A couple of times I have heard people express concern about my apparent negativity towards the institutional church. They say to me “Large church, small church, house church, we need them all to reach New Zealand for the Kingdom of God”. Deep down my desire is to be a typical Kiwi and nod my head and smile, and agree with them, and say that they have a point, and say that I was not intending to be negative about the institutional church. However friends let’s be honest, after three or four generations of my family being in Leadership in the church and the mission field, and from sitting down and trying to read the New Testement without my cultural glasses on, I do feel negative about the institutional church. So what is my view point on the institutional church?
1. Institutionalised Churches are great community organisations. They provide food banks, counseling, after school care, toy libraries, budgeting advice, spiritual support, friendship etc. Former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley acknowledged that the New Zealand church provided one third of the social welfare cover during the late 1990’s. The negatives to this are: a) Christ never told the church to make this their primary purpose. He told us to look after the poor amongest us. b) As community organisations the institutionalised church has not succeeded in extending the kingdom of God, and bringing the other 90% of the nation into the church. 90% of NZ are unmoved by this awesome effort, and no closer to discovering Christ. If being an effective community organisation was a key to fruitfulness, New Zealand would have been in revival for 150 years!
2. Awesome Music…………. And? New Zealand Churches spend more money on their sound systems then on Evangelism. They spend far more man hours on organising and producing the music then in any other area of the church. Most churches when they plant, spend the majority of the money they have initially on a sound system (I did!). Is this biblical? Does this help us worship God through our lives every day? Does it please God to watch this? Is all of this effort and money worth it just for a sing – a - long that gives you goose bumps?
3. Awesome Preaching……….And? We as Western Christians know more, and have trained more then any other Christian generation in history, yet we have produced the least. We are addicted to information we do not act upon, and are allergic to the obedience that Christ calls for.
4. Good programs for our kids………Really? The reality is that we as Christian parents, thinking that our children are gaining spiritual input from youth group or Sunday school, make spiritual guidance and input at home less of a priority. Statistics tell us that children’s and youth programs make no statistical difference to the horrendous fall out rate of young people between 18 and 28 (some estimates put it at 75%). We forget that Sunday Schools and youth groups were started in the 19th Century for slum children who worked and had no education or Christian input. For this purpose they were excellent, but they were never expected to be Christian baby sitting services or primary religious education vehicles as we use them now. Parents are abdicating there Biblical responsibility to raise there children in the Lord to the organisational church, with disasterous consequences. If a child does not experience day to day spirituality (more than just grace at dinner or bedtime prayers!!), and live Christ in the home it’s irrelevant whether they go to a programme or not.
The most terrible truth I have had to face upto in my own life during 2004 was that I had been living in a Christian ghetto for the majority of my life. What is a ghetto? A ghetto is an area where people from a specific culture or religion live as a group, voluntarily or involuntarily, in milder or stricter seclusion. That’s what church as I knew it was!
Let’s be honest. Most ‘committed’ Christians are so involved financially, emotionally, relationally and timewise with their local church, that they are cut off from the rest of the world. The majority of church members often don’t even have close friend’s who they spend quality time with that are not believers. John Baker in a recent book review remarks on being raised in the New Zealand church “I was basically born into the Christian faith. From the time I was one week old I was in church every Sunday. Don’t try and quote scripture at me, I know it all. I know how to act to be accepted and look spiritual within the Christian world. I cannot point to a time in my life when I could say I wasn’t a Christian. But I am not at all sure I know how to relate to the 90% of the New Zealand population that will only ever be seen dead inside the Church, and maybe not even then”. Bill Hybels said that the local church is the most complex organization in the world. He’s right (sadly), and to keep this complex organization functioning we need to do everything that Christ either said not to do or at the best didn’t mention to ‘serve the house’, and thus run out of time and energy to do what he did command his followers to do.
As institutionalized believers we are trying to be salt in a salt mine or light in a lighting shop!
It is strange that we try and get people to join our Christian ghetto by utilizing bizarre mating rituals called ‘methods of evangelism’. We need to invent these methods such as Evangelistic rallies, Impact World Tour or Alpha etc to artificially create ways of making contact with the other 90% of New Zealand who do not know our Father. Yet we wonder “why?” after all the buzz is over. “Why?” after all the positive responses and full alter calls and commitments to faith, “why?” after a month or two, hardly anyone has climbed over the ghetto wall and joined our group? (When these methods do work in growing our church, it is usually people from another Christian ghetto). When I was in Singapore I loved visiting places such as Little India or China town with all their attractions and interesting things, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Now that I am a ‘back slider’, I love popping along now and then to a church service (not really!) but I don’t want to live out my life in Christ there.
Church leaders would reject what I am saying here and point to all the things their church has done to advance the Kingdom of God. But the normal church member who sacrifices so much to keep their church organization functioning and flourishing but have lost touch with the other 90% of New Zealand, must realize that these points are true. How can we change the world when we do not even connect with the world? Friend, how sad is this, that I had to leave the organized church; I had to resign my professional ministry, to have a chance of breaking free from the ghetto. Even after a year of leaving, I realize that I still have the habits and culture of the Christian ghetto. But as I am breaking free, I am truly becoming a follower of Christ. I am learning to be salt to a flavorless dinner, I am learning to be light in darkness, and I am starting to see friends and family that I was too busy for before, starting to say yes to Jesus Christ. I am finally being obedient to Christ’s last words to go into all the world.
Friend we can continue to sit in church and sing and pray, prophecy and run programs for revival, fantasizing that 90% of this nation are all of a sudden going to jump over the ghetto wall and join our club, or we can gain the courage to climb over the 1700 year old walls of Christendom ourselves, and join the real world, with the radical love of Jesus Christ in our hearts, ready to be salt and light.
Friends I do believe that the institutional church is a brake to the advancement of the Kingdom of God. Inban Caldwell once said to me, ‘the Devil never worries when we go to church, but he really worries when we become the church’. Let us truly become the church without walls, and be obedient to Christ and GO.
