TILL HE COMES Blog

Close Your Church for Good, Chap. 3, Part 4. Having introduced the definition of the church, I now attempt to clairfy some misconceptions of the church. I begin with the Greek word ekklēsia.

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First, it is true, as mentioned above, that the Greek word used for “church” is ekklēsia, which means “gathering” or “assembly.” The term could be used of any type of gathering, whether social, political, or religious, and even of groups of people that never actually “gather.”

It is important to note that “church” is not exactly a translation of the Greek ekklēsia. The term “church” actually is derived from the German Kirche, which in turn comes from the Greek adjective kuriakos, “belonging to the Lord” (cf. 1 Cor 11:20) or possibly the Latin circus. In the early history of the church, when the New Testament was getting translated from Greek into Latin, there was no clear equivalent in Latin for ekklēsia, and so various terms were proposed. Tertullian used curia (“court”) while Augustine famously wrote of the Civitas Dei (“City of God”). One surprisingly common term used by various Greek writers was thiasos (“party”), which generally referred to a troop of revelers marching through the city streets with dance and song, often in honor of Bacchus, the god of drunkenness. The point is that many early writers did not know how to translate or describe the term ekklēsia, but the terms they proposed offer tantalizing clues as to how the church functioned and was viewed during its early years.

Some help on translating ekklēsia may come from recognizing that it is derived from the word kaleō, “to call.” Some who have understood this refer to the church as “the called out ones.” But it must be pointed out that the emphasis in such a usage is not on the people who gather, or where they gather, but rather, who or what does the gathering. To put it another way, the most important factor in an ekklēsia is who causes and calls the assembly. When compared with the Scriptural usage of the term, it quickly becomes obvious that it is God who calls the assembly, and forms the gathering. Therefore, whenever the term “church” is used, it is either stated or implied that it is a gathering of (or by) God.

It is likely that the New Testament writers borrowed the term from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) where the people of Israel are often referred to as the ekklēsia of God. They were called and gathered by God from the world to accomplish a specific purpose and task. In the New Testament, the emphasis is that when God gathers, He does so not by gathering people together as a nation, but by gathering people together into a person, namely, Jesus Christ. 

This is the first misconception about the church that must be unraveled. It is not a place or a building (more on this in chapter 8). Church is not something you go to. Nor is it an event. It is not something you can do. It cannot be scheduled. Instead, the church is people whom God has gathered into Jesus Christ.

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Close Your Church for Good. Chap. 3, Sec 3. Since I had already posted the intro to chapter 3 on July 18 (it was chapter 2 at the time) , I decided I better post something new. So here is my working definition for church.

What is the bare bones basic understanding of church? What did Jesus try to teach His disciples about what He was forming them to be? What did Paul and the other writers of the New Testament try to impress upon the readers of their letters? What is common to nearly every spiritual renewal movement in history?

In this book, church is being defined as the people of God who follow Jesus into the world. To arrive at this simple understanding of the church, it is necessary to unpack and unwind some of the complex misunderstandings that have been constructed around the church.

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Close Your Church for Good. Chap. 3, Sec 1. To talk about the church, or to live and operate as the church, you must have a definition of “church.” What is yours? In this chapter, I will introduce mine.

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Have you ever wondered why your church does certain things a certain way, while the church across town does everything so different? Churches have wide diversity, from music and preaching styles, to building construction and leadership approaches. Why is this? Some of it has to do with traditions and customs, but even these are often guided by something much more basic: the definition of the church. What is the church supposed to be and do? It depends on how you define “church.”

But getting a definition is not as simple as looking up a verse in the Bible, asking your pastor for his, or looking one up in a theological dictionary. Even where church is defined, such definitions tend to be full of complex ideas and theological jargon which require further explanation. For example, a typical definition of “church” reads something like this:

Church (Gk. ekklēsia) is the universal body of believers that functions under the headship of Jesus Christ and meets regularly in local assemblies to carry out the Great Commission through observing the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper and listening to the preaching of the Word of God, all for the edification of the believer and the evangelism of the world.

