Why I Love the Church and I Hope You Will Too - Reason 2

Reason #2: The Church Is the Current Expression of an Eternal Plan

In Titus 1:2, the apostle Paul writes of the “eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began” (New King James Version, emphasis added). In this context, the apostle Paul was describing his ministry, a ministry of evangelism and salvation.

And as Paul describes his ministry, he outlines God’s redemptive purpose, from election (”those chosen of God,” v. 1), to salvation (”the knowledge of the truth,” v. 1), to sanctification (”which is according to godliness,” v.1), to final glory (”in the hope of eternal life,” v. 2). 

To look at Romans 8:29-30 we see that before time began God determined to begin and to finish His redemptive plan.  Redemption from sin could not be purchased by animal sacrifices or any other means. (see Hebrews 10:4-9) Therefore the Son came to earth for the express purpose of dying for sin.

All of this means that the church is something so monumental, so vast, so transcendent, that our poor minds can scarcely begin to appreciate its significance in the eternal plan of God. Our salvation as individuals is almost incidental. The real aim of God’s plan is not merely to get us to heaven, but the drama of our salvation has a purpose far more grand.

Our salvation builds God's church and God's church depicts God's love.  In the one-another-ness of Christian relationship we may reflect the supreme unity of the Trinity.  In the ministry of gospel living, we may reflect the limitless love of God.  In the corporate worship of saints gathered in the name of Christ we may reflect Heaven on Earth - a pre-quil to the New Jerusalem, and redemption's consummation.

How can we not rejoice in the prospect of that? How can Christians possibly be apathetic about the church?  How can we, having been given the keys to supernatural living, ignore the opportunity to participate in the supernatural activity of God known as "the church?"

There is a fascinating conclusion to all this. Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 15:24-28:

Then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death. For He has put all things in subjection under His feet. But when He says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him. When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.

Picture the scene. All Christ’s enemies are destroyed and defeated. All things are placed in subjection to the Son. The Father has given Him the great love-gift, the church, to be his bride and to be subject to Him. Christ is on the throne. All things are now subject to Him—except the Father, who put all things in subjection to His Son. “Then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all” (v. 28).

And yet, to live a New Testament lifestyle means that the supernatural final chapter can be both witnessed (by non-believers) and experienced (by Christ-followers) now.

Oh, I love the church.  I love it because in all of its activity is the promise of eternity both now and yet to come.

Why I Love the Church and I Hope You Will Too - Reason 1

I love being a part of God’s continuous supernatural activity.

I’m not talking about a church building, but about the spiritual collective of God’s people.  

It is a spiritual building (1 Pet. 2:5), the dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16-17; 2 Cor. 6:16), the way that the earth sees the glory of God, and the true center of spiritual life for the redeemed ones.

God is the architect and the builder. In Ephesians 2:19-22, Paul writes,

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

I cannot overstate the importance of the church in the plan of God. The church is His building (1 Cor. 3:9). He is the unchangeable, sovereign, omnipotent Lord of heaven. His Word cannot return void but always accomplishes what He says (Isa. 55:11). He is always faithful and cannot deny himself (2 Tim. 2:13). His sovereign purposes always come to pass, and His will is always ultimately fulfilled (Isa. 46:10). 

For example, in Matthew 16:18 Christ said, “I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.” How about those unchangeable words!  Christ knows His sheep by name (John 10:3), and He wrote their names down before the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8)—He personally guarantees that the gates of Hades will not prevail against the church He is building.

“The gates of Hades” was a Jewish expression for death. Hades is the place of the dead, and the gates of Hades represent the portal into that place—death itself. Hades is also the domain of the devil. Hebrews 2:14 refers to Satan as the one “who had the power of death,” and verse 15 says he used that power to keep people in fear and bondage all their lives. But now Christ has broken that power, and liberated His people from Satan’s dominion—in essence, he has broken down the gates of Hades. And therefore even the power of death—the strongest weapon Satan wields—cannot prevent the progress and victory of the church.

