It's Not About Us, Part 2 - (The Church Yearns for Freedom)

(This is the second article in a series.)

The church is trapped, and the church yearns for freedom. We are trapped by many things:

1) Anxiety over declining membership and shrinking budgets.
2) Grief over closing and/or losing congregations.
3) Fear that our entire denomination is dying a slow, painful death.
4) Concern that the Christian church in general is becoming unpopular and irrelevant.

When confronted with these realities, we tend to turn inward to find explanations and solutions, which only leads to more anxiety. If only, goes the thinking, we had better pastoral leadership, or more relevant worship services, or more dynamic education programs, or stronger evangelism techniques, or hipper seminaries, or sleeker Presbytery structures, or snappier mission statements, or catchier denominational slogans, etc., etc. - then, we could attract back all those precious young people we never see on Sunday mornings. When these solutions don't work, or only partially work, we fall back into the cycle of anxiety and being trapped.

But as soon as we can realize that "it's not about us," and that we can be at peace with those realities, then we can move toward the freedom that God wants for us. Imagine how great it would feel to be freed from the following chains:

1) Weekly fretting over how many people come to worship or Sunday school.
2) Angst over the fact that most of the congregation is over the age of 40, or 50, or 60.
3) Constant fear that giving is going to fall short of the budget.
4) Worry about the cost of maintenance for an aging building.
5) Sadness that the Presbytery will need to close a few more congregations this year.
6) Anger at churches that are leaving to find another denomination.
7) Dismay over articles on negative cultural attitudes toward Christianity.

As important as these concerns might seem to us (especially #3), none of them represent the reason God called the church into being. Nowhere in the New Testament are we told that the purpose of the church is to maintain programs, buildings, budgets, congregational charters, and the reputation of our faith in the wider culture.

Instead, we are called to spread the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed. Period. We are called to feed the hungry, comfort the lonely, heal the sick, visit those in prison, and speak out for justice and peace - all the while proclaiming our faith in Christ. Unfortunately, our anxiety and our helplessness over the loss of these other non-essential things have become the chains that keep us from proclaiming Christ. Which is why it is so important for the church and the people in it to make peace with the changing realities.

If our membership declines, even to the point we must find smaller facilities, then so be it!

If we must close some congregations, or even the majority of them, then so be it!

If our denomination becomes much smaller, or merges with others, or even perishes, then so be it!

If the Christian church in America becomes a minority, an outside voice in a secular culture, then so be it!

It's not that we want any of these things to happen, but rather that we can accept them and move forward in faith should they be God's will. The history of God's people is full of many amazing stories of rise and decline, and God has never failed to bring God's people through lean times into a future of great abundance.

The church is currently trapped by our disbelief in God's power over the present realities. Only when we are freed from our crippling anxieties can we be free to follow the Holy Spirit to the place God has prepared.