The American Church: Tempted in the Wilderness

7 06 2011

Tuesday Re-mix -

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. Luke 4:1

The church in America is in the wilderness. That’s not such a bad place to be. It’s a difficult place, often a painful place, but it’s a place God often leads his people when He has some difficult lessons to teach them. And the American church certainly has some difficult lessons to learn. Moses learned in the wilderness, as did Elijah. The people of Israel learned in the wilderness. And Jesus went there as well, where he experienced some critical “perspective builders” in the form of temptations. The American church, while in the wilderness, is experiencing temptations as well. If there were ever a story written about it, the way Jesus’ story in the wilderness has been written, the enemy’s temptations of the church might go something like this…

I. The devil said to them, “If you are the Church of God, tell these people to become members.” As bread represents a basic necessity for our body, believers (i.e., members) represent a basic necessity for the Church. There is not a church leader anywhere who, when describing the church he/she serves, is not tempted to describe it at some level in terms of number of members. It is one way we measure our effectiveness in mission. Every evangelistic outreach is measured this way. And since we all want to be seen as “successful”, the temptation here is to move as many bodies as possible from the “prospect” category to the “member” category as quickly as possible. The temptation is to use emotional pleas, scare tactics, or other forms of manipulation toward an all-important “decision”. And what the church is left with, especially over the long term, is a membership filled with non-believers. At that point, none of the promises God gives us about His church are any good anymore. This temptation of getting people to check the correct box on our little in-take cards is definitely one to resist.

II. The devil led them up to a high place and showed them in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to them, “I will give you all their authority and splendor…” Gaining political power seems to have become a favorite pastime of the American church over the last few decades. The problem with this is that, though Jesus had plenty to say about how we should live our lives individually, and how the church should live, he had nothing at all to say about the “Christianization” of government. Even in the face of an oppressive Roman empire, with plenty of opportunity to organize His church against it, Jesus did no such thing. Don’t hear me wrong…I believe strongly in each of us as Christians taking seriously our civic responsibilities. But I believe the organized church should resist the temptation to build political power in order to create a more comfortable place for Christians to live and to work and to go to school. Comfort, after all, is not what followers of Christ signed on for. Just think what might be accomplished if we took all of the energy and resources we spend on political gain and devoted it to missions and ministry.

III. The devil led them to a dangerous place of broken relationships and had them stand on the highest point of the slippery slope of conflict. “If you are the Church of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here.” Relationships are messy business…and hard work. Some of them take extra work (you might call them “high maintenance” relationships). The temptation is to devote only a limited amount of time to relationships, so that you can focus your energies on more important things, like evangelism and worship. Then, when conflict comes, we wonder why our relationships are so very broken. We cry out to God then, saying “save us…bring us unity!” But we have forsaken our part in preserving unity in the first place. A church who doesn’t pay attention to relationships has little hope to move through conflict successfully. Resist the temptation to let relationships do whatever they want. Pay attention to them and learn to do them well. Do not put God to the test in this.

If the Church can resist these (and other) temptations and can keep its focus on Christ, it can come out of this wilderness experience all the better for having gone through it. And as with Jesus, maybe the devil will leave us until a more opportune time…

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Church Unity, Church/State issues, conflict, leadership, missional

Does Your Church Speak “Governmentese”?

3 05 2011

Tuesday Re-mix -

How would you describe your church to your next-door neighbor?  How would you describe your church to that neighbor’s 6-year old daughter?  How would you describe your church to another pastor in your community?  How would you describe your church to the homeless person on the street?  HOPEFULLY, you answered each of these questions differently, because you cannot know how to describe your church appropriately unless you first know something about the person(s) to whom you are describing it.  Right?

The audience matters.  While the pastor down the street may want to know something about your church’s theology, your neighbor’s 6-year old daughter could not care less about that.  While your neighbor may want to know about your church’s location or your worship style or your ministries, the homeless person on the street just wants to know if there is a place there to get some food or to sleep for the night.  The point is, it is important to understand what the person wants to know before you start describing your church.

So what does the government want to know about your church?  What about the legal community?  Believe me, it is an entirely different set of questions from any of these, and probably different from anything you might imagine.  The government wants to know what kind of taxable entity you are, and if your are not taxable, the government wants to know why not.  The days when the IRS just “assumes” you are a church because of your name or just gives you the benefit of the doubt are long gone (if those days ever really existed in the first place).  The lawyers, on the other hand, want to know what kind of legal entity you are (that is a different question from what type of taxable entity you are) and, specifically, who to name in their lawsuit when they want to file one against your church.  Again, the days when the church enjoyed some type of moral protection against getting sued are long gone.  Churches and their big budgets are now prominent targets for the legal community.  In both instances, whether from the government or the lawyers, you can bury your head in the sand and pretend to be invisible if you want, but you will look silly (and dishonest) in the long run.  This is why your church needs both an attorney and an accountant…you need professionals who speak government and/or legal jargon in order to correctly describe your church in those very specialized languages.

