The Answer Is That We Are Out of Answers
Photo by Lubo Minar on Unsplash
“As long as I have been alive the church has been largely in decline in North America. There may be individual examples of congregations thriving, but statistically Christianity is waning in the West. This ongoing state of decline has created multiple generations of church leaders looking for answers. We ask many questions, some of which are helpful and some which are not. How can we turn the tide? How can we reach more people? How do we stay relevant in the culture? How do we grow the church?
For far too long we have acted as though we can fix the church and ourselves. We just need to try a little harder. Mix up our routines a little bit. Hire a better staff member. Plan a better program. Improve our music. Provide better live streaming. On and on we go with our schemes. We are convinced there is a perfect strategy out there somewhere that will flip the script. We just have to find it. The reality is, no silver bullet exists.
What if the answer we are looking for is precisely to admit that we are completely out of answers. It’s often noted for people dealing with substance abuse that many times you have to hit rock bottom and be willing to admit how desperately you need help before you can start to find healing. I think the church may be in a similar place. We are addicted to the self satifistication of manufactured “success.” Until we admit we cannot fix ourselves or the church, we have no hope of real healing.
It’s time to stop all our striving and admit that we don’t know how to fix the church. In fact, it’s more than that. It’s time to admit that we fundamentally cannot fix the church. It’s not within our power. In all our failed attempts to fix the church, the common denominator is us. The heart of the problem is that we think we can fix it in the first place.
Lately I have been preaching through the book of Acts along with a couple other pastors in my local church. I have been struck again by how this ragtag group of followers were transformed from a small frightened group of people into a world-shaking movement. That transformation did not happen by their own ingenuity. It is no accident that the New Testament church finds its start with a small assembly gathered constantly in prayer. (see Acts 1:14)
I love this quote from Jason Vickers about those early Christians:
When the earliest followers of Jesus literally lost sight of their Lord, they did not rush to attend a seminar on what to do next. Nor did they cling for all their worth to the time-tested structures of Judaism. To be sure, the disciples later organized themselves and set out to spread the gospel throughout the known world, but they did not do this initially, they did one thing. They tarried together in prayer…Indeed, to tarry together in prayer is to admit that we are out of answers, that we have lost confidence in the ability of marketing schemes, new technology, and fund-raising campaigns to save us. It is to turn our attention heavenward and to ask God the Father once again to pour out the Spirit promised by the Son. (Jason Vickers, Minding the Good Ground)
Holy desperation is a place of grace. When we find ourselves abandoning our own attempts to fix ourselves, it’s in that place where we finally turn our attention to the One who does have all the power to transform. It’s in the place of desperation where we can admit our failure and sin, and call out to the Lord for deliverance. Finding the place of desperate prayer is the place where we will find hope in our churches again.
This principle does not apply only to corporate church life, it’s actually a principle that starts with us personally. If you live for more than a few minutes on this earth you come to realize you can’t fix yourself either. Salvation begins when, by the grace of God, we admit we actually need saving. We must find this place of holy desperation in our own lives, not just for the church. And in fact, renewal in the church must start with renewal in individual hearts. As long as we spend all our time trying to fix a depersonalized church we will miss true awakening. Fire cannot burn in a vacuum. It needs oxygen and fuel of some kind. Holy fire will never burn in our churches without individual hearts being set ablaze by the Holy Spirit. Do you want to see your church on fire for the Lord? Then first offer yourself as a living sacrifice and crawl up on the altar.”
In a season of pain, rejection, and complete poverty of spirit marked by lamenting, sorrow and pleading to God, the Holy Spirit introduced me to the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 as a progressive path for rising from one’s crushed, broken, unraveling life in the flesh into the compassionate comfort and humble meekness where Christ sets the table for the feast of righteousness where one may be filled and satiated daily leading to growing up into the likeness of Christ in the Spirit… in mercy, purity, peacemaking, and persevering in persecution even to the refined place of being greatly rewarded, “as the prophets before you.”
i argued that it began with one’s eyes being opened to the demoralized and broken existence she lived, with the realization one cannot save herself….. one pastor argued it had nothing to do with one’s own perspective on her brokenness or suffering but was solely a function of God’s grace. Were the pigpen’s deprived and filthy circumstances where the prodigal found himself God’s “hard mercy” to bring his mind to sanity and a rational decision to remember and return to safety? Was the prodigal’s mind still blessedly able to be jostled and his eyes see and ears hear God’s grace in rousing him from the edge of permanent lostness? Were they the natural consequences of his choices allowed by God’s removal of His hand of protection from over a foolish young man’s folly that finally became unbearable? What was Jesus’ intent in casting the Beatitudes out first? What is their relationship to the rest of His message?
My view of and questions about the Beatitudes got no traction with my pastors at the time who had no interest or time to listen… But 10 months later and backed by resources like John Chrysostom, Martin-Lloyd Jones and others in hand to witness to this understanding I’d received, I was given permission to teach that view.
I’ve fought for every foot of the biblical territory on which I stand against clever wordsmithing, complacency, judges with no fear of God or man, timid righteousness, bold arrogance, and bitter resistance from multiple enemies, all within “the church.” But I’m not without God’s presence or encouragement He has disciplined, corrected, instructed, guided, and covered me with His wings. At the hardest season of conflict with UMC He showed me my longterm juvenile infatuation with the institution and sense of wanting to protect it from crumbling foundations, so much so that it rose to the level of idolatry that threatened to overshadow Jesus Christ Himself. That was my awakening. There is only one answer. It is Jesus Christ.
I emotionally departed from the institution but carried Jesus Christ image painted by Wesleyanism with me, waiting for another place to fellowship. I don’t care if there are only a handful who depart, I’ll be among them journeying to a new home. The sewer system in this one is broken. Its power source has been disconnected. And the pillars and roof will collapse as the foundation crumbles.