who help themselves."
Who defines terms like "relevance" and "cultural insignificance" or, more accurately, whose definition do we accept?
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