It is difficult to disagree with such a definition. However, disagreement begins when you start to discuss what the various terms and words mean. How can the church be both universal and local? Who is a believer? What do they have to believe and who gets to decide?  What does it mean for Jesus Christ to be the head? Should we have pastors and priests or not? Why are baptism and the Lord’s Supper called ordinances? What kind of baptism is required? How and when should people be baptized? What exactly constitutes “the Lord’s Supper”? How often should it be observed? Who gets to do the preaching? How long should the preaching be? What does it mean to preach “the Word of God”? Also, this specific definition says nothing about leadership, organization, church government, denominations, our role in politics, and many other issues that are important to the average church.

The theology books generally attempt to answer these sorts of questions. And before you know it, an attempt to understand what the church is and what the church does requires detailed knowledge of dozens of books and an advanced educational degree or two. The “basics” of church seem to require a lot of advanced study and research. Apparently, the basics are not so basic after all.

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Close Your Church for Good. Chap 2, Sec 2. How did church become so complex? It didn’t start that way; it evolved that way. But we can become simple again.

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Christianity began quite simply. Yet over the years, it has gone through various cycles of gaining complexity until a renewal movement arises, and brings a portion of the church back to simplicity.  These cycles are nearly always the same. Initially, the movement begins with a few simple but profound ideas which could be taught and learned in minutes. The people who hear these ideas are so moved by them, they are able to remember, practice, and teach them to others. 

Within a few years, however, the movement begins to morph. Questions get asked and answered and innovative practices become standard traditions. Cultural influences are incorporated to appeal to the masses but soon become indistinguishable from the movement itself. Eventually, the movement begins to slow as the required knowledge and expertise to live and function within the movement becomes so great, it takes not a few minutes, but a few years to understand and grasp the ideas and practices of the movement. The two or three initial truths which spread so rapidly at first are developed into massive systems of beliefs and practices, complete with books, specialized leaders, and training centers where new initiates spend years of study before they are allowed to go out and teach others also.

This continues until someone comes along and simplifies things again. Then a new movement begins bringing reform, renewal, passion, excitement, and generally, an explosion in evangelistic activity. Frequently, these new ideas, new practices, and the people who teach them are condemned as heretical by the established and well-grounded movement. But over time, the new movement either dies out, or follows the general pattern above, and is eventually incorporated into the well-grounded and established movement. When this happens, new books are written, new explanations are provided, new training centers open, and the ever-growing mass of required knowledge to live and operate within the movement expands.  Eventually, a new movement begins and the process starts all over again.

These spiritual movements often center around freedom. Those who are involved in the movement believe that the Scriptures contain very little about how church should be done. The Scriptures do tell us, however, what the church is, and what the church is supposed to do. As long as we understand this, we can be as free, flexible, and creative as we desire.

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Close Your Church for Good, Chap 2. Sec 1. Here is the new introduction to chapter 2. I’ve done major revisions to Chapter 1 also, which will only appear in the final e-book version.

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What is the church supposed to be and do? It depends on how you define church. But getting a definition is not as simple as looking up a verse in the Bible, asking your pastor for a definition, or looking one up in a theological dictionary. Even where it is defined, such definitions tend to be full of complex ideas and theological jargon which require further explanation. For example, a typical definition of “church” in many theology books reads something like this:

Church (Gk. ecclēsia) is the universal body of believers that functions under the headship of Jesus Christ and meets regularly in local assemblies to carry out the Great Commission through observing the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper and listening to the preaching of the Word of God, all for the edification of the believer and the evangelism of the world.

