On entering a season of leadership. A case against the legality of the church.
In truth, transparency, and vulnerability.
As I enter this new season, my heart grows heavy with fear. Fear that I have no doubt that the devil placed there, but fear nonetheless.
On a Wednesday at midnight I asked myself the question- How much am I willing to give up for Jesus? The answer to that question was- everything. And then I asked what am I willing to give up for the Church. The answer was not the same. And what am I willing to give up to pursue Christian community? Again another question and another answer.
Why then does the Christian community and more importantly the Church act as if all three of these questions are the same question, and should have the same answer?
The devil tells me I must give up my mode of existence if I want to survive and exist in the church. The devil threatens me with conformity. He threatens me with isolation.
I have realized for myself, I do not want to follow in the ways of the church but in the footsteps of Jesus. I am interested in relationship not religion. I do not want to follow in the ways of the traditions of "the church" but rather allow my relationship with Jesus to create new modes of Christian comradery and worship. To not conform to the church but to show up truly as who I am and BE the church.
Leadership is scary. It means it means stepping into the spotlight, and the spotlight means that all my imperfections are put in the spotlight. The devil is trying to use these imperfections to sway me from my path and to draw me away from a community that I am called to. He pressures me to present false perfection over real relationship (with Jesus and the community) and organic growth.
On old wineskins;
“Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.” Matthew 9:17
Church has become so embedded in its legalistic and corporate ways, that it often forgets to be the beating heart of the community, shifting and growing and changing with the church depending on who is in the church and what they need. In its attempt to better serve its community, some rules and practices emerge to help facilitate that moment.
But so often we allow these rules and practices (apt to their specific time and issue) to solidify into law, relying on old wineskins to carry us through to new wines. Religion has managed to commodify and control Christan community in a misguided attempt to cultivate community, in just the way that Jesus preached against.
Jesus did not call for legalism- in fact, he actively fought and preached against it.
Over time those practices and traditions can cause community to become artificial and manufactured, things originally intended to help dry up and grow stiff around the edges- they still technically get the job done, but there is no wiggle room for growth. In fact, any growth or even change pushes against the stiff sides of this legalism, and threatens to crack the casing, ruining all the "wine" and destroying the whole system. In order to keep the current system alive, the church clutches closer to these rituals, practices and traditions creating strict rules and regulations. It almost prevents the church from growing the way it's supposed to.
It's like Jesus says- you don't pour new wine into old wineskins, you pour it into a new wineskin, and its time to find new wineskins to hold our new wine.
Things need to be updated with the times, and laws can only be and are only a product of their time. All of this is mirrored in our society at large, but our church should not look like society at large. Our Church should look like Heaven on Earth.
We often forget that we too not just unbelievers are human and fallible and very very susceptible to sin. Every single one of us- not just the outcast and the downtrodden, WE, the church are the very ones in need of forgiveness- not just criminals and outcasts. We humans have a prelication of overlooking our own mishaps. We must take the log out of our own eye before we worry about the speck in our neighbors.
“Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?” Matthew 7:4
If we truly trust the Spirit of Jesus, we should trust that it moves in all individual lives. Our job is just to foster that walk with Jesus, not to patrol it. It is to walk side by side with it- not to judge it. If we can’t do that maybe we should question the faith we have in Jesus in the first place. We need to remember that a relationship with Jesus, can not and should not be manufactured or forced.
I want to be very honest and say that the idolatry of the Church over Jesus is something that really worries me about the Christain community. What I want is a church that will meet me in the messy and love me like Jesus does. I want a church that respects all walks of life and offers a seat to every person without exception. I want a church that exemplifies the unconditional love of Jesus.
It gives me honest hope that while I have not personally experienced this at a corporate level, I know many people who carry this version of the church within them. I feel that my home Church, People Church is growing toward that, and I believe that that is why God has planted me there. To have them in my life and to walk out my journey with Jesus with the people I see this in and my home Church by my side is an absolute pleasure and honor.
I believe we need to redefine what "Capital C" church is. Capital C church is all of us who follow Jesus, for Jesus sees no difference in his followers. And those who truly have a relationship with Jesus, something that is up to only Jesus to judge, are equal in the eyes of the Lord. There is no separation or denomination in Jesus’s eyes. And it’s not up to us to judge who has a real relationship with Jesus or not. Only he knows what's really in our hearts. We have no human means to "authenticate" someone else salvation.
I believe that salvation is about proximity to Jesus, a proximity that only the Sheep (us) and the Shepherd (Jesus) can truly know for themselves. Our relationship with Jesus can and should be deeply and intensely personal. Of course, this relationship also creates and calls for a need for community that meets and worships in church. But we have unfortunately made it so the Church is not the center of our Christain community but that it IS our Christain community. When this happens we begin to hinge entrance to the Christain community via the gates of the church. (Not to mention that there shouldn’t be gates on the doors of the Church anyway, but that is almost a separate conversation.)
