These are a series of lessons adapted from Jonathan Fisk’s book, Broken. All are encouraged buy Broken to get the full content in the book.
Never follow a rule that has to start over (again and again . . . and again . . . ) again.
The 5th rule every Christian should break as often as possible is this: IfWeCanJust Churchology.
Where is the Church?
Churchology (Ecclesiology): The stuff that makes a church into “the Church.” It’s what makes any gathering of people into the assembling of God’s people. A lack of this “knowledge of the Church” is the root of the fifth rule that all Christians should break.
Galatians 4:26: The heavenly Jerusalem is the free woman, and she is our mother.
1 Peter 5:13: She [the Church] who is in Babylon [Rome?], also chosen, sends you greetings, as does Mark, whom I regard as a son.
Read Revelation 12:1-6, 13-17
– How are we supposed to see “the Church”?
Once upon a time, in keeping with the language of the Apostles, Christians called the Church their “Mother.” No longer; today, American Christians–although we’re not quite sure what the Church is–are far more likely to see the Church as some doting, old, crazy lady to whom we are unfortunately related in some extended-family kind of way. She shows up at family gatherings and tells the same five stories over and over again to anyone unlucky enough to sit next to her. Most of us secretly think it would be best if we just bit the bullet and put her up in an old-folks home.
In recent years, many of us have become convinced that the problem is that she is not only that old and senile, but that she is also sick. We’re not sure how, and we’re not sure why, but we’re sure that it is true. If she wasn’t sick, then she wouldn’t look so old and feeble. She’d be young, spry, and buxom. But here we are, stuck with this nutty old bat whom, everyone calls “Church,” and we can’t quite bring ourselves to believe it. Most of us still believe that the Church is out there somewhere; we just don’t know where she is or how to find her.
Where did the Church go? No one knows.
Although we are not quite certain how any of this happened, most of us don’t think too deeply on it. Instead, we focus our energies on the hope that it is not too late. “If we can just reverse the effects,” we tell ourselves, “then before the Church vanishes altogether, we might be able to bring her back to her true form.” IfWeCanJust hunt down and administer the proper cure …
IfWeCanJust: The belief that God’s blessings for the Church can be received by us only after we have first done (you fill in the blank). IfWeCanJust, then, is nothing more than the worship of our efforts to be Church.
IfWeCanJust find it … IfWeCanJust find the silver bullet we’re seeking. Some of us scream. “We’re running out of time!” Others yell, “The innovations of our innovations must be more innovative than ever before.” We all agree, “Yes! IfWeCanJust find and try the never-before-seen-or-heard-of answers, then the Church will thrive and not perish.”
IfWeCanJust … It is a long and storied tradition–the strongest tradition of American Christianity. It is so strong that most don’t even realize that they even have this tradition. IfWeCanJust is wired into their thinking, maybe even their churchly DNA. IfWeCanJust is the perpetual quest for the perfect Church to whom we can point to and say, “Look! Those are God’s people.” And we believe more firmly than any doctrine that this “Church” can be found only on the other side of our renovations to whatever the current “Church” is. The lie behind it all is founded on two basic assumptions.
- The first assumption is that the gnarled, slightly cranky old woman bearing her crosses before us is not the Church that Jesus intended her to be. She is, instead, some half-leftover shell of the real Church, sickened and dilapidated until we can barely be certain the Holy Spirit is in her at all.
- The second assumption is that Jesus has surely left it up to us to fix her.
Ephesians 4:11-13
Pastor’s overly literal translation
And He [Jesus] Himself gave–on the one hand, apostles; on the other, the prophets, the evangelists, and pastor-teachers–[for what purpose?] to the equipment of the saints, into work of service, into [the] edifice of the body of Christ, until we may all come to the fullness, into the oneness of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, into complete manhood, into the full measure of maturity of Christ . . .
Only one verb is in these verses: “gave”
– Who is doing the giving?
These verses do not show us as doing the doing but, instead, being moved into three areas (note by the accusative form of the prepositions in the Greek):
- The equipment we are to have as Christ’s saints,
- work of service, and
- the structure of the Body of Christ
This is for a specific purpose: unity and maturity, Christ’s maturity.
– When the verse is mistranslated, who is diminished? Who is exalted?
– What difference does this make anyway?
