BLOG 7/24/18. THE CHURCH, LIKE EVERTHING ELSE, MUST GRAPPLE WITH CULTURAL CHANGE, … AND IT’S A TOUGH DISCIPLINE.

The church of Jesus Christ will always survive in some form, but those forms will, of necessity, be ever engaged with the inevitable tides of culture. We read daily of major economic and political institutions, who either come to grips the realities or a changing culture and generational realities, of fade in their inability to relate to that change. And there will always be those believers in Jesus Christ, and who are indwelt by his Holy Spirit—who are the dwelling-place of God by the Spirit—and who find one another and know of their need for one another and so find some manner of connecting with each other in order to show their love, support, encouragement, in mutual instruction within that relationship.

At the same time, those forms that may have been meaningful and fruitful in those communities of nurture yesterday, may become the victims of those very same cultural tides that are affecting every other human community. Yes, there will always be those who wear the garments of peace, the garments of salvation, but their incarnation as the people of God will morph as those communities (conventicles?) are committed to fulfilling their mission to demonstrate God’s New Creation in Christ. To cling to those forms which may have been meaningful and fruitful in the past, may be an act of unbelief.

It may sound like an oxymoron, but the gospel of peace can be very disruptive. Unlike so many merely human communities, the true Christian community sees beyond nationalism, beyond tribalism, beyond comfort-zone religion, or any merely-human scheme to accomplish God’s tomorrow, which ‘tomorrow’ has now invaded our today. This discipline of thinking into God’s tomorrow is of the essence of the Christian discipline of repentance by which we begin to thing and operate in a whole new frame of reference.

Those persons, who have been described by some as “religious Christians” are not up to this, not more at home with what is. They are not, seemingly, capable of engaging in the radical obedience that is required by being Christ disciple in this world of constant new challenges and change. Of course it’s demanding! Nobody ever said that to be a disciple of Jesus was (to quote the hymn) being “carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease.”

One might look at all of the innovations being engaged in by new digital age corporations (such as the innovations in office space by WeWork) and so many start-up companies that become successful, by approaching their goals in ways foreign to former cultures.

Happily, there are a multitude of just such culturally sensitive Christian communities functioning most fruitfully in a very diverse set of contexts, and bearing that fruit which God’s New Creation is called to exhibit, and joyously being God’s people of the Light in what is so often a turbulent, and short-sighted humanity.

This isn’t really new. The church has existed from its very beginning as aliens and exiles, but in recent centuries, in the culture of Christendom, the church settled down to enjoy its gains and to construct human institutions in an attempt to guarantee its role in society—and this is all evaporating very rapidly.

And yet, … our calling is still to herald the gospel of peace to every people group in the world (Matthew 24:14). It’s our calling as Christ’s disciples. It’s what we were made for. And it calls for the cultural sensitivity of all of God’s people: the weak and the foolish and those of no special reputation. This is the harvest field we are called to. “Come, labor on! Who dares stand idle on the harvest plain …”