What is church for?
Let me begin by seemingly going on a tangent – but old guys might appreciate it. Back in 1970 Edwin Starr released the hit song “War”. The opening verse goes like this:
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, uhh
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Say it again, y’all
War, huh (good God)
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, listen to me, oh
And since I always like to follow up on such things with a link for those who are so interested, here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZJRJpbGkG4
OK then, back to my title. While many non-believers might ask ‘what is church good for,’ it seems some believers have a similar mindset. By now most of you would have heard about what some church leaders might be doing in the UK. It seems they think the word “church” might turn people off, so there is discussion about whether or not the word “church” should be retained. One report puts it this way:
The Church of England looks set to undergo a woke rebrand yet again by dropping the word “church” in favour of “relevant and modern-sounding” descriptions such as “community”, a new study has suggested. Lambeth Palace appears to be avoiding the traditional word when discussing the creation of new worshipping communities and congregations.
The Centre for Church Planting Theology and Research looked at the language used by 11 dioceses to describe new churches. It claimed 900 new churches set up by the dioceses in the past decade all opted against using the phrase “church plant” as its primary description. Reverend Dr Will Foulger, who authored the report, found that six of the 11 dioceses used the language of “worship”, two used “congregation” and seven used “community”.
However, Dr Giles Fraser, vicar at St Anne’s in Kew, told The Telegraph that this apparent reluctance to use the word “church” reflects “a misplaced desire to be relevant and modern-sounding”. Writing for UnHerd, Dr Fraser added: “The Church has given up on church. Not since Prince became Squiggle has there been such a daft revision.”
A spokesman for the Church of England claimed one reason why the word “church” appears less often in the description of “new worshipping communities” is that these forms of worship can exist outside of traditional brick-and-mortar churches. https://www.gbnews.com/news/church-of-england-woke-madness-rebrand
It seems with so much bad press about this already, now some church leaders there are claiming there is no intent at all to drop the word “church.” So whatever is the reality, and however this pans out, some real questions still arise about all this. Let me share a few thoughts.
Of course for some folks – whether within or without the church – this word “church” may well have negative vibes or connotations. But then again, so do a host of other terms, be it Scripture, the Bible, religion, the faith, evangelism, discipleship, fellowship, baptism, pastor, Christian, Christianity or even Christ. So should we start dumping those terms as well in order to be relevant and to reach the lost?
One need not pick on these folks in the UK however. Christians – even Bible-believing evangelical Christians – have been doing this sort of thing for many decades now. Whether called “seeker-sensitive services” or what have you, Christians have long sought to make the church more attractive and inviting to Joe Pagan.
So they have introduced everything a pagan might like: the mandatory cafes with spiffy coffee machines and yummy treats; plenty of entertainment; the disco look with black walls and smoke machines; young and good looking preachers; very brief and rather contentless sermons (more like pep talks than sound biblical exposition); rock concerts with theologically anaemic choruses; and so on.
They bend over backwards to make themselves look cool and hip and trendy so that non-believers will feel right at home. And many seem to go out of their way to hide or cover up what is actually going on. So many new churches today look nothing like a traditional church building – and intentionally so.
I was once part of a large church that when it built a new auditorium it sort of featured a cross on top – but it was deliberately camouflaged and covered up by artistic architecture. So 99 per cent of folks looking at it would never have guessed it was a cross, or guessed the building was a place of Christian worship.
Now I am NOT saying there is no place to try to welcome unbelievers and try to be somewhat appealing, etc. I am not saying we should seek to be unappealing and unattractive to the lost. But what arises here are some deep questions about just what is a church for, and what should be its main emphasis.
Just what is church for?
This of course is a very large subject, but let me make things short and sweet here. If you look at the New Testament and the early church, the church – or where Christians came together – was just that: a place where believers met, worshipped, were instructed, received the sacraments, and so on. It was about believers and for believers.
