There is a reckoning happening to the American Evangelical Church. It is slower than I wish, however, it is happening. 2020-2021 is proving to be the years when our weaknesses are being exposed. Some have identified these things much earlier. However, currently it is happening en masse - if we let it. Read my previous blog here that I wrote on my church's site.
I've been writing and thinking much about all of this. I am a pastor in a church that would identify as evangelical. I love Jesus and I want people to know him, to have a genuine relationship with him. I want to see Christians growing together as a family in Christ to unashamedly fulfill the Great Commission, and to be known as being the hands and feet of Jesus in our community as we love God and love one another, guided by the Scriptures as our authority in faith and life. If these qualities are the essence of what we might call evangelicalism, I am still all in.
However, there is an anxiety for many in this time of reckoning, and many things are being surfaced that must be addressed - a major one being the need for truth telling, and the ability to face and handle the exposure of our own failures not just personally, but as the Church and as local churches.
We don't know how to handle our own failures as a Church, or have lost sight of real, meaningful introspection. Truth telling is a quality the American Church is not known for. Every church will run into their own sin and failures. Leaders will sin. Local churches will eventually drip into seasons of unhealth or stagnation. Sometimes its traumatic when it is revealed, and churches are ripped apart. Other times, they are just rumbles and quakes, leading to a few families leaving here or there.
An important question we must ask is - what happens when this events occur? What happens when the earth quakes below the Church, and the cracks in the walls are exposed?
I have seen and personally witnessed churches leaving those cracks there for everyone to see. Even pointing at them, addressing them, and being honest about them. Sadly, I personally do not know many stories like these. I pray that these are more in number than I've personally witnessed.
However, what seems more common is the other kind of response. We play a political game and march on through a public relations campaign, as we imagine our reputation as a church is more important than the raw truth of our failures to be told. Image before honesty. Positive notoriety to be propped up before ugly genuineness leaks onto the congregation and surrounding public. It is not usually done in a nefarious manner, and not every situation necessarily should be told in every detail.
As we have created this habit, churches are doing a disservice to their congregation.
We are not equipping our churches to properly face our failures.
We grab the corner of the rug, we sweep the mess under, and try our best to move forward. Failures that are not dealt with eventually stack up like cracked and faulty foundational blocks that find their way beneath every area of our churches, eventually toppling over. Some times, the whole church falls with it.
The word 'apocalypse' comes to mind. Not in the eschatological, end of the world sense that we usually use it. The original word simply means 'to reveal.' It is an uncovering, showing the true man behind the curtain. These toppling-over events are a kind of apocalyptic event for a local church, whether small or large.
We don't like our shame to be revealed. Adam and Eve had the instinct to hide when they realized they were naked. These mini apocalyptic events are indeed like the stripping away of our church's clothing while standing in the middle of Costco. Even though the Spirit fills us, we are still imperfect sinners, all works in progress. Any church which is made up of many dozens or hundreds of imperfect people who are work-in-progress Christ followers are going to be an extension of this. All of our churches are imperfect. All of them are works in progress.
There is a simple element of the Gospel that we have forgotten, which has lead to I believe vast spiritual immaturity among us as local churches and also as the institutional church. It isa lack of a willingness to rely on the truth, even at the expense of ourselves. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). If a denomination or church is afraid of telling the truth, they lack trust in Jesus who is the Truth - and our grace. Honesty is a way that we can lead others to see Jesus, and find life in him to an unbelieving world.
This takes practice. No one likes the feeling of the gut punch when your own sin is exposed. It's against human nature. That is precisely why it is perhaps one of the best manners in which we can tell and be the Good News of Jesus in 2021. To rely on the grace of Jesus not just personally but as the church, to act on what we all claim to believe - that his death and resurrection can cover any sin and restore what our locust-sin has eaten - means that we consider his glory in our truth telling as more important than preserving our image.
We must equip our congregations for truth telling, baring the consequences, and then rebuilding as necessary. It is embracing that famous scriptural conjunction found in Ephesians 2 that is perhaps the only glimmer of hope we have as humanity. God is indeed at work in us, but we are still sinners. We still stumble into the deeds of darkness. We will sometimes find ourselves embracing deeds of death passions of the flesh.
"But God," says Paul, "being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved" (Ephesians 2:4–5).
God can redeem our church's sin. A leader may fail and leave trauma behind, a church may make a terrible decision and hurt many, but in truth telling we act on our continual belief that God forgives, extends grace, redeems and changes. We are saved, and he continues to save. He is rich in mercy.
I pray the evangelical church can be known in the next generation for truth telling and the revealing of the grace of God at work in our churches rather than a continual embrace of image worship and reputation idolatry.