There’s really not much to disagree with in such a definition. It is when you start to discuss what the various terms and words mean, however, that disagreement begins. How can the church be both universal and local? Who is a believer? What do they have to believe and who gets to decide?  What does it mean for Jesus Christ to be the head? Should we have pastors and priests or not? Why are baptism and the Lord’s Supper called ordinances? What kind of baptism is required? How and when should people be baptized? What exactly constitutes “the Lord’s Supper”? How often should it be observed? Who gets to do the preaching? How long should the preaching be? What does it mean to preach “the Word of God”? Also, this specific definition says nothing about leadership, organization, church government, denominations, our role in politics, and many other issues that are important to the average church.

The theology books generally attempt to answer these sorts of questions. And before you know it, an attempt to understand what the church is and what the church does requires detailed knowledge of dozens of books and an advanced educational degree or two. The “basics” of church seem to require a lot of advanced study and research. The basics are not so basic after all.

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Close Your Church for Good, Chap. 2, Sec. 2. In the previous post, I asked you to imagine what would happen in your community if your chuch ceased to exist. We continue this line of inquiry in this post.

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How about the other people in town? Would the residents even know your church was gone? Again, it probably depends on the size and prominence, but in general, your church closing down would generate little more than gossip and speculation. Would the city council care? The Police Department? The Mayor? How about the gangs, prostitutes, and drug dealers? Would the media notice? Would the nightly news report it? Would the newspaper write an article? Even if they did, would it be a leading story? Would it make front page? They might do a report if your church was an historic landmark, but probably only if your town is small. Old churches close all the time, and the media rarely gives even a few lines of news. The only other time church closures get reported is when it is a mega-church, or when the pastor or staff are caught in some sort of sex scandal or financial crime.

So tragically, for far too many churches, the only people who would really notice that your church closed are the people who attend there and the pastors of the other churches that would receive them. The average person in your community and neighborhood would only know that your church shut down because the “For Sale” sign went up. The brutal truth is that, for most churches, if they were to close, the negative impact on the surrounding community would be next to nothing.

Why is this? You hear some people teach that the church is the hope of the world, but how can this be if the people in your neighborhood and town wouldn’t even know if you were gone? What has happened that the church, which seeks to be light and salt in the world, has become so insignificant and marginalized?

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Close Your Chruch for Good, Chap. 2, Sec 1.

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What would happen to your city if your church shut down? Let’s begin with the people who attend the church. Most would be sad that their church closed, but eventually, the majority would go to another church in town. Some might stop attending church altogether, but it’s safe to say that the lives and schedules of most of the people in your church would change very little. Only the address of where they go to church would be different.

How about the people who may not attend on Sunday mornings, but are involved in some of the church programs? If the church has programs like Youth Group, MOPS, AWANA, AA, or a free meal for the homeless on a the Second Tuesday of the month, all the people who attend these would have to find other churches or social groups who host them. This is generally not too difficult, even in the smallest of towns. I once pastored a church in a small town with a 2000 Census population of 169 people. We were the only church in town, but there were other churches in nearby towns that had nearly identical programs. If our church had shut down, the people who attended our programs simply would have gone to another church or community center that hosted the same programs.

Moving outward from the church a little further, there are the immediate neighbors of the church—those who live next door and on the same street or block. They would notice if your church shut down, but it wouldn’t affect their lives too much. Most churches have surprisingly little contact with their closest neighbors. If your church closed, the neighbors might wonder what happened, but there would be little noticeable difference in their lives. There is one exception. Some churches, like people with loud dogs, do not make the best neighbors. This is especially true of large churches in residential areas. Police and pastors often receive complaints from the neighbors of large churches about traffic congestion and excessive noise on evenings and weekends. Just as you would probably be annoyed if a large dance club opened up next to your home because of the noise and traffic it would cause, so also, many neighbors get annoyed by large churches on their street. So in these cases, the neighbors might actually rejoice if your church closed.

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Close Your Church for Good. Introduction. Now that I’ve finished chapter 1, I felt like I needed to go back and write an Introduction for the book. So here it is. After this, we will get on with chapter 2.

