IS THE LOCAL CHURCH IRRELEVANT?
Who says so and why?
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM WESLEY AND CAREY?
Wyn Fountain
About 80% of New Zealanders, believers and non-believers, do not attend regular church services, thus declaring that the local church, as is, is irrelevant in their opinion.
What do they mean by that? They mean that they can live their daily lives during the week just as well without attending the local church as they can if they attend regularly. This is not just a N.Z. problem. It is the same in all countries of the West. According to Peter Wagner and Ralph Winter the world-wide Evangelical church has grown from about 150 million in 1974 to about 650 million in 1998. But this growth is not found where the church conforms to a European tradition. In a research done in the early nineties in Amsterdam, young people were asked if they were interested in God. 100% answered "Yes". When they were asked if they were interested in the church. 1% said "yes", 99% said "NO".
The representative in Southern Russia of President Putin sent a letter recently to the Orthodox, Baptist and Pentecostal Churches asking what contribution they could make to the betterment of Russian Society. One denomination responded with a candid admission that they could contribute very little. They were preparing people for the next world, not this one. What would your church say if it received a letter like that from our government?
Those who regard the local church as irrelevant include many who have a strong faith but find little in the local church programme that relates to their priorities in life.
ARE WE SATISFIED TO ACCEPT THIS AS NORMAL?
The fact that such a large proportion of the population does not attend church should give us cause for great concern. Are we going to settle for more of the same or are we going to ask ourselves some searching questions? We cannot afford to assume that the blame is all on those non-attenders. We need to ask ourselves some serious questions about their perception of non-relevance.
C.S.Lewis said, "In nothing has the church so lost her hold on reality as in her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation. She has allowed work and religion to become separate departments and is astonished to find that as a result, the secular work of the world is turned to purely selfish and destructive ends. The greater part of the world's intelligent workers has become irreligious or at least uninterested in religion. But is it so astonishing? How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine tenths of his life?"
(From Creed or chaos by Dorothy Sayers)
"THE CHURCH HAS LOST HER HOLD ON REALITY" - C.S.Lewis
What is necessary to restore the perception that the churches are genuinely concerned with those nine-tenths that Lewis speaks about - if they are?
The answer is, that during both the Sunday services and the week-day activities, what is happening in the lives of the members during the other six days must be
treated as very important to the church. Most Sunday services make little more than a token reference to the issues that affect the lives of the members where they live and work.
Jesus said that we believers are the "Salt of the earth". Salt is supposed to make people thirsty for what we have. Who is being made thirsty? Not many, if we are honest. People want to know how we can make people thirsty in our families, at work, at recreation and in neighbourly conduct. If people find that attending church is no help in this regard then the church becomes irrelevant. Pastors find this lesson difficult, because they do not live in the same environment as the congregation. Sermons comprise generalisations while people want specifics. If it is asking the pastors to perform an impossible task to be specific, others, who live and work in the fabric of society, must be introduced.
Pastors have traditionally monopolised the pulpits, but they should not unless they can be specific. The monopoly is not scriptural it is the tradition of men.
This should not be just to give other people "a turn", but to introduce into the services something about life as it is lived, as the pastors cannot. It is unreasonable to expect that one man can meet the needs of a whole congregation. The burden should be shared. If you watch "The Hour of Power", Channel three, 8 a.m. Sunday mornings, you will know that Robert Schuler has someone in the pulpit every week to give a testimony about their real life. They don't give a formal sermon, but very often what they say is more powerful than the sermon, in my opinion. Schuler is setting a good example, in this regard. That is why I watch that programme.
Pastors' priorities are different from those of the congregation. The local church services are their top priority and there is a tendency to expect that the members should also see these as their top priority. Pastors tend to treat the church programme as the most important manifestation of the kingdom of God, to them it is. They tend to see the worship services as the central activity of the church, because that is where they serve the whole church and they are the key players in them. The services are perceived as an expression of unity, being members one of another. That is a false perception because when people come to church they greet each other politely but sit in rows facing the front as individuals, looking at the back of the head in front them, relating only to the pastor and worship leaders. There is minimal communication between the members attending. Assembling together in services is no guarantee of fellowship or unity or common purpose. The closer one walks with the Lord during the week the more superficial are the services on Sunday, because during the week we walk in reality.
