Who/What do we trust? #RethinkChurch
I want to say at the forefront that I like the United Methodist’s Rethink Church media campaign. I find it a refreshing reminder and call to the Church that it is important for us to keep reviewing and reexamining our calling to be the people of God, the followers of Jesus.
However, one of the frequent and even valid criticisms of the campaign is that it is simply that, a marketing campaign that simply repackages the same old organization. For many churches it will be just that. They will take no time or effort to think about what they are doing and why they are doing it, so they will remain the same old people doing the same old things. And my fear is that if anyone responds favorably to the ads they see by attending a church near them, they will experience that same old church that might have kept them away from church in the first place.
While I can’t guarantee change (even in my own life), I at least want to give God the chance to transform me so there is a possibility of something different. In May I preached a series of sermons on Rethinking Church. Over the next few weeks I will try to put them into words (I don’t write sermons, so I have to either have the taped ones transcribed and edited or I will have to go back and try to recreate them) to share.
This one isn’t one of those, but it offers an important background context.
Our danger in the church is that we tend to confuse the Creation with the Creator. This is more than simply worshiping the natural world around us, this is a danger that exists anytime we look to anything that God has created for life and hope instead of trusting the God who created all things. Do we find ourselves trusting in the things that God does and getting so wrapped up in those things that we end up ignoring the God who blesses us.
I see this in my own spiritual life whenever I try hard to develop a spiritual discipline like prayer or scripture reading. I might even have a certain mount of success at it so I feel really good about what I have done. We want to be people of the Book or people of prayer. So when we look to the things that define our character or that we are proud of, we look to those things. Or maybe we have a profound spiritual experience (like Paul in 2 Corinthians 12) and so we want to hold onto that experience and we get a lot of mileage from how that makes us feel. So we go from conference to conference, or read book after book, or listen to song after song that helps us maintain that great experience of God’s presence.
And when the experience fades, what then? We try to recreate it, because that experience of God is what blesses us and defines us. Or maybe some other idea comes to us about who we are as God’s people, but it might dilute our self-understanding of being people of the book, or a praying people, or even a church beyond the walls.
The experience or the thing God has given us becomes our central focus.
We have slipped into idolatry. The created thing has supplanted the Creator.
The experience of God at the beginning is a great gift. Then we focus on the gift and instead of remaining open to God’s own self, we want that experience we had before. We choose the lesser because it is known and familiar and has become part of our image (of self or of God) so we close our hearts and lives.
The idea of Rethink Church as simply an marketing campaign to get people to come to church can set us up for that same trap. Are we simply trying to get more people to come to our church and join our organization (thus offering the created thing as the answer to people’s needs and wants) or are we using the living work of God’s people as Christ’s representatives, the body of Christ in the world, to bring people to experience God’s gracious presence in their own way.
