Quick read. Highly recommended. Some of my highlights:
[T]he traditional way churches organize themselves is the major obstacle to embodying authentic church life in the world…. A church may burden itself with so many and such extraneous accidental features that it becomes almost impossible to live out its essence.
[A]ssociations tend to stray from their founding purposes…. It is common, even expected, that associations supposedly devoted to education, a sport, a profession, or a particular subject will make resolutions and public proclamations on divisive political and social issues completely unrelated to their reason for existence. Not all mutinies occur on ships. Not all pirates sail the seas.
Later generations [of church leaders] … may begin to preserve the traditions of earlier days simply to safeguard their positions in a bureaucracy.
If [the state] leaves the church alone, if it recognizes its freedom to worship as it pleases, to organize as it sees fit, to choose its own leaders, and if it grants such privileges as tax-exempt status, it does so only because it judges that the church does not work against the essential interests of the state. … The church always faces the temptation to hold on to its freedoms and privileges by subordinating, compromising, or giving up its mission of witnessing to the lordship of Jesus Christ. … When churches operate like other institutions in society they place themselves under the ethics, laws, and social expectations applicable to analogous institutions.
I do not think that the status quo can be maintained for much longer. … [The church] can try to prove its continued relevance to society by adapting to society’s progressive morality while deceiving itself into thinking that this new morality is thoroughly Christian. In contrast, the church can give up its vain ambition to be recognized as chaplain and advisor to an increasingly pagan culture and take up its original mission as a countercultural witness to Christ.
“[P]arachurches” … conduct their work in ways that require a constant stream of revenue. They purchase and maintain building complexes, making it necessary to hire janitors, make periodic repairs, and pay large utility bills. To coordinate the activities of hundreds of people and programs for every age and interest group, churches must hire five, ten, or even twenty-five ministers. The Sunday worship alone requires the service of a worship minister, sound and lighting technicians, singers, and several band or orchestra members. … Even a medium-sized church needs an annual budget of $800,000 to $1,000,000. Megachurches need $10,000,000 to $50,000,000 annually.
And from where does this money come? It comes from member donations. And why do they give? … Some churches teach explicitly and others implicitly that giving to the church is a Christian duty or even a quasi-sacrament. … Or, we think of our gifts as membership dues. We attend church services, enjoy the pageantry and an uplifting message from a gifted speaker, and benefit from the work of staff and volunteers. We feel guilty if we attend without helping to pay for the services.
But money exerts a corrupting force. Churches have earned a reputation for constantly soliciting donations…. Churches need to meet their annual budgets. The staff’s livelihood and the viability of many programs depend on it. … If we set up the church so that we need to attract customers and keep them happy, how can we at the same time call them to “count the cost” of following Jesus (Luke 14:15-35)?
[W]hen i became an employee of a church my duty to God got confused with the expectations of my employer…. If your service to God becomes a means of livelihood on which your family depends for mortgage payments, school loan payments, and retirement savings, the joy of ministry often departs. You begin to think about salary, benefits, and working conditions. You notice who has power over you and who does not. … [A]fter a few years ministers are tempted to think of their ministries as they would other jobs, as means of livelihood.
If you gather around a table to share a meal, read the Scriptures, and pray for each other, you do not need a highly skilled speaker, a talented worship leader, an efficient administrator, or a meticulous bookkeeper. … In an assembly of 2,000 people, 1,950 will be completely unknown to us. For most of the time, we sit in rows looking at what is happening on stage. Senior pastors are like the celebrities we see on the screen. We feel like we know them, but we have never had a meal with them. In a small gathering we can hear from everyone, we can learn their stories, see their faces, and hear their voices.
If faith is to survive we must intentionally retreat to places where the Christian story is repeated and lived.
[P]reachers spend what time they have left after doing their administrative duties searching for hooks, movie clips, pictures, and stories rather than studying the Scriptures…. [F]or all that work, the modern sermon contains little instruction on the true scope and depth of the Christian faith. Nor does it really challenge the deep pagan myths that animate our post-Christian culture. … I do not think listening to a twenty-minute uplifting talk on Sunday morning will repair a half-century of neglect. We may have to do something more radical.
[W]hen an individual actually urges churches modeled on businesses, schools, charitable organizations, theaters, or community centers to return to the family or kingdom or the body of model of the church, the systemic logic of these models absorbs, overwhelms, and neutralizes all efforts at reform. At work in each of these models is an irresistible logic fundamentally at odds with the essential nature and mission of the church. … [Y]ou cannot reform the traditional church by tweaking this or that program or renaming an office or an activity to sound more biblical…. True reform begins with abandoning the foundational logic of alien models and all their outward manifestations. The problem is in the DNA, not in the name.
[M]ost contemporary churches are stage centered. People come to watch, listen, and feel. The preachers, readers, worship leaders, musicians, and singers are the center of attention. The church experience becomes performance and entertainment. If the performance is not satisfactory, we go elsewhere. … The stage replaces the table, the music replaces the Eucharistic meal, and a general feeling of transcendence replaces Christ crucified and risen. … [I]f there is any institution that reeks of inauthenticity, it is the institutional church. … Authenticity is not trendiness but honesty. It is having no gimmicks and playing no tricks. No plastic smiles, fake happiness, or implausible certainty.
The question for me is not “Why seek God?” The question is “Why seek anything else?”
Brave Ole World 