My Practical Theology of the Church

Yet we are alone creatures, especially we modern-day Western Americans. We prize our individuality and independence. We are convinced we need no one, and at the same time are gravely afraid that we are alone. We keep our secrets to ourselves, persuaded that we are unique in our depravity and that ultimate rejection would ensue were we to expose ourselves.

        And so, questions remain: How? Where? In what way? With whom? Where is there really a safe place – the Church – to begin to learn to tell my own story, to have others engage with it, and even to engage with others as they learn to tell their stories? In other words, how can I experience the gospel?

The Church

        †the importance of relationship†

For many Christians, the obvious, expected answer is church. And by that, many would mean, get up on Sunday morning and go sit in a sanctuary, sing some outdated songs, listen to someone ramble on for about half an hour, doze off during a couple of prayers, maybe shake someone’s hand, and go home. Possibly during the week you show up at someone’s house and talk with a few others about what you think a certain Bible verse means over a cup of coffee and dessert. This, however, is not Church. This is not the gospel. This is not the Kingdom of God.

The Church of Jesus Christ –  His body, His bride – is not a building or a place. Rather, the Church is a group of people and an event. The Church of Jesus Christ is, despite appearances, a unified, set apart, universal, and sent community. It is the expression of the reign of God in the world whose primary identification is proclaiming the good news that that very reign of God is at hand in and through the person of Jesus Christ. The Church is an alternative culture to the culture of the world, sent on a mission to preach the gospel to the culture of the world. The Church is called to be people of faith, hope, and above all, love. And the Church realizes its unity and attains its maturity when it’s mobilized in acts of service in Jesus’s name, living out the representation of Jesus in the world in the power of the Spirit. The Church is not simply coffee and doughnuts in the Fellowship Hall dissecting the pastor’s sermon. Erwin McManus, author of An Unstoppable Force and pastor of Mosaic in Los Angeles, puts it this way: “The gospel flows best through the establishing of significant relationships that are authentic and healthy. When relationships become stagnant and the community of Christ closes itself to the outside world, the result is an institution rather than a movement.” The Church is something that happens when we love – when we love God, others, ourselves.

†Jesus’s mission†

In Luke 4, Jesus speaks his mission to the people in the synagogue in Nazareth. He quotes Isaiah,

 “God’s Spirit is on me;

     he’s chosen me to preach the Message of

         good news to the poor,

Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and

      recovery of sight to the blind,

To set the burdened and battered free,

      to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”

 

He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down.

 

In this moment, Jesus set up his next three and a half years of work on this earth. He proclaimed his purpose: preaching, pardoning, healing, setting free. With these words, he clearly spelled out the practicalities of the great commandment. Not only was this the mission of Jesus; this is the mission of the Church. Jesus sets out for us very clearly the work we are to be about. The Church is called to preach the good news. We are called to announce pardon, to set people free, to proclaim healing, to shout out that God is acting in the world. These acts are the gospel manifested, and they require others. They cannot be performed in isolation; to be the Church means to be in relationship.

        †the Trinity and relationship†

And the key to relationship is the Trinity. In his book Invitation to Theology, Michael Jinkins states, “…[I]t is only in community that we become all we are meant to be because we were created for communion by the God whose very being is in communion…” The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit exist in perfect community with each other, loving each other in perfection and unity constantly. Thus the Trinity models for us how to be in community with each other. As we understand more and more how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to one another in perfect love, we are called more and more to relate to one another in love, in spirit and truth. This is the nature of God, and his very nature flows over into mission; hence the command to love God and love others. Thus Jesus’s explanation of his mission – preaching, healing, pardoning. “God’s purpose for us is nothing less than…the quality of life in relationship to and for others that Christ lived by trusting in God the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit.”

        †blessed to be a blessing†

To be the Church also means to be called out; the very definition of the word ekklesia means “the called out ones.” What does it mean to be called out? It means that we are marked, predestined, separated, holy, called out of the world into the family of God. It means that we are blessed with the benefits of salvation and called to be a blessing, called to do the mission of God in the world.

        The idea of the Church being a people blessed to be a blessing originates in God’s call to Abram and his descendants in Genesis 12. “I’ll make you a great nation and bless you…All the families of the Earth will be blessed through you.” In these words we find the beginnings of what it means to be the Church, the family of God: being blessed and being a blessing are inextricably linked.

There are two elements here; one is that of identity, and the other is that of vocation. Our identity lies in the fact that we are blessed. We bear the name of God. We are adopted into his family. We reap the benefits of salvation through Jesus Christ and become members of the body of Christ. We see this clearly in Ephesians:

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus…

Yet we are also called to be a blessing; part and parcel of our salvation is its working out in action. We return to Jesus’s words in Luke 2; he calls us to action here, to preach, to pardon, to set free – in other words, to bless. In his book A New Kind of Christian, Brian McLaren puts it this way. “…[T]he essence of our identity as people of God isn’t that we’re an elite, saved for privilege, but ordinary people saved for service, for responsibility. …Salvation is joining God’s mission instead of trying to live by our own selfish personal agenda.” Salvation is not simply praying a prayer at the end of a little booklet and thus obtaining fire insurance; salvation means identity and action. It means living in the community of God, being a blessing through service and love and responsibility.

