~4 min read
On the church deteriorating into default positions
Jay Wegter
Church structure is a utilitarian mechanism (as in Acts 7 and the provision for a deacon board) and not the core or heart of ecclesiology. That is a truth easily lost. In the book, The Trellis and the Vine, author Colin Marshall unfolds the relationship between structure and living church body. The structure, like a trellis, serves as a support role for the vine. It provides some shape and underpinning, but not life and nourishment, therefore the trellis (structure) cannot be the source of our ecclesiology.
And in terms of a default position, what do we commonly see in Evangelicalism? We see hyper-structuralism which has replaced the Great Commission mandate. We see elders stewarding programs rather than stewarding the giftedness of the body. Something must change. It is common for pastors to desire something different without doing anything different. What will it cost us to be agents of change so that the default trajectory is reversed so as to recapture the Great Commission mandate?
First we will have to engage in some ruthless honesty; namely that church history gives us a vivid picture of deterioration into the default positions. And here they are:
- Works, not justification by faith through grace.
- Man-centered, not God-centered schemes of sanctification and spirituality.
- Formalism, ritual, and externals not heart religion and Christ-dependent spirituality.
- Passive spectatorship and not a fully ministering laity.
- Feminized spirituality and not a robust patriarchal theologizing.
- The church viewing itself as an institution not an organism.
- Hierarchy not community.
- A widening gap between clergy and laity.
- Church services as ‘events’ and not for mutual edification within the body.
- A professional clergy and not a missional community.
Reversing the deterioration of these default positions is hard work. It’s like making water run uphill—in other words, it defies nature. It requires the miracle of the power of the gospel. A certain ‘pull’ must be overcome—the pull of the gravity of what remains of our depravity (the ‘gravity of depravity’ which makes us so ridiculously passive).
Think for a moment of the countless church buildings in Europe. Most were built to last for centuries, as if their purpose and role were timeless. But, the vast majority of them today are but ‘religious grave markers’ indicating where there once was life, but no more.
How did this deterioration of spiritual life become so complete? As faithful ‘coroners’ we need to identify the cause of death. It happened in small increments. It began when religious forms slowly ‘ate up’ NT church function and mission. And as the source of the church’s life (Christ in the gospel) was gradually forgotten, the church institution became a value in itself; it became objectified. The un-objectifiable became objectified—(something that Paul Zahl said cannot actually be done).
And as the church increasingly rested upon being a value in itself, it mistakenly thought that it had life in itself. Christ, the Lord of His church, became merely the greatest of the saints, and not the Lord of Glory. As His Lordship became more invisible, hidden by the prominence of the externals of religion, the church did not repent, but hardened its practices into forms which became associated with its definition of ‘orthodoxy’. Tragically she imagined that her life was sustained by her religious practices.
Like the church of Sardis of old, she didn’t know that she was dead (Rev 3:1). She conducted herself oblivious to the fact that if she were to have life, it would only be by daily abiding in the life of Christ, her Head. As a result, silently, invisibly Ichabod was written over her door. Nonetheless, yet grace-less, Christ-less souls continued the rituals and externals of religion. Keeping the church going was their assumed goal. But sadly, what was once a lampstand lit by the oil of Christ’s Spirit had become a spiritually lifeless organization of man. Such will be the fate of any church that is content to live upon anything but Christ and His glory. For ministers so easily forget that the gospel creates the church. Like a Texas tornado, the gospel touches down bringing forgiveness, love, freedom and true community. Thus the gospel births the church and sustains her life. The gospel feeds and nourishes the vitality of the church. No wonder we need to be discipled in the gospel—for it displays to us that Christ is our very Life! There is no spiritual pulse without conscious dependence on Him. Pastors wake up! Are you animated by Christ’s love? Are you exercised over the fact that you will give an account of whether or not you have nurtured a church that was pleasing to Christ? Do you pant after Him to make Him known and to know Him? Do you preach Christ or merely preach about Him?
His eyes are a flame of fire; He is evaluating you now (Rev 1:14-20). If you are not exercised over these things so that you are driven to your knees to plead with your Lord, and if you hesitate in answering the above, then here is what you are facing. It is very likely that you may be leading a church which exists merely to perpetuate itself. That is not Christ’s mandate and pattern. For Christ requires us to be utterly devoted to the privileged task of presenting every man complete in Christ (Col 1:28-29). Anything less than that as your ministerial goal is to be something other than Christ’s bondservant.