Radiant Church

Restoring the Credibility of Our Witness

Tara Beth Leach

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780830847624
• eBook ISBN: 9780830847631
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Outreach Resource of the Year

Something is not right. The witness of the church in North America is eroding. Many Christians are alarmed by the decline in church attendance and seek a culprit. Too often, we point the finger away from the church, make culture the enemy, and build walls between us and others. But our antagonism and enemy-making are toxins that further eat away at our witness. Is there a better way?

Tara Beth Leach could easily be one of those millennials giving up on the church. Instead, she is a pastor who loves the church and is paradoxically hopeful for its future. In an era where the church has lost much of its credibility, Leach casts a radiant vision for Christians to rediscover a robust, attractive witness. We need to name the toxic soil we've grown in, repent for past wrongs, and lean into a better way to become the church that Jesus proclaimed we would be.

Leach casts down idolatrous false images of God to recover a winsome picture of a kingdom of abundance and goodness. We can be sustained by practices that will tune our hearts to God's and form us into the radiant communities God intends for us and those around us.

1

THE CALL TO RADIANCE

“YOU’RE NOT ONE OF THOSE born-again Christians, are you?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. Was it a trap? What did they think “born-again” meant? I leaned over the fence that stood between my neighbor and me, and we both watched our children play together in the yard. “What do you mean by that?” I tried to ask in the most nonjudgmental tone as possible and instead take the posture of curiosity. “Well, those born-agains talk about a God who loves you, but they live their lives as anything but loving. They only care about their own political agenda and not the people that they have politicized.” I can’t remember exactly how I navigated the conversation that day, but perhaps it’s familiar to you.

Some circles project hostility between the church and culture. While plenty of people have the opposite and more loving view of the church, I think it’s safe to say that there’s a growing tension between the church and culture in the Western world.

There’s been a pulling away of sorts, however. No longer do we enjoy easy approval from Western culture, and going to church on Sunday mornings is no longer the thing to do. According to Gallup, the most dramatic shift is those who don’t identify as religious at all.1

Aside from decline, our reputation has been put to the test. If we were to dial the conversation back to 2007, David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, noted this from an outsider to Christianity, “Most people I meet assume that Christian means very conservative, entrenched in their thinking, anti-gay, anti-choice, angry, violent, illogical, empire builders, they want to convert everyone, and they generally cannot live peacefully with anyone who does not believe what they believe.”2 A few years later, in 2011, David Fitch declared that evangelicalism was coming to an end. He writes, “Evangelicalism’s influence within American society is painfully on the wane. As recent as just this past decade, evangelicalism had carried a significant amount of political influence within society and seemed confident of its identity as a church in America.”3

The influence the church once had is waning, the light that once shined bright is diminishing, and the salt that was once salty is losing its saltiness.

Over a decade ago, as many influential church leaders and theologians saw the future of the church they gathered to create manifestos. Many called for a redefining, a rebirthing, and a reidentification of the church. It was time for renewal and revival, and for the evangelical church to embrace the God who births new things. Fast forward a decade and it would appear that the church has missed the moment, or perhaps it’s something that “gets worse before it gets better.” Either way, I think it’s safe to say we have reached a crisis moment.

The crisis, however, is not just the decline of those who declare faith in King Jesus—though that is certainly to be lamented. The crisis, instead, is an issue that must be dealt with in our own family room. This is not the time to point the finger outward, and it’s not the time to blame the world. Instead, I pray that we take this opportunity to look in the mirror.

SYMPTOMS OF THE CRISIS

Moral failures. In the last few years, moral failures of pastors and so-called Christian politicians alike are being brought to light at a rapid rate. But what’s troubling is how quickly we defend the perpetrator rather than the victim. Perhaps even more troubling is that at times the world is defending the victim while the church defends the perpetrator. This was an alarming reality when Bill Hybels was first accused of sexual abuse and harassment from a number of female staffers at Willow Creek. The leadership was sadly quick to defend their pastor and blame the victims. Rachel Held Evans tweeted this about the #ChurchToo movement, “The Church in America, and specifically evangelicals, are going to have to muster up some humility and take a serious look at how patriarchy, sexism, and toxic masculinity have infected their culture.”4

In many ways it would appear that the curtains have been pulled back on systems of power—power often held by my brothers in Christ—that are wrapped in toxic systems. We have learned in recent years that behind closed doors things weren’t what they appeared to be behind the glimmer and glamor of the large auditoriums, fog machines, and rapid growth of butts in the auditorium seats. Maybe all along the very things we anointed as success weren’t successful after all.

Then we started to hear whispers from the mouths of trembling, broken, and fearful women. At first we asked them to keep quiet; we must not ruin the witness of the church. Some quieted down, and some got louder. When American culture started the #MeToo movement, the church had its own movement, #ChurchToo. Thousands of stories emerged—gut-wrenching, painful, and devastating stories. Take a moment to scroll through Twitter’s #ChurchToo feed and grab a box of tissues while you read. If it doesn’t make you weep, I don’t know what will.