WHAT ARE THE NEEDS AND ISSUES THAT HAVE A HIGH PRIORITY ?
God's basic unit is the family, not the church, therefore we may list the following as some examples of issues that church members find relevant.
Parenting
Family relationships
(and in particular) Teenage issues.
Youth Culture
Education
Work relationships
Business Ethics,
Govt. and political issues.
Most churches steer clear of this last item because the pastors will say that they have people in the congregation from all sorts of political persuasion. Many evangelicals have shunned government as being "of the world". In my younger
days we were discouraged from such participation. Although that is different today there is still very little attempt to deal with issues in the local church environment from a biblical point of view and to give direction on policy, because it is controversial. Again, this is because pastors do not see this as their field of expertise, but are reluctant to vacate the pulpit to someone who does. Thus there is minimal encouragement to participate in local or national government or to intelligently study the issues. When people unsympathetic to a Judeo/Christian culture take control of the local and national government we get angry but don't know how to present alternatives or stop the rot.
In Africa, it is well acknowledged that the missionaries have done a wonderful job turning many to the Lord and setting up schools to educate the Africans. Millions have turned to Christ during the last half-century. But I have asked Christian leaders from Africa, both white and black, why so many countries have turned either to communism or dictatorship resulting in disastrous government. These leaders have readily admitted that the education and instruction by the missionaries did not include how to govern, because missionaries are not trained to teach that kind of thing. Mugabe, of Zimbabwe, for instance, was trained in a missionary's school.
The same thing is happening here in New Zealand. Legislation is constantly being passed that is anti-family, and anti-Christian forces predominate in every government department, because evangelical churches pay scant attention to equipping their people to be intelligently aware of the answers to the issues of society. It seems that evangelism is supposed to be the answer to all our problems. Rarely is it recognised that a person may be called of God to be involved in civil government just as surely as to the "ministry" in a church.
State schooling is based on atheistic secular precepts. How many churches seek to help their members to guide their children to cope with the anti-Christian curricula? How many take any sort of a lead in teaching Christian school-teachers how to teach Christianly. At a Christian school teachers conference that I attended I heard some teachers complain that they are not allowed to teach as Christians. That is a false perception and others at the conference, fortunately made that clear. Have we capitulated to the secularisation of education because of a lack of teaching how to teach Christianly? Does that apply similarly in a hundred of other areas of life? If so it is true that the local church is irrelevant.
OUR BELIEFS AND OUR WORSHIP ARE IMPORTANT 7 DAYS A WEEK
Our services contain so much talk about what we believe. Our songs constantly reiterate what we believe, but what the world sees is our lives, not our beliefs. If we don't make them thirsty we have to ask some serious questions about the outworking of our beliefs and also the songs we sing.
Church arranged leadership seminars are always on leadership within the church programme. It is a rare seminar that is arranged by a church designed to equip believers to accept leadership within the society outside the church where they live, work and play, as followers of Jesus Christ. Many people therefore do not regard their jobs, and in particular their leadership in society, as a calling from God. Instead they tend to learn their leadership qualities from the peer pressure of their environment, getting their training from secular colleges, courses and seminars. Believers are therefore so often indistinguishable from non-believers, being ill- equipped to accept leadership outside of the church as emissaries of the Kingdom of God.
When pastors are challenged to conduct seminars to train Christians to lead outside the church, they complain that we are asking them to perform a task that is not theirs. Maybe they have a point, but if the church does not provide such training, then it is, in fact, irrelevant in this regard. If it is not the pastor's responsibility, then whose responsibility is it? The eldership should see that it happens. If there is no one in the congregation qualified then introduce someone from elsewhere.
Combine with other churches. Many churches do good social work, picking up the pieces at the bottom of the cliff. But we are not good at building fences at the top in areas such as commerce, health, welfare and education. Many Christians are involved in these areas, but almost always are trained in secular institutions. Hence the perception is furthered that the churches have little contribution to make and are irrelevant.
Ask yourself this question. In your church, if a church member is trained as a schoolteacher to be involved in an overseas mission, will he or she be farewelled and commissioned and blessed by the church? But if a member is trained as a schoolteacher and takes a position in the local school, would they get the same attention? How many churches would hold a commissioning service upon graduation for commerce or medicine? It does happen, but rarely.
