By Corey Fields
It has been interesting to watch the buzz over the recent Pew study looking at religious affiliation between 2007 and 2014. Although I’m very thankful to Pew for their incredible work in pulling together the hard data, we’re seeing a widespread reaction (both from within and outside Christianity) that is disproportionate to the amount of surprising data the report contains (which is little to none).
Somehow, it seems like the institutional church is just now beginning to really grapple with the reality. As Canadian pastor Erik Parker pointed out, however, it is not as unprecedented as many seem to think. “The Golden Era of church attendance in the 1950s was the abnormality,” he wrote.
The Pew report has even spawned a somewhat controversial illustration by Christian cartoonist Adam Ford in which he toys with the idea that the numerical decline is at least partially attributable to nominal Christians dropping the label now that it has become less socially advantageous to identify as Christian. There is probably truth to this.
Numerical decline didn’t seem to worry Jesus as much as it does us. In John 6, after delivering what his followers criticized as an unacceptable and “hard teaching,” Jesus said, “Does this offend you?” Verse 66 tells us, “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” Jesus was also known to caution would-be followers about his homeless lifestyle (Matt 8:19-20) and encouraged people to “count the cost” before making the life-altering decision to follow him (Luke 14:25-33). Jesus clearly needed a marketing director.
Largely driven by the well-meaning church growth movement of earlier decades, our reactionary response to numerical decline has facilitated a gradual and largely unnoticed shift: the church itself has become the object — the end game — of God’s mission, rather than the instrument. A congregation can entice, attract and invite new people to join them, but when growth itself has become the mission, we’re not making disciples but seeking warm bodies. Numerical growth is value-neutral. The question is, ‘To what are people being attracted?’
What I want to suggest to the Church is that, if we can find a way to pry ourselves loose from panic or survival mode, we still have a tremendous and crucial role to play in our culture today. We have a niche no one else is filling, and we have a message no one else is preaching.
What is that role, that message? Well, it’s the way of Jesus.
I’m sure that sounds obvious. It may even sound trite. However, Jesus’ life and teachings were far from obvious or trite. He preached love of and prayer for one’s enemies (Matt 5:44). He preached and modeled self-sacrificial service (John 13:12-17). He told parables in which the “good guy” was someone normally despised by his listeners (Luke 10:25-37). He told fellow working people, weary and belittled from Rome’s impressment policy, to “go the extra mile” (Matt 5:41). He lifted up the socially unpresentable, broke social convention, and ventured to places and people considered unclean by the religious establishment when that’s what it took to communicate God’s grace and forgiveness.
Such is not the message of mainstream America, whether on the right or the left, religious or not. In a culture increasingly unaware of what the Christian message is, “we are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us” (2 Cor. 5:20). Where Christ is becoming increasingly obscured behind a veil of culture wars and political agendas, we must remember that “Christ has no body but ours; no hands, no feet on earth but ours” (Teresa of Avila).
Have we been too willing to jump on cultural and political bandwagons? While the major political parties argue over how to help the middle class, who is talking about the poor? While our culture watches to find out who the bachelor proposes to or clamors over other celebrities, who is noticing the faceless and voiceless — “the least of these”? While we battle each other over our competing individual liberties, who is saying, “I value you above myself” (Phil. 2:3)?
Our churches’ desperate need for more people may have made us forget the world’s desperate need. There is still a desperate need for the water of life that doesn’t leave one thirsty again (John 4:13-14). There is still a desperate need to hear what Walter Brueggemann calls “a word from elsewhere.”
Jesus called his followers to live the ethics of the Kingdom of God, where “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” (Matt 20:26). It’s a kingdom where even someone being tortured to death can say, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). This is the stuff of the road less traveled, the narrow gate (Matt 7:13-14). It sounds good from the pulpit, but I frequently witness even Christians criticizing Jesus’ teachings as unrealistic or “weak” when put to real-life situations.
This is our charge, however, and perhaps now is a ripe time to find out if we really believe in this stuff; if we are willing to see the world from a God’s-eye view.
In particular, we have a tremendous word to speak to our world regarding who we are as people. Paul J. Wadell writes of this very powerfully:
Christian theology, at its best, insists that the key point is not what makes us persons, but who makes us persons. The problem with focusing on what makes us persons, whether it is our rationality, our freedom, our call to be responsible, or our conscience, is that anyone who lacks any of these criteria can be removed from human consideration. … Beginning with the question of who makes us persons teaches us that our lives are gifts, not our own possession, and that our human dignity does not depend on us possessing any particular capacity, talent, or ability.
While the rest of society may give up on the delinquent, forget the disabled, or dehumanize those who do wrong, the follower of Jesus stubbornly says, “This, too, is a child of God.”
We have sanitized Jesus and allowed him to become an abstraction kept a safe distance. Perhaps our problem is that we have too many believers and not enough disciples. As Rachel Held Evans once wrote, “We have created a culture in which Christians tend to see Jesus as a sort of static mechanism by which salvation is secured rather than the full embodiment of God’s will for the world whose life and teachings we are called to emulate and follow.”
As a result, the proclaiming of Kingdom values sometimes gets us in trouble with the religious establishment, just as it did Jesus. Pastor Brian Zahnd of Word of Life Church says this happened to him when he decided to preach a whole sermon series on the Sermon on the Mount. His fast-growing mega-church all of a sudden saw people begin to leave for a much safer message. At MidAmerica Nazarene University, many believe it was no coincidence that Randy Beckum’s demotion from vice president came a week after his Feb. 10 sermon in which he asked students to consider whether Jesus’ teachings might be in contrast with a culture of violence, guns and militarism.
The role for today’s ‘declining’ church is to return to that original call to “make disciples” (Matt 28:19), something that LeRoy Eims was calling a “lost art” even back in 1978. Making and becoming disciples: that lifelong process in which our values, priorities, and lifestyle gradually morph into those of Jesus. It’s a transformative journey unequaled by anything else we can market, but something I fear can easily fall by the wayside in the midst of worry over shrinking budgets.
Of course, someone may ask, “What are we to do about those shrinking budgets and emptying pews?” It’s not that this is an unreasonable question. It is indeed a reality many of us are dealing with. It’s just that I think Jesus has already given us an answer: “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt 6:33).