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Becoming a Blessed Church: Forming a Church of Spiritual Purpose, Presence, and Power
Chapter 1: What Is a Blessed Church?
What exactly is a blessed church? It is a glimpse of what a church can be. It is a vision, a glimpse of a healthy church uniquely grounded in a relationship with God that allows blessings to flow through it. Unfortunately, it is a vision too few churches have today, although many are glimpsing it. There are so many factors that keep churches from becoming blessed communities that it’s hard to grasp the full ramification of this vision. To understand what becoming a blessed church means, it might be helpful first to look at the factors that need to be overcome to allow a blessed church to take root and grow.
Identifying what prevents churches from becoming blessed is a kind of chicken-and-egg thing. Is the problem that pastors and church leaders no longer have the vision, faith, and skills to lead churches to blessedness? Or is it that churches have become so dry, dysfunctional, and dead that they no longer have the ability to follow pastors and church leaders into blessedness? Both seem to be true. As I look back at my training to become a pastor, I have to admit that I wasn’t very well trained to lead churches into blessedness. The seminary I attended tried to prepare me to become a pastor, but like many mainline denominational seminaries, it had an overwhelming focus on all things theological that didn’t prepare me to become a pastor in a church where not everything is theological. I studied theology, Christology, eschatology, teleology, ecclesiology, bibliology, and a bunch of other “ologies.” I studied church history, biblical languages, pastoral care, and ethics, but I learned very little about how to lead a church. The assumption, so well articulated by a Hebrew professor, was that “you can learn how to do all that church stuff when you get out of seminary.” As he said, “Seminaries are academic institutions. You have to figure out the other stuff on your own.” That’s an amazing statement from someone charged with preparing pastors and church educators for ministry and church leadership.
The problem with so many mainline denominational seminaries is that is that their mission is often at odds with the mission of the early church, which was to bring people into a deep, spiritual, loving, saving, and healing relationship with God the Creator, Son, and Holy Spirit. Too often they see themselves primarily as academic institutions, like universities and colleges, where the focus is a rational investigation and study of theology, history, and the Bible. How does this emphasis fit with their calling to train pastors, educators, and leaders for ministry and mission? Is the main function of pastors, educators, and leaders merely to be theologians explaining the mysteries of life, or are they charged with leading others to this deep, loving relationship with the Trinity? If their calling is to train pastors, educators, or leaders, what model for ministry and the church do they use? Is it that churches should be little academic institutions where the pastors and educators act as resident theologians? Is it the corporate-culture model that assumes the church is an organization in which the pastor acts as CEO and the lay leaders act as members of the board of directors? Is it the pastoral care and counseling model that assumes the church is a counseling agency in which the pastor serves as the resident therapist? There’s a lot of confusion about how to form a healthy congregation, and that confusion was imparted to me when I graduated from seminary. I wasn’t sure what my role as a pastor should be or what to model to follow.
My seminary professors reflected this same confusion. Few had served as parish pastors, and even fewer had served as pastors of dynamic, growing churches. The majority were trained mainly in academia, focusing on theological study, and so their teaching focus tended to be theological, not practical. This emphasis is in direct contrast with my graduate studies in counseling, where not only had every professor had training in the academic study of counseling, but all were still involved in private practice or as staff in a counseling agencies. I noticed the difference in my sense of competence after graduating. As a counselor, I felt prepared for most situations, and when I didn’t, I knew where to get help. As a pastor, I felt unprepared. I’m not alone in feeling inadequately prepared for leadership. Many mainline pastors feel this sense of inadequacy. As one pastor confided to me, “I came out of seminary knowing how to exegete a passage, but I had no idea how to help a person struggling to find a sense of purpose or to feel God’s love.”
Here’s an odd little statistic to reflect upon—one that demonstrates the problems with traditional seminary training. There is an inverse correlation between denominational growth and educational expectations. The more education a denomination expects of its pastors and educators, the more it shrinks. Christian Schwartz, who made a study of the qualities of growing churches, based upon a survey of 1,000 churches in 18 countries, found that seminary training has a negative correlation to both church growth and the overall quality of churches. His research found that only 42 percent of pastors in high-quality, high-growth churches had seminary training, while in low-quality, low-growth churches 85 percent had graduated from seminary. Traditional mainline denominations all expect a fairly high level of education, and pastors with a Ph.D. or D.Min. are often the most respected in some denominations. In contrast, the fastest-growing movements of all are among the Pentecostals and nondenominationals, which require little advanced education at all. They still may expect the pastor to be trained, but the pastor often has on-the-job training, supplemented by workshops, seminars, and in-house training programs focused specifically on church growth and discipleship. What inhibits the formation of blessed mainline churches may be partly that pastors, educators, and lay leaders have been inadequately trained not only in the practicalities of church leadership, but also in the knowledge of how to tap into the power of God to guide and help them. Their training becomes so academic and intellectual that they lose the life-giving sense of God’s call that initially led them into ministry and that can sustain them in ministry.