Colson writes, "In that instant, all lingering doubts about whether I should write this book evaporated. Don't get me wrong. We need prayer, bible study, worship, fellowship and witnessing. But if we focus exclusively on these disciplines--and if in the process we ignore our responsibility to redeem the surrounding culture--our Christianity will remain privatised and marginalised. Turning our backs on culture is a betrayal of our biblical mandate and our own heritage because it denies God's sovereignty over all of life.
It is not enough to focus exclusively on the spiritual, on bible studies and evangelistic meetings. While turning a blind eye to the distinctive tensions of contemporary life. We must show the world that Christianity is more than a private belief, more than personal salvation. We must show that it is a comprehensive life system that answers all of humanity's age-old questions".
TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO IT WAS DIFFERENT
For many centuries the churches have been led by people who have withdrawn from "secular" occupations to become involved "in the Lord's work". But when Wesley was ostracised by the churches he started a lay movement of around ten thousand small groups that changed the face of the United Kingdom by sending the people back into their work place to sanctify it as unto the Lord. (The No. 6 Salt Shaker Letter is promoting a return to small groups). That Great Awakening also spawned the great modern missionary movement largely through William Carey, a layman.
Outlined below is a list of the interests of these two giants of the faith, which go far away beyond the so-called "spiritual" work of the local church. Today these interests would not be embraced in "the Lord's work".
A businessman friend of mine took time off to go through Bible College. After graduation I asked him to join me in running a business forum in which we discussed ethics and morality in business. His reply was "If it is not saving souls, Wyn, I don't want to have anything to do with it". I understood because I had been immersed in that kind of a church mind-set most of my life. The Bible College that he had attended had a basic philosophy, which has its roots in Greek thinking, which creates a clear distinction between sacred and secular. They had warned him against my activities. If that college had been immersed in a biblical, Hebrew philosophy, it would have at least suggested that his business activities should be sanctified and embraced in the kingdom of God.
A messianic Jew told me that the greatest difficulty he had in understanding the Christian gospel was the way we spoke of salvation as though it was a matter of the spirit only and mainly related to making sure that when we die we went to heaven.
This life and this earth were treated as very temporary and not essentially part of the kingdom of God. He told me that the Hebrew worldview was quite different and salvation embraced every aspect of life, mental, spiritual and physical. He wanted to know why we were so looking forward to Christ coming back to earth, if our destination was heaven. He said that the biblical (Hebrew) centre of spirituality is the family, "Why", he asked," did we treat the church as the centre of our spiritual life?" I thought those were fair questions. He said that he could not find a local church that was truly biblically based. He and his wife eventually gave up trying. But he still believes that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, although he rarely attends church.
That will give rise to howls of protest, but listening to him I could see why he thought that the churches today conform more to tradition than to scripture.
Another Jew engaged me in conversation at a wedding. I asked him if the services at the synagogue were the centre of spiritual life as churches are for most
Christians. He replied "Indeed no, the centre of spiritual life is our dining room table where we relate our spirituality to the events and issues of life".
Would to God that all Christian families had the same attitude.
If people look upon their church as their spiritual family, many of those issues that the Jewish family talks about around the table, should be brought right into the meetings and services. The consequent unwillingness to make provision in the church programme for teaching and dialogue about matters that relate to everyday life accounts for the perception of irrelevance that exists in the minds of many believers who have become disenchanted with the churches.
As Evangelical Christians we have lost the worldview that both Wesley and Carey held because of the subsequent broad acceptance of some eschatological doctrines that disparaged creation and our stewardship of it. Let me tell you about Wesley and Carey, which most Christians would regard as two of the tallest giants in Christendom during the last two centuries.
JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791)
During his 88 years, this indefatigable man achieved a monumental impact upon the United Kingdom particularly, but also upon the USA and the British Commonwealth. He saw the world as rightly belonging to the kingdom of God but occupied by the enemy. He believed that the "gates of hell" should not prevail against the church, but that believers should take their religion outside the church and penetrate like salt into the very fabric of society.
