Church as we know it

The soil of the church as we’ve known it is drying up, and the tree that has grown here is wilting. Its fruits are shriveled. This dry tree will catch fire by a small spark, and in its ashes it will fertilize a new growth. The “church” as we know it has been a church of refugees. A church of people who congregate in a safe place in order to escape the realities of the outside world. The church as we know it has rightly been critiqued as the opiate of the masses, having created grand illusions of a utopian afterlife while ignoring and at times even contributing to the desperate plea of humanities starvation. The church as we know it houses arrogant men who are constantly engaged in pissing matches with one another.

The church as we know it is no church at all.

We were supposed to be a sent people. We were supposed to be, to use a popular analogy, a people of light who run into dark places. Instead, we are a people who amass around a small candle with a bulb for a flame, rubbing our hands together for warmth. And so, as the gospel itself is a paradox (that in surrendering we win, that in death to ourselves we receive life) death to church as we’ve known it will revive us.

No longer will we have to feel guilty because we aren’t in these buildings every time they unlock the doors (which is itself a tragedy). Rather, we will commend the people of God who labor in vocations outside of the church, and invest in their co-workers in the name of Jesus Christ day in and day out. No longer will we exalt the clergymen who have only known church as we know it, seeking to protect a tradition of card houses. Rather our sanctification will come about by ministering to the people whom God loves, not by sleeping through one man’s weekly message. Our sanctification will come by Christian service, not Christian sermons.

The church as we know it is no church at all. It stands (as Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche suggested) as the sepulchers of God: A place where many go to mourn their faith in remembrance of days long since passed, waiting to be beamed up. 

Brothers and sisters, you and I serve a living God. A God who has no sepulcher. A God who may have a tomb, but a tomb that stands empty to remind us that he holds the keys to death and hell. We have a savior who prayed for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. A time has already come when we will no longer worship the Father in this “church” or that. We are a people who were commanded not simply to come and assemble, but to go and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. 

Let the dead bury their own dead, we must follow Jesus.

Note - I believe that there are very few original ideas: Therefore, I have read books by NT Wright, Dean Flemming, Scott McKnight, Reggie McNeal, and Brian McLaren very recently.