It is unfair to place the blame squarely on seminaries. Congregations present their own problems. They become so accustomed to a purely programmatic and traditional mode or operation that they don’t see the possibility of creating a congregational approach that is more spiritually open, and that leads people to experience God more deeply and tangibly in their midst. In fact, some churches become so accustomed to dysfunction that they don’t realize that they are dysfunctional. A seminary student who served an internship in our church said something to me once that reflects how accustomed people can be to dysfunction. After participating in our church budgeting process (which entails bringing all committees together in a time of prayer to discern what God is calling us to do, and putting aside squabbles and turf battles to seek what God wants), he said, “I didn’t know it could be like this. I just thought that arguing and fighting over the budget was how it was done in all churches.”
How does one lead churches like these out of the wilderness? Many pastors try. They eventually get chewed up and spit out when their congregations steadfastly resist all efforts to construct a more spiritually open approach. Some churches become so dysfunctional that their histories put one in mind of a revolving door. One pastor after another comes to the church with much fanfare; each lasts from one to three years, and leaves disillusioned by the hostility and inhospitable treatment she or he experiences while trying to lead the church out of dysfunction. In fact, many of these churches, because of their dysfunctional patterns, become adept at calling dysfunctional pastors who end up damaging the churches further because of their addictions, affairs, or embezzlements.
A final problem lies with us pastors, educators, and leaders. Many of us come to ministry with broken lives that may leave us psychologically and spiritually wounded. On the one hand, our wounds can become detrimental when they interfere with our ministry because we have denied and repressed them, refusing to do what is necessary for healing (whether that means undergoing self-examination, therapy, or spiritual direction). On the other hand, our wounds can become a source of strength if, through our self-examination, therapy, or spiritual direction, we are able to use our wounds to deepen our compassion, understanding, and care of others. Whether these wounds become a detriment or a strength depends upon the pastor’s, educator’s, or leader’s willingness to face her or his woundedness, be healed from it, and make it a source of strength.
God seems to call broken people to ministry. I don’t know why, but it’s true. Read in the Bible of the people God called. Joseph, a cocky little guy hated by his brothers, was sold by them into slavery. Moses was a murderer on the run. Ruth was a widowed foreigner whose descendents included King David. King Saul was afflicted by an oversized ego and paranoia. David was the runt of his litter and eventually became an adulterer. Solomon instituted a terrible death-squad campaign upon becoming the ruler of Israel. Jeremiah was mentally ill. Many of the disciples were ignorant and selfish. Mary Magdalene had been demon-possessed. Paul was a persecutor of Christians and aided in the killing of them. Yet God called them all. God calls broken and flawed people.
But that does not mean that people called by God should remain broken and unhealed. God also calls them to seek healing. They bear responsibility for doing the best they can to live a healthy life—one that is spiritually, psychologically, physically, and relationally balanced. Becoming whole may entail going to a counselor for psychological and relational health; seeking out a spiritual director for spiritual health; engaging in a diet and exercise program for physical health—all of which many of us pastors are loathe to do. Too many pastors today don’t bear enough responsibility for their own health and well-being. As a result, they become unhealthy leaders leading unhealthy congregations.
What is the path out of this wilderness? How do we lead our churches out of dysfunction and into blessing?
Rational Functionalism
To place the blame solely on academic seminaries, dysfunctional churches, and unhealthy pastors is not quite fair. They are all symptomatic of a far greater problem. The bigger problem is something I call “rational functionalism”—a disease that has afflicted all mainline denominations, and as a result afflicts their seminaries, churches, and pastors.