Four Characteristics of the Church

        So what does it mean to be the people of God, to be set apart, unified, an alternative culture, especially in today’s postmodern world? What do the people of God look like as a community? There are many ways to describe this sacred community. The characteristics of the people of God are myriad and of great variety and it would be impossible to enumerate and describe them all. For the purposes of this discussion, four are chosen here: missional, incarnational, inclusive, and contextualized.

        †missional†

The Church, the people of God, is to be missional. “Mission is the result of God’s initiative, rooted in God’s purpose to restore and heal creation. [It] means ‘sending,’ and it is the central biblical theme describing the purpose of God’s action in human history.”  As stated earlier, this mission has its roots in Abram’s call to be blessed in order to be a blessing, and it plays out through the meaning of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The entire point of the existence of the church is to be missional, to be sent out into the world preaching the good news, setting free, pardoning – once again, all those things Jesus spoke of in Luke 2. The Church is not an entity meant to be a social clique worried simply about its own members or defined by its style of music or preaching or dress. It is the vehicle God uses to break his Kingdom into the world and it is defined by its relationship to God.

        †incarnational†

The Church is also to be incarnational. The Church is to be an active, participating, visible member of its community at large, living the gospel in full view of its neighbors.  The people of the Church are to live their lives on display, living as part of the community and not in isolation from it.

In addition, being incarnational means seeing Jesus in the eyes of those around us. In her essay Faces of the Humiliated, Elisabeth Verhey explains that we tend to look for God

“in the traditional places – in prayer, in the interior life, in the sacraments, in loving connection with our neighbors. …[But] what we learn from Jesus is different. …He teaches us to care for the stranger and the sick and the imprisoned, and that in caring for them we are also caring for Him.”

It is in being present and active in our neighborhoods and communities, serving and caring for the humiliated and the marginalized, that we see Jesus and are seen as Jesus.

        †inclusive†

The Church is called to be inclusive. For too long, the Church has functioned too much like an elite country club: if you pay your dues properly and come from the right kind of people, we will let you in. Once you’re in, behave properly and hang out with the right people and you’ll be accepted. But this is the opposite of what Jesus has called us to. Who were his friends? The “sinners” – prostitutes, tax collectors, fishermen – the marginalized, the outcasts. We are to be a Church without walls, without barriers, a place that includes all people from all walks of life, living out Jesus’s words that he did not come to save the healthy, but the sick. A beautiful picture of this inclusiveness is found in Revelation 7:

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God

      who sits on the throne,

           and to the Lamb.”

In this moment, the Church praises God, and people from all nations and languages and races are there together. This is what the Church is called to be – open and inclusive and welcoming, recognizing that there is no superiority or exclusivity.

        †contextualized†

The Church is to be contextualized, realizing that God has a specific call, mission, and context for each local body. There are truths that are universal for all of the Church, but this is often reduced to a formula for “doing” church.  Yet each congregation has a unique personality in a unique setting, and the Church is called to respond to the voice of God in that unique place and time. McManus says:

The goal has [unfortunately] become to make sure beliefs are doctrinally sound and people have a growing knowledge of the Bible, rather than to live in a dynamic, fluid relationship with God through which we learn to hear the voice of God and move in response to him.

To be a contextualized church means to understand the surrounding community and context, in terms of geography, ethos, era, culture, personality, and identity. Being contextualized walks hand in hand with being incarnational; both require deliberate connection with and a heart for understanding the surrounding culture.

Problems of the church – a Gen Xer’s Perspective

        I grew up believing that the most important moment of someone’s life that is that private, individual decision one makes to accept Jesus Christ into her heart. In an effort to emphasize the need for each person to decide and not rely on family, community, or culture, my upbringing accentuated the individual, personal nature of one’s relationship with Him. And in an effort to emphasize the grace and freedom that comes with that relationship, my upbringing focused on the decision in terms of Jesus to the exclusion of community. Yet paradoxically, I was raised with a whole host of obligations to church: show up every Sunday morning, evening, Wednesday; show up and help out with every church event; teach Sunday School and Children’s Church; and more. Lip service was paid to these activities as “responses” to my relationship with Christ, but in reality they were obligations. It was implied that these were the only correct responses to a relationship with Christ, and if these things weren’t in evidence, one’s relationship – salvation, in fact – was deeply in question. Somehow, salvation was personal and “by grace,” but as soon as you were “saved” you were sinning if you slept in on Sunday morning.

