The purpose of the church cannot be to survive or even to thrive but to serve.
Self-Preservation
When a church begins to think its sole purpose is to survive, it naturally turns inward. It goes into self-preservation mode, which does no one any good. If survival is priority #1 a church acts and operates like an institution or a company. Jesus, who came to bring more than what can be mentioned in this post, never planned on establishing a business. Businesses operate with a bottom line and CEOs manage with a “survive at all costs” mentality. If businesses operated solely on the teachings of Jesus they wouldn’t be in business very long. Death is never part of anyone’s business model, and rightfully so.
Yet, why do churches insist on operating like businesses? Why do they continue to think and act like secular institutions. Truth is, a secularized society wants nothing to do with a secular church practicing secular theology and filled with secularized Christians.
Jesus is building something far more compelling than a business. If your past experience with church left you jaded, confused, or damaged perhaps you encountered a poor man-made expression of a secular church. Unfortunately, we can’t judge Jesus primarily from his followers (or his enemies), you have to take him home for yourself and see what he has to say.
Self-Denial
There are several analogies used in scripture for the church, and one is that the church was designed to act and behave as a living organism—a body. If we accept the premise that the church is an organism, then we need to accept the natural progressions of life. There are distinct characteristics that nearly all living organisms experience: birth, growth or maturity, reproduction, and finally, death.
The funny thing about the last one, death, is that most living organisms try to avoid that at all costs. But Christ said that death was something we must be willing to experience before we can actually live:
Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. (Luke 9:23-24 NIV)
This thinking is thickly counter-intuitive to everything we know and believe. What about living, what about self-preservation and survival? How can dying be the first step? Perhaps the church growth strategy we should adopt goes something like, “Come and die.” This type of strategy matches exactly with what Jesus says must do to follow him. While the world says, “preserve and protect yourself,” Jesus teaches, “deny and lose yourself.”
Church growth and Christian maturity is all about decreasing, losing yourself, denying yourself, serving, and surrendering—it’s about dying. When serving becomes the essence of the church, rather than surviving and thriving, this is when the world is compelled. It certainly isn’t easy and if you want to be a servant you’d better be prepared to be treated like one, but it’s not about you anyway, it’s about Jesus.
The future of the church isn’t going to be found in its preservation but in its denying of itself and investment in the world. The church doesn’t exist for the benefit of its members, it exists for the benefits of its non -members. Remember that the next time you plan an event, or a worship service, or a missions trip, or discipleship class, or anything worth doing.
Before we can begin to live as the church, we must be willing to die and deny ourselves. We must die to our conveniences, our comforts, our traditions, and our desires. Only then will we truly live and function as the hands and feet of Christ.
FUEL FOR THOUGHT…
Are you more prone toward servanthood or survival?
What servant-like characteristics do you crave to see functioning in churches?
photo credit: Brendan Sceroler
Ryan, are you a Neil Cole/organic church fan? If not, you would be pleasantly surprised by how much his approach mirrors the way you think of the church.
Your word about churches as businesses is a good one. I think when the way you “do church” necessitates a financial “bottom line”, at some point (or maybe constantly!) you are going to face the decision to either follow Jesus onto the cross of self-sacrifice or to protect that bottom line. Any “successful” CEO (read:pastor) can tell you which choice leads to a thriving business (read:”church”). But when we read Jesus’ words, we hear: “Whoever wants to save his life – of course, he had better not do anything dangerous, and whoever loses his life – should have been more cautious, poor fellow.”
I crave to see people in the church wake up to the reality of how compelling the gospel really is, and be scrambling over one another to feed, clothe, love, and set free the captives in their communities.
Great comment, Adam, thanks! I have read Neil Cole’s book and I enjoyed it. I read it about 5 or 6 years ago, but I picked it up again this year and was surprised at how much I resonate with it now.
I crave to see the same thing, and have seen glimpses of it, but I want it more and more. Only God can do it. It’s up to Him, and I’m surrendering.
I’d love to talk to you about business as it relates to the church, Ryan. I read a book (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Business-Matters-God-Still/dp/0830838880) about business and the church and it rocked my world. It changed how I view the purpose of business: “Maximize shareholder value” aka profit is what my business school education taught me, but the purpose of business is really to 1. offer services or products that enable the community to flourish and 2. provide opportunities for people to express their god given creativity. (profit is of course necessary as a means to attract additional investment in order to grow) Under that view, business is a powerful kingdom advancing force.
All that said to challenge a small piece of your post which reads to me like, and I could be wrong about what I’m reading into here, all business is secular and all business is not able to advance/take ground in the kingdom. I think its a bit more nuanced and gray than that – there are businesses that provide great opportunities for people to engage in meaningful work, and business owners that can help people provide a living for their families. Many businesses are about the bottom line only. And that’s the part of business that gives capitalism a bad name.
Now that I’ve thoroughly high-jacked your thoughts about servant-hood with a large tangent, I thought I might add that I do it anytime anyone says “its not about you.”
Joe, great comment and great challenge. I don’t feel “all business is secular and all business is not able to advance/take ground for the kingdom.” That has never been my stance. Actually, I took notice to a study a few years ago in which the character traits of a few successful CEO’s were examined. They wanted to see what “kind” of leader is best at running a business. They were shocked to find that many of the CEO’s were overwhelmingly humble men. Turns out humility is the basis for leading, and the business world was surprised. From a biblical perspective, this isn’t surprising at all! When businesses operate under sound biblical leadership, as with your two points above, amazing things can happen. I believe in that, for sure. Thank you for sharing these points and what you’ve learned. I look forward to learning more.
My point with the post wasn’t to diminish the function and purpose of businesses, or reduce the positive impact businesses can have. Rather, my point was to reflect on the negative effect of churches adopting self-preserving business principles in lieu of Christ’s call to serve and self-denial.
And yeah, it’s not about us, but Him in us.