There were dozens of magnificent cathedrals in Britain at the time, but it was in none of these that the Great Awakening was spawned. Whilst Wesley was part of
that system and would have reformed it if he could have, he was instead ostracised and took his message out to where the people lived and worked. If you are ever in Bristol, don't fail to visit his unpretentious, humble and diminutive headquarters. In spite of severe opposition from the churches, from these headquarters he discipled a nation by forming many thousands of small groups that produced a national transformation, the effects of which remain with us today.
Wesley was known for his outdoor preaching, but that was not his only accomplishment. J.W.Bready's book " England Before and After Wesley", published by Hodder and Stoughton, reveals that Wesley's brand of evangelisation went far beyond much of our modern evangelism today. The revival he spawned was a moral/ethical revolution against corruption in the justice system, in royalty, in the church, in industry and society in general, when conditions were much worse than they are today.
Wesley did not confine his attention merely to ecclesiastical or "spiritual" matters, or building up church congregations. He spent much energy and time in studying temporal problems and writing on their remedies.
He expounded a doctrine concerning the employment of wealth and the function of money more exacting and deeply revolutionary in its social implications than any ever advocated by the trade unions.
He vehemently attacked the slave trade and bombarded the liquor traffic.
He attacked the bribery and smuggling endemic at the time.
He opposed legal, political and ecclesiastical corruption.
He launched an attack against war and all its barbarities.
His caustic structures on the fashionable and snobbish boarding schools of the day angered the upper class.
He studied electricity, then an infant innovation of science.
He wrote a medical book for the poor with simple remedies that could be used when doctors refused treatment, because the patient could not pay.
In other words:
The redemption of the nation not only involved preaching for conversions and
supernatural manifestations, but also the physical and psychological needs of society.
He stimulated individuals to relate their personal redemption to the collective redemption of society. A COMMON MORALITY resulted, one that profoundly affected much of the world. In this age of pluralism and the autonomy of the individual, we have to concede that only remnants of that common morality remain. But a common morality was sadly lacking before the Great Awakening. If this transformation happened then surely we can hope that it can happen again only more so. It will not happen again however, if we maintain that because we become involved in the society around us we will not be involved in 'saving souls'.
WILLIAM CAREY
The year after Wesley died William Carey left England for India. This event is widely regarded as the beginning of the modern missionary movement, although the Moravians had been active during the preceding century.
William Carey was an uneducated shoemaker, not a theologically trained cleric, but he became an intellectual giant. The amazing account of his accomplishments that follows is a quotation from a tribute to Carey to mark the bicentenary of his arrival in India, documented by Ruth and Vishal Mangalwadi, L'abri leaders in India.
" William Carey was a BOTANIST who discovered 'Carey Herbacea', a variety of Himalayan eucalyptus.
He was the founder of the Agri-Horticultural Society in the 1820s, thirty years before the Royal Agricultural Society was established in England. He did a systematic survey of agriculture in India, wrote for agricultural reform in "Asiatic Researches" and exposed the evils of the indigo cultivation system two generations before it collapsed. He did this because he was horrified to see 60% of India had been allowed to become an uncultivated jungle.
He was the first to write essays on FORESTRY in India, 50 years before the government made its first attempt towards forest conservation. Believing that God made man responsible for the earth, he both practised and vigorously advocated the cultivation of timber, advising how to plant trees for environmental, agricultural and commercial purposes.
Carey was the publisher of the first books on SCIENCE and NATURAL HISTORY in India, because he believed that" All thy works shall praise thee, o Lord" and nature was declared "good" by the creator. Nature is not "Maya" (illusion), to be shunned. Carey frequently lectured in science and tried to inject a basic scientific presupposition into the Indian mind that even lowly insects were not 'souls in bondage', but creatures worthy of our attention.
He was the father of PRINTING technology in India, building the nation's largest press. Most printers had to buy their fonts from his mission press at Serampore. He was the first to make indigenous paper for the publishing industry.
He established the first NEWSPAPER ever printed in any oriental language, because of his belief that above all forms of truth and faith, Christianity seeks free discussion. His English language journal, "Friend of India", was the force that gave birth to the Social Reform Movement in India after the first half of the 19th century.
Carey was the first man to translate and publish great INDIAN RELIGIOUS CLASSICS into English. He transformed Bengali (considered only fit for demons and women) into the foremost literary language of India. He wrote gospel ballads in Bengali to bring the Hindu love of musical recitations to the service of his Lord. He also wrote the first Sanskrit dictionary for scholars.
