Strong
Church/Weak Church 3
Last week, we saw that the church at
Jerusalem had some wonderful strengths, but it certainly was not a perfect
church. What does Scripture reveal about its weaknesses and what might that
teach us about our own church?
The first weakness I see in Jerusalem
is that it was a big church.
“Wait a minute, Tom. Didn’t you say
last week that was a strength?”
I did. It is also a weakness. Why?
Well, a big church is usually so exciting that no one wants to leave it. They
want to stay right there, enjoy the high-class music and high-quality
preaching. They want the programs and schools for their kids. They want the
cachet that comes from being part of the biggest, the greatest, the best church
since Pentecost.
In college, I used to call this the
gold-coat ministry. Some guy was called to the ministry and headed off to Bible
college. While there he met a beautiful gal and started having children. His
graduation date slipped further away, or perhaps arrived and then passed
without him getting a position in the ministry. Perhaps he got into a little
debt, or his wife had some health trouble. Before you know it, his dreams of
the pastorate had vanished, and he settled for being one of a hundred other
ushers wearing gold coats and taking the offering on a Sunday.
I am not trying to criticize ushers,
and I realize there are many contributing factors that enter into a man’s
decision not to enter the pastoral ministry. But the simple truth is, big
churches all too often become magnets, pulling people away from smaller church
and then never letting them go. I am not saying that is their intention, but it
is often their effect.
God, in His sovereign wisdom, chose to
allow persecution to come to that big church in Jerusalem and the context shows
us the direct positive consequence. And Saul was consenting unto his death.
And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at
Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea
and Samaria, except the apostles (Acts 8.1). As for Saul, he made havock of the
church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to
prison. Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching
the word (Acts 8.3-4). The earthly result of this scattering-induced
preaching, is that Christianity went from being a small, geographically
centered, ethnically limited, backwater sect to a Roman Empire wide religion.
Why is it that we do not know how so many of the churches in the New Testament
started? Because they started themselves. Men fled Jerusalem, fled Palestine,
and as the Christian Diaspora traced the lines of the Jewish Diaspora, churches
sprang up everywhere.
We have this American mindset that
seems to say God wants all ministries to grow, to thrive as we see it. But God
wanted John the Baptist’s ministry to decrease, and John understood that. That
is the direct context of his famous statement, He must increase but I must decrease (John 3.30). God chose to
break up the only megachurch in the Bible because He knew the gospel would
spread as a result. A numerically growing church or a church of substantial
size is a blessing, certainly, but sometimes the blessing comes when it
shrinks. We seem to forget that in our all too often narrow-minded
parochialism.
The second weakness at Jerusalem was
also connected to one of their strengths. You will remember I said that they
were thoughtful of each other’s needs. It is seen in how generous they were
with each other. But such giving, as it wonderfully became the culture of their
church, produced a corresponding weakness. Some gave for the wrong reason.
I will not here belabor the story of
Ananias and Sapphira found in Acts 5, but I will ask you to note it.
They gave generously, even sacrificially, but they did so for the wrong reason.
If there are people in your church
giving in order to impress others, that is a weakness. If there are people in
your church giving in order to soothe their conscience regarding some
unknown-to-everyone-else sin, that is a weakness. If there are people in your
church giving in order to win people to their side, or to build a power base
useful in church politics, that is a weakness. We are to give because God told
us to. We are to give because we want to invest in eternity. We are to give
because it helps people and advances the Lord’s work. In short, we are to give
with the right motive.
God is at least as interested in
motive as He is in action. We see that from one end of Scripture to the other.
Giving done in pride is abhorrent to Him, as is witnessing, parenting, praying,
preaching, or a thousand other things. Why my people do what they do can be a
tremendous weakness all the while it looks like my church has a great strength.
The third weakness I see in Jerusalem
is that they lost their unity due to ethnic strife and division. And in those days, when the number of the
disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the
Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration (Acts
6.1). This would go on to become an unhealthy pattern in the early
churches. It was rooted in the Jewish religiously motivated racism endemic in
their culture. One rabbi of Jesus’ era took a bath every time he came home from
the market in case he had touched something previously handled by a Gentile.
The Sadducees used to mock the Pharisees saying soon they would soon need to
wash the rays of the sun since it shone on the Gentiles also.
Paul’s method of church planting was
brutally efficient. He would enter a city, find the synagogue or place of
prayer, and take advantage of the open service concept to stand and argue that
Jesus was the Christ. After doing this for a few months he would split the
synagogue, gather his converts, and start a church. In so doing, he began with
a core group that was immediately rather mature. They were dedicated to their
religion, knew their Bibles, and had a proven life-long willingness to buck the
societal trends of the day. But racism was baked in with all the rest of that,
and Paul had to deal with it repeatedly in his epistles. The churches, started
organically by the Jewish believers scattered via persecution from Jerusalem,
would have had the same basic problem.
We dare not, however, sit secure in
our twenty-first century aplomb and look down our noses at the first century
church. I have read too much of our recent history to feel we have won this
battle. Indeed, after including a chapter about racism in Schizophrenic I have received emails and messages from many people
regarding the racism still prevalent in our churches today. When we treat
others differently on the basis of their ethnicity we infringe upon their basic
humanity, and when we bring that into God’s house we violate all that He
intends His church to be.
Beloved, do be welcoming to all those
who walk into the doors of your assembly, from wherever they hail, however they
got there, and whatever they look like. If Jesus died for them like He died for
me, that ought to be good enough for all of us.
I cannot write it any more clearly
than Paul did in Ephesians 2. I leave
you with his words and ask you to ponder them.
Ephesians 2:13–19
Ephesians 2:13–19
13 But now in
Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of
Christ.
14 For he is our
peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of
partition between us;
15 Having
abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in
ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace;
16 And that he
might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity
thereby:
17 And came and
preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.
18 For through him
we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.
19 Now therefore
ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints,
and of the household of God;
There is so much to be said about pastoring a smaller church (really, a whole lot) but I feel like I have to be careful to assure people it is not a question of sour grapes. I work hard at trying to get the church to grow in a very difficult area of the country. The fact of the matter is that because of building issues in the heart of a highly urban setting the best option will be to split off multiple small churches. I fear trying to encourage men to come to minister in my area to grow by split makes them think that I am limiting God and they would rather go where they can get a salary and enjoy all the 'exciting' things God is doing because He 'shows up.' Silly me, I must be mistaken about the power and omnipresence of God.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your excellent insights about strengths and weaknesses.
You are right. My inference is not driven by sour grapes, at least I hope not. I am truthfully not bitter/upset/jealous about a thing on this sunny Spring Monday.
DeleteChurch planting, and doing so in an urban environment would/should be a whole additional discussion.