8.23.12 BLOG: QUESTION: CAN A ‘CHURCH’ BE ONLY A ‘MYTH’?

A generation ago, Bolivian Methodist bishop Mortimer Arias, speaking in this country, related to an ecumenical assembly that, as a Latin American, he found North America to be a particularly difficult mission field because people think they have accepted or rejected the gospel without really understanding it. “The more I think of it, the more reinforced is my impression that this is one of the most serious obstacles for Biblical evangelism in this country. How can you evangelize people who consider themselves Christians? How can you evangelize through millions of  ‘Christians’ who assume that they have received the gospel, and that they are bearers of the Good News, but who not at all excited about it?”

In that same general time frame, the short-lived Pope John-Paul I, was speaking (I think in Chicago) and asserted that the major task of the church today is “to evangelize those already baptized.”

In recent days there have been studies that indicate that a very small percentage of those with spiritual longings who would ever look to the church as a place to seek answers. More than that, the church has become for many a confusing and hindering factor in one’s quest for God.

I could footnote this from my own career as a teaching pastor in the church and in conversation with a very large number of people who would consider themselves Christian, but had no knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, no sense of any need for any changes in their lives, no sense of real sin or real need of Christ’s saving work in their lives, … just content to be part of a community of congenial religious strangers which meets some social need in their lives. I have often estimated that in many of the several dozen churches I know quite well, that there are probably only about one third of the members who manifest any real evidence of the reality of new life in Christ, or of familiarity with the data, or of the demands of the gospel. The rest seem to be content with the church as a commodity that fulfills some “spiritual” need in theirs lives, with or without any mention of sin and salvation.

Which brings me back to the question: Can a church be a ‘myth’?

Webster gives as one definition of myth, the following: “A person or thing existing only in imagination or whose actuality is not verifiable: as a: a belief given uncritical acceptance by members of the group esp. in support of existing or traditional practices and institutions. …” So that if the participants decide a particular church is a “church” notwithstanding that it does not have much to do with any substantial Biblical definition as the “dwelling place of God by the Spirit,” or “the body of Christ,” or a community formed by the word of Christ, or the demonstration of God’s New Creation/Kingdom of God, … is it then a church, … or is it a myth?

Now there’s one to chew on