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It is not my desire for any church to close. I grieve whenever I hear of another church having to disband, sell its building, and the pastor has to find a new job, and the members must (hopefully) find new churches. In fact, on the day I began writing this book, I learned that a church I used to pastor had just closed its doors. I knew and loved the people who went there, who poured hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars into the church. With many tears and prayers, they had tried to make that church a vibrant source of light in their community. But they closed. And when I heard, I grieved.

So do not misunderstand. I love your church. I love your pastor and the people who attend there. I love the programs you run, and how you have labored for Christ so faithfully over the years. I know there have been great sacrifices, and many people have been helped as a result of your church. That last thing I want is for your church to disband, for the pastor to lose his job, and the people who attend there to no longer have a place to worship, learn, and be encouraged.

To the contrary, I desire that such things only increase in frequency and effectiveness. I want to see more people in church as greater numbers of people are reached with the gospel. I hope that your church becomes widely known for its love, grace, mercy, and generosity. My wish is that the influence of the church only increases. That is why I wrote this book.

If you’ve scanned the book, or read the chapter titles, you may be under the impression that I want churches to sell their buildings and shut down permanently. Let me emphatically say that this is not the message I intend to give. Rather, my hope is that churches rethink what they do, and more importantly, why they do it. Certainly, some churches may close down if some of the suggestions in this book are followed, but if so, they will close for good reasons. They will close to expand their effectiveness and ministry options, not because they can no longer survive. That is how you should understand the title of this book. If you are going to close your church, close it to accomplish something good. This book is about closing your church with purpose, rather than just fading away for lack of funds and people.

So it’s not just a book for struggling or dying churches. It’s a book for thriving churches who sense they’ve lost their direction, or need to revitalize their vision and mission. This book points out several areas and functions of the church that can be closed or modified, and in so doing, better accomplish the mission of Jesus Christ, thereby revealing the Kingdom principles of God. You might be surprised at some of the suggestions that are proposed. But you may also find that in following these suggestions (which initially seem “anti-church”), you and your church is liberated to function as the body of Christ is truly supposed to function. You may find that closing your doors is the best thing your church ever did.

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Close Your Church for Good, Chap. 1, Sec. 8. If the church of the past adopted and accepted the powers offered by Satan but rejected by Jesus, what should our response be today?

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It’s no use arguing that the church should have done something different. We weren’t there, and even if we had been, we probably would have done the same thing as they. What’s done is done whether we agree with it or not. The past cannot be changed.

But one thing that can be changed is the present. Whether we agree or not with the decisions of our predecessors, we make our own decisions today. We can choose differently. We can, if we so choose, reject the siren call of power, money, glory, authority, recognition, and control. We can root out the areas in our churches that draw us away from love, service, and sacrifice.

And many believe we have done just that. Though all agree that there have been abuses in the past, most think that in general, the church has improved. We hasten to add, of course, that the church will never be perfect because it is filled with imperfect people. And that’s probably true. The church, like individual Christians, is always a mixture of faithfulness and failure. But this doesn’t stop all the positive things the church accomplishes. The general consensus among churchgoers is that we are a loving, generous, humble, sacrificial, service-oriented, forgiving, merciful, and friendly organization. The trouble, however, is that this image of the church is generally not shared by non-churchgoing people. They tend to see us as greedy, hypocritical, unforgiving, judgmental, harsh, critical, and selfish.

So where is the disconnect? If the church is as loving and generous as we believe, why do people on the outside see just the opposite? The possible answers are numerous, but the solution is what concerns me. And the solution, I believe, must be based on the fact that in general, people are blind to their own faults, though they are obvious to everyone else. Just take church history as an example. We can all look back and see the abuses and problems of the past. We wonder why they didn’t see their mistakes, and make the necessary corrections. How could they be so blind? But the point is that one hundred years from now, people will look back and ask the same questions about us.

