That's a Bad Question
Tue, 2010-02-23 09:49 — Joseph Bayly
Recently I was asked the following question on this blog: “Of the 15 people attending your group, how many had a completely non-church background before you arrived?”
The question looked to me like a passive aggressive challenge. I might have been wrong about the motivation behind the question, but regardless, the question itself is flawed.
It is a bad question, and answering it would have justified it as a valid question–even if it was asked purely out of curiosity. I’m reminded of a story my parents tell about my older sister. When she was three, my dad, who admittedly has a slightly odd sense of humor, asked her who she liked better–Mommy or Daddy? She caught him in his trick though, and answered back, “That’s a bad question.” So instead of answering the question, let me address the presuppositions behind it.
The way that many people understand ministry these days is that the test of the claim of evangelism at a church is whether or not it is possible to have non-Christians visit, feel validated, return, and get involved–all prior to them becoming Christians. But true preaching of the word will always convict men of their sins. This means that in a true church, unbelievers are going to either get angry and leave, or become Christians. Of course, this does not necessarily happen immediately, but the expectation should be that one of those 2 things will happen. And it makes no sense to keep from offending non-Christians, so that you can claim them as part of your core-group starting a new church. “Validating” a ministry in that way actually shows that it is almost certainly unfaithful. The one thing you know is that sinners are not being called to repentance.
James 1:27 “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
It doesn’t say “Being a good church in God’s eyes is this: to prove yourself so appealing and tolerant that non-Christians will join you in your work, and you will depend on them as part of the core of your new church.”
Is it really necessary for us to have people attending who had a “completely non-church background” before we can make the claim that we are being evangelistic?
Comments
Joseph, It seems that you
Joseph,
It seems that you have equated those with a "non-church background" with non-Christians, and that you have turned the question into "Is your church seeker-friendly?", which is a bad question usually wondering if your church is inoffensive and tolerant of sin. I didn't interpret the question in that way. I don't know who asked it, but if I had asked the same thing, I would have been wondering if everyone in the church plant just had previous connections, is comfortable because they grew up in a Bible-preaching church, or if the presence of non-believers and recent converts is evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit and of your commitment to discipling those who do not come from a personal history of involvement in the covenant community.
In Christ,
Alex
Hi Alex, Sorry I didn't see
Hi Alex,
Sorry I didn't see your comment until today.
Maybe I'm mistaken about what people generally mean when they say "completely non-church background". If it only means "recent converts who have never been to a church prior to yours" then I've conflated two things. However, I think it generally is used much more broadly than that. It seems that you think the same thing when you say "non-believers and recent converts".
Regardless, I guess the core of what I'm driving at is that the true test of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in a church doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether or not people are present who never went to church before. I think it stems from a mentality that focuses on numbers as the proof of God's blessing. Growth is an indicator, but not by itself.
I'm hesitant to keep pressing this, for fear of making people think I don't desire conversions. Yet Acts 2:41 says, "So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls." We look at that and think, "That's what it looks like to have the Holy Spirit present. All kinds of unchurched people coming to know the Lord." Yet the context is that Peter was preaching to "Jews...devout men from every nation under heaven". Would we consider them as having a completely non-churched background today? No.
Why doesn't the next verse (vs 42) come into our thoughts? "They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." Far too often, there is nothing like this going on in churches, whether they are growing, stagnant, or dwindling.
There are people all over the country who have a *very* churched background that are either not Christians, or whose faith is so weak as to be almost non-existant. The Crusade mentality is that the important thing is to get people saved and move on. That is not biblical. We are called to make disciples. I recognize the common perception that churches just trade members back and forth and that nobody is being "reached" for Christ, and I reject it. Is the work of the Holy Spirit really not evident when He leads Christians out of other churches where they have been being led astray by false teachers into churches where their souls will be cared for? Or what about those who are currently at churches where they are actually discouraged from sharing the gospel with others or from caring for the weak and helpless?
There is something twisted about our understanding in America of how the Holy Spirit works ever since the time of Finney. If there are large numbers of numbers of conversions, we most definitely ought to consider that a special out-pouring of the Holy Spirit. But we should remember that when that has happened in the past, many of the conversions that took place were people who were *already* in the church. On the other hand, if we aren't seeing large numbers of conversions, that doesn't mean the Holy Spirit isn't present. On the contrary, we look at the rest of the New Testament to see what it looks like to have the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
If we look at the fruit of a church, it is not properly judged by the presence or absence of a particular kind of person. It is judged by the lives of those who are present. That doesn't mean you can't speak of a church corporately. It is possible for a church to be ingrown or racist, which would lead to the lack of a particular kind of people, and thus you judge the church for that. But how does that happen? It happens because a large number of the individuals that make up the church have those sins themselves and because the leadership isn't fighting it (or is even promoting it).