There’s still more significance to the imagery of “the gates of Hades.” Gates are a walled city’s most vital defensive safeguards. Christ’s words therefore portray the church militant, storming the very gates of hell, victoriously delivering people from the power of death. So, Christ also assures the triumph of the church’s evangelistic mission. through the church, He is at work spiritually accomplishing a mission that cannot be defeated!  “Winning.”

Christ’s promise in this passage should not be misconstrued. He is not saying that any particular local church is incapable of failure or abuse.  No, He is saying that no such failure can prevent His mission from being accomplished by the whole church.

Please notice that the church is a work in progress. Christ is still building His church. We are still being joined together (Eph. 2:21). The church is still under construction (v. 22). God is not finished yet. The imperfections and blemishes in the visible church are still being refined by the Master Builder.

So yes, I love the church.  It is the current work of the savior of the world and I like being right in the middle of His activity!  I hope you will love it too!

I Love the Church, and I Hope You Will Too

     I love the church. I am inveterate and incurable lover of the church. It thrills me beyond expression to serve the church. 

     Although I am also involved in some parachurch ministries, I wouldn’t trade my ministry in the church for all of them combined. The church takes first place in my ministry priorities, and all the parachurch ministries I serve are subordinate to, and grow out of, my ministry in the church.

     In fact, my whole life has been lived in the church. I  was born into a family who found their cultural identity as church-going Christians.  Our primary social interactions - in the church.  Our primary community service - through the church.  Our primary interpretation of culture and news of the day - with the church.

     We were those “every time the church doors open” kind people.  There was no guilting us into it.  There was no need for enticements.  We didn’t go to be entertained.  We just didn’t see the world working for us any other way.  Loving God and being His church was like breathing.

     In a short series of upcoming posts, I’m going to outline some biblical reasons that I love the church.  They have surfaced over a lifetime of thinking deeply about who I am and why God made me this way.

Church Shopping Tips

Let me start out by saying that I totally despise the phrase "church shopping."  I have my reasons (mostly connected to the idea that a church is some kind of product to be compared to other products and measured according to consumeristic values -- sorry, I couldn't resist).  However "church shopping" is a phrase that our culture uses to describe the process of looking for a new church home.

Obviously, I write this with some bias.  I AM a pastor.   I AM a pastor leading a church that I would like to see grow.

That being said, I have done some thinking about how to find a church home in this American culture. The danger for those of us who are looking for a spiritual community is that it is very hard to avoid a consumer mentality. You can tell this has happened when you sound like a movie critic at lunch on Sunday afternoon.

“I don’t know, the sermon kind of bothered me. I didn’t like the sound of his voice. How about that solo? Yikes, someone was off key. Also, what’s up with those offering bags? I’m more of a plate man myself. And anyway, I’m not sure they have the kind of youth program we’re looking for.”

While my family is plugged into a community of Christians in which we experience vibrant relationships that help us grow and that provide us opportunities to help others as they grow, perhaps you are not.  For my whole life I have NEVER chosen a church.  I grew up in the church my parents chose. (We never changed church in my entire growing up years -- my parents believed that church was their community and that we traveled good times and bad times together.  So we never left.)  As soon as I moved away to college and seminary, I became a staff pastor and have only attended churches I have lead since the time of my youth.

I have discovered that it is an odd experience in today's America for someone to have experienced the kind of consistency in church participation that marks my life and identity.  It has been this discovery that has had me doing some thinking about the process of finding a church.  Assuming you are looking for a church for all the right reasons, here are my tips for visiting a church that may become your home.

CHURCH SHOPPING TIPS BY BRUCE

1. Think of your visit to a church as if it was a visit to someone’s home. Be gracious.  Instead of focusing on things you don’t like, try to see the positive things and keep your focus on the things a church does well.

