A Great Exaggeration

The other night, as the sun was going down, I, with another pastor, was looking over the football field surveying a group of thirty-odd young people running around on the grass playing a game of Capture the Flag.  I looked over at Greg, who, with arms crossed and smile stretched across his face, caught my eye and spoke.

'Reports of the death of the church are greatly exaggerated, I would say.'

Bemusedly, we watched the vibrancy and vitality of the youth as they strained and pressed forward towards the goal that had been clearly marked for them - the pink flag on the end of a stick poking up between the goal posts; unfortunately, the sun was getting quite low in the sky and not only were the flags more difficult to see, it was also humorous to watch the youth try to remember who was on their team and who was not.  Eventually, they gave up trying to decipher whose team they were on and simply tagged everyone.  Laughter and shouts of joy echoed in the stillness of the twilight.  And I nodded.

Indeed, reports of the church's death are not only exaggerated, but quite clearly fake news.  This is not a head-in-the-sand mentality, but a true to life hope in the immense power of God as He reimagines the future of the Body of Christ for us in a tremendously powerful secular age.

Mark Twain penned those words about his supposed demise in 1897 (according to This Day in Quotes), but it was not the original sentence.  Supposedly, Twain, while in London, was aware that some newspapers in the United States were writing him off because of an illness, and his response was this:

 “I can understand perfectly how the report of my illness got about, I have even heard on good authority that I was dead. James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness. 
     The report of my death was an exaggeration.”

Illness, especially in our contemporary phobic society, can be misconstrued easily as the next footstep onto the threshold of death's door.  We seek to find any solution for illness on WebMD, or any other website that may seem to lump symptoms together, and then we point our fingers at the screen while our heart thumps steadily in our chest, There, see that!  These symptoms seem to say that in just a little while the gravediggers will be shovelling the last fill of dirt into the hole.  I suppose I'd better write up my will again.  With fear tightening in our guts, we close the laptop in front of us and resign ourselves to fatalism that no matter what, there's nothing we can do about the demise that seems to be just across the doorstep...  Why even try?

Which is why, as Greg and I surveyed the scene last Friday night, captured by the surround sound of young people enjoying life together, I think to myself - This is why we try.

The contemporary church has an illness - there are no denying the symptoms:

According the Australian Bureau of Statistics from the latest Census in 2016, fifty-one percent of Australians still claim Christianity, but...

The largest growing demographic for the Millennial group is 'no religion' or 'other religion.'  Young people are absconding with their religious (or non-religious) lives intact to somewhere way beyond the denominational church walls.

Of those who claim Christianity (whether or not they claim Christ is a different issue), only a small minority would attend worship weekly.

Biblical literacy seems to be at it's lowest level since the Protestant Reformation.

Prayer, for the most part, has that sense of soft drink machine mentality - I put in my time, pray earnestly (for a good three minutes) and then, when I'm good and ready, I expect that God will eject a positive answer to my prayer.  Quite a bit different to C. S. Lewis' thoughts of prayer: 'Prayer is a request.  The essence of a request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted.'  (But that doesn't make the granter unfaithful.  Maybe the granter is simply more patient?)

When prayer isn't answered within seconds, like the nervous Facebook poster who receives no instantaneous thumbs up or smiley faces, we believe that either there is no God, or that He doesn't care about us.

This illness seems entirely depressing, and the immediate reaction by most church leaders is to turn to the internet for some kind of panacea that will fix the malady (but more likely just ease the symptoms) of the contemporary church - a new program, a bigger building, some fog machines during worship, a better sermon and especially a more charismatic pastor - but the incredible cure for what ails the church is (unsurprisingly) found in the scriptures and some of our youngest are intuitively reconnecting with what Paul writes about to the Ephesians:

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.  Be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love.  Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

Ephesians 4:1-6

To be bound by peace.

To be one.

To find unity.

To see, beyond a doubt, that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers  of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.  (Ephesians 6:12)

In the new life of the church, we recognise that those who profess Christ stand with those who are at a different stage on the path of faith, not against them, and certainly not above them.

In the next instalment of the new life in the church that is coming, we'll look at four ways that churches can continue to release, not harness, the excitement and joy of our people, young and old alike, in mutual partnership of walking this pathway of life together.  I recognise the ultimate irony of writing a blog on the internet on how to help the church, but these four ways are images of new opportunities of sharing the Gospel without 'programming' them.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in his classic book, Life Together,  “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”

Let's find the new life together in the 21st century community that is our Church.