There are a lot of people looking for change in the church.  I’m one of them.  But what does that look like?  What is the fundamental beginning place? Too often the change we adopt is merely a reaction to what we don’t like and we tend to go in the opposite direction.  I responded to someone’s blog a few days ago in which that very reaction was found amongst the comments and I asked:

“Why do we make it an either or?  Programs or relationships…institution or unorthodox gatherings…theological or spiritual…structured or unstructured…out there or in here. 

All of this “either or” is a smokescreen for saying, “we don’t want to do it your way”.  Because no matter what we do, and how we do it, when people gather, there is structure…there is program…there is theology…there is spirituality …there is relationship – healthy or not…there is someone “in” and someone “out”.

Unfortunately, what the whole church has missed in our generation, in all of its expressions, is that we are called to a ministry of reconciliation both amongst us and beyond us – a ministry that begins when we come into covenant relationship with Christ and one another, is fed only by the common and primary language of prayer, and must be pursued, even if it costs us our “lives” (our precious positions, standing, influence, etc). 

We are called to love…to allow Jesus to pray us into relationships with people we would rather avoid (as Peterson would put it). 

All of the new forms of church may be exciting, even somewhat effective for a season, but they do not answer what most desperately needs answering…why do we avoid the ministry of reconciliation?  Why don’t we name sin in the church?  Why don’t we name those who sin?  Why don’t we love those who sin?  The kind of love that says we do life together…discover redemption together through each other’s need for it…that removes the “us vs them” that has no place in our hearts, especially in the church.

I like what Peterson says:  “We will never get love right if we don’t get sin right and the looming difficulty in getting sin right is our propensity to minimize or deny it…when improvements need to be made in our communities, sin is not ordinarily targeted as the place to start.”

Are we called to the radical and non religious?  Absolutely!  But until we do that within our walls, we have no credibility beyond our walls.  We are like the man who is successful in business but goes home and abuses his family. 

We need real change – not reactive change, and that change must begin within our own hearts – as I wrote in an earlier blog, quoting a common phrase – we need to be the change we are looking for. 

We need to learn a complete new way of doing things – a way to which we have no reference point other than what Jesus did.  We need to look at him and his ministry again – not to figure out what made him such a great leader (he didn’t come to be an example of great leadership) but to see, really take a good long look and see, the people he ministered to – they were his focus.  Why? 

Because, what is completely unorthodox and what alone will bring the change so many are hungry for will not be found in the ways and places we gather together.  It will be found when we prefer the wisdom of a child.  It will be found when we listen to the voice of the one we would rather not hear.  It will be found when we learn to love the people we would rather avoid.  It will be found when leadership becomes hidden because we would rather identify the forgotten and marginalized amongst us as “the greatest in the kingdom”.  Did you notice that is what Jesus did when his disciples argued about who was the greatest?  He didn’t point to himself (which he alone could rightfully have done) but brought a young child into the midst…a virtual nobody in his day…and said “unless you become as one of these you won’t even enter”, and we could add, “never mind be great”.

To pursue this kind of change requires a radical reorientation of our hearts.  And that reorientation will include becoming aware of the sin within us that blocks love for others and love for God.  There is no other way.  This is not denying that we are new creations and that the old has passed away.  It is reinforcing these things – only those who know a covenant relationship with God through Christ have the courageous orientation to allow God to expose their hearts so that he can remove the sin and in its place make room for love.

I am taking a sabbatical this year to explore new ways of gathering, and to come before God to learn to love in ways beyond what I have learned to this point. It is not so much to leave what I have known, but to take the fences off my playground…to not limit God to place and time and familiar ways…it is to give God intentional access beyond what has already been my experience.  It is to allow him to lead me to people he wants to walk with through me…people who aren’t going to show up in our various gathering places whether at a church building or someone’s living room or in a coffee shop.

How about you?  What will your role be in discovering a different church? What would it look like for you to take the fences off your playground?

Peace