We’re
reaching the end of Andy Stanley’s The
Grace of God, and I’m
hitting my first area of disagreement.
Well,
it’s not exactly disagreement. It’s more a case of I think he’s focused on half
the picture.
Can
I really say that about Andy Stanley? On I plunge.
This
chapter, “Commissioned by Grace,” asks and answers the question, “Is church for
everyone or is it just for church people?” Stanley doesn’t hesitate. It’s for
everyone, he says, and he paraphrases St. James in that the church sometimes
makes church too hard for people. “If the church is God’s primary vehicle for
dispensing the message of grace, then the local church is clearly not for
church people,” he writes. “It’s for everybody.”
And
he’s right. We can slip into our “godly” insistence on form and procedure and “this
is the way it’s always been done” and thus tell communicate to any newcomer
that they’re welcome as long as they get with the program.
But
that cuts both ways.
We
can make our church services so “seeker-friendly” that they resemble little
more than a toned-down rock concert, or sometimes even a toned-up rock concert.
I’ve attended churches where the hymnals had disappeared, replaced by words
projected on a screen that had a lot about I and me. And I’ve attended churches
where singing anything but what was in the hymnal was considered the equivalent
of heresy.
I’ve
attended churches where the staff stifled any individual initiative from the
congregation, and churches where the congregation expected the staff to do
everything.
I’ve
attended churches where no one greeted newcomers, and churches that replaced
Bible teaching with popular books.
I’ve
attended churches that were so focused on “seekers” that they forgot the need
to make disciples.
All
of these things are signs of something wrong. And the answer may not be a happy
medium or compromise but something entirely different. And I don’t have an
answer as to what that might be.
One
clue might be how so many of us – young and old, disciple and seeker – are drawn
to liturgy. So much changes every day in this virtual, 24-hour-news-cycle world
that a church worship service, and a church, similar to the one from 2,000
years ago is not only welcome but stabilizing, an anchor in a world built upon
transience. Or saying the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm in the
language of the King James Bible connects me to believers or 450 years ago, and
believers scattered among a wide array of denominations today. (I will often pray
the “Jesus prayer,” both aware of and appreciating the fact that the meaning of
it, if not the exact words, connects me to Orthodox believers.)
But
the church is more than a style of worship, or what words we use in a prayer.
Stanley’s right – church is for everyone. But that doesn’t necessarily mean
that everything relating to church members should be excluded.
Led
by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading Stanley’s The Grace of God. To see more posts on
this chapter, “Commissioned for Grace,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.
Photograph by Junior Libby via Public
Domain Pictures. Used with permission.
