More Questions About Your Church Is Too Small Part Two
April 5, 2010
John H. Armstrong
ACT 3 Weekly
April 5, 2010
More Questions About Your Church Is Too Small
Part Two
John H. Armstrong
Last week I mentioned that I was asked to prepare ten questions for radio interviewers to ask me about my new book, Your Church Is Too Small. We looked at three of these questions last week. I want to give you answers to three more questions this week by providing short response to each of them.
1. What factors in recent history, especially in America, prompt you to believe that Christians are actually seeking unity with those they have commonly been separated from historically? In particular, how is this happening between the three great Christian traditions (Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant)?
Over the last two decades various movements have arisen in the America church. Some of these are disturbing and troubling. Others are exciting and seem to be filled with great promise. In mission, for example, we are seeing a huge drop-off among those young adults between ages 18-35. In record numbers they are not going to church.
At the same time we are seeing young Christian leaders arise who understand this problem and who are courageously speaking to the need for a new mission paradigm for reaching the post-Christian generation. Again the fruit of this is, as it always will be, mixed.
As these young mission-oriented leaders seek to reach the multitudes of unchurched adults among us they are discovering that the church can no longer afford the luxury of schism and in-fighting between Christians and groups. They are not deeply committed to denominationalism at all. The fact is denominations, as we know them, are likely not going to survive. I think we will still have them long after I’m gone but they will look and feel very differently. They will need to be leaner and more focused on equipping the laity to do ministry. They will not run large central offices staffed by bureaucratic leadership. They will invest more money and training in church planting. These churches will look and feel very differently than what my parents knew about the church and from the churches that I pastored over the years of my pastoral life.
In the midst of this Catholics, who already had a major encouragement to engage with the rest of us because of Vatican II, are joining into these missional conversations and taking part in city-wide efforts to reach the unchurched. Pope John Paul II’s call for the “re-evangelization” of the West has been heard by many younger Catholics. These young Catholics are meeting these young Protestants. They are beginning to see how much they can do together. This began in the pro-life movement but it is now clearly moving far beyond those common concerns. This is not about a political alliance for conservative values but it is about a common sense of identity in the ancient creeds and a common call to share the love of Christ in every way possible.
The Orthodox Church is a different story altogether. Many Orthodox Christians have remained comfortably ensconced in their ethnic churches and thus have had little or nothing to do with other Christians in their towns and communities. More recently some evangelical Protestants have entered the Orthodox Church. Their number seems to be growing. There is a pretty significant number of these former-evangelical Protestants who write and talk about their movement to Orthodoxy. My personal hope is that these new, young Orthodox converts will join with some wiser and older Orthodox priests and lay leaders to form a new coalition of Orthodox Christians in America who will contribute out of the richness of their own tradition to the rest of us in the body of Christ. For this to happen some of these Orthodox converts will need to get over the danger of triumphalism and humbly engage with other Christians, some of them in the very places they left behind and some in places where they may fear to go. I see a tiny spark of hope on this horizon that I seek to fuel and fan into a flame. I believe that we need the richness of these believers if we are to breath well. John Paul II was right when he said the church had two lungs: West and East. To be a healthy body we need both lungs working well.
Now, what has happened in America is interesting. Issues like abortion, and now same-sex marriage, have prompted many Christians to see how they have the same answers to modern ethical issues about life and family. But it doesn’t stop there. As we talk we learn just how much have to share in common. We begin to pray together and we have even found ways to bear witness to our common faith in the marketplace.
Missions, ministries and churches have united in prayer walks, in local fellowships for unity in some particular mission, as well as in conversations that benefit of all Christians in growth and development. These grass-roots movements are where I think you will see the most good come as Christians connect relationally in the love of Christ and in common concern for his kingdom as they pray together, “Your kingdom come, you will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
2. Is there a danger in seeking unity when real disagreements still remain between various Christian traditions and churches? Doesn’t your vision lead us right back to the old liberal notion of a “common faith” that stands for little or nothing that is truly orthodox in the end?
