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What are you supposed to become as a Christian? (Delivered June 22, 2008)
We are a young church in some senses and I love reading about the adventures of young growing churches across the country. An interview I saw of a young couple who had just started their new lives as believers had one of my old seminary professors asking them how it was going in their new lives as Christians.
The husband responded with an unusual analogy. “Sometimes, we feel like we have joined a bowling team. We come every Sunday, and Wednesday nights we can. We come dressed to bowl, each of us carrying a bowling ball (He held up his Bible.) We step up to the line to bowl, but we can’t see the pins. After we bowl, they tell us how many pins we hit.”
His wife jumped in with, “No Dear, they tell us how many pins we missed!”
They jumped my old professor with questions. “Shouldn’t we be allowed to see the pins? How can we hit the pins if we can’t see them? Don’t we have the right to see the pins?” They followed with one very perceptive question: “We know that being a real Christian is not just one thing; it has got to be several, maybe even a dozen – what are they?”
As church goers have you ever felt like this? We know when we have messed up but not when we score a point. What are the pins for which God is aiming the lives of Christians? You may be interested to know that the word most often used in the New Testament that we translate as sin was borrowed from archery. The word hamartia meant to miss the target. So what is the target? What are we doing church for? What are our hopes to become in the future by participating in church, small groups, service projects, Sunday school and prayer chains? What difference does becoming a Christian make?
The success of this church is not based on memberships and baptisms or even budgets but producing real Christians. I have spent all of my life in churches experiencing what they thought constituted real Christianity. I have come to the conclusion that a great many are good intentioned but have entirely missed the point of Christianity. I will list some of the major types of churches I have been in and I bet you will recognize some of them as the same churches you have been in.
1. The “believe like us” church.
These churches expect you to interpret the Bible just like them. These churches can be liberal or conservative but you better fall in line with their beliefs. They may be into feminism, or creationism, or dressing conservatively, or refraining from movies or dancing, or like only a certain version of the Bible. They want you to accept certain beliefs just like them and then you can fit in and be embraced.
2. The “behave like us” church.
These churches have clear moral rules which “faithful” people conform to. We find a precedent in the ancient Pharisees with whom Jesus contended who had over 1,000 rules altogether. The Pharisees are still with us today in Christian clothing. I heard a story at grad school when I was at Point Loma Nazarene about a woman who saw some of us religion students going to a movie on Sunday which was a double offense for a Nazarene. Our professor was trying to help her loosen up by explaining that Jesus allowed his disciples to pick grain on the Sabbath. She replied, “Yes, and two wrongs don’t make a right!”
3. The “experience God like us” church
The goal of these churches is for everyone to have the same experience at church. For some emotion-focused churches they want you to have a repentance experience accompanied by tears. At typical services they want the emotions high and lots of physical touching to bond everyone together. In some charismatic churches this would include speaking in tongues.
More traditional “high” churches, which normally attract older believers, want you to feel the same awe from the aesthetics of their church. Beautiful painted murals in a magnificent building of architectural splendor with stained glass art work. The experience of hearing Bach on a giant pipe organ in this kind environment should make your jaw drop. At least they think it should make your jaw drop and if it does then you can join their church.
4. The “share our politics” church
Everyone attending this church belongs to one political party. They maybe Republican, Democrat, communist or whatever but you better vote their way because that’s God’s party. Funny thing in America many mainline protestant churches have aligned themselves with the Democratic party and many conservative churches have left their traditional neutrality and supported the Republican party. Many black churches have focused on civil rights and denominations such as the Quakers, brethren and Mennonites have rallied their people around peace.
5. The “support the institution” church
This is typically a denomination but not always. The good Christians at these churches love their church and national denomination but can’t really tell you why except it has a grand history. Good Christians at these churches put their names on the roll, attend church regularly, attend meetings faithfully, serve on committees, carry out maintenance tasks, and give generously to the churches budget without annoying questions about where the money goes. Good Christians are the people the institutional church can count on.
6. The “prepare people for heaven” church.
For them, Christianity is essentially an “eternal life insurance policy” or a “fire escape!” Life in this world afflicts people with “achy breaky hearts,” but accepting Christ assures us of a better life in the next world. Going to heaven and preparing for the journey are the dominant themes of this church just like gospel music and country and western music which these people like.
7. The “sacramental” church
This church is all about doing the rituals right. “High church” likes reciting the Lord’s Prayer a lot as if it was magic. The leaders want to see everyone baptized as infants and later confirmed in the church. They want people to receive Holy Communion and, in some churches have last rights and confessions. They believe that God’s grace comes through the sacraments and doing the right rituals.