2. Try very hard to worship instead of evaluate. Enjoy discovering new ways of experiencing and serving God in ways that unfamiliar churches do those things.

3. Be thankful for friendly churches. The real test of a spiritual community is investing in each other’s lives.  Give yourself time before and after worship gatherings to enter genuine conversations that go deeper than "hello," and "thanks for coming."

4. Pray for the church you visited each Sunday at lunch.  Assume the role of partnering in a church's success whether or not it becomes your church home.

5. Do not put too much importance on the sermon. A good preacher is nice, but a church is primarily a spiritual community and the shimmer of a skillful  wordsmith should not be your primary concern.  The people of the congregation are the ones who sustain each other over the long haul.

6. Look for a church that will provide you with opportunities to serve others and stretch your skills and gifts in this arena.

7. Try some small, out-of-the-way congregations. You might have to ask around to find them. Pay particular attention to churches that are new or are meeting in interesting locations.  You are less likely to find polished production driven experiences in such congregations.

Count your season of wandering as a time of spiritual growth and discernment. Do not be in a hurry, but do not waste Sundays either. Be about the task of finding your church home.  Holy days are important to each person's spiritual journey and to the wholeness of each household.  A habit of skipping Sunday's is a hard habit to break, so don't start it!

Finally I want to say, you are never going to find your perfect church. Your perfect church does not exist. Narrow your search down to 2 priorities for you and your family.  Let the rest grow as you become a contributor in your new church family.  Part of the joy of being in a community is learning to live with the faults and frailties of others, just as they learn to live with you and your idiosyncrasies.

Why the Church Matters

Below you will find a re-print.  It is posted from an old articla in Christianity Today, which printed it as exerpts from a book (reference to follow).  I hope this will be a challenging read.  It's a bit long, but worth your time.

Why the Church Is Important

Dear Timothy and Junia,

Right now I want you to do some careful thinking about the role that the institutional church will play in your lives. Many young Evangelicals are a bit leery of getting too involved in the life of a local congregation. Some can tell painful stories of bad experiences with institutionalized Christianity.
In America, Evangelical churches have often been bastions of conservatism, providing support for the status quo. For example, many of our leaders were reluctant to lend their support to the civil-rights movement when their help was desperately needed. More recently, some of our leaders have allowed male chauvinism to continue unchallenged. Unfortunately, these kinds of lapses have earned Evangelical churches a reputation for being reactionary and even contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ. When secularists are asked about Evangelical churches, they often say that they consider our churches and other Evangelical institutions to be anti-gay and sexist.
It is certainly true that our congregations have, at times compromised the radical requirements of discipleship prescribed by Christ, and you may find yourself put off by the church because of its failure to be faithful to his teachings. But I would urge you to consider this fully, and to think about the words of St. Augustine: "The church is a whore, but she's my mother." That statement brilliantly conveys how I feel about church. It is easy for me, like so many of the young Evangelicals I know, to note the ways the church been unfaithful as the bride of Christ. You don't have to look too hard to see that the Evangelical church in America has a great propensity for reducing Christianity to a validation of our society's middle-class way of life. Unquestionably, the church too often has socialized our young people into adopting culturally established values of success, rather than calling them into the kind of countercultural nonconformity that Scripture requires of Christ's followers (Romans 12:1-2).

Why, then, do I encourage you to participate in organized religion and commit yourself to a specific local congregation? Because, as Augustine made clear, the church is still your mother. It is she who taught you about Jesus. I want you to remember that the Bible teaches that Christ loves the church and gave himself for it (Ephesians 5:25). That's a preeminent reason why you dare not decide that you don't need the church. Christ's church is called his bride (11 Con 11:2), and his love for her makes him faithful to her even when she is not faithful to him.
Through the ages, God has used the church to keep alive and pass down the story of what Christ has done for us. It is the church's witness that has kept the world aware that Christ is alive today, offering help and strength to those who trust in him. The story of Christ would have been lost during the Dark Ages if the church had not sustained it in monasteries where the Scriptures were laboriously hand-copied while barbarians were tearing down the rest of Western civilization. Church councils have protected Christianity from heresies by examining new theologies. Today, it is against two thousand years of church tradition that our modern-day interpretations of Scripture are tested. In short, it is the church that has preserved the Gospel and delivered it into our hands.