There is a danger here, I freely admit it. If I was pursuing the lowest common denominator as the basis for unity with others I would agree with this fear. I do not honestly believe this is the case, however. I believe we need to build unity on a solid biblical, Christ-centered, Trinitarian foundation.
Think about this historically. For at least five to seven centuries the visible church had the same creeds, councils and form of faith. The “rule of faith” (as it was called) guided the church as one and the creeds were enough to express their deep faith in visible unity. Differences between the East and West were already developing for sure but the church remained one, at least in the broad sense. Eventually events in the world would change the way the church lived and thought. With the collapse of the Roman Empire the church in the West was fundamentally altered and Constantinople, that great city in the East, became the center of visible Christianity. Over time, this too changed, especially with the rise of Islam.
By the tenth century tensions had already broken this larger unity and things were developing that led to the Great Schism of 1054, when the East and West were broken apart. Other reform movements, especially in the West, were put down until finally the Protestant Reformation called the church to repent in the sixteenth century. Tragic events, events which cannot simply be blamed on one side or the other in my view, led to the break-up of the church in the West. This division brought about the Protestant churches. Notice I say “churches” here since each country had one new church and often several before long. In America, where democracy allowed for the free flow of ideas and religious practice, we have had a veritable explosion of churches over the last three centuries.
Now, please understand me here. Some of this story is good and right. In all things there are elements that are good and some that are bad. I am not saying the Reformation was a mistake. I am saying the final division was a tragedy.
In the nineteenth century theological liberalism arose in Protestant churches. Eventually this spirit, and its way of thinking about faith, entered into the Catholic Church as well. Early liberalism, indeed some important parts of this liberal way of thinking, were important and brought about necessary changes in helping the church engage with the modern world more seriously. But the authority of the Scriptures was undermined in the process. The result was a loss of confidence in the ancient confessional Christian faith among many. We eventually reaped the whirlwind in this regard. Extreme liberalism helped destroy some of Europe and America’s greatest oldest and strongest churches.
In the twentieth century fundamentalism arose to challenge this liberalism. This challenge, though important, often went off the rails as well. It fostered numerous schisms and debates that took the church far away from the ancient faith that it had once found common to all Christians—Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox. Though fundamentalism is uniquely a Protestant phenomenon in terms of its historical meaning I encounter the spirit of fundamentalism in every church. I have had dialogue with Latin Mass Catholics in recent weeks as well as Orthodox people who think no one else is a true Christian but them. This is a kind of fundamentalism.
3. What is the greatest hindrance to your vision of unity between Christians?
The greatest hindrance is human sinfulness. This sin expresses itself in what is called sectarianism. By sectarianism I mean the kind of faith that expresses itself in a doctrinaire commitment to one’s own views or particular group which results in a narrow-minded devotion. Those who do not agree with me are condemned and sometimes this is done rather harshly. This kind of sectarianism is really a form of tribalism. We gravitate to our own kind and from the position of our tribe, our place of comfort and safety, we reject and condemn others who differ from us. This stance is easy to fall into if you hold to serious Christian conviction about what you see taught in the Scripture and your church.
My friend Rex Koivisto says: “Sectarianism is seeking unity in uniformity rather than unity in diversity and expecting other Christians to comply fully with my views before I can have genuine fellowship with them.” I agree with that.
Variety in unity and unity in variety is the way God has always worked, whether in nature or in his kingdom. Unity without variety is dead uniformity. God’s power, goodness and wisdom is manifested in many forms. Unity respects the forms and retains relationships in them.
The real problem here is the mindset of the sectarian. It is a mindset that closes in on the very person who holds it. There is nothing else to learn, no one else who can contribute to my way of understand the kingdom. The rigid ideology of sectarianism shuts out growth and stunts unity.
Dear John - I've been reading, but have not yet finished, your book, and as I read my concern has been with the second question you address this week - how to avoid an empty least-common-denominator. After reading and rereading your "answer" I don't see that it has really been an answer to the problem.
