A Place Where You Belong

I was provoked in my spirit the other day by some tweets from a person I only began following this year. Sometimes it is important to name names, but I’m not ready to do that at this stage. I appreciate some of what he has to say, and he was recommended by a friend from church. I even have a book he co-authored sitting in my stack of books to be read in the near future.

So being new to him, I don’t know if this is his thing or if he’s gone off on a tangent, but there is a reason I don’t think it matters that you know who he is: he represents a way of thinking that has been around evangelicalism for longer than I’ve been alive. So I mean to critique the movement and the idea, not the man.

But what is this strange yet familiar teaching, Josh?

It’s about who church is for.

I almost went on a nostalgic rabbit trail here, but I stopped myself, for you. The point I was going to make stands on its own: I have grown up in churches that embraced change and churches that resisted change, and I am a big fan of the former. But with one caveat: what you change and what stays the same makes all the difference in the world.

I was once someone who pushed for change in one of those resistant churches. I saw modern rock instruments as neutral tools, not the spiritual poison many decried. I saw modern translations as making God’s words more accessible, and how could that be a bad thing? Choirs, pews, hymnals, stained glass—none of it sacred. Just one strategy or another.

What mattered above all else is this: what are we trying to do here?

I bought the idea that church should be welcome to visitors, and that sermons should be evangelistic, and that the Sunday morning experience should be geared around the kind of thing you could invite your friend to, because the pastor was better at sharing the Gospel than the rest of us. I had nothing against old things, per se, but I wanted to see improvement. I wanted to cast off anything that hindered.

But these impulses have changed over the years. Perhaps in part due to other doctrines learned in seminary, learning to appreciate the local church, membership, communion, baptism, etc. I came to appreciate not the value of old things in and of themselves but the possibility that I had not fully reflected on their wisdom. It was not history that won me over but philosophy, teaching me that every object and every image and every practice is part of a network of beliefs. There are no neutral tools.

I’ll save the implications of that thought for another time, but that wasn’t what effected the big change. Seminary didn’t directly change my mind. Instead, I found myself in another church that was generally resistant to change, and it made me reflect on the doctrines behind that. I had never really come back to that main question: what are we trying to do here? Or better yet, what should we be trying to do here?

Sure, there are the big categories of worship, teaching, evangelism, service, and fellowship. (If I recall, that version came through Rick Warren.) I still find this list helpful. But it’s missing a crucial element: who is the Sunday morning service for?

So I began, as any good Baptist would, looking at Scripture. I know the church is the people of God, not the building, so the local church meeting seems to be the local people-of-God meeting. So far, so good. In Acts, we see the apostles going out into the synagogues, the marketplaces, etc. to share the news about Jesus, and people were being invited back to their gatherings. None of the formal elements we recognize in church yet, but obviously a bunch of new people are going to change the dynamics of the meeting.

And there’s a lot of freedom in Scripture about how we can organize a church meeting; there is nothing that prescribes the size of the building, the order of service, the relative emphasis on different aspects. So maybe this is one of those issues? Some churches are inward focused and some are outward focused and we all have our strengths, amen.

But wait. When Jesus recommissions Peter at the end of John’s Gospel, what is His charge? “Feed my sheep.” This is the heart of pastoral ministry as distinct from other kinds of ministry, that the leaders of the church take up Jesus’s work of caring for believers needs. The work of the ministry belongs to all the saints (Eph 4) but pastoring is a unique ministry from one saint to another. It is caretaking.

This doesn’t in and of itself settle all the questions. But it does explain why it bothers me so much when people say things like this: “Church leaders, you need to decide who you’re going to lose: the people in your community who don’t know the love of Christ, or the church member who thinks the church revolves around him (or her).”

I want to read this charitably. I really hope the author meant being willing to offend members who don’t care about other people and refuse to do the minimum to reach them. But I fear some will take it a different way, and indeed some do teach it a different way.

Or then there’s this quote: “The gap between how quickly you change and how quickly things change is called irrelevance. The bigger the gap, the more irrelevant you become.” I’m struggling to find a charitable reading here. As though relevance were a virtue the church needs to cultivate, a fruit of the Spirit that comes from abiding in Christ.

What I fear is this: creating an experience for unbelievers and calling that “church.”

I fear a pastor who would say to his flock “you’re already saved, so get out of my way! I have to go find new sheep!” Presumably, once they are saved, they can get out of the way, too.

I fear a false dichotomy imagined between evangelism and discipleship. Either we evangelize, or we don’t. Either it’s for unbelievers or it’s for you stubborn insiders.

Church is not an experience. It’s a family. When you invite an unbeliever to church, it is not like inviting a friend to go to a restaurant with you; it’s like inviting a friend over for dinner. You don’t say “this is our home, stay out!” You practice hospitality. You make them feel welcome. But it’s still your house, for your family, with your awkward pictures on the wall, your grandma’s old blanket in the corner, and the smell of the foods you cook the most lingering in the air. You’re inviting people to your community, your family, your Heavenly Father.

The pastor on the lookout for unbelievers to add to the flock might say, “look at Jesus! He left the 99 to find the one.” Yes, but who is the one and where did He leave the 99? Isn’t the one a family member who has lost their way, someone perhaps struggling with doubt or burdened by sin or wrecked by life’s circumstances? Isn’t it someone who is already an insider, a believer, who needs help? And in leaving the 99 did He expose them to hunger and danger? No, the good shepherd leads His sheep into fertile pastures and will not leave them unprotected. Jesus does not advocate abandoning the 99. He doesn’t bring the 99 with Him into danger where the one lost sheep had wandered.

This is not either/or. If your vision of the one lost is the person who needs to hear the good news of Jesus Christ, and reaching him or her means mistreating those who are already saved, what kind of good news do your actions preach? Come over here with the rest, so I can leave you, too.

No, “feed my sheep” means don’t let the desire for a bigger flock cause you to overlook the flock you have. Pastor, Jesus has already entrusted these people to you! Don’t let them go hungry in a quest to find the ones that have not yet been entrusted to you.

My pastor in Dallas loved to tell the story of a church member who came to him with a complaint about the way they did something there. Todd would say, “I’m so sorry. No, really, I’m sorry. Would you please forgive me? I’m so, so sorry for whatever I did that gave you the impression that church is about you.” Powerful words. And there is an important truth behind them: just as the family does not revolve around the whims of the individual, so we should guard against trying to make the church fit all of our desires, our preferences, our conveniences. We are in this together. Our job is not to cater to the squeaky wheels.

But nevertheless, I disagree with the words at face value: it’s not exactly right to say that church isn’t about you; you are the church! Again, with the analogy of family: if I say to my brother “family isn’t about you,” I risk communicating or even believing that he doesn’t belong. That’s baloney.

Church shouldn’t revolve around you, but you belong here.

I believe churches should be welcome and hospitable to unbelievers. I believe we should translate our family practices and lingo so that everyone can understand. I believe we shouldn’t set up unnecessary obstacles in the way of our guests. But I also believe church is a family, that it is a place where only brothers and sisters can truly belong, and that the health of the family should be a higher priority than growing the family.

If someone is standing in the way of the change you want to make, especially if that change is something you believe is an obstacle to hospitality, the easy thing is to alienate that sister or brother. But the right thing to do is feed them. Disciple them. Invest in their maturity. And be open to the possibility that the change you want may not be the change your family needs.

I don’t have the platform of the person I’m quoting, and I don’t have my own church to pastor, but I am a student of the Word. “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10). Don’t give in to the false dichotomy that says you must either cater to the whims of insiders or cater to the whims of outsiders. Invest in a healthy family, practice hospitality, and be amazed at how the two work together.