Rational functionalism is the tendency of denominations, their congregations, and their leaders to subscribe to a view of faith and church rooted in a restrictive, logic-bound theology that ignores the possibility of spiritual experiences and miraculous events, while overemphasizing a functional practice disconnected from an emphasis on leading people to a transforming experience of God. On the one hand, rational functionalism turns faith into an intellectual endeavor rooted in an excessively rational, empirical, quasi-scientific approach. This approach to faith is a by-product of the Age of Enlightenment, whose focus was on the rational and scientific pursuit of truth. Rational functionalism is rooted in the idea that we can uncover the mysteries of life and the universe mainly through rational thought and disciplined investigation. From this perspective, God is a problem to be solved through a method that mirrors the scientific method as closely as possible, and if that isn’t feasible, then by restricting the inquiry to the laws of human logic and analysis.
The rational functional approach can reduce a congregation’s practice to the attempt to lead people into a positivistic, logical exploration of religion and faith. The idea here is that a theological, historical, sociological, psychological, anthropological, economic, and philosophical understanding of the Christian faith will enable us to discern the laws of God and human life more clearly, and we can therefore learn to live better lives. In short, this approach reflects what a national leader in my denomination once said to me: “If we can just get people to think right theologically, then all of our problems will go away.” The problem is that faith is more than just a logical, empirical inquiry into God and God’s ways. It involves our minds, spirits, bodies, relationships, and beings. To address the human seeking for God from only a rational, logical, theological perspective is limiting.
One danger of rational functionalism is that it can cause pastors and leaders to become overintellectual in their approach to faith. God becomes an abstract notion, not a presence whom we can experience, form a relationship with, and love. Increasingly, these pastors and leaders endanger their faith. They don’t know what to do with God. They especially don’t know what to do with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. They can appreciate Jesus from a historical perspective, but what do they do with the resurrected Christ who, according to Scripture, is incarnated in the world, in relationships, and in the human heart? What do they do with the Holy Spirit, who inspires, heals, and miraculously touches life? Ultimately, they become so intellectual in their approach that they not only lose their own faith, but struggle with leading others to faith.
I am not advocating that pastors and church leaders should remain theologically and historically ignorant, or that we should blindly accept everything in the Bible as historical fact. Understanding Scripture and Christian faith from a more critical and academic point of view is a good thing because it can help us to understand the context and intent of Scripture, thus helping us hear God’s voice more clearly when we read Scripture. My point is that when academic inquiry and scientific skepticism become stronger than an emphasis on forming faith and leading people to an encounter with God, the church declines because people are no longer led to form a living faith in God that can transform their lives. The church becomes little more than a social agency filled with well-meaning but spiritually dead people.
In churches caught in the grip of rational functionalism, sermons tend to become academic papers read to the people in the pews. They don’t address more basic issues: How are we supposed to endure living with pain, loneliness, and turmoil? How are we supposed to find God amid life’s darkness? Bible studies focus on the historical, sociological, economic, and cultural issues of the time, with the intent of uncovering what theological message the writer of a Bible passage is trying to impart. They don’t address more basic issues: What is God saying to me through the Scripture about how to live my life? What is God saying to me about what God is doing in my life, especially in the face of my suffering? How is God calling me to love others and to reach out to those who are suffering, both near and throughout the world, and who are in need of God’s love as well as mine?
The primary problem at the core of rational functionalism is that it fails to treat God as a tangible presence. God is treated mostly as an idea or thought, or as an entity we encounter when we die, rather than as a tangible presence in the here and now. There is no sense that God’s kingdom is all around us, and that this kingdom is a spiritual reality in which we can experience God directly.
A second problem with rational functionalism is that it functionalizes the life of the church, turning everything from worship to committee meetings into routinized events with little connection to a larger purpose. In the rationally functional church, the focus is on maintaining the institution, not on creating experiences through which God can be encountered and experienced in our midst. What matters most is preaching in the prescribed manner, adhering to particular rituals in the traditional way, and singing only the traditional hymns. Guiding people to a tangible encounter, experience, and relationship with Christ isn’t much of a concern. Teaching people how to discover the power of the Holy Spirit in their midst is never emphasized because the object of the church has been reduced to doing what we’ve always done, to function the way the church has always functioned simply for the sake of functioning. Guiding people to discover the Creator’s call in their lives, calling them and us to live deeper, richer, and greater lives of love and service, is ignored in favor of guiding people simply to function as Christians have always functioned. In short, the message is reduced to (as someone once told me) “We should be Christians because Christianity is good and ethical, and we should be good and ethical people. The church’s role is to teach us to follow the Golden Rule.”