He began dozens of schools for Indian children of all classes, girls and boys and launched the first college in Asia at Serampore, near Calcutta, partly in order to liberate the many Indian minds from the darkness of superstition.
He was a British cobbler who became a PROFESSOR of BENGALI, SANSKRIT and MARATHI at Fort William College in Calcutta where the civil servants were trained.
Carey introduced the study of ASTRONOMY into the sub-continent because he cared deeply about such destructive cultural ramifications of astrology as; fatalism,
superstitious fears and the Indian inability to organise and manage time. He taught that the heavenly bodies were not deities that governed our lives, but were created to be signs or markers dividing space into North, South, East and West and time into days, months, years and seasons. They made it possible for us to devise calendars, to study geography and history, to be free to rule, instead of being ruled by the stars.
He pioneered LENDING LIBRARIES in the sub-continent in order to empower the Indian people to embrace ideas that would help generate freedom of mind. He wanted to encourage the creation of an indigenous literature in the vernacular. He believed Indians needed to receive knowledge and wisdom from around the world, to catch up with other cultures and make world-wide information available through lending libraries.
Carey was the first Englishman to introduce the STEAM ENGINE to India AND TO ENCOURAGE Indian blacksmiths to make indigenous copies of the engine. He introduced the SAVINGS BANK to India to fight the all-pervasive evil of usury.
He was the first campaigner of humane treatment of LEPROSY patients who were often buried or burned alive because of the belief that a violent end purified the body and ensured transmigration into a healthy new existence.
He was the first to fight against many social evils such as polygamy, female infanticide, child marriage, widow burning (Sati), euthanasia and enforced female literacy. While the British rulers accepted these social evils as irreversible and an intrinsic part of India's religious mores, Carey researched and published and raised up a generation of civil servants that changed the laws.
Carey was the father of the Indian renaissance of the 19th and 20th centuries, challenging the grip of asceticism, untouchability, mysticism, the occult, superstition, idolatry and witchcraft. His movement culminated in the birth of India's nationalism and eventually in India's independence. His THIS-WORLDLY SPIRITUALITY WITH A STRONG EMPHASIS ON JUSTICE AND LOVE FOR FELLOW MEN, NEXT TO LOVE FOR God, marked the turning point of Indian culture from a downward trend to an upward swing.
He also happened to pioneer the modern missionary movement of the West, reaching out to all parts of the world. He was the founder of the PROTESTANT CHURCH in India, the translator and publisher of the bible in forty different Indian languages. He was an evangelist who USED EVERY AVAILABLE MEDIUM to illuminate every dark facet of Indian life with the light of truth.
HE IS THE CENTRAL CHARACTER IN THE STORY OF THE MODERNISATION OF INDIA.
SOME GUY THIS CAREY! " (End of quotation)
Look down that list of William Carey's. If he came to your church how many of those subjects would you ask him to talk about?
When we compare the worldview of these two giants of the faith with that of the leaders of our local churches and denominations today, it is not hard to understand people when they say that the church is irrelevant. To my great regret, I have been part of this lack in leadership for a great part of my life.
May the Lord of Glory, hasten the day when all his saints will see themselves as part of the bride "making herself ready" to rule the world, in their daily occupations and when the assemblies of the saints will make room for them in their programme.
Church leaders today are asking the wrong questions. They are asking "How can we run a more effective church?" The New Testament says NOTHING about building
churches as we know them. The question leaders should be asking is "How can we help our people to bring their everyday activities into the embrace of the kingdom of God?' The Christian bookshops have plenty of books about how to run the effective church programme. There are a growing number of books today about
Faith at Work, but church leaders are consumed with their church meetings and activities.
Salt makes people thirsty. We have to admit that not many people in our society are thirsty for what we as Christians have. At least 80% do not go to church.
Having spent a lifetime immersed in church activity and being fully convinced that in Christ we have "The Way", it is very sad for the author to come to the end of the road and honestly admit that we are having very little impact upon society. This little booklet is an attempt to answer "Why?"
If the All Blacks keep losing matches, the coaches will tell them in no uncertain terms what must be done to return to form. The team members will not turn away in protest, jumping up and down in anger. May the criticism in this book be accepted in the same spirit.