I have sat through many boring sermons, bad Christmas plays, excruciating Easter sunrise services, and off-key “special music” numbers. I have taught flannel-board Sunday School and filled in for the organist when she was sick. I have been a youth group leader, a camp counselor, a Bible study leader, a Campus Crusade for Christ Action group leader, a song leader, and more. All of these things have been under the umbrella of church, yet few of them were true experiences of what Church is supposed to be.

Too many North American Christians have all the answers. They know what church is; it’s music and a sermon on a Sunday morning, Sunday School right before and prayer meeting on Wednesday night. They get good reminders from the sermon and critique the worship leader. They hold Bible studies in their homes and talk about what they think a certain Bible verse means.

This is not the Church! This is a social club with assigned rules and norms dating from 1950. This is not an innovative, alive, dynamic group of people called out of the world into a new kind of relationship with the world. This is not people allowing the revolutionary implications of the nature of the Trinity to impact them and their way of life. This is not people committing to a new way of life within their community and culture. This is people counting conversions, not conversations. This is people wanting a nice safe place to sing songs and shake hands without ever encountering the marginalized or humiliated. This is people not willing to delve deeply into their own souls and hearts and minds to uncover the nature of their own creation and sin.

a Front Porch story (a Gen Xer’s Dream for Church)

        Margie and Kevin had just moved to Metropolis a couple of weeks ago. Margie got promoted and transferred, and Kevin’s dotcom allowed him the flexibility of living anywhere, so they decided to take advantage of the potential for “upward mobility” and make the move. They weren’t really sure that the pursuit of money and stuff was what they wanted, but they also didn’t know anything else to go after, so they went ahead and left. Neither were very close to their family, and although they had plenty of friends to hang out with at the club on weekends, there wasn’t anyone it would be hard to leave.

        They’d found a adorable little house for a great price right in the middle of the city, within walking distance to an organic grocery store and produce stand, yet a good distance from the bustle of corporate downtown. Margie could take the metro to work and be home each day before rush hour really got started.

        Margie and Ken had been in town for just a couple of weeks and were still exploring their neighborhood. One warm summer Thursday evening, they were out walking the dog and took a turn down a street they hadn’t yet explored. A couple blocks later, they started to pass a house with a great big front porch full of people talking and laughing, drinking good beer and some even smoking a cigar or two. Margie glanced at Kevin and saw his eyes light up at the cigar smoke; she knew one of his favorite pastimes was discovering new cigars and discussing their merits with friends. Kevin had a twinkle in his eye for Margie, too; she was a beer snob, and he’d caught a glimpse of the label of one of her favorite brands peeking out of one of the trash cans. They both sighed longingly, realizing that they wished somehow to be part of this group of people. There seemed to be a peaceful spirit about them, in spite of the music and laughter and noise. As they watched, it seemed as though these people were truly enjoying each other.

        As they drew closer, they started to cross to the other side of the street, when someone called out. As they stopped, a man jumped off the side of the porch and walked over to greet them. Two hours later, Margie and Kevin walked home, a little bit dazed, but certain they had found some interesting friends. And, they had plans for tomorrow night.

†

Four months later, Margie and Kevin had spent every single Thursday evening on the front porch (or inside the house when it was chilly) of the house two streets over and three blocks down. They had made several close friends, and they had also made a discovery about these fun-loving, open, genuine people. They were, well, religious! They spent a lot of time laughing and playing silly games and talking, but they also seemed to know each other really, really well. When one couple’s kids were in an nasty car accident, the whole group showed up at the hospital, cleaned their house, moved the rooms around so the kids could recover on the group floor of the house, and in general just butted in to their lives. But it wasn’t intrusive; it was good. They weren’t alone. They did this over and over for each other. In fact, when Margie and Kevin went home for a visit one weekend, they returned to find their lawn mowed and gutters cleaned.

        But the strangest thing of all was the singing and praying these people did. Sometimes they’d spend an entire thirty minutes pouring their hearts out to God on behalf of some wartorn third world country none of them had ever been to. Other times, they’d end up giggling during their prayers like the Person they were praying to was right there in the room, enjoying the joke. Sometimes they sang songs that moved Margie and Kevin to tears, even though they didn’t really understand any of the words.

        Soon Margie and Kevin were hosting gatherings at their own home, enjoying the opportunity to extend hospitality back. In a conversation about six months after they moved, Margie and Kevin realized that these people knew more about them than all of their other friends had ever known combined, and that they had grown to love and value these people. They even found themselves inviting others to join. Eventually, they learned their friends’ “secret”. They were Christians, although they weren’t like any Christians they’d ever heard of. They actually considered their Thursday night group a church, and Margie and Kevin were part of it. Margie and Kevin continued to belong, and as they grew in relationship with these people, they eventually learned what it means to have a relationship with the One who created them. A couple of years later, Margie and Kevin found themselves traveling to that country they had prayed for when they first showed up, planning on spending a year or two serving the people there. They knew that this was what they had been looking for when they’d moved those few years previous, and they were gratefully for that front porch of life and love and laughter they’d walked to by the One who knew all along where they were going.

        

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Endnotes

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