When a church is actually not helping.
When a church is actually not helping.
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Last edited by Jill on Thu Feb 17, 2011 7:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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darinhouston
- Posts: 3114
- Joined: Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:45 am
Re: When a church is actually hurting not helping.
Hmmm. A very uncomfortable topic indeed. In what context do you ask?
Re: When a church is actually hurting not helping.
One is free to do these things, as far as scripture is concerned. Whether one is able to do them is another question.Is everybody entirely free to leave a church body at any given time without any wierdness or bad feelings.
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darinhouston
- Posts: 3114
- Joined: Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:45 am
Re: When a church is actually hurting not helping.
I'll go so far as to say if you find a church body that isn't receptive to you "checking them out" it's not the place you want to be. You can count on weirdness if you "join" and don't show allegiance, but I think one should be able to attend various gatherings at various times whenever to fellowship with the entire body (just as I visit my in-laws sometimes, my folks sometimes, my cousins sometimes, sometimes we have family reunions or larger gatherings, etc), but it's difficult for folks wedded to traditional forms of church membership to understand that heart.
That said, I think there's value in "settling in" where you find a receptive and comfortable body so that you have more of a shared life and support and encouragement and the like.
That said, I think there's value in "settling in" where you find a receptive and comfortable body so that you have more of a shared life and support and encouragement and the like.
Re: When a church is actually hurting not helping.
I think it comes down to control. To the extent that a church organization tries to control people, it is unhealthy. The only control that is acceptable in the church is self-control.
My blog: http://dannycoleman.blogspot.com
“Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read’st black where I read white.”
-- William Blake
“Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read’st black where I read white.”
-- William Blake
Re: When a church is actually hurting not helping.
I often hear preachers say that the Church is “God’s best idea” for healing, growth of Christians, changing the world, etc. I think such a statement can be true, but must be clarified, lest it bring a reproach upon the intelligence of God, and the value of His ideas.
According to scripture, attending a religious meeting with the label of “church” is not always beneficial, and can even make things worse than they were before the gathering (1 Cor.11:17).
It is no doubt true that the Body of Christ, biblically speaking, is the best thing that God could imagine or create, but this is hardly the way most people will understand the statement. One has the impression that organizations like the ones of which they are leaders represent their idea of “the Church,” and, therefore, that a group like theirs is the best thing that they think God could come up with.
It can hardly be denied by anyone acquainted with the facts that the spiritual benefit that some (most?) institutional churches do for their members is usually modest (judging from the spiritual condition of many who have attended for years), and that the damage done through them is often serious. One problem with such churches is the fact that they welcome unconverted people to be a part of their regular services. A related problem is that they preach a very compromised message to their “audiences” and accept into “membership” such people as respond to their watered-down message, without ever demanding that such people really make a surrender to the lordship of Christ. As a result of these policies, churches end up having scandalous behavior in their midst, which they hardly know what to do about. In fact, they often do little or nothing, resulting in the church losing its saltiness and having no further value than to be cast out and trodden underfoot by men.
The situation is aggravated by the unbiblical solutions that the leaders often seek to employ in order to remedy the effects of the problem of carnality. Since they fill their congregations with unconverted and unspiritual people who have no internal controls (which they would have if they were spiritual believers), it seems necessary to impose external controls—just as one would with rebellious children. If you are not going to fill the congregation with self-controlled, spiritual people, you must control them another way, lest the organization be fraught with frequent scandals. If scandals become too much of an embarrassment, instead of practicing church discipline, it is more common to make carnal religious laws and to impose guilt to control carnal religious people. This requires the leaders to take on a more political, controlling role. Since this is how the leaders of the pagans behave, the church begins to have the characteristics of pagan organizations.
Thus, what usually goes by the name of a church, in our time, is essentially like a religious club, holding meetings to which non-members may be brought, in hopes that they may eventually be recruited into the club. The ideal club meeting is one in which there are very many non-members in attendance, who can potentially become members—if the club activities can be made to seem pleasing and desirable to them.
