Can a church be conflicted? Can she be torn between self and community? Can she elevate one at the expense of the other? Is she a congregation centred on one or a congregation of congregations?
Why not one? Isn’t the head of the church Christ, her cornerstone? I am however talking about human leadership, and the structure and hierarchy we put in place to organise the numbers.
The searching question is, how do we put the structure in place? Is it one that exalts the leadership or one that empowers the community? More relevantly, can the goals of leadership (of attracting the numbers back and of worrying about how to keep paying the high cost, or overheads, per attendance, etc) clash with the goals of community (of quality growth that takes time)?
But surely, we can do both right? How do we even talk about growth without a structure in place? Can’t the two work hand in hand?
Well, yes, yet what if it risks becoming more about the leadership at the top rather than the community at large? More specifically, what if it plans for growth in a way that unwittingly sacrifices the life and heart of community, thereby turning the latter into a means to its organisational ends?
Admittedly, the church has changed since the time Jesus led only twelve to start a worldwide revolution that endures till today in the midst of reformations, nurtured enlightenment values, two world wars and the rage of postmodernism.
The essence of this change is best portrayed by Francis Chan in his book, Letters to the Church. Here is an extract of it.
“One young person in the church articulated it so well. He said it felt as if the rules suddenly changed on him.
He explained that for years he was taught salvation was a free gift and the gospel meant he could have a personal relationship with Jesus. It would be like someone gifting him a pair of ice skates.
In excitement, he went to the skating rink and learned to do all sorts of tricks. He enjoyed this and did it for years. Now suddenly he was being told that the skates were actually given to him because he was supposed to be a part of our hockey team working together to pursue a championship.
He wasn’t supposed to just twirl around by himself. That’s a huge different! While he did not disagree biblically, it would take time to realign his thinking and lifestyle.”
And talking about realignment, that young person would also have to deal with other issues bombarding him from all flanks like post-graduation concerns, career choices, marriage, starting a family, and building a stable roof over his head.
Alas, that gift from the start has not changed. It is still free, it is still about growth from within, about the fruits of the spirit, about the joy of salvation, and about living a life consecrated and set apart.
But with the complex structure aimed to accomplish earthly, temporal goals, that gift comes with what Francis Chan would describe as the trap of meeting expectations, the trap of popularity at the pulpit, the trap of safety in numbers, the trap of avoiding criticism, resulting in massive groupthink, the trap of fund-raising, the trap of deference to top leadership for fear of being sidelined, and the trap of comparison and competition.
What is of deep concern for me in the context of a church is that there is a real risk of her rushing to plant the seeds on the other grounds save for the good soil.
I can imagine the corporate farmer managing his cultivated lands from afar, from the comfort of his airconditioned panopticon tower. He benchmarks growth against numerical quotas, measures the bearing of fruits by its productivity and rigorous kpis, and turns spiritual autonomy and community into corporate control and authority.
As Nouwen warns, “The temptation of power is greatest when intimacy is a threat. Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christians empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love.”
And if God is love, then let me just say for the record that you cannot professionalize love, turn it into a means to an end, and instrumentalise the actions of love and the fruits it bears over time to dovetail to your corporate goals with timelines to match and numbers to show on charts, graphs, and stats.
Let me end with this. There has always been a clarion call to return to the heart of worship. It has always been the cry of every member’s and leader’s heart. It is a cry for intimacy, authenticity and empowering fellowship without the thrills and spills, without the fanciful play of lights, sound and huge pixilated screens.
Alas, we have tried everything to bring that heart of worship back to the center of the body of Christ. But what we often end up doing, even with the best of intentions, was to appeal more to the flesh for fear that we can’t compete enough with the world of loud entertainment and dizzying attraction. That act of quiet desperation often ends up turning the church leadership against her community with the latter becoming a means to the former’s end, thereby deepening the conflict indefinitely.
Alan Hirsch once said: “If you have to use marketing and the lures of entertainment to attract people, then you will have to keep them there on the (same) principles because that is what people buy in to...Win them with entertainment, and you have to keep them there by entertaining them. For a whole lot of reasons, this commitment seems to get harder year after year. We end up creating a whip for our own backs.”
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