Giving Church Another Chance

Finding New Meaning in Spiritual Practices

Todd D. Hunter

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780830879267
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Ministro del culto cristiano

Everybody wants to be spiritual. But nobody wants to be religious. Everybody is looking for a rich spiritual life. But nobody is looking to church.As a pastor, Todd Hunter found himself disillusioned, burned out and needing to drop out of traditional forms of church. He experimented with house churches and other options but was still dissatisfied. Eventually he found himself sneaking off to worship services on Sunday mornings with surprising results.What did the historic spiritual practices of church do for him? How did they lead to a life of centered peace, chart a path to simplicity and cause him to reach out to others while focusing on the glory of God?Walk with Hunter on this journey to find spiritual riches in a surprising place. You might just give church another chance.

1

Going to Church

Being Sent as Ambassadors of the Kingdom

“The method of the kingdom will match the message of kingdom. The kingdom will come as the church, energized by the Spirit, goes out into the world vulnerable, suffering, praising, praying, misunderstood, misjudged, vindicated, celebrating: always as Paul puts it in one of his letters—bearing in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed.”

N. T. Wright

I played serious baseball while in college—well, serious to me! I was a catcher. Before every game we had meetings for pitchers and catchers to go over scouting reports and how we would pitch every batter. We discussed which opposing hitters were hot at the time, which players were not hitting certain pitches in certain parts of the strike zone, and where batters tended to hit certain pitches so we could position the defense. As important as these meetings were, we never mistook them for the game.

Those meetings prepared us for the real thing: the competition. Church and its historic activities and practices should be viewed in the same pregame manner. They enable us to do what we long to do: excel as followers of Jesus in the 167 hours per week we are not in church.

This is not a perfect analogy, but to help you see how the spiritual practices of church work with being sent by Christ, think of athletics and other public performers. Those of us who have watched a major athletic event or professional performance on television have probably seen an athlete in a locker room or performer in a dressing room engaged in deep, personal, private time. Perhaps they are visualizing and imagining just how they want to sing on stage or attack their opponent on the field. Maybe they are quietly filling their minds with positive thoughts, remembering the times they have done well, believing that they can do so again. These are common practices of elite performers.

Now imagine you left the TV but have come back an hour later and the event is running late. The camera crew is looking for the performer, who is still in the dressing room, in church mode. That would be odd. No performer ever confuses the preshow preparation with the show. The former always exists for the latter. It leads to the stage.

Most every human activity has meetings associated with it. Corporate marketing teams meet, sports teams meet, surgical teams meet, teachers meet—but none of them confuse the meetings with the real task. Meetings exist to facilitate the actual work.

As fed up as many people are with church meetings, I don’t think the church needs to quit meeting; nor does it need to make the meetings more hip. The people of God have met weekly in tabernacles, temples, church buildings and homes for thousands of years, and they will continue to do so. But the church needs to rethink the purpose of its meetings.

Accepting the Church for What It Is

I am not antichurch, and this book is not a critique of the church. I assume that church is what it is, for better or for worse. This book is about the spiritual practices of the church as a launching pad to life. Like most human endeavors, the church has meetings associated with it. Unfortunately, while most people do not confuse meetings with their work (the game or show), churchgoers often do.

I have discovered that Christianity is not just composed of the right stuff, accurate beliefs and correct ingredients. Over the years I learned that I needed to find some right practices to make the right stuff work. A rocket can be assembled with all the right parts, but if someone messes up launch procedures, the whole thing turns into a catastrophe. Lots of people, from various disciplines and points of view are wondering aloud today whether the church has become a catastrophe of sorts.

In response to my own experience, and taking into consideration the critics of Christianity, I believe we have discovered all the right bits of stuff, assembled them and defended them from the contrary elements of society, but we forgot how to launch the rocket.

I believe in “going” to church. I go every week. I have been a church leader since I was nineteen years old. But I have also experienced a five-year hiatus from normal Sunday meetings. (Don’t worry, I didn’t “forsake meeting together” with the body of Christ; I just experimented with other forms of church.) At first it felt good to be liberated.

But it wasn’t so great, actually. I found that in my “antichurch” home or coffee shop groups and many of the others I have known, the focus stays on the meeting: what style, who leads, when and where we meet and so forth. Thus I dare say that we need to repractice church—no matter time, location, size, leadership—so that the natural fruit becomes followers of Jesus who are ambassadors of God’s kingdom

A Representative and Representing People

In 2 Corinthians 5:19-21 Paul implies that corporate ambassadorship is a loose synonym for church.

God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (NIV, emphasis added)

For us, these two things are not usually synonymous. Church is one thing—someplace we go for worship, teaching and fellowship—and being an ambassador is another. Worship, learn and fellowship are not the first words you associate with an ambassador. An ambassador is someone with position, delegated power and the duty to act or represent. How can these terms linked in Paul’s mind be so divergent in ours? Because, we have sawn in two what was intended as a whole.

The term translated “ambassador” is customarily used to connote someone who is a trusted elder; an envoy who travels as an authorized agent or representative on behalf of another. Interestingly, Paul says that in the new way of Jesus, in the Spirit-empowered, Spirit-authorized church, God is trusting Jesus’ people to be his envoys of the kingdom of God. Ambassadors are focused on the affairs of their own country (the will, agenda and story of God) as they reside in another country (their actual lives) they have been sent to. As ambassadors of Christ, we focus on the agenda of the kingdom of heaven, which is the rule, reign or action of God. We ambassadors are alert to the agenda of God in the places we live, work and play.

I can hear someone thinking, I don’t experience church as a launching pad for ambassadorship within the rhythms and routines of my life! Maybe this is a good place for a confession: it is no secret that while pursuing religion it is possible to become something other than the shining example we envision when first heading down that path. Along the way lies the ditch of smugness, the pothole of judgmentalism, the rut of superiority and the crater of self-righteousness. Any pastor, spiritual director or counselor can tell you that connection to a church can expand or shrivel life. In fact, respected Christian author Philip Yancey says that he has been “in a life-long process of separating church from God.”

We don’t have to be particularly sympathetic to the church to recognize that this is an unfortunate state of affairs. How could the church become crosswise to the purposes of God? Perhaps the church itself is not so much the problem. I’ve been a pastor for decades, so I know that some churches are boring and out of touch, and that others are much more approachable and in tune with the times. If our critique ended here, the solution would be pretty easy—just get every church to be culturally cool! And that’s not such a huge job. Stuffy boards, vestries and presbyteries notwithstanding, it is not so hard to culturally remodel a church. It surely is not like putting a man on Mars.

Unfortunately, something much more profound is going on, something way beyond how cool church is. Millions of Americans are also leaving cool churches in search of something more meaningful. The issue is not so much the contemporary nature of the church but its connection to God’s purpose for the church. If we are to be living within God’s story, and if God’s story can be likened to a map, a narrative or a piece of music, then we should be asking, What map are we on? What narrative are we living in? or What music are we playing? These questions will lead us to see that church is mainly what happens outside of its meetings.

Many today say, “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” But most of them are confused about what spirituality is. Here is the best definition I have heard: “Union in action with the Triune God is Christian spirituality.”

All along the continuum of conservative to liberal, Christian groups have struggled with being genuine apprentices of Jesus. Most of our problems come from picking and choosing our favorite markers of discipleship and then purposefully or inadvertently ignoring others. I know this is oversimplified, but conservatives have often chosen Bible facts and witnessing, and liberals have chosen various social-justice issues.

These things are fine. It’s just that there is so much more. Not more to do or becoming more religiously busy, but more holistic, more at rest and peace as was Jesus our Master and Guide. In view here is a way of life marked by the kind of love found in 1 Corinthians 13, the kind of character exemplified in Galatians 5 and the righteousness, peace and joy of the kingdom Paul describes in Romans 14.

This fuller life works as we go out the front door, get off the subway, walk to the soup line, seek a parking space or hurry to church. The bottom line: apprenticeship to Jesus directs our whole life—not just the activities chosen from various right- or left-wing traditions.

There is a subtle but huge difference between Christianity viewed as something to do versus something to live. The word do implies rules, regulations and sheer obedience. Live, on the other hand, calls to mind holism, groundedness and thoughtfulness. Lived implies organic rhythms and routines. Eugene Peterson powerfully connects believe, do and live:

No matter how right we are in what we believe about God, no matter how accurately we phrase our belief or how magnificently and persuasively we preach or write or declare it, if love does not shape the way we speak and act, we falsify the creed, we confess a lie. Believing without loving is what gives religion a bad name. Believing without loving destroys lives, believing without loving turns the best of creeds into a weapon of oppression.

It is true that Christians are commanded to do certain things. But in so doing we never “become the subject of the Christian life, nor do we perform the action of the Christian life. What we are invited or commanded into is what I call the prepositional-participation . . . of with, in and for.” That is to say, God is always the subject, and God also performs the essential, difference-making action. We get in on it through the prepositions: we are with God, in God, for God.

You Don’t Have to Be Perfect

Showing others how to relate to God and his purposes for humanity is what Jesus was aiming for through his life and ministry. Though they are important, Jesus rarely talked about right beliefs. He never asked people to formulate proper theories regarding Noah, the flood or the ark. He didn’t call people to an accurate hypothesis of why God called Abraham or how it was that Abraham and Sarah had a child. Jesus spoke about his obedience to his Father’s will and invited others into his kind of life.

At this point you may be, figuratively speaking, wiping your brow while exhaling a big Whew, I don’t have to believe everything just right! While we may need a deserved break regarding believing perfectly, it is no easier to behave correctly—to obey God in the way Jesus did—than it is to believe correctly. Both take a massive injection of God’s grace and some simple cooperation on our part.

I know many of us have read the Great Commission a thousand times, but I’ll bet very few of us have caught the highlighted bits below on the first couple hundred readings:

Meanwhile, the eleven disciples were on their way to Gali­lee, headed for the mountain Jesus had set for their reunion. The moment they saw him they worshiped him. Some, though, held back, not sure about worship, about risking themselves totally.

Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead and gave his charge: “God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:16-20, emphasis added)

Imagine that. Among his first ambassadors, Jesus identified some who held back, who were not sure about worshiping him—wondering whether worship were a whole-life thing, if it meant placing their life before God as an offering (Romans 12:1-2), whether it would cause them to risk themselves totally. But this did not deter Jesus. How in blue blazes does that work—that Jesus entrusts his whole agenda to a mixed group of people? Well, I think I know. When I go to church, I always find a mixed group of people, some holding back, some cruising along and others going for it full-throttle. Church members have not changed much in the last two thousand years!

Jesus commissioned his first followers with a special and unique task: to train others, to instruct them in Jesus’ practices, in his way of life. Train sounds like a corporate term or the activities at a police or fire academy. Pray sounds like church or monastery. But to Jesus they are two aspects of learning a way of life.

Confidence for Going to Church

This past year I had the joy of reading and endorsing a book for someone I have known for thirty years. Mark Foreman was my first teacher at Calvary Chapel Bible School in Twin Peaks, California. In Mark’s book Wholly Jesus he writes what I consider to be one of the most holistic and unprejudiced observations and explanations of the church I have read in years. More than that, Mark’s views on the church impart hope in a time when the church’s reputation is very low. Mark gives us great help in moving from simply attending church to being ambassadors of the kingdom:

My experience tells me that buildings are not the problem. Believers all over the world desire worship/training centers that allow them to move more quickly to advance the kingdom. Unbelievers as well are attracted to centers of worship. There is something very human about wanting a gathering place to worship.

Note the emphasis here is to advance the kingdom. That is precisely what ambassadors of the kingdom do—they represent, advocate for and adv...