The Morality of Choices: Church Wars

The Morality of Choices: Church Wars August 30, 2016

Morality of ChoicesI used to care a lot about being relevant. Not a day went by that I didn’t step on my soap-box and preach about how the church has got to learn to be in step with the times.

I still care about that. But I’ve started to believe that often behind our language of relevance is more of an idea of competition.

Last week, I talked about the Morality of the choices we all face, and how American consumerism has shaped us in some unhealthy ways, and is responsible for much of the problems we face today. Today I want to talk about how this has played out in the American Church.

Judged by Jihad

Chances are you have never heard of Sayyid Qutb, but your life has undoubtedly been impacted by him.

He’s one of the Muslim thinkers responsible for the modern enthusiasm for jihad, and many believe he was one of the great influences for Osama bin Laden’s decision to wage war on the West, what bin Laden called the “Judaeo-Crusader alliance.”

Western people don’t know of Sayyid Qutb, but no less than The Guardian named him as “the most famous personality of the Muslim world in the second half of the 20th century.”

But before Sayyid Qutb was all that, he was a young man searching for answers to life, and when he came to America (back in the 40’s) he was in his early twenties and looking for a place to connect with people and find friendships, and maybe he was even open to Christianity.

Born and raised in Egypt, Sayyid was very familiar with Coptic Christians and was interested enough in the Jesus story to attend several churches during his time in New York.

But to Qutb’s shock what he discovered was not a church that was built around worshipping the Crucified God. What he found was a church that was built around choices.

In his book Milestones, written about the time he spent in America, Qutb would later say this:

If the church is a place for worship in the entire Christian world, in American it is for everything but worship. You will find it difficult to differentiate between it and any other place. They go to church for carousal and enjoyment, or, as they call it in their language ‘fun.’ Most who go there do so out of necessary social tradition, and it is a place for meeting and friendship, and to spend a nice time. This is not only the feeling of the people, but it is also the feeling of the men of the church and its ministers.”

Sayyid came to America right after World War II. So many books have been written on the large social upheaval that happened in the post-war Western world, but the change that has shaped our world probably more than any other was that the secular age was becoming more and more pronounced.

The Christian church in America saw that their influence in culture was diminishing and so it began to suddenly care about things like being relevant, and meeting people where they were at.

All of which sounds well and good, until you realize what a dramatic shift this really was between the conception of church that Christians have had for thousands of years (and still have in much of the world).

Before this, church was not a place where you came to get your needs met, it was a place where you came to worship God and serve others. It was the place where you came to learn what your needs really were, and your place in the universe.

But once church becomes a choice among the choices, and every church becomes a choice among the pantheon of other churches, what church is, and what we expect from her changed dramatically.

Here’s Qutb once more on his time in America:

“Every minister attempts to attract to his church as many people as possible, especially since there is a tremendous competition between churches of different denominations.  And for this reason, each church races to advertise itself with lit, colored signs on the door and walls to attract attention and by presenting delightful programs to attract the people much in the same way as merchants or showmen or actors…There is nothing strange in this, for the minister does not feel that his job is any different from that of a theater manager or that of a merchant.  Success comes first and before everything and the means are not important and this success will reflect on him with fine results… It is his first measure of the way he feels and evaluates.”

Church for the World, Not a Worldly Church

Last week I wrote about the morality of choices and ended by talking about how every pastor I know feels some sort of tension here. Often we feel like we are selling out our calling because to say the things that people really need to hear puts our church at risk, to be the kind of institution that incarnates the self-sacrificing love of God in the world rarely inspires people to truly sacrifice and plug into that kind of community.

I first read Qutb’s story from Mark Sayers excellent little book “The Road Trip that Changed the World” and in it, he talks about how after World War II, church in the West changed from people being participants to spectators.

In my personal experience this is spot on. I’ve preached at churches where the music has been excellent, the production value of everything from start to finish has been top of the line and the people in the pews were passively watching “the show”

Here’s how Sayers describes how he feels when he sees this today:

In the past I would have blamed the church. I would have with coldness deconstructed the service. Looked down my nose at the methodology. The problem is that I now have seen the same look of detachment in Reformed gospel preaching churches, hip emerging churches, and polished Pentecostal services. I have seen the same bored eyes in liturgical-heavy high churches and casual organic house churches. The people who [are running these churches] are great people, passionate about Jesus and His mission…Yet something had fundamentally shifted. The balance of power had moved, but everyone [is] too busy trying to get the undecideds in the door to notice what [is happening. The church in the West faces] the almost impossible task: satiating hungry beast that is the 21st century citizen of the West.

So this is a time of year when churches all over America have an influx of new people moving into their city, checking out new churches and, if we’re honest, trying really hard to convince people that our church is where they can grow the most spiritually.

I get it, I lead one of those churches, and I care a lot about the local church I serve connecting with new people. But what I’m starting to be suspicious of is that in our rush to be relevant, for pastors to work in the fact that they know what “Netflix and chill” really means or to quote the new Jay-Z song in their sermon.

Sometimes what we’re unintentionally doing is lowering the bar about what it means to be inside a Church, or to be a follower of Jesus.

Behind our desire to be relevant is a question we have to start asking: Are we trying to contextualize the Gospel into ways that the incredibly demanding way of Jesus can make sense, connect it to people’s deepest desires and hopes and help them see how a life of sacrificial service and worship is what they were really made for?

Or are we just trying to be more relevant than the church down the street?

Instead of a robust spiritual warfare that Christians are called to wage against the Principalities and Powers, we engage in church wars that are really just a race to some generic, secularized bottom that looks vaguely like a Jesus community and more like a Coldplay concert and a TED talk.

This may sound more cynical than I mean. I’m not writing it with that spirit though.

I believe most pastors want their church to be a compelling force for good in the world, and that we can actually reclaim that calling. We can do something about the problems of society if we stop the church wars.

But that is a choice we each have to make.

I just want us all to see it is a moral one.


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