A person close to me who is an ardent follower of Jesus and pretty cynical about church asked me recently, “Can the church practice the virtues it teaches, for example, contentment?”
The question set me thinking: Are we ever content in the church we are part of?
Contentment is a deep form of happiness, the kind Jesus called blessedness in his Beatitudes. I once heard a lecture on happiness by a New Testament scholar. He said for him the deepest meaning of happiness is contentment.
Stephen Shoemaker
He described his grandfather who, at the table, would savor what was on his plate, never ask for more, then when finished would push his plate away and say, “Thank you, God.” Contentment is a form of the classical and Christian virtue of temperance, although not as we normally think about it.
Can a church be happy, content with who they are? Most churches I know are wracked with anxiety and self-doubt. And its ministers are as well. The admission of St. Paul lets me know it’s been around a long time. Along with his list of calamities, he closed: “And besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.” We are with you, brother Paul!
When I was growing up, we looked for an increase in members, baptisms and financial growth as a sign we were on the right track. In the early days, there was a board at the front of the church, to the right of the pulpit, where Sunday school and worship attendance and offering statistics were displayed. I have friends who grew up in evangelical churches where going out witnessing for Jesus was a requirement and proof of your true devotion to Jesus.
For insecure teenagers, this was really hard. Annie Dillard tells of a young boy who knocked on her door and asked when she opened it, “Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” She responded, “No, but I think I know your parents.”
“Can a church be happy, content with who they are?”
That kind of church. I do not mean to make fun of the sincere desire to lead others to Christ but to underline the anxiety many young people felt trying to follow what was being asked of them.
Do Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount ever apply to churches? Matthew 6:25-33 says: “Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, or about your body, what you shall wear! … Look at the birds of the air. … Consider the lilies. … O, little faith ones! … But seek first his kingdom, and all these things will be added to you.”
Or these words from Paul in Philippians 4:6-7, do these apply to the church, not just people in the church? “Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Peace, and its offspring, contentment. If the church in worship for a whole season, like Advent or Lent, might hear these words as the benediction each Sunday as they leave, something might be released.
One dimension of the virtue of temperance is attaining, or being given, a more modest state of being, not wanting overmuch, content with what we have. Wendell Berry has a poem called “The Wild Geese” that settles my spirit:
Geese appear high above us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for a new earth and heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.
Bill Wilson of the Center for Healthy Churches said after the pandemic the greatest challenge for the church coming out of the public health crisis was to be able to “manage their anxiety.” Our anxiety may have metastasized since, with a perfect storm of challenges.
But can the church be content, quiet in heart and in mind, clear? Can we be all right with the size of our church or the size of our budget? Can we escape the corroding nature of nostalgia for earlier times for the church?
A wonderful man at Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville when I was there, Paul Debusman, a librarian at Southern Seminary, would sometimes remind us of Luke 13:32 and the words of Jesus: “Fear not, little flock, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
“If we can show a little light of the kingdom in our midst, that would be enough.”
It might mean this: “Rest your anxious minds and hearts, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Here is the kingdom as gift, not attainment. Don’t wring your hands in worry; open your hands to receive it. And in the kingdom, we may ask, what is little and what is great? Jesus had a few things to say about that. If we can show a little light of the kingdom in our midst, that would be enough. Not fireworks, a little light.
Once after a sermon at Crescent Hill Baptist, William Hendricks, an extraordinary theologian at Southern Seminary next door, passed me in the foyer and said in the way only he could say it, “That was an adequate sermon!” He got the punctured look on my face he expected.
Early in the week he called to say, “When a sermon is adequate to the gospel, that is sufficient. You have done your job!” I learned later I was not the first young preacher he had taught this lesson! Adequate? To the gospel? That is enough.
Temperance is a modesty of being, not wanting overmuch. Carlyle Marney once translated Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart,” this way: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will change your wanter!” Then he added, “There are some things we cannot afford to want.”
We can be intemperate even in the pursuit of spiritual ends. In John Hersey’s novel about American missionaries in China in the early 20th century, The Call, the main character is a young and earnest missionary named David Treadup. Hersey observes:
What is moving in his story, what may be in the end be thought to redeem the obvious failure of his mission to China is his lifelong struggle to subdue the greater but sicker saint in himself and give himself to a more modest state of being: one of balance, sanity, serenity and realized human love.
That I still remember this passage decades after I read it may say more about me than I wish to reveal. But this “more modest state of being” is a beautiful description of the spiritual virtue of temperance.
In a culture possessed with the desire for more, what is enough? It is a question for the church. How do we measure our success? That question itself may be the wrong question, but it is the question our culture bids us to ask.
Perhaps we should start with Jesus’ Beatitudes, which turn upside down the wisdom of the world on such matters. We might consider the mission of the church anew. Clarity there might help.
Richard Niebuhr defined it as “the increase in the love of God and neighbor.” Just a little increase week by week is enough.
Pope Francis defined our mission this way: “The church should be a place of God’s mercy and hope where all feel welcomed, loved, forgiven and encouraged.”
Maybe those words should be on the board at the front of the church to the right of the pulpit instead of a tally of numbers. And with the help of God and the kingdom which God in God’s good pleasure gives us, may that be our aim and our sufficiency.
Stephen Shoemaker most recently served as pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Statesville, N.C. He previously served as pastor of Myers Park Baptist in Charlotte, N.C.; Broadway Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas; and Crescent Hill Baptist in Louisville, Ky.