The “Low church” version of this emphasizes a devotional life. A Christian reads the Bible and prays daily. A Christian family has prayer together at meals and at bedtime. Christianbook.com makes millions of these church people because they buy tons of devotional books and Christian pleasure reading. The mistake they make is the means have gotten substituted for the ends. These books are supposed to be a conduit for knowing God and His will. A channel for gaining spiritual power to live out God’s will but for many it is a substitute for a real relationship with God. Why encounter God when you can just read about Him. That’s like watching the movie instead of taking the real trip.
8. The “become like us” culturally church.
For these churches the sign of conversion is the reinculturation of the new or prospective member. We know you are “one of us” when you talk like us, dress like us, see the world like us and share our tastes from food to sports to our kind of music. In the Bible the first century Christians encountered the “Judaizers” led by James of the Jerusalem church who expected gentiles to become circumcised, give up pork, obey Sabbath laws and adopt other Jewish customs as a precondition to becoming followers of Jesus. Paul struck that down along with Peter.
9. The “All-American” Church.
These churches think that Christianity’s objective is for people to be good citizens and patriotic to the America of yesteryear. In the nineteenth century this branch of American Christianity believed that God had a “Manifest Destiny” for the U.S. that provided for the vision of “winning the West.” This is also called the “American Civil Religion” and assumes that the values of “the American Way of Life” are the same as the values of the kingdom of God.
You may be asking what is wrong with these churches. I used to belong to one and liked it. There is nothing “wrong” with any of them. I know that moral norms are important for holding families and society together. I know that believing the right things is important but I also know the devil believes and that faith goes deeper than that. I want people to be able to face death with hope and not fear. I know that true faith is an experienced faith and that certain rituals have their place in church. I also affirm and exercise my American citizenship. I even admit that I am more comfortable with people who are like me culturally.
I have not unpacked the ingredients of so many traditional churches because they are bad but because they do not reflect essential Christianity. They are not fully doing God’s work because they are focused on the wrong things and missing the mark by at least a little bit and in some cases a lot. Subsequently real Christians in their congregations maybe somewhat content as members but they have this nagging feeling that something important is missing. They just can’t put their finger on it. The goals of their church are not quite hitting the mark when it comes to God’s archery contest for New Testament believers. The goals of their church are not essentially what we are called to aim at and not why Christ came, lived, died and was raised for on our behalf.
The apostles handed us a real faith at the cost of many of their lives. A faith that is living and connected to Christ. I was in college during the 80’s and I heard this true story of a Russian philosophy student at Leningrad University named Tatiana Goricheva. She tried many philosophies including existentialism (life has no meaning except the meaning you give it) and finally turned to Yoga. Let me read you an excerpt from her testimony:
In a yoga book a Christian prayer, the “Our Father,” was suggested as an exercise… I began to say it as a mantra, automatically and without expression. I said it about six times, and then suddenly I was turned inside out. I understood … that He exists. (God), the living, personal God, who loves me and all creatures, who has created the world, who became a human being out of love, the crucified and risen God.
Now imagine that Tatiana has become a student at CWC and she has joined our church. She is open to whatever we want to teach her about being a Christian. Is our plan to have her memorize the Lord’s prayer, give up her occasional vodka, bring her offering envelope to church every Sunday, serve on a committee and prepare for heaven? Is there any more to the Christian life than that? Is that a faith that can change the world like it did when the Apostles spread it? What is our game plan for Tatiana and other seekers that come to church here? We need real objective goals for seekers and long time believers to shoot for.
There are four vital signs of growth any Christian can examine. It’s like taking your pulse to see if you are really alive. This is how you can know if you are fulfilling the vision God has called you to do.
1. I am growing in my intimacy with God and faithfulness to his Word.
This vital sign is demonstrated in my life by spending time with God through prayer, worship, listening to Him, reading the Bible and actively living out His principles in my life.
2. I am growing in real relationships with others in a small group.
This vital sign is demonstrated in my life by gathering with others to actively use my spiritual gifts, to build them up in Christ, and to be involved in disciple making.
3. I am growing in my service to God and others.
This vital sign is demonstrated by discovering my unique God-given gifts, passions, and personality, selflessly and effectively to serve my family, my church, and my community so that God’s kingdom and work can be furthered.
4. I am growing in reaching my pre-Christian relationships for Christ
This vital sign is demonstrated by my growing compassion and ability to build friendships with pre-Christians that will lead to an opportunity to introduce them to Jesus.
Now if we go back to our bowling analogy we talked of earlier. God wants us to not only be good bowlers but to roll a strike. Agreed? A frame of bowling has ten pins that if you knock them all down you get the maximum score. Let’s go through the ten pins and see what we need to hit as believers and Christ followers to know we have been successful. After all we don’t want to just know when we have rolled a gutter ball and failed. That is how it is when a church only points out your sins and shortcomings. We want to see the pins clearly and take good aim.