When we misunderstand these verses, the Church becomes all about us (IfWeCanJust…) and what we have to do. Yet, the only verb in this passage has Christ doing the doing, with us being faithful, so we are brought into His maturity.
The Idolatry of Worship
We Lutherans started out as excommunicated Roman Catholics. So our IfWeCanJust thinking intuitively starts with, “IfWeCanJust get rid of all the Catholic stuff, then we can come up with worship the way God wants it.”
When the non-Lutheran Reformation first hit the ground, some groups said, “If it’s not in the Bible, then we won’t use it; only the Psalms, no instruments!” But you can see how long hope in that silver bullet lasted. Just visit your nearest church some Sunday.
Others eventually noticed that getting rid of instruments hadn’t really fixed anything. They suggested, “Well, IfWeCanJust use some instruments but only with the Psalms, then our people will get more inspired by the words. Then our churches will be more alive.”
But it wasn’t long before someone else was saying, “I like all these instruments just fine, but do all the tunes and words have to be so melancholy? Maybe IfWeCanJust get the music to sound more uplifting, then our churches will really take off.”
Another says, “Hey, have you seen what those people over there are doing? They’re really bringing in the crowds. You can even see signs of the Spirit’s presence among them. Maybe IfWeCanJust make the music more catchy, then some of these visitors might stick around.”
It keeps going. “That’s the ticket! Why stick with all these dead-letter prayers anyway? The Spirit is life. We need prayers from the heart and sermons that aren’t written. Surely, that will make a difference.” “Yeah, and why should only the pastor preach? Surely, IfWeCanJust get everyone to participate in worship, then we’ll see the churches really grow.”
“Hey, how about letting the youth lead worship?” “Why can’t women preach?” “You know, this is the age of entertainment. We can’t expect people to understand anything unless we present it in drama. Jesus taught in parables after all.” “Whoa … did you notice that this amp goes to 11?” Wham, bang, boom.
Today, we have even more churches, more divisions, more styles, more sects, more buildings, and more variation in worship than you can shake a kaleidoscope at. There’s a fallen silver thread running through it all, and it is a mad optimism in the ability of our music and prayers to be the essence of the Church, to make us real Church.
Yet not once in all the constant updating of worship experiences does abundance flow out over the churches. “Maybe the problem is all these denominations and their worship traditions,” someone says. “Maybe IfWeCanJust be plain ‘Christian’ then we’d really see things get going.” But wait a minute, now we’re back to what and where is the Church.
What way of worship will really help us be the true Church? Where can I find a congregation that has an authentic conduit to God’s Spirit? If we don’t know what we are or where the Church is, then our silver-bullet solution (which is faulty to begin with) will never hit its mark anyway. But that doesn’t stop the IfWeCanJust theology in the Church today.
– Discuss.
Churchly Pornography
The Church today is like a young man who has watched hours of pornography. Because of his pornography addiction, he has been trained to expect what he sees on the screen. And so in his life, he goes from party to party and club to club searching the woman (women?) to fulfill his fantasies.
He meets woman after woman. With each woman, after the first night’s stand and a few follow-up phone calls, he starts to notice her flaws. He sees the flabby spots and the wrinkles already forming beside her eyes. Her breath smells after she eats garlic, and she expects him to get out of bed and shower before she’ll hug him in the morning.
Next thing you know, he’s back at the parties, once more searching for the immaculate woman he expects to find. He hardly knows he is doing it. He thinks he is looking for love. He believes he is searching for the perfect romance. But the problem is that he isn’t looking for love of any kind. He is not looking for a real woman at all. He is looking for pornography.
The way that porn works to destroy the expectations of a young man looking for his lifelong love is the same way silver-bullet churchology works to undermine faith in God and His Church. Porn begins to poison a young man by showing him an image of a woman beyond his wildest dreams. Then, it shows him another. Then, it shows him another. Again and again, it lifts up a newer, better, more recent, more enhanced picture of what his romantic (sexual) life could be until, without realizing it, he begins to believe that it should be that way!
Without even knowing it, he begins comparing every woman he meets to the (entirely unrealistic) fantasy images he believes in. The end result is that he can never be content in any relationship with a real woman. He finds himself moving from one to another, casting longing eyes about him, even while out in public with the woman he is momentarily semi-committed to. No matter who she is, she can never live up to the image he believes she must be–not because she is a failure–but because he is addicted to women who don’t exist.