According to church-growth researcher Bill Easum, a leading writer on mainline church health and vitality, this kind of functionality (what he calls the “machine metaphor”) has “made it easy for church leaders to relate to the ‘church’ as an institution rather than a spiritual community. It also made it easy to honor educated leaders who often ridiculed emotion and feelings. Symbols easily became the reality instead of pointing to it, . . . logic replaced passion and experience. The materialistic world was real, whereas the inner world of the soul was little more than illusion.” The result, according to him, is that “Institutional churches function like corporations. Pastors are CEOs. Policy manuals replace ministry. Pastors attend seminary and are referred to as ‘professionals.’ Denominational structures and financial needs grow faster than those of congregations. Job descriptions replace calling. Degrees are more important than proven competency. . . . In such a church, leadership is based on credentials, and faith is something to be learned. This metaphor is evident in churches that place a lot of emphasis on administration, credentials, denominationalism, meetings, and defending the faith.”
Ultimately, becoming a blessed church means overcoming rational functionalism. In blessed churches, people not only expect to experience God; they do experience God. Their expectations open the door to God, who stands knocking. They expect to hear the Creator’s voice guiding the church to what it is called to be and do. They expect to encounter and be blessed by Christ. They expect the power of God the Holy Spirit to flow through their life and the church’s, blessing them in so many ways.
The Problem of Church Growth
Becoming a blessed church does not necessarily mean becoming a growing church, at least not in numbers. Many of the large, fast-growing megachurches around the country are what I would call “blessed churches,” but many are not. Numerical growth is not a defining characteristic of a blessed church, even though many think it is. In fact, the plethora of church-growth materials on the market nowadays can be a problem for many churches and their leaders who seek to grow blessed churches. Why? Because not all churches are in situations that allow them to replicate the growth of these megachurches.
The books written by megachurch pastors are filled with insights and tips on how to create a large, growing church. Many of these books have influenced my ministry and my life. The problem is that almost all these books fail to account for three primary factors that contribute to their growth—conditions that most churches can’t replicate. First, most of these churches are new church developments, seeking to attract only baby boomers and generation Xers, so they don’t run as forcefully into the problems inherent in turning around an established church that includes members of multiple generations. Instead, they have had the advantage of being able to create their own customs, follow new ideas, and focus much more of their energy on ministry rather than on maintaining buildings. Established churches can be difficult to turn around because their members often resist change and transformation. They cherish their customs, their hymns, and the ways they have always done things.
In addition, mainline churches are being challenged to respond to the demands of multiple generations, all seeking something different from worship and the church. Often the oldest generation, the World War II, or “GI generation,” seeks to hold onto tradition. The next, the silent generation, cherishes tradition, but also supports reaching out to younger generations. Baby boomers, born between 1943 and 1960, tend to want stimulation and excitement in worship, but in a new package, which may mean contemporary worship that eliminates traditional symbols and rituals. Generation Xers are often idiosyncratic, wanting churches to tailor their efforts to their age group’s varied interests and tastes (which can be almost impossible for churches to do). Finally, millennials, those born since 2000, tend to love traditional symbols and experiential rituals, while still expecting them to reflect a mixture of traditional and contemporary effects. Holding the interests of all these generations can be extremely difficult, making revitalization of a mainline church a much more daunting task than simply starting a new church that targets only one or two of these generations. Many of these megachurches have succeeded by ignoring the two oldest generations, something the mainline churches cannot do.
Turning a firmly entrenched church around to make it grow numerically takes a set of skills that many pastors don’t have, either because they lack the proper training or lack the right personal attributes. It takes a special set of skills to help a struggling congregation make the transition from, as pastor and author Stan Ott says, a traditional church to a transformational church.
A second factor that uniquely contributes to the growth of megachurches is that they are either planted or replanted in growing communities. There is a direct correlation between a growing community and a growing church. For instance, my own church, Calvin Presbyterian Church, has nearly doubled in size since I became its pastor. Certainly a big factor in this success is that Zelienople is a growing community near one of the faster-growing areas of the country. With the exception of Pentecostal churches, it is rare that churches grow in declining communities, and unique factors contribute to the growth of Pentecostal churches.
Third, large, growing churches tend to target and attract people who are seeking a church that does things differently. They draw members who are adaptable to change and are willing to risk, and who don’t want to be in a traditional church, no matter how alive it is. The people in mainline churches are often the people left behind by members who have left to seek a more contemporary church. They fear risk and don’t want change. They sometimes love their traditions more than they love God.
