BLOG 4/2/14. THE CHURCH … AS HUMANLY IMPOSSIBLE?
Would you believe that I, as a (would be?) missional-ecclesiologist, am fascinated reading the account of the Google guys: Larry Page and Sergey Brin. These two very young geniuses in information technology, mathematics, etc. have put together a company that is awesome. They are, to be sure, eccentric, elitist, and probably not the most personable chaps one would want to deal with. But there is a sense in which they become models for me of what the church needs to retrieve. Their biographer records that they are “rabidly dedicated to Google and to promoting its mission” (of becoming the major search engine in the game).
But check this: they personally interview the folk they employ to discern not only their exceptional credentials, but that they are those who believe in the impossible. They want a whole team (now several thousand) who are passionate about their mission, so are willing to do what is necessary to realize their goals, and discover new breakthroughs to make it happen.
I like that. Sounds like something I read about in the New Testament, about how Christ’s followers/disciples are to be passionate about the humanly impossible mission of seeing that “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations” (Matthew 24:14). Yes! Doesn’t it seem inescapable that every one who is baptized into Jesus Christ then becomes one who becomes equipped and engaged in fulfilling this eschatological design for the church? It does to me.
Yet our landscape is dotted with quite commendable church institutions that seem oblivious to this passion of our Lord for his church. So many of these are venues for all kinds of good activities, both humanitarian and aesthetic … yet it is not uncharitable to say that they are only marginally ‘the church’ that Jesus has ordained. Such church institutions are humanly explainable. They may have a wonderful pulpit, be well administered, sponsor many helpful activities, balance the budget, have a good name in the community … and yet forget their ultimate mission, and so be only marginally ‘a church.’ Living and authentic church communities are never humanly explainable. They are the dwelling place of God by the Holy Spirit. Recruiting members is a human activity. The making of disciples requires radical conversion. Awesome.
Let me unpack that. Christ’s calling of every one of us has a goal that is humanly impossible. The church is only possible by divine empowering.The very task of making disciples is humanly impossible. Our calling to go and turn men and women from darkness to light is impossible, and even more to turn them from the dominion of darkness to the dominion of God’s dear Son. Face it: conversion that comes with open eyes and ears and hearts … is humanly impossible. Getting the joyous news of God’s new creation in Christ into resistant, and often hostile, settings is humanly impossible.
But that is precisely the mission we are to be engaged in. And when we obey, then we are accompanied by the power of God through the Holy Spirit (which is why the early church had as its major activity, that of praying for that power). A sign of an authentic church is that it is reproductive, since all of its participants are equipped to be contagious with the gospel, to be passionate about the mission, to be the every day incarnations of that gospel in their sphere of operations. And growth is always of destructive. The “new wine of the gospel” cannot be contained in rigid wineskins, as Jesus reminded us. Passionate members are formed into the image of God, and so make disciples of others. Such a church can never be static. It is always a community of aliens and exiles—but it is alive and it believes in the impossible. It is passionate about its mission and goal.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their mission with Google, provoke in me a desire to see such belief in the impossible, but much more eschatological goal pursued in what is often a forgetful church scene. I trust that such does not seem too bizarre to my readers.