Did the church of the past err? Yes. Are we erring now? Probably. The trick is to find how and where, and then what to do about it. We do not know what future critics will say, so the best we can do is listen to some of the critics of today. And then, with the aid of Scripture and the Holy Spirit, try to discern what is true and how we can change.

That is the goal of this book. With one ear to Scripture and the other to our unchurched critics, we want to see if there is anything in the church today which still reflects the abuses of the past. Where are we falling to the temptations and influences of the devil and his attempt to twist and pervert the church away from the purposes and plans of God? Where might we reflect a desire for self-reliance, riches, authority, recognition, glory, and control? If such desires and influences exist, they must be identified and changed so that we may truly live and function as the body of Christ.

Each of the following chapters will look at one area of concern. After showing why it’s an area of concern, we will attempt to discern the biblical and traditional basis for this practice or program in an attempt to determine its original purpose. Next, we will try to discern any Satanic influence in this area, which has caused it become twisted or perverted away from the original purpose. And finally, suggestions will be made about how that practice or program can be resurrected to reflect Jesus Christ and the life-transforming glory of the gospel.

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Close Your Church for Good, Chap. 1, Sec. 6.

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Following His victory over temptation, Jesus began His ministry, gathered and taught disciples, then died on the cross and rose again from the dead. In His resurrection, He gained what Satan had promised, but Jesus gained it according to the will and ways of God, not in selfishness, but in service; not in power, but in humility; not in riches, fame, honor, and glory, but in poverty, weakness, shame, and relative obscurity. Before He ascended to heaven, He instructed His disciples to follow His example, and pass on the training that He had given them.

Over the next few centuries, the followers of Jesus did their best. But it was tough. They faced constant threats from the government and the military. Some of them lost their jobs, their families, and even their lives. They were scorned and ridiculed. And yet, as they served and loved others, gave self-sacrificially of their time and possessions, offered forgiveness and grace when wronged, and lived faithfully to the example of Jesus, the message about Jesus continued to spread and lives were changed.

But then something happened. The temptations came back around. As more and more people became followers of Jesus, the focus of many Christians began to shift. The emphasis began to move away from self-sacrifice, service, generosity, humility, and peace, and toward power, influence, prominence, authority, recognition, and control. This is seen in a variety of ways. Out of pure motives to protect and educate new believers, church leaders began to consolidate power and control. They created a hierarchy of religious leaders who helped develop rules of morality and decide which understandings of Scripture were correct. They tried to increase their influence in society by gaining more followers and defending Christian beliefs against the claims of philosophy and other religions. 

One of the greatest shifts came when the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity after he defeated his enemies under the sign of the cross. As a result of this victory, he declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Mass conversions followed. Thousands of pagan temples were transformed into places of Christian worship. Almost overnight, Christianity became rich, powerful, and prominent. It also became a tool of the Empire, blessing the Empire’s wars, approving the Empire’s laws, and installing the Empire’s rulers. In exchange, the Empire gave the church land, money, and buildings. The church had gained power.

In his book, The Myth of the Christian Religion, Gregory Boyd describes the transition this way:

Once the Church acquired power over others, everything changed. A movement that began by viewing the acquisition of political and military power as a satanic temptation now viewed it as a divine blessing. A movement that was birthed by Christ refusing to conquer his enemies in order to die for them now set out to conquer enemies—for Christ. The faith that previously motivated people to trust in the power of the cross now inspired them to trust in the power of the sword. Those who had previously understood that their job was to serve the world now aspired to rule it. The community that once pointed to their love for enemies and refusal to engage in violence as proof of Christ’s lordship now pointed to their ability to violently defeat enemies as proof of Christ’s lordship.

Whereas Jesus has turned down selfish individualism, power, control, riches, fame, recognition, and glory as a means of accomplishing His mission, the church fully embraced such things as a means to spread the Gospel, fulfill the Great Commission, and expand the Kingdom of God on earth.

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