This is also why your church should incorporate.  There are only a limited number of legal possibilities when it comes to choosing the correct “legal entity” to call your church.  And of all the possibilities, a corporation most accurately describes most church cultures.  You can run with partnership, or joint venture, or unincorporated association if you want, but you are not going to like the consequences when the first lawsuit gets filed.  Unless you incorporate your church (or fall under the corporate umbrella of your church’s denominational entity), you open the door to pastors, staff, elders, deacons, lay leaders and even ordinary church members having liability for any and everything that goes wrong.  Incorporation creates a “legal entity” which limits the liability of otherwise innocent bystanders.  Without that limitation, your wealthier members become sitting ducks to the very creative members of your legal community.

But be careful.  It is one thing to incorporate and call yourself a corporation and it is another thing altogether to actually act like one.  And if you call yourself one but do not act like one (i.e., do not have trustees or do not have meetings of those trustees or corporate minutes or a constitution or by-laws, etc.), then you open the door yet again to the creative meanderings of the legal community to find a way to get to the assets of your wealthier members when that next lawsuit gets filed.

If you want to describe your church to your neighbor’s child, you better know how to speak to a child.  But when it comes time to describe your church to the shark-infested waters of government or law, do yourself a favor…get a lawyer to help you.  You would be foolish not to.

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Church Law, Church/State issues, The Church's Influence

Like Moths to a Flame: How We are Killing the Church

14 12 2010

Tuesday Re-mix -

I’ve never actually seen a moth burn up as a result of being drawn into a flame.  But I’ve seen them buzzing around my back porch light enough to get the idea.  It is a great illustration for how we are often drawn into the very things that will ultimately destroy us.  That has been the experience of the church in America.  We fight to obtain the very things that will ultimately weaken us and make us wholly ineffective.

I believe that the spread of Christianity in the early church was attributable primarily to two God-ordained circumstances: (1) persecution from outside the church, and (2) conflict from within, due to the differences among them.  Take away the oppression of the Roman government and Christianity does not have a reason to spread beyond Jerusalem except by mere happenstance.  Take away the vast cultural differences within the early church, and Christian doctrine never really gets tested and grown and purified, it never develops any of the Spiritual “immunities” to false teaching which it currently enjoys.

It is always funny to me, then, when we in the church spend so much time and energy trying to rid the world of both of these catalysts.  The church in America is actually fighting  for two things that will kill us: (1) political favor from the outside and (2) homogeneous culture on the inside.  I spoke to the second item in my recent post here.  I will only summarize that post by saying that, contrary to what many of us seem to believe in the church, diversity is actually our friend, i.e., our strength…not our enemy.  But what about the first catalyst?  What about persecution from outside the church?  History tells the story best.

Historically, Christianity has always grown stronger in the face of political persecution.  In the instances where Christianity has enjoyed huge political favor (such as being a State Church), it has grown little in terms of Spiritual depth and has grown even less in terms of geography.  On the other hand, where there has been persecution, Christianity has known nothing but growth.  Conservatively speaking, the persecuted church in China is estimated at 25 Million strong…this, in the face of nearly a century of  Communist government directly prohibiting Christian assemblies.  Here in America, where we have enjoyed 200 years of freedom to mold and shape Christianity in any way we please, our Spiritual intensity pales in comparison to China or South Korea or South America or any of a number of other third-world communities.  Despite boasting some of the greatest Christian leaders and teachers in the world, our American communities scoff at our hypocrisy and our lack of compassion.

In response to this demise, the church in America continues to pour its energies into fighting for political favor, as if it is both our right and our benefit to have the world see us as superior.  We fight to make the lost world act more Christian, and the harder we fight to make them act Christian without actually helping them into a relationship with God, the further we drive them away from the church.  We fight for our right to pray over the loud speaker at football games (while our brothers and sisters in China don’t even have the right to pray together in any setting) but do we really have a genuine desire to pray (which we are still free to do), or is it just a desire to be favored?  We fight to have history portray us as a Christian nation, but we don’t seem nearly as intent on actually following Christ in our individual lives.

I am wondering if there is a relationship between our political activism and our Spiritual shallowness.  I think there are still plenty of American Christians who are so disillusioned as to believe the American church is somehow leading the Kingdom of God on a global scale.  Wake up America.  It has been a long, long time since our church was “the standard” for Christianity around the world.  We are far too busy trying to moralize our country to spend any time or resources actually showing people Jesus.  We need to be good citizens of our communities, to be sure, but how much of our energies spent fighting the world around us should be redirected to loving the world around us and helping it see Jesus?  Like moths to the flame, we are drawn into political frays and our testimony is burning up before our eyes.

But here is hope.  The more time I spend watching and listening to the youngest generation of Christian leaders in America, the more I believe they understand the flames and genuinely desire to avoid them.  What’s more, I believe they understand what genuine compassion and Christ follow-ship looks like, and I believe they will lead us well in that regard.  I have great hope for the American church and am actually looking forward to being a part of it for the next several decades…if I can just get these flames on my tail put out.

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Church/State issues, leadership, The Church's Influence, the revolution

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