The challenge for most mainline churches is how to get church leaders, especially lay leaders, to lead a scared, resistant, and risk-averse church to grow when they are scared and resistant themselves. Many mainline churches lack a vision for change, the confidence to make changes, and the desire for change. They want stability. Their focus has slowly become fixed on themselves and their survival (and sometimes their death). Seeking what God wants is not high among their priorities. In many ways, they become stuck. They don’t want to die, but they don’t know how to live. They want God to speak to them, but not if it means making changes.
Many of the pastors who lead these churches are afraid themselves. They fear leading these churches to God and transformation because of the backlash they may experience from members. They feel like failures because their churches aren’t growing, and they feel like cowards for not taking more risks. I don’t want to make it sound as though great pastoral leadership means changing everything. As you will see in the following chapters, I believe that change should be rooted in God’s calling. Change may also mean maintaining traditional rituals and programs, but adapting them ever so slightly in ways that make them fresh to new generations.
As I stated above, becoming a blessed church may not lead to church growth because the focus of a blessed church is on opening to God in our midst, not on adding members. Growth in numbers becomes a by-product of growing in a relationship with God. The focus of a blessed church is on doing what God is calling us to do, having the confidence to know that God is in our midst, and relying upon God’s power to get results. This focus may not lead to numerical growth, but it does lead to health. In other words, by focusing on leading people to spiritual encounters and experiences of God, the church and its members end up forming healthier and more vibrant relationships with each other, relationships that emerge out of the deep spiritual connection with the Trinity and with each other. The more the church focuses on grounding its ministry and mission in a dynamic relationship with the Trinity, the more its members and other participants engage confidently in ministry and mission that make a difference in the local community and in the world, if only in a small way. As the church grows in its relationship with God, the members become increasingly aware of God’s power in their lives. In short, becoming a blessed church means becoming a place where God is present and God is experienced. Lives are thereby healed.
If becoming a blessed church means becoming more open to God and God’s power in our midst, why doesn’t that automatically translate into church growth? The answer is fairly simple. Becoming a blessed church means discerning and doing what God is calling us to do, and some churches simply aren’t called to grow. In fact, sometimes churches are called to die. How many of the original churches founded by Paul and the other disciples still exist? Just as people have a term of life, so do churches. Sometimes, becoming a blessed church may mean finding a way to die with faith, hope, and love. This is a hard idea to grasp in our evangelical age when success in ministry is measured by the size of a church, but sometimes churches have to die to give new life to others.
A woman told me of her experience with the death of a church that brought new life to two other churches. She served on a presbytery (the regional judicatory body of the Presbyterian Church) committee to determine what to do with the church building of a Presbyterian congregation that had shut its doors and ceased operation. The decision had been made to sell the building. Two bids came in, one from an Episcopal parish, the other from a fundamentalist Southern Baptist congregation. The Southern Baptist bid was $30,000 higher than the Episcopal, creating a dilemma. The members of the committee wanted the extra $30,000, but they didn’t want a fundamentalist congregation to occupy the church building. A fight erupted within the committee. Finally, the committee leader asked the members to be quiet and to go out and pray for an hour to see what God wanted them to do rather than argue about what each wanted.
When they resumed talking, someone offered an alternate suggestion, one heard in prayer. Why not sell the building to the Southern Baptists and give the extra $30,000 to the Episcopal parish? That way, new life would be given to two churches out of the death of one Presbyterian church. The committee spent time praying about it, and all agreed. But they had one problem. How would they get the presbytery to go along with their suggestion? Wouldn’t their suggestion be seen as poor stewardship, since the building was presbytery property, and the presbytery could use the $30,000? Indeed, at the next presbytery meeting a bitterly divisive argument erupted among the 120 pastors and elders. Finally, an 85-year-old woman slowly walked up the aisle and stepped to the microphone. Stamping her cane on the floor for emphasis, she said, “Can’t this presbytery ever do the right thing? They heard this answer in prayer!” In that moment, everyone knew that following the committee’s suggestion was what God wanted. In that moment, the presbytery became blessed, and because it did, God became ever more present to two churches of widely different theological beliefs. This kind of thing happens in a blessed church. People seek what God wants, and when they do, they discover God’s unexpected blessings.
The Marks of a Blessed Church
I’ve spent most of this chapter discussing what a blessed church is not, and what keeps churches from becoming blessed churches. Let me now offer a vision for a blessed church.
I believe that above all, mainline churches are called to become blessed churches, to become places where God’s blessings are tangibly experienced. They are called to be a healthy places where people devote their lives to God the Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit, and where healing occurs. These are some of the marks of a blessed church.
