Death and taxes are inevitable in this life.
Here’s the third sure thing. . .
Given enough time, every dynamic Christian movement will plateau and decline. No exceptions.
Why?
A sure thing
1 November, 2005
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7 Comments
Wasn’t sure if the ‘why’ was rhetorical, but here goes as to why this happens. Lets say you plant a healthy thriving church, the people who follow you will try to do it the same way to gain the same success you had rather than seeking God for themselves. That is why we try to do revival by doing what the revivalists did, or why we have thousands of Alpha courses, or give it another year and you will be able to buy ‘how to be emergent – 12 steps to breaking free from programmes’
For us as pastors we must always be ready to see that we are not here to create a legacy for ourselves, in short we must die and recede ultimately.
You know if you surf a wave all the way to the shore line it eventually dies, you get a long ride but it gradually gets less and less exhilirating, by that time you are so far from the surf you struggle to get back out to where the real big waves are being formed. If your on a wave now then look for the next one, the one you are on is dying – period!
Yes, but there’s a lot of good stuff that happens on the wave as it gets into the shore. The entire picture is of waves beginning, waves breaking, waves dying. All of them are needed and appropriate – none is a “perfect wave” but each contributes to the system of waves that eventually break on the shore. If you’re on a wave now, yes, it will eventually die, but remember there’s some good surfing to be done on that wave. Yes, you’ll have to struggle out to get another one but you’ll be charged up with memories of what is possible when a wave is fully formed. As you struggle out, you’ll see new waves forming and being ridden by others – encourage them as you go and look forward to the next one. The danger comes for us all when we believe and then declare that our section of the wave is “best” or “more of God” than others.
I agree with the sentiments of both of these comments but I have a deeper concern in the direction of this post and the metaphor of surfing a wave or crashing a boat. There seems to be an inherent danger with just giving something a certain timespan and then ‘writing it off’. That’s fine with cars and other humanly made things but the church is created by God and even called the ‘Body of Christ’ in the Bible. The incredible nature of God’s grace allows us to participate (calls us in fact) in his redemptive work. Who’s to say that something older is of no use or past it’s use by date? Think of Moses, Sarah, Zechariah, etc… all people who this conversation would write off as not contemporary enough. We need to be very careful before we ‘write off’ a church as too old. I agree that plenty are at the point of death but equally I have to reject the idea that if it is new it is therefore more valuable. There seems to me to be a certain existenist element driving this idea that won;t get the msision anywhere.
Dear Mike and Andrew,
So right you are in your comments, as one who lives in a locality (Highlands of Scotland) that is steeped in great waves of God’s grace, and one who regularly has the opportunity to preach to many differing shades of Christianity, I know only too well the dangers of jettisoning good and valid practice.
Maybe the best example of surfing is the Apostle Paul, he ‘surfed’ through Galatia, Macedonia, Asia etc. He tried to catch the wave to Bithynia and wanted to surf in Spain but as far as we know never really got there. He constantly (at the Spirit’s bidding) pushed the edge of the known envelope, yet we see him resident in Ephesus and other places. My analogy was more to say lets not catch the wave to the shore and then believe that this is where we now must take up residency.
I would never presume that something older is past its date, if that were the case then the NT would be obsolete and we would have to keep writing Scripture to suit our own whims.
As you say, ‘new does not mean more valuable’ you know it seems to me the wheel has never been improved upon, a round wheel is still a round wheel, though a top drawer Michelin is far better for its purpose on modern cars, than a solid 2″ wide compound rubber on a Model T Ford would be.
Likewise what use would it be to preach on Boston Common when all the people are down at the shopping mall? Preaching is relevant period, that remains constant, but standing on a bleak and lonely windswept moor to preach is not.
In short I suppose I always want to hear the voice of God in our day, how best can I display the rule of the Kingdom of Heaven in my day, my town, to my neighbour.
So for instance when I ask ‘Lord how best is a church structured?’ The answer is ‘structure it around the table fellowship, with elders and deacons serving the people and teaching all that I have commanded’.
By the way I’m not much good at surfing anyway, but I sure hope that when the Lord returns, I will not be found sat amidst the flotsam and jetsam of debris of the high tide line – thanks for your input.
I suppose the issue with things being old is that they tend to calcify – a bit like our arteries. Recently I was meditating on the verse “I will build my church and the gates of hades will not prevail against it” and I realised that this does not apply directly to any particular church, but to the church overall. A particular church may prevail for a time but may eventually die (cf. new Testament churches). That does not nullify the promise, though. The nature of the church is of local communities in particular historical settings. Because of this, the church must always change if it is to truly be the church. Of course there are some key aspects of the church that do not change. But, if the church institutionalises aspects of its life such as culture and methods, then as society changes the church is bound to become less relevant – less a truly local expression of the body of Christ – who himself was incarnated into a particular historical situation. The problem comes when we do become less relevant – less representative – of our context. When the wine gets old and starts to taste pretty good that’s when we tend to despise new wine. That’s when we need to start looking for new waves. but there is definitely a time between the forming of a wave and its demise when surfing is great. The key, I suppose, is to know when the wave is going to die and when energy would be better expended in paddling out to find a new one.
I often reflect on the “house church” of the New Testament. Paul was a missional genius. My understanding of a “house-church” is of a multi-generational, multi-social class, multi-economic statused reality (masters, slaves, children, artisans, extended family – and quite a number in a large household). Meet around a table for a fellowship meal in memory (and anticipation) of Jesus and you have a radical social issue. You have broken down male/female barriers, class barriers, social barriers, maybe even racial barriers – people of these different backgrounds would not normally eat together. They share bread and wine in acknowledgement of their common need for salvation, forgiveness, hope etc. Next day, they wake up. Nothing has changed, but everything has changed. How can a master now treat a slave with contempt – the day before he ate and drank on common ground and in recognition of jesus as lord? That’s why Paul didn’t have to abolish slavery – the injustice of slavery is abolished in the christian community as people sit at table together in a radically different social order. In this way the church becomes the place where the values of the kingdom of God are made visible. But, those values are not meant to remain in the church, they are meant to transform us so that everything from now on is different. Slavery is abolished through Christ not because parliament has been lobbied (though that can be good) but because a radical transformation has occurred in the lives of his followers who can never live out an oppressive ethic again.
This is the missionary genius of the first century house-hold-church. But, house church as it is often done today often lacks multi-generational aspects, multi-social strata aspects, etc. By trying to capture a method we may miss what that method was able to achieve in its original context.
The question for us today is what methods or contexts would produce such a radical social experiment as the household church of the first century? I suggest that our search for this sort of reality is equivalent to our waiting for the new waves to form.
MikeB said
“The key, I suppose, is to know when the wave is going to die and when energy would be better expended in paddling out to find a new one”.
That is so true, and that is the most difficult to do, because it often (always) seems to strike at my own securities first.
Also with regard to house church, so often they form around a house and set up in pride that their particular house church is closest to the 1st Century model. Yet we are never encouraged to follow primitive church functionality and model to the letter, simply because we live in a different social setting – but Mike you reveal the crux when you say…
“You have broken down male/female barriers, class barriers, social barriers, maybe even racial barriers – people of these different backgrounds would not normally eat together”.
I wonder if the Lord will break down denominational barriers – for the church has added this barrier to the others, many churches I know do have elements of segregation along class, nationality, financial status and social lines, and this so much perverts the gospel of the Kingdom.
I long to surf on the grace of God instead of drowning in a tsunami of mediocrity.
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