Is the Local Church the Hope of the World?

I have been away from church leadership since November of last year and I have found the time away to be an important time of reconnection, reflection, renewal and re-forming. When I began my sabbatical I was not sure what to expect. I just needed to get away. I needed space to breathe and grieve and pray and think. I needed to reconnect with my heart. I had grown weary with expectations and criticisms and the not always silent commentary about how long it would take before I “got over my grief.” As I look back on the months leading up to the sabbatical, I am pleased that I did not do anything inappropriate to a couple of people who kept pushing and prodding, checking on how many times I mentioned Joseph (my deceased son) in a sermon or how many times I broke down in a class that I taught. To be fair, some of my perceptions were simply that, perceptions. But not all of them. I had grown weary.

Three months away was invigorating and I lost my weariness. Unexpectedly, though, a new perspective about the church and ministry began to emerge. It did not happen immediately but rather slowly, over time. I would see something, read something, hear a conversation or simply sit alone in my thoughts and prayers and something would click inside my heart. This was not anything revolutionary and some of it lead me to confess that if I had been quieter as I led in the church I would have discovered much of this new perspective years ago.

One of my favorite quotes, the kind of thing one puts on social media, for several years is that “the local church is the hope of the world.” There seems to be something profound about seeing the local expression of the Church as the place of mission and the place where lives are changed. Mission does happen and lives are changed, not by the denomination but where the mission ought to happen, at the local level. I still believe that but I know only too well that things get in the way of that happening more often. Let me give you an example.

Recently I had a conversation with someone who is a regular church-goer for most of his life. He was expressing his frustration with his local pastor who, every summer, would berate his congregation for being gone for most of the summer. He told me that he liked to go to the lake, loved vacations and felt a deep need to get away. He looked at me and said “what’s wrong with that?” Without thinking, I told him there was nothing wrong with vacations and getting away from the regular pattern of life for much needed vacations (re-creation). But I said something else, without reflecting on it for more than a couple of moments. I then said “do you want to know a deep secret that most pastors won’t admit?” He pulled his chair closer to mine and said “Yes!” I then said “really most pastors don’t care if you are on vacation or not. They are just worried that you will forget your pledge while you are gone.” I could have added “they also hate that you’re gone, not because you won’t do ministry but that it will have an impact on average Sunday attendance.” Ouch.

In the movie Jerry Maguire, the phrase “show me the money” was used by an athlete who was encouraging his agent to execute a better contract with his sports team. That same phrase could be used by those in leadership positions in the church. As I thought about this I felt a catch in my spirit because my criticism was directed toward me. In the church, money should not be the significant concern of the leadership but often it is the sole concern. When one looks back at the Church that emerged from Pentecost, budgets and capital campaigns and salaries and mortgages are never mentioned. Why? Because ministry is not about those things. It should never be “show me the money” but rather, “show me the cross.”

It may seem disingenuous to say such things now that I am not responsible for budgets and salaries and mortgages and so on. Perhaps it is but as these months away from such concerns has gone on, I am surprised and blessed to have been given the opportunity to see the errors in the way in which my time and energy were devoted. Much of my time was spent dealing with the financial issues because that was the hand I was dealt. When mortgage payments are the largest line item on a budget, it is a challenge to not make finances a top priority. The concern of many, shared freely and openly with me, had nothing to do with being an image bearer of Christ.

On this side of the altar, I now see that I wasted that time and energy. Perhaps I would not have lasted as long as I did had I not but what a blessing it would have been to have spent all that energy on living like those first Christians did and place the cross as the sole context of ministry. This caused me to wonder if the effectiveness of ministry is directly related to the energy spent in building buildings instead of people. Is the local church truly the hope of the world? It could be but often is not. Because it is all about the money.

There is a local church a couple of miles from my house that is in the process of finishing a new building. As I was driving by recently I wondered how much the Kingdom of God will make a difference in the world because of the new and shiny structure. I also wondered if the money raised could be funneled into helping the hungry, the thirsty, the naked and those in prison. Have I become naïve? No. I simply have seen the waste. What a tragedy it is.