The blessed church sees itself as the body of Christ. This is the first mark of a blessed church. To do so, the church and its members must quit considering itself to be something akin to a business, an organization, or even a family. The church has attributes that are similar to a business, an organization, and a family, but it is unique. Nothing else in the world is like a church. As Rick Warren, a leader in the church-growth movement, says, “The church is a body, not a business. It is an organism, not an organization. It is alive. . . . The task of a church leadership is to discover and remove growth-restricting diseases and barriers so that natural, normal growth can occur.” Blessed churches are the body of Christ, and they take that fact seriously. In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul outlines a vision of the church as a living, breathing, acting body with Christ as its head. Too few churches hold onto that vision. The blessed church is the body of Christ that follows Christ’s guidance to feed, nourish, and care for itself in a way that allows it to grow and become a servant to the world.
The leaders of the body know that Christ is the head, and so they continually and prayerfully seek Christ’s guidance. They are like the nervous system. They move the body to act and react in certain ways, but they remain very much aware that their source has to be Christ—God’s presence—in their midst. The rational, functional church forgets that Christ is in its midst. Seeking Christ’s wisdom and way becomes an overwhelming passion for the blessed church, and its leaders regularly seek in prayer Christ’s wisdom and way. For pastors, this means becoming people who pray, especially when they are too busy to pray. Prayer is central to the life of the blessed church. It is like the nervous system of a body. It is through prayer that the body hears what the head desires, and it is through prayer that the body communicates with the head. This emphasis on prayer must begin with pastoral leadership. If the pastor does not lead out of prayer, then the body is unlikely to pray, and without prayer the body becomes disconnected from the head. It will end up either running functionally and frenetically like a chicken with its head cut off, or it will die.
On a practical level, the meetings and matters of the blessed church are grounded in prayer as its leaders seek what God wants over what they want. Dying churches are ego-driven. Blessed churches are Christ-guided. Blessed churches root their ministries and mission in prayer, act confidently on what they hear, and let God take care of the results. They don’t achieve these practices perfectly by any means. Faith is always sprinkled with fear and doubt in even the most faithful leaders. Still, in the end, they do their best to act in faith rather than fear.
The blessed church has a vibrant sense of faith, hope, and love. When a church lacks the faith to trust God to work in its midst, the hope to believe that good things are possible, and a basic love of God and others, it begins its slow descent toward death. Still, how does a church renew faith, hope, and love when it is struggling? So much in a church depends upon leadership—not just pastoral leadership but lay leadership as well. A church always mirrors its leaders. If the leaders are self-focused and selfish, the church will be too. If the leaders are tentative and fearful, the church will follow suit. If the leaders are afraid of God and growth, the church will also be fearful. In the same vein, if leaders have a strong sense of faith, hope, and love, then so will the church and its members. That faith, hope, and love will carry over into members’ lives so that they become more faithful, hopeful, and loving with their families, in their workplaces, and in responding to the suffering of the world.
A blessed church is a church of deep faith in God and God’s power. What does it mean to be a church of faith? Sadly, far too many Christians confuse faith and belief. Faith is much more than belief. It is a deep trust in God. It is an abandoning to God in which we surrender our control and power, trusting that God will act to accomplish something through, with, or among us—something wonderful and powerful that we cannot accomplish on our own. The leaders and members may be afraid of change, but in the end they always opt in faith to do what they prayerfully sense God calling them to do. They may not know with clarity what the outcome of their act of faith will be, and what they opt to do in faith may seem risky or dangerous, but when given a choice between acting fearfully to protect themselves and acting faithfully to serve God, they act in faith—though it may mean taking a path that seems uncertain and frightening.
Besides having a deep faith, the leadership has a strong sense of hope for the future, that future blessings are coming from God. This hope prevails even during bad economic times, amid troubling world and national events, and despite congregational crises. They have a strong sense that God is with them and will make good things happen, especially if they remain faithful, even if it means going through terrible times of struggle and turmoil.
Finally, the leaders have a strong sense of love for each other and the church’s members, a love that leads the members eventually to reach out and love others, even those who are different. They don’t react to failure and problems with anger, frustration, or impatience. They understand what it is to be afraid and to make mistakes. So they act with love. With this kind of leadership, members become people of faith, hope, and love, and this love becomes almost tangible to those visiting the church. This quality of tangible love is apparent in large blessed churches, but especially evident in small ones.