Nobody judges Paul, saying he must have done something wrong to have the Jews reject him and the Gentiles accept him (to flip this conversation on its head). Why? Because he was becoming all things to all people, so that by all means he might save some. If our church leaders and members can be described in this way, it is clear that the Holy Spirit is present and active.
Longwinded,
-Joseph
What is your definition of
What is your definition of the church?
Long answer to a short
Long answer to a short question:
Tabitha,
I am not Joseph Bayly but I thought I’d take a quick stab at answering your question myself. This is a broad quick stroke that may be wide of the mark but it may get us somewhere.
You ask, “what is the church?”
I see in this question several others. In none of what follows am I trying to be a wiseacre, though the first point will probably give that impression. But it is important to understand precisely what this question is before going on to give an answer. So I’ll just do my best to answer all the versions of the question in order.
First, taking the words at face value: what is the church? Asked literally this way with this spelling and lack of capitalization, the answer would, in this case, describe the group of people Joseph worships with. It has a name that sets it apart from the group of people who worship down the block.
A second way of understanding the question is, what is a church? A church is a group of people who meet together to fulfill the biblical mandate to worship the Triune God. It could be First Presbyterian/Baptist/Methodist/Congregational Church, or ClearNote Church, or even Fellowship of the Bloodwashed Patriarchs. I’ll come back after the next paragraph and address the question of legitimacy (i.e. what makes a church a “true” church). For now, a “church” is a group of people who meet together with the purpose of worshiping the one true God. It is a group. They meet. They worship. They may or may not be a good church but people can point to them and say “that’s a church” and not be totally disconnected from reality.
Third, it could be understood as asking, “what is the Church?” In that case, the answer is all people everywhere throughout all time who have been purchased with the blood of Christ. This is the Invisible Church, or, as we say in the Apostles Creed, the catholic church (notice the lower case ‘c’ to distinguish it from Catholic, the term used of the Pope’s people). They are sprinkled into most “visible churches” and are, in those particular churches, worshiping alongside unbelievers. Those not acquainted with them personally could not, at a glance, tell who in the pew was a believer and who was not, since in most churches, folks gather together with those they can succeed in imitating (everybody dresses alike, for example). The Invisible Church is all believers regardless of denomination, race, sex, status as dead, alive, yet-to-be-born. The Visible church is all people who profess faith in Christ.
How are we to tell a true church apart from a false one? The prayer meeting in a dorm room or a Campus Crusade meeting—are these “churches”? No—for the following reasons:
First, every church (to be a true church) must be under authority. It is connected in some way to other churches and that connection is a means of exercising authority. Not “lording it over” but exercising authority. Acts 15 shows that in the face of disagreement churches sent men to meet together, argue, pray, decide and declare whether circumcision should be required for admission to the visible church (see above). The churches submitted to this authority. So churches since then have been connected to each other in a way that promotes the right use of authority.
Second, what we see in the Bible is that the church gathers together to do certain things: they give attention to the apostles’ teaching. This is preaching. The apostles left us an inspired text (words breathed out by God) and God has appointed certain men to read, explain and plainly apply the words of that text. A true church submits itself to this preaching.
The church also administers sacraments. What’s a sacrament? It is a visible word, an eternal truth illustrated to us in physical elements, bread, the fruit of the vine (wine or Welch’s) and water. Sacraments are boundary markers that assure believers of the promises they represent and show the church visibly that it is not the world. There are right ways and wrong ways to administer the sacraments, of course. So, the church that willy-nilly baptizes any body that wants baptism or the church that throws bread and wine at anyone who comes through the door without so much as a warning (ala 1 Corinthians 11) is forfeiting their right to be considered a true church.
Which brings us to leadership and authority. A true church has elders (though they may be called other things like deacons or pastors, they are to fulfill the office of elder) who teach, rebuke, correct, and, in a word, love the people in that church. This means, among other things, that they wait to baptize until Christ is professed, they withold the Lord’s Supper until Christ is submitted to.
Thus the church is not a building, for example. But buildings are awful useful things (not striclty necessary but useful) when groups of people get together regularly. And for a church to be a church, it must be a group of some size. Jesus teaches church discipline in Matthew 18 and promises His presence when 2 or 3 are gathered together. And the church should assemble regularly. The Greek word for “church” actually meant “assembly” by the time Jesus taught (not, as is sometimes claimed, “called out ones” which has stumbled many people in this individualistic age).
But let me end here and see if I’m on track with your question of if someone else would like to jump in and clarify…
Thank you for your clarity.
Thank you for your clarity.
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