Where would most of us be without the church? Most Evangelicals have the church to thank for the Sunday-school classes that taught us what the Bible says and paved the way for our eventual decisions to commit our lives to Christ. Stop and consider the importance of the church's worship and liturgical functions. Even if we Evangelicals aren't likely to call them sacraments, as the Roman Catholics do, we still recognize the importance of certain ceremonial rituals. For instance, baptism is an important public declaration of faith that initiates new members into the fellowship our churches. In baptism, new Christians become part of a body of fellow believers who are called to spiritually encourage one another and hold one another responsible for consistent Christian living. The extent which churches live up to such obligations varies from congregation to congregation.

Holy Communion is another ritual of our church that cannot be taken for granted. Even if most Evangelicals view the bread and wine as only symbolic of the body and blood of Christ—and there are many Evangelicals who view them as more than that—the role that those symbols play in our lives cannot and should not be minimized. Holy Communion focuses our faith Christ's sacrificial death, which delivered us from our sins and signaled his conquest over the demonic forces of the universe.

My earliest memories of church services involve the sacred specialness of Communion Sundays. Before I understood any of the theological underpinnings of Communion services, I sensed that there was some kind of mysterious blessing in the air on these days. I felt an awe and reverence falling upon the congregation, and I was aware that something special, something with inklings of the supernatural, was happening. I realized early on that there was a sacred meaning to the bread and wine that demanded a hushed solemnity from everyone present.

Sitting with my parents at a Communion service when I was very young, perhaps six or seven years old, I became aware of a young woman in the pew in front of us who was sobbing and shaking. The minister had just finished reading the passage of Scripture written by Paul that says, "Whosoever shall eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 11:27). As the Communion plate with its small pieces of bread was passed to the crying woman before me, she waved it away and then lowered her head in despair. It was then that my Sicilian father leaned over her shoulder and, in his broken English, said sternly, "Take it, girl! It was meant for you. Do you hear me?"

She raised her head and nodded—and then she took the bread and ate it. I knew that at that moment some kind of heavy burden was lifted from her heart and mind. Since then, I have always known that a church that could offer Communion to hurting people as a special gift from God.

Some claim that they can worship alone, and I do not question their claims. Indeed, those who cannot be alone with God are not fit for community. But the positive experience of worshipping alone does not contradict my argument that something different happens when Christians come together in corporate worship. The sociologist Emile Durkheim recognized that at such a gathering a unique feeling of oneness often emerges—he called it "collective effervescence." He meant that there is some kind of shared emotion and psychic power that can be experienced only in communal worship. It doesn't always happen, but when it does, those who share in this ecstasy keep coming back for more.

I belong to an African American church, and on those special days when the congregation "really gets down, and the Spirit breaks loose," as my pastor says—those are days when that collective effervescence is especially evident people say afterward, "Oh, we had church today, didn't we?" For them, on those days the church becomes something more than a gathering of people in a sanctuary. It becomes a happening. But such happenings would never happen if there weren't "an earthen vessel," as Paul called it, to contain them. That's what the church is. In spite of all of its flaws and shortcomings, it is the "earthen vessel" that can serve as a home for sacred happenings and the special fellowship that the Greek New Testament calls koinonia.