The blessed church is a church filled with God’s purpose, presence, and power. I believe that we experience the trinitarian God as Purpose, Presence, and Power. For example, one of the most tangible ways we encounter God as Creator happens as we become increasingly aware of what our purpose is as a church and as individuals. We encounter God in Christ when we sense Christ’s presence in the life of the church—in worship, word, sacrament, music, drama, activities, meetings, and each other. We encounter God the Holy Spirit when we witness the power of God making coincidences (providences), miracles, and amazing events happen (although the Holy Spirit also works in ways that are often unseen and unencountered). Blessed churches have a relatively clear sense of what their purpose is and why God the Creator called them into existence, even if they are hundreds of years old. They tangibly sense Christ’s presence. They expect the Spirit’s power to work everywhere in the church, blessing the ministries, mission, and members of the church.
The blessed church embraces the sacred. The blessed church emphasizes symbols, sacraments, and rituals in a way that helps people encounter God in every dimension—spiritual, mental, emotional, subconscious, physical, and relational. Such churches emphasize rituals, sacraments, and symbols because they know that these have the power to connect people to the Trinity in sacred ways that the spoken word and music cannot.
For example, the sacraments of communion and baptism are central to their lives. Blessed churches that recognize sacraments have the power to reveal and connect a person with the divine—a power that cannot be fully explained or duplicated in any other way. So the blessed church emphasizes the power of these sacraments and places them at the center of congregational life. For instance, at Calvin Church we celebrate communion once a week in our first worship service, once a month in our second. This frequency is not typical of Presbyterian churches (typically Presbyterians celebrate communion between five times a year and once a month), but we recognize the power of communion to connect people with God’s love and presence. We recognize that the sacred can be revealed through nonsacramental rituals, too. For example, we offer regular healing services as part of our worship, and we have a healing prayer ministry that reaches out to those suffering with physical, mental, and emotional illnesses, as well as other needs. Again, making healing rituals and prayers part of the worship and life of the church becomes a powerful way of connecting people to God’s presence and power in their lives.
Blessed churches embrace the sacred also by placing banners, crosses, statues, and other artistic expressions of the divine throughout the sanctuary. Displaying religious and spiritual artistry runs counter to the emphasis of many contemporary churches, which often strip their worship spaces of all symbols and sacraments. The blessed church tries to create sacred spaces that reveal the Trinity through sacrament, art, architecture, and creative use of symbols and space to reveal the sacred and to connect people with the Divine.
So, one key to embracing the sacred is ensuring that rituals, symbols, sacrament, art, architecture, and space are used in ways that lead people to encounter God. The focus cannot be only on offering symbols and sacraments the way the church did 200 years ago. The sacraments and symbols can and must be transformed so that they use the language and expressions of today in a way that invites newer and younger Christians to experience the power these elements have had for Christians for over 2,000 years. When we refuse to transform the language and expression of our sacraments in meaningful ways, we make tradition and custom more important than an encounter with Christ. Transforming sacraments and symbols creates a difficult choice because it forces the church and its leaders to maintain a tension between remaining true to a tradition and creating a new tradition. In other words, we have to maintain fidelity to the intent and purpose of the sacrament or symbol while transforming it, and while resisting the temptation to create something new just for the sake of newness. The best transformation of a sacrament, symbol, or ritual happens when we understand fully its purpose and power, while transforming it in a way that touches and affects new generations. The essential point is that the blessed church appreciates deeply the power of the sacred to be revealed and experienced through much more than the spoken word or music. The blessed church recognizes that the sacred can emerge through symbols, sacraments, architecture, and art, especially when we ask God to guide us in discerning how to reveal God.