Those people I know, in whom the church I pray for resides, ARE the church. Those people that I don't agree with, that interpret doctrine and theology differently than me ARE the We, all of us, who identify as Christians and claim to follow Jesus ARE the church. WE ARE the church. Where two or more gather WE ARE the church.
I recognize and highlight in this that I AM the church, and I do not want to expect from the church what I cannot even expect of myself. So I lean into the healing. Healing of myself in vulnerability and transparency freely given in surrender, in the name of Jesus. And a hope that I am received in the unconditional love of Jesus by the Christians around me. And in that healing of myself I am in turn healing the church. And in healing the church I am therefore healing myself.
It is an important distinction that the church is not Jesus and should not be honored and worshiped as such, rather in fact the church is US each and every one of us in our brokenness. We are the bride of Christ, not Christ himself. To not hold the Church to a standard because Jesus loves them unconditionally is not theologically sound when you hold it up to the "love the sinner not the sin" model that so many Christians use to justify hate. You are not protecting the church if you judge unbelievers more harshly than church leaders.
So much of the church operates out of the belief that once we are saved we should strive to portray the outward expression of Christian perfection at all times because if we are not then we clearly were never saved in the first place. But that would mean that once we were saved we could do no wrong. That is faulty and toxic theology.
Of course, there are people who never really followed Jesus in the first place, and are operating out of a bad place. Sometimes Church-hurt can lead people to act out of malice. But more likely the case is that this person who has done wrong and is questing the Church (note: here I emphasize that most of the time they will my criticizing and questioning the CHURCH and not usually Christ) is just a person with a real relationship with Jesus, and real temptation from sin from living in our broken world JUST LIKE YOU ARE. Knowing Jesus means we are saved, but being saved doesn’t erase free will and it doesn’t erase the proclivity to sin.
It is time to stop drawing lines in the sand, or at least to stop constructing walls where that line is.
In the end, it comes down to this- I want the freedom to make mistakes on my own. Well not necessarily on my own I’d ideally like Christ to come alongside me in it, but the Church doesn’t need not necessarily have a say in that mistake. (Unless it directly involves them of course). I'd like to be free to come as am with whatever I am experiencing and ACTUALLY not experience any shame or questioning of my relationship with Jesus.
Mistakes are part of learning and growing and tuning into the voice of God, and into the life God created for you. I don’t think I should be met in shame or excluded from the community during those learning periods and mistakes. Isolation during hard times as punishment is maybe not our greatest practice as a church.
We should not be asking Christians to deal with things privately, take a step back, take some space to heal or process. Those are all different ways of saying- we don’t want your shame to be our shame.
I believe in individual accountability within Christian community of course. I even find it fair and healthy that we establish standards to encourage wellbeing. I can understand and respect that I be held to a standard (especially in terms of working in ministry) but that standard should not mean that the church has any control over my free will and choice.
When we lean too far into law and structure if we pull the strings of corset too tightly, the church cannot be a living breathing body of Christ. We preach unconditional love and acceptance but so much of the church's opportunities are limited to those who demonstrate “Christian perfection”.
I think that we get so worried about how people will PERCEIVE the church, we forget to BE the church. We forget to trust in Christ. I know that a true Christ-centered community fosters a fellowship like no other. Allowing it to blossom will only serve the church because at the end of the day the church should be and naturally ends up being the center of the Christian community.
This is all to say that we need be so worried about the “image” of the church, but rather worry about actually being a better church. To worry about trusting in Christ and following in his footsteps.
True Fellowship in Christ:
If we really trust in the Word, if we really trust in Jesus to be who He says He is, we would more freely allow each other to experience our own relationship with God. The natural progression of this is that we are able to walk it out together, side by side, experiencing and acknowledging our own sins and temptations freely rather than rigidly adhering to a rulebook. Leave it entirely to God to outwork any of that struggle in them, simply be a support for them, be a fellow to them in the pursuit of living like Christ.
And if you are focused on Christ it will look like serving like Christ, celebrating like Christ, coming into discipleship like Christ's early followers, it looks like feeling the righteous anger of the oppressed and the sweet joyful hope of salvation. If you are truly pursuing that for yourself you likely won't have time to draw lines in the sand for other people and judge them for where and who they are.
I’ve found that the best option for evangelism and spreading the good news, is to live it out. When people see that peace that comes with a relationship with our Lord, they are encouraged to search for something similar. It is not a dogged pursuit of souls, Christ made it easier than that, and actions are often stronger than words. Live your faith out authentically and don’t worry too much about what other people are doing. Christain relationship is a natural byproduct of faith, community is what we were built to be in, we don’t have to focus so doggedly on forcing it.
When we acknowledge and respect the fact as a community that no matter how far into your walk with Jesus you are, you are still human and fallible, a space emerges where we can own up to our own failings in the moment rather than creating a culture of shame. It cultivates true fellowship, where we can support each other in our brokenness and help each other along the path of healing, together side by side.
I pray that you find these thoughts find you with an open mind but more importantly an open heart.
In love & light, and in the name of my Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
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