Matthew 7:24-25 – “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”
The words of Jesus give us hope. Hope that, as we anchor our lives in his teachings, we are saved, even through the inevitable flood. Thus, the flood is our test and, if we have ears to hear, our teacher. Weathering the storm is evidence of the strength of our foundation.
Matthew 7:26-27 -But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
If COVID-19 is our flood, then the fall of our churches into irrelevance was not a great crash. There was barely a whisper. Christians did not seem to care very much when local churches shut down. How much less those who don’t believe? Our foundation has not just cracked, it has crumbled.
We can’t help but remember that the early church flourished during the Plague of Antonine in the 160s AD, which killed almost 10% of the population, and the Plague of Cyprian in the 250s, which killed more than a million people. They withstood these floods while experiencing religious persecution, torture, and death. Disasters the likes of which we can scarcely imagine today. Those Christians gained notoriety for their fearless care of the sick of all beliefs and backgrounds. The teachings of Jesus had never been more relevant, the local church never more viable, never more unstoppable.
Yet, we find ourselves in the opposite situation. The church that couldn’t be stopped by executions or tortures or famines or plagues can now be closed on a governor’s whim. How can the church that is to overcome the very gates of hell be halted by bureaucrats?
What changed? What flaw has the flood revealed in our foundation – our practice and our beliefs?
I propose the hypothesis that an organization which can be stopped, can be closed, can be shut down, by anyone or anything, cannot be the local church, regardless of what we, by habit or custom, choose to name it. Christians are an ekklesia, a community. Community is not an optional add-on to faith in God. Community is imperative, it is at the root of who we are. To paraphrase Saint Cyprian, “there is no Christianity outside of the church”.
So we come to the problem, which is simple to understand, though not easy to fix. Our ecclesiology, which means our theology of the church and the community of God, is entirely predicated on Christendom or religious freedom. In Christendom, the church grows and is protected by the power of the State, because the State is, somehow, Christian. Religious freedom is the use of the power of the state to protect the church from persecution or discrimination by others.
Do you see the problem? Our local churches, with their big buildings and signs announcing worship times and professional ministers and advertisements and livestreams, could never have existed in ancient Greece or Rome or in modern China or Iraq. Our churches live and move and have their being, not just in Him, but also, and necessarily, in a bubble of governmental protections. Like an immuno-compromised patient placed in protective isolation, our churches cannot survive outside of their bubbles of protection. The sad truth is that churches, the vanguard of the unstoppable kingdom of God, can exist in their current form only because the authorities allow them to. And they only suffer us to exist as long as we follow their rules and don’t cause trouble.
This is unacceptable! The world needs the church in all its glory, in all its love and self-sacrificial service, in its willingness to confront the untruth and injustice, and in its eagerness to reach out and accept people, to reproduce and adapt itself. The world needs the church at its best, for the challenges that we face in the 21st century are immense.
But we have confused the church building with the local church. We have carefully, painstakingly unwrapped the butterfly from the cocoon. We have removed every hardship and obstacle from joining a “church” so that our buildings might be filled and our ministers might be paid. We have created laws that allow us to give financially without feeling the cost. We have done our best to eliminate boredom, and offer a sense of meaning and maybe belonging. You can even serve, if you are a public speaker, a musician, good with children, or a friendly extrovert. The church is still beautiful and brightly colored. She has experienced a kind of transformation. She is no longer a caterpillar, but she cannot fly! She flops around on the lab table, hoping to change the world before she is pinned to the mounting board.
That, my friends, is the situation that we find ourselves in today. Will the church in the religiously free world become a relic preserved in formaldehyde and mounted for all to observe what used to be?
No! This cannot be! We are the people of God. God has used this flood to show us a deep flaw in our foundation, a flaw that has survived for generations. Now, today, we must be transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we might again reclaim, not our political power, not our good name, but our role as ambassadors for God’s kingdom of love and justice and our right relationship with the family of believers.
So we return to my hypothesis: an expression of the local church which exists at the sufferance of the authorities cannot be the local church.. The single proposition changes everything about the way that we understand the local church. The “church building” is nothing more than a para-church ministry, and nothing less. I say that with all respect to para-church ministries. World Vision and World Relief serve an amazing role helping the poor in the name of Jesus. International Justice Mission supports victims of human trafficking. BGEA brings the gospel to the world on a large stage, and New Tribes Mission does the same for the most remote peoples of the world. K-Love radio station provides uplifting music for Christian families around the world. These are all important, beautiful ministries worthy of our support. But none of them are “church”. They exist beside the church, to support the church, and to help the church fulfill its mission. If they die, due to a lack of funds or changes in the laws of the land, the church will continue. In the same way, the “church building” which we have called local church for the last several centuries, with its public services, property, professionally trained ministers who deliver interesting sermons and play great music are para-church ministries. They exist to support the local church. But they are not “church” for many reasons, not least of which is, they exist only at the sufferance of the authorities. Can you imagine the church as you know it remaining faithful in the face of death or even moderate persecution? I repeat, an institution which can only exist in a democratic society with religious freedom cannot be the sine qua non of the Christian community.
So what’s the alternative? To try to seize more national power to protect ourselves and our right to worship freely? How many times must we play that game before we figure out that Christianity and power do not go well together, not least because those who desire power are more than willing to pretend to be Christian in order to get it? No, the battle for earthly power is not the way to recover the church, nor does it seem consonant with the Way.
The church itself must change, and that’s where we find an interesting truth. For all the diversity in the formulation and practice and hierarchy of public churches across times and nations and cultures, there is remarkable unity in the practice of the underground church. Look at the New Testament, and compare it with the underground church in China, Somalia, or the USSR. It is families of people meeting in homes with other people of diverse backgrounds, reading the Scriptures and discussing them, and sharing a meal in communion with one another. Every member a vital element, responsible for giving care, bringing comfort, and sharing the gospel. This is the local church as it should be, as it must be. So different from what it is, how it works, who it benefits, and why it is right now.
“But my church has great small groups!”, you may protest. Thank God for that! A chocolate cake has an egg, but that doesn’t make it a healthy breakfast. In the same way, just because a “church building” has some small groups that some of their members attend as an additional activity, that doesn’t make it a local church. It is still a captive to the whims of the powers that be.
We need a great reversal. We need the organizational equivalent of “servant leader” or “Upside Down Kingdom”. A simple shift in perspective that changes everything. We need to realize, to believe, that the church building with all its trappings is the optional add-on to the house churches (or small groups) that fund it and benefit from it. It is possible for a collection of local churches in the New Testament sense to support a church building. But the groups meeting in the home are primary and their ministries to feed the poor and care for the sick and bless the community are primary. The para-church “church building” is there as a support to the ministry of the home churches. Not the other way around, which is how it normally works.
There can be no doubt. If the church is to be meaningful, then we must recover the underground, the private, the unstoppable church, and lift it high. This seemingly small shift is like the shift from “the greatest among you shall be your servant”. It will have monumental consequences for all parts of our spiritual lives. Fragility is the crack in our foundation that has caused many of our collapses, not least are apathetic and essentially meaningless response to COVID-19 and the associated events. Our fragility is the result of our quest for power, influence, and recognition. Our refusal to live as “foreigners and strangers”. This is where we must do the hard work of rebuilding the foundation, and tearing down some of what was built on the broken parts. This won’t be easy, it won’t be fast. It will be the work of years and decades. Repairing a foundation is always difficult. But it is work that must be done.
Matthew 16:18b – I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
I am Paul, son of Paul 