At Eastern University, where I teach sociology, we have weekly chapel services. Attendance is voluntary, but students have been showing up in such large numbers over the past few years that we have had to move our weekly worship services from the school chapel to the gym. It's not the speakers that draw the crowds, but the worship. These worship services feature "praise music." As an old guy, I have difficulties with this new praise/worship music, but the students love it. I see them with their hands lifted up and tears running down their cheeks as they sing love songs to God, and I realize that they are experiencing God in a way that transports them from the gym bleachers into a mystical community of holiness. I become aware of that collective effervescence wherein God's presence becomes uniquely real. There and then, I am grateful for the corporate worship that makes such things possible.

There is another reason that the church should play an important role in your lives: the church is Christ's primary instrument for bringing about social change and transforming the institutions of society to conform with his will. It is through the church that Christ has chosen to bring all principalities and powers into submission to himself (Ephesians 1:21-22).

When the apostle Paul used the phrase principalities and powers, he was referring to all of the suprahuman forces that influence what we think and do. Some Christians limit the meaning of these words and think that Paul was referring only to evil spirits (i.e., demons). Undoubtedly, that is part of what Paul meant. Evangelicals, especially in this postmodern age, are ready to affirm that there are demonic forces fostering havoc and evil in the world. It should be noted, however, that modern scholars such as Walter Wink and John Howard Yoder have pointed out the phrase's broader meaning. Principalities and powers, say many Biblical scholars, also include such social constructions as television, government, economic systems, and the arts. These and all other social institutions, they argue, should be understood as superhuman forces that influence human behavior. What Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:12 is that we members of the church are supposed to wrestle with these principalities and powers so that they might be transformed into institutions that enact God's will.

Allow me to give you some examples of how ordinary Christians are doing extraordinary things as they work to bring the principalities and powers under the lordship of Christ through the church. Christians in England, working together across denominational lines, have seriously influenced international policies regarding Third World debts. When the heads of the G8 nations held a summit in the city of Birmingham in 1998, Christians mobilized tens of thousands of church members to hold a prayer vigil in front of the convention hall where the meetings were held. Clare Short, who was then Britain's secretary of State for international development, told me that it was that church-sponsored prayer vigil that moved the world leaders to make the first efforts toward debt cancellation.

The collapse of apartheid in South Africa offers another dramatic example of the church's bringing principalities and powers into submission to God's will. Archbishop Tutu, the leader of the Anglican church in that country, was able to make the church into a force for justice. There can be no question as to the crucial role the church played in challenging the racism that had made black Africans into less than second-class citizens.

As young people rebelled against the oppression of the South African police, they found in Tutu a spokesperson and leader for their movement. American author (and my friend) Jim Wallis describes how, on one occasion, Tutu met with thousands of freedom-seeking young people in the cathedral of Cape Town. The atmosphere was electric with anticipation as Tutu took his place in the pulpit. He pointed to the policemen who had positioned themselves along the walls of the cathedral to intimidate the crowd. Then he lovingly spoke to the police: "Come join us! You know we will win, so why not be part of the victory?" Then he led the thousands of young people in singing freedom songs. The congregation rose to its feet, swayed to the music, and started dancing in the aisles. There was no containing these young people, who were celebrating the coming end of apartheid. The dancing spilled onto the streets, and passersby joined in. Thus, a revolution was fueled by a church that was willing to challenge oppressive principalities and powers that had once seemed unshakable.

In addition to such direct campaigns for social change, there are a host of other ways in which the church has been a powerful force for positive societal transformation. Consider what has been accomplished because of missionary work in developing nations.

Schools created by missionaries have educated most the significant leaders in Africa, Latin America, and Asia The professional elites in developing countries—the doctors, lawyers, engineers, and entrepreneurs—almost all owe their training to church-sponsored education. Kofi Annan is one example. In Latin America, even Marxists have to give credit to church schools for training their leaders. Fidel Castro readily testifies that his revolutionary ideas came from his childhood training in Jesuit schools. And I haven't even mentioned all the incredible work missionaries have done in the fields of medical care and agriculture in developing countries

Some people mock the missionary efforts of the church and claim that they have been destructive of indigenous cultures. There is some truth in what these critics say; missionaries have often made the mistake of imposing Western values and lifestyles on native peoples. But today's missionaries are much more cross-culturally sensitive than were their predecessors, and they are often trained in cultural anthropology so that they can contextualize the Gospel in ways that both employ and preserve the best of native cultures.

