Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Another sampling from "Worship, Evangelism, and Ethics-On Eliminating the And"…

"The way the church 'wins converts,' therefore, is by making us faithful worshipers of the God who alone is worthy of worship….Such a people are bound to attract followers, because the God who has called them from the nations is so beautifully compelling."

If this sounds like a jab at megachurches that become consumed by growing in size, it is. There is something deeply disturbing when "evangelism" devolves into the endless quest to pack more people in the pews to have a 'meaningful' experience. But don't hear that criticism as a case of sour grapes from a declining denomination. It's not about jealousy because other churches are bigger than ours. Rather, the concern is about a vision that has settled for something too small. When increasing the numbers of our ranks becomes an end in itself, we lose the power of God's promise that we are loved just as we are and instead get caught up in keeping up with the church of the Joneses. When evangelism becomes marketing, we soon discover that we've traded the precious-but free!-gifts of God for a sales pitch. Grace is replaced with gimmick, and the love of the community becomes lost in saccharine "niceness" and shallow talk of "meaningfulness." We become convinced that faith is a product to be pushed and that God will lose face-or worse, we think, our congregation will lose face-unless numbers are up and people leave the service entertained.

What if it didn't have to be that way? What if we were not bent on being God's top sellers and instead could let ourselves simply offer thanks to the God who has gathered us? The preposterous word of faith (and it is preposterous in a world where everything has become a product) is that it doesn't have to be "that way" and we are not responsible for selling salvation. We do not need to settle for the lesser gods of popularity and prestige. We do not need to settle for anything less than communion with the God who has made and redeemed us. That God is the real focus and center of the gathered church. When we can let go of selling idols, we cannot help but be drawn deeper in love with the God who is "so beautifully compelling." And when we give up on meeting quotas, we cannot help but draw others around us into the same compelling love. That is all evangelism ever is.

Connection: We do not have to settle for anything less than the living God revealed in Jesus Christ as the center of our identity and our worship.

Gracious God, open our eyes to the beauty of who you are, and hold that vision ever before us in the face of all this day brings.