The purpose of the club, apparently, is to provide periodical meetings for all people who can be persuaded to attend them. The duties associated with "membership" include the supporting of the club with the payment of dues, the learning of the rules and protocol of the club, volunteering to assist in club projects, and recruiting others into the club. The advertised benefits of joining the club vary. In some cases, the promise is that those who are members in good standing are guaranteed a place in heaven, rather than the hell to which non-members must look forward. Others are promised prosperity and good health as a benefit of belonging, while others run twelve-step recovery programs promising to assist chronically troubled people in making a better life for themselves.
I think that most of the preachers who say that church is God’s best idea would admit that some churches, being barely orthodox or barely Christian, would not qualify for this high praise. What makes their group different? In all likelihood the answer would be found in what their church is doing differently from others—e.g. preaching the Bible, supporting missionaries, helping the local poor, providing counseling services, etc.
Any group of unsaved people (given sufficient motivation) could mechanically do the things that an evangelical church does—e.g., obtain a tax-exemption, conduct meetings on Sunday mornings, elect leaders to run their organization, buy a Powerpoint projection system, hire or recruit a worship band, sing memorized or printed songs, listen to a religious lecture (even an orthodox one from the Bible), collect an offering, bow their heads with their eyes closed while listening to a pastoral prayer, ritualistically imbibe a particle of bread and a thimbleful of grape juice, conduct a pot luck dinner after the meeting, etc.—but doing these things would not qualify this group of unbelievers as a genuine branch of the true “Church.” The distinction between the true Church and any given gathered group calling itself by that label is not determined by a difference in what they do, but rather in the difference in what they are.
What distinguishes the real Church is that it is comprised of the actual members of Christ’s Body, all of them disciples of Jesus (with the possible exception of their unconverted, young children), all of them possessing His Spirit, and all of them committed to His lordship, gathered as an assembly of believers—and gathered precisely because they all are believers. What constitutes membership in the Body of Christ is a shared experience of repentance and faith in God, a shared commitment to follow Jesus at any cost, beginning with baptism, and a shared receiving of the indwelling Spirit of Christ.
The biblical analogies of church assemblies would be those of a family gathering, or of the mustered troops gathered to receive instructions from the Commander-in-Chief, or of living stones assembled into a living building to provide an earthly domicile for the Creator and a place of His meeting with people, or of limbs and organs attached to a body and to each other by a unique bond, each performing the tasks assigned to them by their common Head. When members of the true Church gather, what makes them such is not what they do, but what they are.
If churches would close their doors for one year, disband their organizations, dismiss their memberships and reopen a year later without members or leaders, it might be possible to build a biblical congregation from the ground up (as Paul did). I have come to think that there is no less-radical means of transforming existing institutional churches into real gatherings of the true Body of Christ. This could, quite possibly, be God's best idea.
According to scripture, attending a religious meeting with the label of “church” is not always beneficial, and can even make things worse than they were before the gathering (1 Cor.11:17).
It is no doubt true that the Body of Christ, biblically speaking, is the best thing that God could imagine or create, but this is hardly the way most people will understand the statement. One has the impression that organizations like the ones of which they are leaders represent their idea of “the Church,” and, therefore, that a group like theirs is the best thing that they think God could come up with.
It can hardly be denied by anyone acquainted with the facts that the spiritual benefit that some (most?) institutional churches do for their members is usually modest (judging from the spiritual condition of many who have attended for years), and that the damage done through them is often serious. One problem with such churches is the fact that they welcome unconverted people to be a part of their regular services. A related problem is that they preach a very compromised message to their “audiences” and accept into “membership” such people as respond to their watered-down message, without ever demanding that such people really make a surrender to the lordship of Christ. As a result of these policies, churches end up having scandalous behavior in their midst, which they hardly know what to do about. In fact, they often do little or nothing, resulting in the church losing its saltiness and having no further value than to be cast out and trodden underfoot by men.
