BLOG 5/29/14. WHEN IS THE CHURCH GOOD NEWS? … OR IS IT?
In this global landscape of the 21st century, that is covered with all kinds of religious communities—from hugely impressive and life-giving communities, to border-line whack-o aberrations, all of which call themselves: the church, … comes the question: “Which are, and which are not the church, and what can be our criteria for discerning an answer?” After all, these cover the range from intentional communities of those disciples/followers of Christ seeking to be obedient and faithful, … to cults seeking to establish their local franchise somewhere, and all in between. The answer to this question is never easy. When does a church cease to be a church? And what obligations do we have to either continue in such? And when and how do we determine to separate ourselves (only to find the same problems, proclivities and drifts in another community, alas!)? New church plants do, in fact, have more of the potential of discerning Christ’s intent for his faithful as they meet together.
This question is anything but new, but never to be engaged lightly. Remember that the seven churches in Asia Minor, to whom the Book of Revelation is addressed, were only a generation from their apostolic founding, and already some are warned by the Risen Lord that they are in danger of no longer being among his churches (Rev. 2-3). He names the ways in which they had absorbed alien teachings, and influences, or compromised ethically, or gotten so busy being ‘successful’ (Laodicea) that they had left him outside the door seeking to re-enter. Only the two churches under persecution seemed to have maintained their integrity.
I am inclined to hold very firmly to the proposition that Jesus came to inaugurate God’s New Creation (or Kingdom of God), … God’s “I will make all things new” design, … God’s “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth.” Any way you look at it, Jesus was the inaugurator of that Kingdom, that New Creation, and the essential and inescapable question comes: What does a particular church have to do with the Kingdom of God? How does it demonstrate that New Creation in its life together, and in its very real neighborhood? That New Creation was something entirely new and counter-cultural and transformational.
Jesus opened the way for our reconciliation again to God by his life, death and resurrection. He went about teaching what that would look like and announcing that good news along with the invitations to have a radical change of mind that would enable his followers to engage in radical obedience to him and his teachings. Any community that is going to designate itself as a church is going to be the community that equips and encourages all of its participants in that New Creation demonstration. Or maybe (to quote G. K. Chesterton) it is a community that: “is completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.”
When a church becomes merely a safe religious enclave replete with pleasant religious activities … it has lost its integrity and can only be marginally and questionably called a church. Am I bound to a community, which seems irrelevant to God’s design for his church, and for me and my sense of mission and discipleship? Again: no easy algorithm here. God’s people have struggled with this in every generation. A particular church is good news when it is passionate about Jesus and his New Creation, and so smells like, thinks like, and behaves like Jesus—so that it is the veritable Body of Christ in the neighborhood of which we are a part. … Something in that direction.