Many did gather ’round to listen while others continued to silence the voices of the hurting. Some who held the power had plenty of opportunities to call for the church to repent, apologize, and work toward reconciliation. I was especially grateful for leaders like Dan Meyer, senior pastor of Christ Church of Oak Brook, JR Rozko, director of Missio Alliance, Rich Villodas, pastor of New Life Fellowship in Queens, New York, and New Testament scholar Scot McKnight for the ways they and countless others prophetically called the church to confession, lament, and a better way.

Allegiance. And then the curtains were pulled back on our own allegiance. I think somewhere along the way we got confused. Of course, the history of this is deeply rooted. Is it God and country? Is my citizenship first in the kingdom of God or in my country? Or are they the same? Flags on altars next to the cross were on equal footing, and the gospel according to the empire began to collide with the gospel of King Jesus. The church fell in love with the empire, and the witness suffered because it wasn’t sure which was which. Patriotism trumped the values of the kingdom, and eventually it seems we developed multiple personality disorder. On the one hand, we loved Jesus and the gift of salvation, and on the other, we sought more power, more strength, more dominance, more prestige, more wealth, more flourishing, and more gain. Eugene Cho warned,

I would submit that the greatest challenge is actually within Christianity: It’s the temptation to build the structures and institutionalism of Christianity but without the parallel commitment to Jesus. It’s politicians and even Christian pastors and leaders who sprinkle on a pinch of Jesus into our thinking, speeches, or sermons but often in a way that fulfills our agenda or goals. In other words, using Jesus to promote nationalism is simply not the way of Jesus.5

We abandoned the imagination of Scripture and instead adopted a Western political imagination that we tried to keep firmly hitched to the Christian way. But if we were honest, it’s a dimly lit version of the early church—if lit at all.

A polarized church. Instead of falling to our knees, we took to larger platforms and louder megaphones to make our views known. We took to Twitter with hateful words and memes. Instead of peacemaking, we took to dividing and violent speech. We were more interested in being right than unified, so we drew harder lines in the sand and pushed the weak, marginalized, and hurting away.

Meanwhile, young ears were listening, and young eyes were watching. What was meant to be beautiful slowly eroded away. As the pastor of the second oldest church in my denomination, many grandparents are lamenting over the decline of the attendance of young people, and many are fearful for the future of the church. Perhaps many decided that the radiance of the church wasn’t what they thought it was.

IT’S NOT THEM; IT’S US

No longer can we point the finger away from ourselves and put the blame on culture wars. No longer can we say, “It’s because they took God out of our schools,” and, “That generation is ruining everything!” Instead, dear Christians, we have a few things to sort through and talk about.

We’ve been exposed, and the curtains have been pulled back. Instead of saying, “To hell with the church!” I cling to the promise of Scripture that declares, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against [the church!]” (Mt 16:18 KJV). I know how this story ends, and I know that the bride of Christ will never fully crumble. I hope that this exposure would lead us to our knees, crying out for the Spirit to birth something new, alive, beautiful, and radiant.

I believe this more than anything: what isn’t revealed can’t be healed. It’s time to embrace what has been revealed and lean into a new kind of healing that can only be explained by the faithful presence of Jesus.

BORN-AGAIN

Somewhere in the mid-1990s, when I was a new Christian, I came across a popular bronze statue by Dean Kermit Allison. The sculpture was called “Born Again,” and it depicted a man shedding his old self with a bronze layer of skin, and his new self was being born anew as a radiant, glassy, crystal version. I remember staring at that statue mesmerized and in tears. I was the statue, I thought. Newly in love with Jesus and recently beginning my life in Christ, God was doing a radiant new thing in my life. But today, that statue seems more prophetic, and it tugs at my heartstrings as I long for the church of the future.

I pray that the church would begin to see, acknowledge, and name the bronze layers that are saturated with worldly beliefs and behaviors and flee from them. I pray that the church would know that we have not been destroyed—it’s not too late. I pray that we would reclaim, be renewed and revived, and allow the work of the Spirit to birth something new and radiant. Like the bronze statue, may the layers of our own systems that have hurt and harmed others begin to peel away, and may the lamp of truth, love, and righteousness be placed firmly on its pedestal and shine in all of its illuminating beauty. Not beauty for the glory of ourselves but for the glory and majesty of our King and Creator. May we shine in s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Introduction: A Dim Light
• 1 The Call to Radiance
• 2 The Radiant Story
• 3 The Radiant Vision of Jesus
• 4 The Radiant King and Kingdom
• 5 The Radiant Witness
• 6 The Radiant Partnership
• 7 Radiant Evangelism
• 8 Radiant Practices
• 9 The Radiant Future
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Praise for Radiant Church
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright