Non-Anxious Churches

Finding the Way of Jesus for Pastors and Churches Today

Mark Knight

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781666795196
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Pastoral failure, volunteer fatigue, exhausted staff members, church wounds, and increasing membership decline have left us wondering, how do we lead from God-with-us rather than the world's hustle culture? Non-Anxious Churches examines communities' need for churches that are authentic, real, and non-anxious. Unfortunately, churches are not immune to anxiousness and can even perpetuate it by juggling tasks, getting caught up in activities, and focusing on the wrong goals. Pastor Mark Knight guides church leaders instead to dwell in and lead from the abiding presence of Jesus. Over the years, the social sciences have added a lot to this discussion about churches and anxious systems. Non-Anxious Churches seeks to further the conversation using answers found in Scripture and in the discipline of spiritual formation.

Chapter 1

How Did We Get Here?

We have to ask a couple of very important questions, “How did we get here?” or maybe “Where did it all go wrong?” The simple answer to those questions is that it’s always been this way, but westernism made it the focus. What I mean is anxiety has always been an undercurrent of human complexity and thus from the very beginning we see anxious humans. These humans created anxious communities and anxious cities with anxious systems. Westernism brought that anxiety to the forefront and found a way to market it into a billion-dollar industry.

All humans have struggled to find their way in this anxious world. Adam and Eve eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, then hiding, and subsequently blaming each other are examples of anxious decisions.1 We see murder and chaos to follow in the next generations.2 Humans are beginning to make a world shaped by anxious decisions.

This would be the world we all would be born into, a world full of deep human insecurities followed by our own personal ways of masking it. This chronic feeling of things being not quite right within will be the channels for our pride, anger, narcissism, sexual excursions, jealousy, idolatry, envy, drunkenness, self-loathing, retreating from people, comparison, workaholism, greed, and an unhealthy drive to success.

In a casual journey through the Bible, and then through the rest of history, we see humans finding their own anxiety-coping mechanisms in an anxious world. This is why the Bible is entirely focused on shalom and bringing shalom which we often translate as peace. However, it is better understood as wholeness, since the word peace seems to mainly indicate in our language an absence of war and a lack of violence. This could be a part of shalom, but it’s not the fullness of the word. Instead, wholeness indicates this idea that things are as they should be, completely and utterly whole and at rest. Jesus is the one in whom shalom is found fully and completely and when we sit at his feet and learn his way, we not only enter into his shalom; but we begin to see it infiltrate throughout our lives, our families, and our churches.

When the Bible talks about shalom it does so on two levels. First, shalom comes through this idea of wholeness in an external way penetrating the world around us; the shalom in creation and in systems and structures. While there is a great demand biblically for this wholeness to start now, we know that ultimately it will be fulfilled completely someday. Second, shalom comes inwardly through wholeness infiltrating a person’s well-being. This can start right now, this very second.3 Jesus can bring us peace through His Holy Spirit and this showcases a fantastic Christian reality of “Christ in Us!” I would guess that both versions of shalom have a tendency to feel like pipe-dreams to some of us with our world in chaos. How can it be brought to wholeness? This seems so far away especially for many communities that are in a constant state of unrest. The second kind of shalom can also feel like a faraway dream too, for our life is chaos. How can we find wholeness when our lives are like this? Even if you wouldn’t define your life as chaos, it probably still feels far-fetched to say it’s in the state of shalom. This underlying inner-anxiousness that is intersecting with an anxious world is constantly infiltrating our well-being. The world is complex and thus shalom can break down. Life is complex and thus shalom can break down.

The Bible’s response to this is, Peace has come!4 God brings forth peace. That’s who He is and that’s what He does. From the very beginning in creation, the Scriptures say that God began to bring forth goodness out of a void. Right at the beginning of Genesis, we see these words, “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”5 God then began to create and after the day was over he looked over his creation and declared it good.

The Hebrew word we translate here “good” is ṭôb which like most Hebrew words is layered with meaning and richness. It is truly best translated as good but it has a deeper meaning of rightness, pleasantness, harmony, things being how they should be. Thus, it’s a very similar concept and thought as shalom. Shalom is often the idea of bringing wholeness while ṭôb is the wholeness to begin with, as things should be from the start. Goodness comes out of the overflow of the nature and character of God who is good. He brings goodness with his creation and his people through the Shalom of Jesus. In this same way, Isaiah 9:6–7 says that a Messiah will come and be called the “Prince of Peace” and the kingdom (government) He brings will be peace with no end. We need to understand that Jesus brings wholeness to us and our insecurities; individually and in His family. The church becomes the outpost of this kingdom of shalom that has no end.

When Jesus showed up as a baby, his birth is referred to in Luke 2:14 as bringing forth peace. The angels declare; “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests.” Jesus then began to bring forth a ministry of shalom as he “brought good news to the poor, proclaimed freedom to prisoners, gave sight to the blind, set the oppressed free and proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor.”6

Jesus said to us, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”7 It’s one thing to preach it, but it’s an entirely separate thing to live it and lead it. The world is drawing us towards the illusion of control that in reality only brings about anxious chaos, because we simply cannot control the majority of what happens in life. In this world, we will have trouble, cause trouble, bring trouble, and step into trouble. Trouble will happen to us and trouble will happen from us. Yet, shalom is found in Jesus.

This isn’t the first time He taught this concept in the Gospel of John. A couple of chapters before He spoke of the troubles in this world, he said something similar in John 14:27: “ Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” It couldn’t be any more clear: There is peace that the world tries to give you, yet it’s an illusion. Then there is peace that I give and it is true peace.

He calmed literal storms and spoke peace into them. He also spoke peace into the fear he found in his disciples.8 We see this underlying anxiety in his disciples, the same anxiousness we find within ourselves when we are also in the midst of a storm (literal or figurative). Throughout his ministry, Jesus is bringing shalom and his followers are bringing anxiousness.

As humans, we seem prone to want control, while Jesus continues to beckon us into the adventure of dependence. He slowly teaches us that to hold tight to the wheel of life is to only bring about more anxiety and to let go is to find more wholeness. When you look at the church, the bride of Christ, do we seem to be a gathering of saints that are bringing about peace or are we exhibiting anxiety? Are we grasping for control, or demonstrating what it looks like to let go?

It’s not just shalom that God brings, though that certainly feels like more than enough. The shalom that comes also carries with it a structure or an organization. Actually, neither of those words are perfect words to describe what comes with shalom, for both words carry too many negative connotations. Maybe the best word is ordering. The shalom that comes from God brings with it an ordering of life that helps nurture the shalom in our journey and in our world.

God set up a helpful way of organizing and orchestrating his people in The Book of Numbers. The people were called and gathered under his name. He’s constantly shepherding his people into wholeness and shalom. You may not have realized it...