While I think that cultural sensitivity is essential, l don't believe that every cultural practice should be tolerated simply because it is indigenous. For instance, certain cultures allow the ceremonial sacrificing of children, and others call for the circumcision of girls upon entering puberty. I believe unequivocally that such practices should be eliminated, and I think you will, too. Likewise, I have no qualms when it comes to challenging the treatment of women in Islamic countries governed by sharia law or what remains of the caste system in India. If the work of missionaries undermines cultural patterns that are cruel and dehumanizing, I'm all for it. The sooner, the better.

There is little doubt that the tentacles of Western technology, and the social changes that come with it, sooner or later will reach out and affect every tribe and nation on earth. Given that expectation, I would prefer that preliterate societies first encounter the West via missionaries, who have the best interests and salvation of indigenous people at heart, rather than via commercial forces whose only concern is the maximizing of profits.

There is one scary thing about our desire to change the world into a societal system that is ever more like the kingdom of God. This is the triumphalist tendency, increasingly evident among us Evangelicals, to use political power to impose our will on the rest of the nation and even the rest of the world. I see this happening especially among Evangelicals identified with the Religious Right who exercise their significant influence to try to force their agenda on others. There is incredible danger in this. I hope you can understand that Evangelicals' God-ordained identity as a servant people is compromised when we adopt coercion as our means for bringing others into compliance with God's will.

Young people often tell me that they are wary of the institutional church because they believe it is filled with hypocrites. Well, it is. What these people fail to understand, however, is that it is because the church is filled with hypocrites that they'll be right at home in it. If they don't think their own lives are filled with hypocrisies, then they are blind to the truth. We in the church mad no bones about it. We acknowledge our hypocrisy. We believe that everyone is a hypocrite, if by "hypocrite" we mean someone who does not live up to his or her declared ideals and does not practice what he or she preaches. Most of us in the church recognize that we fall short of our goals, but we acknowledge our shortcomings and have come together to help one another overcome our failures. As the old saying goes, "We're not what we ought to be, but then we're not what we used to be." The apostle Paul spoke for all of us in Philippians 3:13-14 when he acknowledged that he wasn't perfect but was still striving to become what God wanted him to be. I guess what I'm trying to tell you is the same thing I'd tell anyone else: if you ever find the perfect church, don't join it—because your joining will ruin it!

In spite of all its flaws and shortcomings, I still believe that the church is filled, for the most part, with decent and caring people who will be there when you need them. The loving fellowship that the church often provides is exemplified in a story that a Presbyterian pastor once told me about his early days of ministry at a small country church. One day, a young woman came to the church to present her child for baptism. She had given birth to the child out of wedlock; in a small rural community, a woman who has done this can easily find herself shunned. The day of the baptism, the woman stood alone before the congregation, holding her child in her arms. The pastor hadn't recognized the awkwardness of the situation until he asked, as is customary in a baptismal service, "Who stands with this child to assure the commitments and promises herewith made will be carried out? Who will be there for this child in times of need and assure that this child is brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?" At that moment, he realized that there was no godmother or godfather on hand to answer the question. But, as though on cue, the entire congregation stood and with one voice said, "We will!"

Those who think that church people are all bad should have been around on that Sunday, when they would have had a chance to see the church at its best. They would have seen the church as a nurturing community. That kind of church is worth your time.

Sincerely,


Tony



This was excerpted from Letters to a Young Evangelical by Tony Campolo, copyright © 2006. Used by permission of Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group.

I mostly enjoyed the "whore" quote from Augustine and the phrase about those who are incapable of being alone with God not being fit for the community of God...  That's rich stuff.