Response #43

I'm a subscriber to "Monday Morning Insight", which is a ministry blog-type entity that have a large subscribership and a lot of opinionated people with a lot to say in response to the moderators' articles. This Monday one of the challenges was to respond to the following quotation: "If your church has been plateaued for six months, it might take six months to get it going again. If it’s been plateaued a year, it might take a year. If it’s been plateaued for 20 years, you’ve got to set in for the duration! I’m saying some people are going to have to die or leave. Moses had to wander around the desert for 40 years while God killed off a million people before he let them go into the Promised Land. That may be brutally blunt, but it’s true. There may be people in your church who love God sincerely, but who will never, ever change."

I have never responded before, but today I did; I was response #43. I'm reposting it here because I'll probably never find it again on the MMI blog, and it's something I need to keep reminding myself of.

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This quotation rings true on a practical level, however might sound harsh to those who haven’t had experience with the philisophical level. We need to remember we are dealing with a few generations of churched people raised to believe that “doing church” the way our plateaued churches have always “done church” is wrapped up with being a true Christian. Then “progressive” (to them, anyway) leaders come along with not just their Purpose-Driven-this and their new-music-that, but essentially telling them that the way they’ve always carried out their spirituality is incomplete based on their understanding of the church being incomplete.

Remember that the Pharisees didn’t reject Jesus because they were jerks (at least not all of them). Put yourselves in their shoes, and Jesus really DOES seem like a blaspheming heretic. Fast forward to now, and our churched people may very well view pastors the same way. Those people that seem to be holding the church back and keeping us plateaued or declining are often the same folks that are simply trying to hold true to what they believe to be GOD’S truth based on what the leaders that have come before have taught and modeled. 20 or 30 years ago when the church was thriving, it probably would have seemed like God’s truth to US, too.

And so the solution? We can spend years trying to change their minds, and praying that GOD will illuminate things to them where we will probably fail. But better to pray for us as leaders, that God will guard us from teaching, preaching, and modeling things that 30 years down the road our aged now-forward-thinkers will get stuck on about and plateau the church again under new, discouraged leadership. And in the meantime we need to have respect for those individuals who have a true relationship with Jesus Christ but a life time of faith experience outside of what we’re trying to do in our churches. While we can’t tolerate unchristian attitudes and actions in reaction to our efforts, we can give grace to honest questions and concerns. We can accept that they may never understand what we’re trying to do, and attempt to mobilize them in ways they DO understand but may not fit exactly into our programming plans. If they are a passionate about a programming element that doesn’t fit with our mission and vision but continues to hold great importance to them, we must encourage them to carry it out on their own terms and under their own leadership, offering support and encouragement where we can’t offer manpower from the staff. And so on.

Some may leave. And you know what? As long as they don’t stop going to church, that’s alright. Let’s face it --- there are still a lot of Jesus-loving churches that continue to do things exactly the way they’ve been done for decades. These will be Moses’ “wilderness” churches, and they will die when the people die. However, they will serve the people well enough in the meantime.

But whether they stay or leave, all we can do is continue to love and respect them, but to LEAD those who are willing to follow.