The situation is aggravated by the unbiblical solutions that the leaders often seek to employ in order to remedy the effects of the problem of carnality. Since they fill their congregations with unconverted and unspiritual people who have no internal controls (which they would have if they were spiritual believers), it seems necessary to impose external controls—just as one would with rebellious children. If you are not going to fill the congregation with self-controlled, spiritual people, you must control them another way, lest the organization be fraught with frequent scandals. If scandals become too much of an embarrassment, instead of practicing church discipline, it is more common to make carnal religious laws and to impose guilt to control carnal religious people. This requires the leaders to take on a more political, controlling role. Since this is how the leaders of the pagans behave, the church begins to have the characteristics of pagan organizations.
Thus, what usually goes by the name of a church, in our time, is essentially like a religious club, holding meetings to which non-members may be brought, in hopes that they may eventually be recruited into the club. The ideal club meeting is one in which there are very many non-members in attendance, who can potentially become members—if the club activities can be made to seem pleasing and desirable to them.
The purpose of the club, apparently, is to provide periodical meetings for all people who can be persuaded to attend them. The duties associated with "membership" include the supporting of the club with the payment of dues, the learning of the rules and protocol of the club, volunteering to assist in club projects, and recruiting others into the club. The advertised benefits of joining the club vary. In some cases, the promise is that those who are members in good standing are guaranteed a place in heaven, rather than the hell to which non-members must look forward. Others are promised prosperity and good health as a benefit of belonging, while others run twelve-step recovery programs promising to assist chronically troubled people in making a better life for themselves.
I think that most of the preachers who say that church is God’s best idea would admit that some churches, being barely orthodox or barely Christian, would not qualify for this high praise. What makes their group different? In all likelihood the answer would be found in what their church is doing differently from others—e.g. preaching the Bible, supporting missionaries, helping the local poor, providing counseling services, etc.
Any group of unsaved people (given sufficient motivation) could mechanically do the things that an evangelical church does—e.g., obtain a tax-exemption, conduct meetings on Sunday mornings, elect leaders to run their organization, buy a Powerpoint projection system, hire or recruit a worship band, sing memorized or printed songs, listen to a religious lecture (even an orthodox one from the Bible), collect an offering, bow their heads with their eyes closed while listening to a pastoral prayer, ritualistically imbibe a particle of bread and a thimbleful of grape juice, conduct a pot luck dinner after the meeting, etc.—but doing these things would not qualify this group of unbelievers as a genuine branch of the true “Church.” The distinction between the true Church and any given gathered group calling itself by that label is not determined by a difference in what they do, but rather in the difference in what they are.
What distinguishes the real Church is that it is comprised of the actual members of Christ’s Body, all of them disciples of Jesus (with the possible exception of their unconverted, young children), all of them possessing His Spirit, and all of them committed to His lordship, gathered as an assembly of believers—and gathered precisely because they all are believers. What constitutes membership in the Body of Christ is a shared experience of repentance and faith in God, a shared commitment to follow Jesus at any cost, beginning with baptism, and a shared receiving of the indwelling Spirit of Christ.
The biblical analogies of church assemblies would be those of a family gathering, or of the mustered troops gathered to receive instructions from the Commander-in-Chief, or of living stones assembled into a living building to provide an earthly domicile for the Creator and a place of His meeting with people, or of limbs and organs attached to a body and to each other by a unique bond, each performing the tasks assigned to them by their common Head. When members of the true Church gather, what makes them such is not what they do, but what they are.
If churches would close their doors for one year, disband their organizations, dismiss their memberships and reopen a year later without members or leaders, it might be possible to build a biblical congregation from the ground up (as Paul did). I have come to think that there is no less-radical means of transforming existing institutional churches into real gatherings of the true Body of Christ. This could, quite possibly, be God's best idea.
Re: When a church is actually hurting not helping.
Whoo! Good post Steve!
My blog: http://dannycoleman.blogspot.com
“Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read’st black where I read white.”
-- William Blake
“Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read’st black where I read white.”
-- William Blake