Repost: The church on the margins

Some thoughts from a post last year about this time, The church on the margins. I remain convinced that the church struggles in the West because the church doesn't struggle in the West. Christianity was not established as a safe public religion. It was a persecuted, marginalized faith of misfits and outcasts driven by a Gospel urgency and a Kingdom focus, not a faith centered on a polished professional weekly performance. When the church falls out of favor with the culture and the power brokers stop calling preachers for political support, when being a Christian means persecution instead of comfortable pew sitting, when we are too concerned with being arrested for preaching the Gospel to worry about legal battles over pieces of metal in a cross shape, then we will find the true strength of the church which is manifested in weakness.

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(This promises to be a rambling tirade… you have been warned)

It struck me again this morning that Biblical manifestations of the visible church have pretty much always operated at the margins of society. It is easy as Americans to “assume the church” because culturally the church has always had a special place in the fabric of Americana. We assume that what we see is how it was and how it should be in spite of the glaring discrepancies we see in Scripture when compared with our assumed practices. In reality, when you look back over the last two thousand years what you find is that the church has typically been at the margins of society and in many ways remains so today, even in “Christian nations” like America.

Here in America, the church is often hidden within the church. By that I mean that there are virtually no mainstream expressions of the church that present a consistent Biblical witness to the world. They present what the prevailing culture expects the church to look like instead of asking the hard question of what does the Bible expect the church to look like. The overwhelming majority of Christians are found in institutional church groups where the assembled group on Sunday is at best a relatively even mixture of believers and unbelievers. That is not being judgmental, that is simply reality. The aforementioned gathering has only a cursory relationship to the church that was instituted, described and lived by the first disciples.

When we remove our blinders and look at the church as a whole, we find that in most of the world outside of America and Western Europe, the church operates at best on the margins of society. In places like China, Pakistan and Iran we find our brothers and sisters living under constant threat from the authorities and from hostile unbelievers with the tacit approval of the government. For the first three hundred years of the church, it operated essentially as an outlaw religion until the “conversion” of Constantine. During the thousand year period between the conversion of Constantine and the Reformation, the Gospel itself was denied by “The Church” and believers were marginalized and often persecuted to the point of martyrdom by those who deemed themselves the arbiters of the faith. In the five hundred some odd years since the official start of the Reformation, the so-called “visible church” has been characterized by fights over doctrine, political machinations, corruption, hypocrisy and all too often violence.

As I have mentioned a time or two before, I think the decline in church attendance is a positive thing for the Gospel witness. The witness of the church is best presented when it is presented from the outside, from the margins of society to a world that is hostile to the church, the message, the messenger and the One the church serves. It is an infinitely and eternally powerful message that is proclaimed from a position of weakness and by a method of foolishness (1 Cor 1:18). Delivering a 45 minute sermon in a controlled environment to a genteel crowd in their Sunday best that voluntarily assembled to hear that sermon is not foolish preaching. Being arrested for boldly preaching the Gospel to a hostile crowd and continuing to do so when on trial for your life is the foolishness of preaching (Acts 6:8 – Acts 7:60 ). That makes absolutely no sense to Americans but it makes perfect sense when you understand the Gospel, which at its core is about God coming in the flesh to die a cruel and base death on a cross on behalf of creatures who hated Him and loved themselves. The Gospel is about the only Being in existence with any real power setting aside that power to free those who were powerless and frankly unaware of their need for redemption.

What would the church look like today if it was once again on the margins of society instead of smack dab in the middle of it? I think we are finding out as the innate hostility of the world toward the Gospel manifests itself more and more clearly and boldly. The reaction from many corners of the church has been predictable: outrage, hand-wringing, passionate speeches about our “rights” being violated, lawsuits and legal defense funds. I fear that the ugly truth is that we are spending an enormous amount of time and money and effort defending a status quo that actually hampers the Gospel witness. How terribly ironic! Instead of submitting in humility to the hatred of the world and witnessing in spite of that, we are trying to defend our place in the world. Winning the culture war, defending our rights, taking back our country, reclaiming our “Judeo-Christian” heritage, etc. have nothing to do with the calling of the church and I am similarly fearful that there are many who are cynically manipulating Christians in their own quest for power.

Christianity has its genesis in a Man born to a young woman from a no-account town, a Man who lived in simplicity and humility and service, with followers chosen from the most unlikely of men. It is a faith that has as its crowning moment a humiliated and beaten Man nailed to a cross like a common criminal, a faith that spent its first centuries being persecuted and killed for the sake of that Man. It is a faith that is unlike any other religion, a faith that demands nothing from its adherents but faith, a faith that humans are incapable of demonstrating on our own. It is a faith that promises eternal life to come but persecution, reviling and hatred now.

It is hard to talk credibly about that Gospel when we are trying to do so in the comfort and affluence of the Western church, securely ensconced among a culture that cherishes achievement and power. The Gospel does not call us to conquer, it calls us to surrender. We are not called to overcome but to submit. We don't boldly follow Christ into battle, we humbly follow Him in death. What do we have to fear from the world? Better a sword across my neck than a sword in my hand.

(I warned you)