Transforming Church

In the inner city of Atlanta an ethnically Swedish congregation watches as the skin color of its neighborhood darkens. In the end it finds itself scared. It can’t distinguish between the lutefisk and potato sausage of its ethnic heritage and the faith that claimed it in baptismal waters. The church votes and closes its doors only to relocate in a lighter skinned suburban reality. This church is afraid.

In rural South Dakota there are two churches dying through slow demographic attrition. They are of the same denominational heritage and as chance would have it only ten miles apart. Their denominational polity has suggested that they join together to pool resources and vision for a more vibrant future. But they refuse. You see, they might change each other and lose their unique pasts. They are afraid.

In a suburban community in Florida there is a church whose membership is comprised primarily of retirees. The church’s growth plateaued over a decade ago and then entered a gradual decline. Its members can’t understand why this is the case because they reside in a booming and increasingly young area where young couples with children abound. So they hire consultants to come and assess their situation.

The consultants interview several young families that had visited but had not returned. They discover that in every case each family had felt unwelcome and in particular, children who had participated in worship had been glared at when the noise they had made had seemed “inappropriate.” The findings are shared with the congregation. The consultants are amazed when what they encounter in response to these findings is indignancy and apathy. The findings? The church’s doors are metaphorically closed.

Out in the middle country, a mission congregation blooms in a fast growing suburban setting, a contrast to the other mainline churches around her, floundering and dying even in the presence of spiritual need and material abundance. This congregation is a resounding denominational success of growth both in terms of discipleship and physical numbers.

But its floundering local denominational authority sees this Jesus community’s vitality not as an asset for leading and resourcing other churches in the region, but as a threat. You see, the thriving church’s vision stands out as a painful contrast to the vacuum of vision and leadership that rests in the denominational offices just miles away, and they are afraid.

In the midst of all of this, my own shelves are filled with books and periodicals that talk about the opportunity of the American church to become a first century church once again. The truth is that it’s not an opportunity or something we need to somehow accomplish or claim. Folks, we are already there. I am struck by the image of the “first” church, which is the real first century church, found in John 20.

“When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews…” (John 20:19a).

It just sounds so painfully familiar doesn’t it? Their doors were locked, closed, shut up, for no other reason than fear, just like ours. This is the first century church, its raw material congregated…a huddled mass of confusion, indignancy, frustration, and simple fear. This is the humus…the raw dirt and humble beginnings of a movement that now spans our globe and thrives in many of its corners, even as it seems to wilt in ours.

It’s a bleak picture. And a real picture. And a human picture.

AND, it’s also the only sort of picture God needs to do his best work. It’s when the chips are down, and at the foot of crosses, and in dark alkali tombs, and locked and barred rooms where God does God’s best work.

“When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews…Jesus came and stood among them…[and] said to them, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained’” (John 20:19, 21-23).

Here’s the reason for our hope: Jesus. You see, he’s STILL breathing. In the fearful soil of an ancient/new first century church like ours, all we need is the breath of this risen man to fill the sails of a new church. Not a regentrified church vainly attempting survival because it’s an organism afraid to die, but a Jesus-breathed church engaging the kingdom mission of forgiving and reconciling in a self-proclaimed forsaken and unreconciled world.