February 2004 Archives

We have made following Jesus all about being a good church member. (Reggie McNeal, The Present Future)

Eugene Peterson, in the forward to Embracing Brokenness:

It's odd that a religion that carries the cross as its central symbol should require a crash course in suffering. But it does. Oh, how it does.

We have somehow ended up with a country full of Christians who consider suffering, whether it comes from a broken body or a broken heart, a violation of their spiritual rights. When things go badly in body or job or family, they whine and complain endlessly. Sometimes they protest vehemently. In between complaints and protests, they seek out the company of those who anesthetize them with soothing words and soft music. They have no difficulty finding such aestheticians-pain-killing spiritualities are a glut on the market. The only cross they seem to have any acquaintance with is a piece of cheap jewelry.

Can anyone get their attention long enough to convince them that suffering must not be avoided, but embraced; that brokenness does not diminish a life of faith but deepens it?

It's tempting sometimes to be cynical about the established church and to grasp for another ready-made solution as the answer. As some of us have raised questions about the established church and its priorities, it's been exciting to see new forms of church arise, and to hear other people asking questions that need to be asked about what we've been doing. It's also exciting for me to hear questions being raised about the emerging church, and to be reminded that it really isn't a unified movement as much as it is a diverse collection of people around the world trying to rethink how we can live the Gospel without all the trappings of modernism. They don't all agree and they aren't always right.

As much as I'm in favor of new forms of church (and I really am), I think there is a deeper issue at work. The emerging church, whatever that means, isn't the answer. The emerging church is still going to make mistakes. It still has people in it. It still gets it wrong. It can still be into self-preservation and the wheels can still come off. We're seeing this already.

At the same time I'm reading books like mission-shaped church, I remind myself: this blog is not called The Emerging Church. It's called The Dying Church. It's about all types of churches, emerging, established, whatever, hearing the call to die to themselves and to take up the cross of Christ. It's what someone said so beautifully to me last week: it's about becoming to submissive to Jesus Christ that we're dead. That's what The Dying Church is about. And dying yesterday wasn't enough. It's a daily thing, and any church that walks with Jesus has to make the decision to die every single day.

That's what it is all about.