So believers were fed and discipled in Christian fellowships, and then they went out into the world to share the gospel with the lost. They did not seem to worry about making their Christian fellowships acceptable to worldlings. They did not wait for unbelievers to come into their worship services. They went out TO them.
The idea that they might have needed to tone things down, or re-word or re-phrase things, or more or less cover things up in order to attract the pagans would not have entered their minds. They were NOT ashamed of the gospel. They were NOT ashamed of their faith. They were NOT ashamed of the cross. They were NOT ashamed of the local church or gathering of believers.
Evangelism was of course vitally important to the early Christians, and they went to where the lost were found. They did not seek to make their times of fellowship and worship attractive and non-threatening to those around them. They were not interested in seeker-sensitive services in other words.
They had no need to try to be trendy and relevant. The gospel was and is relevant. What lost sinners need are not worldly amusements and safe and cozy environments. What they need is to know the core gospel message. And that message is that we are all sinners in rebellion against God and headed to a lost eternity.
Jesus came to planet earth, suffered a cruel death on a cross to deal with the sin question, and then rose again, commanding his disciples to tell everyone about this. And that they did. And as groups of believers emerged in various localities, they met together for edification, for teaching, for training, for fellowship, and for discipleship.
Being renewed in the faith and growing in grace, they then went out into the world to reach other people. Today of course we seem to do things quite differently. We encourage non-Christians to come to our churches. There may well be a place for this, but if it means watering things down, not properly feeding the flock, and not training disciples, then real problems can arise.
And the real issue is this: trying to make non-believers feel comfortable and at home in a church is not what we are called to do. We are called to make ALL people feel uncomfortable in the sense of confronting their sin, presenting them to a holy and just God, and demanding a life of faith and repentance.
Related to this is this basic truth: if we are really concerned to reach the lost, it will NOT be done by rock concerts, pizza nights, and hearing feel-good self-help chats. It will be done by the Holy Spirit. It is his job to convict the lost and to stir up believers to faith and holiness.
As A. W. Tozer famously said: “If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.”
Let me offer a few more choice Tozer quotes:
“The Holy Spirit is not necessary to the church; we have arranged it so that he is not required. He has been displaced by what we call ‘programming’ and by social activity.”
“Almost everything the Church is doing these days has been suggested to her by the world.”
“The church’s mightiest influence is felt when she is different from the world in which she lives. Her power lies in her being different, rises with the degree in which she differs and sinks as the difference diminishes.”
“There was a day when the world followed the Church. She took the initiative; she was aggressive. But it has changed now, and we are down on our knees imitating the world. The Church is like a poor old withered hag, rather than the beautiful, full-blooded bride of the Lamb we are intended to be. That we should stand by the world’s highway and stretch our withered hand for a dime from the world is a disgrace.”
“It is now common practice in most evangelical churches to offer the people, especially the young people, a maximum of entertainment and a minimum of serious instruction. It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction is God. One can only conclude that God’s professed children are bored with Him, for they must be wooed to attend a meeting with a stick of striped candy in the form of religious movies, games and refreshments.”
“There is a passion today to be relevant. This, I believe, is one of the gods of the modern church. We will go to great lengths to prove that the message fits in nicely with the culture around us.”
“This is the day of the magnification of slick personalities, and as we magnify slick personalities, we are, in fact, minimizing God. We have church meetings in which we never see God at all. We see only the servants of God, which is a tragedy. I am afraid that we have a lot of hero worship in the church of Christ today. We are magnifying the messenger and consequently minimizing the message. The message should be of such a nature that it overshadows the messenger.”
“The only power God recognizes in His church is the power of His Spirit; whereas the only power actually recognized today by the majority of evangelicals is the power of man. God does His work by the operation of the Spirit, while Christian leaders attempt to do theirs by the power of trained and devoted intellect. Bright personality has taken the place of the divine afflatus.”
Tozer is exactly right. The way the church will again make a difference in this world will NOT come by dropping the word “church” or engaging in dozens of other useless gimmicks. It will come when we welcome God back with open arms.
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