The first pin is Discovery.
Focusing on the one pin in the first row, the new possibility that God offered in Jesus Christ commonly begins for people with the profound discovery that we matter to God. This is why Jesus told the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. Those parables have five ideas in common:
1. Something of great value is lost.
2. In response to loss there is an all-out search or an anguished vigil.
3. When the lost is found, there is a great celebration.
4. God searches like the shepherd, the woman, and the father.
5. He does this because like the sheep, the coin, and the son, we matter supremely to the searcher.
It was St. Augustine that said “God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love.”
The second row is two pins of relationships
When we become Christians two types of relationships take place. I will talk about them in the logical order though they usually occur in the opposite order.
The first pin in the second row features a person’s experience of a new relationship with God. This is the supreme promise of the Bible – that we shall know God, that we shall know forgiveness, acceptance and love of God, that we shall be born again and know God’s power and the life of eternity now within us. This faith relationship comes to us by sheer grace and can’t be earned.
In this new relationship with God we still “see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face” as Paul put it not understanding it completely. This means being saved and the relationship we experience in this life is what Paul called a down payment or a foretaste of the fuller relationship with God we will know one day. It provides moments in which we know God and more moments in which we know that we are known, and this experience shapes us to live as God’s people in the world.
The second pin in the second row is a new relationship with the people of God. Christianity is not a solitary religion but a social religion. It is not an individual game like golf or weight lifting but a team game like football or basketball. The church is the messianic community, the body of Christ and the new Israel. Becoming a Christian necessarily involves joining this people. Jesus promised to be present where “two or three are gathered” in his name. Many people experience the church in some form before they experience the faith relationship with God. That is natural because the Faith is “more caught than taught.”
It has been proven that people who drop out of church are vulnerable in time to the breakdown and loss of faith because Christianity is a communal faith. Being involved in corporate worship and a smaller group of friends from church enables God to strengthen us in miraculous ways.
The third row with three pins identifies what is basic in the new life that we now live from our faith in Christ and involvement in his church. The first of these pins is doing the will of God. As new Christians we discover that we are no longer our own but bought for a price by God. Now that we are reconciled to God, Christ calls us to “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” Paul explained that Christ “died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised.” Doing God’s will means first obedience to God’s commandments, “from the least to the greatest.” And it also involves devoting our talents to God’s purposes.
The second pin on the third row is love for people. Jesus taught us that the second commandment after loving God is to “love your neighbor as yourself.” This love (agape in NT Greek) is not so much a feeling of heart as a willful decision to have goodwill for humans. A Christian’s goodwill includes people outside the Christian family, social network, socio-economic class, nationality, culture, and race. Christians are called to will good for their enemies and even for the enemies of God, because God does.
The third pin in the third row is freedom in Christ. The central event of the Old Testament, the Exodus, involves God’s liberation of the Hebrew people from bondage in Egypt. The central event of the New Testament, the Resurrection of Jesus, involves the liberation of people of faith from the power of death. Paul also saw that Jesus Christ sets us free from the “Tyranny of the Law,” i.e. the legalistic trap in which we try to justify our lives by obeying all the “rules.”For Paul, Jesus Christ sets us free from the power of sin. While it is still possible for us to sin, we can be freed from the compulsion to sin.
The fourth row has four lifestyle pins. The first pin on row four reminds us that we are called to live in the world, but not of it. That is we are called to live by Kingdom values, rather than the values of Hollywood or Wall Street. A Christian does not allow the values of this world distract him or her from keeping their eyes on godly values.
The second pin on the fourth row calls us to a lifestyle of service and ministry. We now join a movement that does good to all people by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned and no longer living for ourselves but others.
The third pin on the fourth row calls us to a lifestyle of witness and mission. A Christian does a lot of good for people’s bodies but even more good for their souls. Due to America becoming more and more secular we are on a great mission field once again. Jesus taught us to “let our light shine before others” and gave us the great commission, so that we know that every person has the inalienable right to discover that he or she matters to God, has the opportunity to join with God’s people and experience the new life and lifestyle.
The fourth pin on the fourth row affirms that, as Christ followers we discover our identity and we begin to become our true selves. The image of God is restored in us.
When all these pins are knocked down we score the strike that God intended for us to rack up. If you have ever wondered what the goal of the Christian life is to be and what a good church allows you to take a shot at. This is it. A good church is a bowling alley that clearly shows the pins to you and gives you lessons on hitting the mark. Not just pointing out to you how badly you missed. This is the church we want to grow into being. Will you join the construction crew?
If you could look into the future and see the bowler that Christ has in mind for you to be ten years from now, you would stand up and cheer and you would deeply want to be that person. Now is the time to build that alley. Now is the time to become that bowler. Let’s hit the pins together. |