The blessed church is not afraid to serve God in its own way. It is not concerned with fitting into a mold of what church should be, nor of what its denomination expects it to be. Instead it is concerned with responding to God’s call and God’s call alone. Each church has its own calling, ministry, and mission. Calvin Presbyterian Church’s calling is going to be very different from that of a northern urban church; a church in Orange County, California; a church in rural Alabama; or a church in the deserts of Arizona. Our mission is not as clearly on our doorstep as it is for some churches. We don’t have homeless people sleeping on our steps, nor do we have an influx of migrant workers each summer. We don’t necessarily come as clearly face-to-face with our mission field. While an urban church may be called to give direct service to the poor and the homeless, or a church in Orange County, California, may be faced with reaching out to thousands of unchurched people moving into the area, much of our mission beyond evangelism is in giving money to support mission rather than engaging in a more active, hands-on mission. Some people may criticize us for that, but it’s our calling. In fact, we felt that calling so clearly a few years ago that we restructured the way we give to mission. Instead of being a church that gives a huge chunk of money to the denominational mission programs, we decided to devote 30 percent of our yearly mission giving (we generally give between 19 percent and 23 percent of our yearly budget to mission) to what we call the Special Mission Fund. This fund is set up to respond to the more immediate needs of those with whom we come in contact. The fund helps a paralyzed woman purchase a voice-command control box to operate her television, telephone, and other appliances. It helps a poor woman with six children find temporary housing. It supports a faith-based organization that needs seed money. It helps an abused woman rent an apartment to start a new life. It supplements the welfare income of a man with epilepsy, and supports him in the process of receiving a house built by Habitat for Humanity volunteers. The point is that this mission fund is set up to respond to God as God is calling us to act in mission.
The ministry of a blessed church is always unique. It is a custom fit to its members and its community. I cannot stress sufficiently how important it is for blessed churches to serve in their own distinctive ways. Some Christians are always willing to tell others what they should be doing. Blessed churches resist the idea that they should do what others outside their situation demand, even if the hearts of the demanders are in the right place. The blessed church is harmonious with its own calling. It doesn’t respond to people who say, “You should do this because it is what churches are supposed to do.” Instead, it responds only to two questions, “God, what are you calling us to do?” and “How do we best respond to God in our own situation and context?” Bruce Smith, our music and youth director, likes to say that Calvin Church has an unofficial motto: “Calvin Church—we’re not for everyone.” What he is saying is that we tend to respond to God in the way we feel called to respond. If you don’t want to be part of a church that responds to God in this way, there are other congregations. We want people who feel called to the same ministry and mission that we do. We want to respond to God in our own unique ways.
The “Blessed” Body of Christ
Describing the blessed church with precision is difficult because in many ways it is something experienced that cannot be outlined. There is no such thing as a perfectly blessed church because there is no perfection in the human realm. Instead, what people notice is that there is something special, something sacred and mysterious going on that leads people to encounter and experience God. Not everyone who enters a blessed church experiences this, especially if one is looking for something else. Some people who visit Calvin Presbyterian Church really are looking for a different experience. They may want a church with a particular political or social agenda, a church with less commitment or perhaps more rules, or a church that will expect less active participation. They are seeking a particular form of worship. They are looking for a church with mostly folk in their own age bracket The mark of a blessed church is not that everyone who enters the sanctuary is “slain in the Spirit” and walks away in the conviction that this is the only home of God. The ultimate mark of a blessed church is that the people called to become part of it sense God’s presence and power working among them, even if they can’t put their finger on exactly how this presence is manifested or how the power is working.
In a blessed church, rational functionalism has been chased away. People don’t discuss theology so much as they discuss life, and in the process they experience the theological teachings of the church coming alive. In a blessed church the pastor doesn’t do everything. Instead, the love of the members and the leaders for one another does everything. I’ve experienced that activity at Calvin Church. I don’t have to be the main love-giver when people go through trauma. The members of the church do it without being trained or educated to do so.
As we will see in subsequent chapters, becoming a blessed church means becoming what a church already is: the body of Christ in a particular place. It is a place in which people form a vibrant sense of faith, hope, and love that comes naturally from being part of a community of faith, hope, and love. The blessed church is a place in which people tangibly experience God as Purpose, Presence, and Power; and because they also embrace the sacred, they experience God through sacred symbols, sacraments, art, architecture, and more. Blessed churches are places where people serve God in ways that are unique to them and their context because they are trying to live in harmony with their calling. Ultimately, blessed churches are places that have discovered the great spiritual truth of congregational life: God wants to bless us, God wants our churches to thrive in their own way, and all we have to do is create the conditions for God to be welcome.
Reflection Questions
- Read 1 Corinthians 12:12-21. Reflect on what specific changes would have to be made in your church to make Christ the head and to nurture health in the body.
- Read 1 Corinthians 13. Reflect on concrete ways to make faith, hope, and especially love stronger in your church.
- In what specific ways is your church caught in rational functionalism? How can you break its grip on your church?
- In what ways does your church bear the marks of a blessed church
- as an organic incarnation of the body of Christ, rather than an organization?
- as a place of faith, hope, and love?
- as a place filled with God’s purpose, presence, and power?
- as a place that embraces the sacred? and
- as a place that serves God in its own unique ways?
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