I recently had the privilege of preaching John 2:13-22, Jesus clearing the temple courts. In the process of studying this passage and its historical context I discovered two things. First, the Jewish council had approved for sacrificial animals to be sold at the temple, but that this market was placed in the Court of Gentiles which would have been a hindrance in the Jews' "evangelistic" mission of being a light to the Gentile nations. Second, this problem was only symptomatic of the greater problem, the replacement of true worship with the mechanics of worship.
The sad fact is that the church in America (not to exclude other places where this may also be the case) is in much the same condition. The mechanics of our worship (music, programs, Sunday school, service order, etc) has often replaced true worship itself. In the case of the Jews, they had forgotten that the temple was God coming to dwell with His people, and in the church we've forgotten that "church" is the presence of Christ in the world.
Francis Chan asked a good question in a message to his church. If you had never been to a church service before, but you had read the Bible a lot, when you finally visited a church service would you find what you would have expected to find based on what you read in the Bible? His observations centered around the fact that while we understand the two great commandments according to Jesus (Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself) we typically fail miserably at loving our neighbor as ourselves. Chan says, "I love [so-and-so]...but do I love him as much as I love myself? Do I care about his kids as much as my kids? Do I care about his house and his marriage as much as my house and marriage??
Chan's theory about why we do church the way we do it is because it's what past generations have fed to us. We learned what church is because of how we've seen it, but if you compare church today with the early church at its inception at Pentecost in Acts 2 you see a drastically different picture. In Acts you see people actually loving each other as themselves, giving to each other as they had need (because of the fact that they loved each other as themselves), they went house to house celebrating the Lord's Supper and remembering Christ, they devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching. And the reason for all of this was because of their excitement over what Christ had done. He was the Messiah who died and rose again. He had risen from the dead and all of the Old Testament promises of the new covenant had finally arrived.
Last night Sara and went and saw the film "Obama's America," and I think it was a film that God wanted me to see (long story, trust me). After seeing the predictions they're making about the state of our economy in America, I realized something. Several Christian missions organizations (e.g., Village Missions, InFaith) exist solely for the purpose of ministering to the church in America. Village Missions especially exists for the purpose of providing pastors to churches who cannot afford one or whose doors are about to close for financial reasons. As much as these organizations are good, and as much as I have been considering for a couple of years joining with one of them, I'm not really sure why we should consider a bad economy a threat to the body of Christ, the church which Jesus Christ Himself said He would build.
Up until recently I have held a view of what "church" is, and I now see that my view, and probably most of America's view, of church is a view of church that depends on a certain economy to thrive. This is not the view of the church in the New Testament. In the New Testament the church was the body of Christ who met together in love and fellowship and meeting one another's needs and centered on the preaching of the Word of God. This church was powered by the Holy Spirit. This church did not need money to operate like an amusement park ride. It did not cease operating when the money ran out. The Holy Spirit doesn't take cash to work. The Holy Spirit takes faith.
Large churches with expensive buildings and expensive sound and light systems and large staffs are fine. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But what happens when the economy tanks and there's no money to run services or maintain the building anymore? Is that not setting people up to see the church as failing if there's no money on account of the economy? Honestly, will the church really lose its influence and power just because it runs out of money? Didn't the church grow out of people's homes and public spaces originally? It seemed to do just fine then on account of the Holy Spirit.
I have spent most of my life holding a very unhealthy view of church, and I know that at least for me God is really working on my heart and telling me it's time for me to change. As I heard someone recently say, "We have to be the change we want to see." It's time I start truly believing in the power of the Holy Spirit again, the way they did in the great revivals. My friend and mentor Charlie was abroad doing evangelistic campaigns last summer and someone he met there had recently been to America visiting churches, and he said "It's amazing how much they can accomplish without the Holy Spirit." It's time we stop making a monotheism out of just Jesus Christ and actually embrace the whole Trinity. As certain as we evangelicals are that Christ saved us from our sins, why aren't we also just as certain of the power of the Holy Spirit?
I believe many of us in America are so materialistic that we've replaced Christianity with its mechanics, and we've set ourselves up for failure by trusting in money to run the church, and in so doing we have robbed Christ of His Church. It's time to give it back into His hands.
Lord, please bring the church to repentance, and give more of us a vision for the church as it should be. And please come and take her home quickly before things get too bad down here.
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