2 Peter 2:14: With eyes full of adultery, they cannot get enough of sin. They seduce the unstable and have hearts trained in greed. They are an accursed brood!
Silver-bullet churchology is the Church’s pornography. Pornography feeds people with falsely perfected images of impossibly idealized sexuality until they cannot find contentment in any real relationship. In the same way, “IfWeCanJust” theology preaches a falsely perfected vision of an impossibly idealized “Church” until no congregation can live up to its expectations.
The manipulated images of “what Church should be” teaches us not to love the Church as she really is, but instead to lust after a Church that can never be. As a result, we treat our congregations the way young women are being trained to treat themselves. We try to squeeze our “Church” into a tighter dress, thinking this might better turn the eyes of visitors who glance our way. We put fake eyelashes on her and paint her lipstick a brighter red.
Just like the effects of porn on young men, the average American Christian is only further trained to expect from the Church something that she is not. Like the young man clicking from image to image on the Internet, the Christian begins to hop from congregation to congregation. Except now the rush of new experience lasts a shorter and shorter time. By doing all we can to dandy up our “Church” to attract some visitors, we ourselves begin to fall prey to our own propaganda.
Forget that for 2,000 years Christians were comforted in the arms of the Church, calling her Mother. Forget that she has always been imperfect because she has always been made up of sinners. Forget that her true beauty has always been the hidden faith of a gentle and quiet spirit, steadfast in comfort, graceful in blemishes, wise in age, and in God’s sight very precious. Forget all that.
Today, we expect her to be a trophy wife. We’ve wasted our last pennies on plastic surgery, insisting that she play the harlot for anyone who happens to drop by. And all we’ve gained is a spirituality that excels in training Christians to worship their covetousness. The result is not a Christianity steadfast in commitment to the Word. The result is not a Christianity steadfastly aware that Church is a life together bearing with the weaknesses and burdens of one another. The result is not Christians steadfastly believing we are a congregation of sinners assembling to receive communal forgiveness. The result is a trend of disappointment, church shopping, denomination hopping, spiritual frustration, and eventual religious impotence.
But with every disappointment, with every love lost, more and more church shoppers only visit and never join any of the churches at all. To this shortage of commitment, the cry goes up that we must start over. We must renew our vision. We must think out of the box even further. We must seek even more radical forms of change. Like a young man recently broken up with his latest fling, we try to medicate our heartbreak by looking at even more porn. IfWeCanJust!
– Discuss.
Getting Off the Hamster Wheel of Church Porn
Galatians 3:1a, 2-3: You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?… I want to learn only this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the actions of the Law or by believing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having started out with the Spirit, are you now going to be made complete by the flesh?
The Church on earth will always be weak, sick, and fragile. But the authority with which God Himself preaches to us is anything but weak. He preaches that His Church is strong, sound, and unbreakable because He is unbreakable, because His Word is sound, because His resurrection is strong enough for all mankind. As those being brought into the Church, we live by faith that we are this Church because of Jesus. The churchology that we are Church because of Him must be our unshakable faith. “I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.”
Here is your redemption. Here is your saving, world-judging, paradise-ushering Lord. He enters even now with every authority in heaven and earth, with promises to wash you and teach you, so you remember through faith what you should never forget: you have no need to start over. “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46: 10).
Already Done
Titus 3:5-8: God saved us because of his mercy, not because of anything we have done to gain his approval. Instead, he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit [that’s baptism!], whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior. So, since we have been made righteous by his grace, we have become heirs with the confident expectation of eternal life.
This is the lonely way of true churchology. It stands against the traditions of men. Like a little ship caught up in a perfect storm, the hope is not in the passengers but in the Pilot.
The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord. He is the past, the future, and the present (Hebrews 13: 8). This Gospel will never be as glamorous as the hunt for a silver bullet to perfect life in the present evil age, because this Word will always be preaching about a cross, a death, and our iniquities that caused it. But it is only in this cross that we also hear the promise of something worth more than silver or gold–an eternal, empty tomb.
This is the only churchology that can never be broken. For it is the only churchology not dependent on you! You don’t even have to start over to believe it. It’s been the same answer yesterday, today, and forever.
Click here to go to the next lesson.
