Rebuilding The Church

In his first sermon, Jesus said, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 4:17). That is the church's message. But, sadly, there is little evidence in the way Christians live to support our claim that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Rather, the evidence would suggest that, in most churches, the culture of the economic, political, and military systems of the United States is at hand. The question must be asked why the churches do not live by their confession.

At a conference of Christians in New York City in the late 1970s, an American Indian said, "Regardless of what the New Testament says, most Christians are materialists, with no real experience of the Spirit, and most Christians are individualists, with no real commitment to community." He looked over the group of theologians, clergy, and Christian leaders and continued, "Let's pretend that you all were Christians. You would not accumulate, you would actually love one another, you would share everything you had with each other and with the poor, and you would treat each other as if you were a family." He finished with a question: "What is it that keeps you from doing that?" Not one had a good answer to his question.

At one time I thought the reasons the church didn't live by what it said had mostly to do with lack of will, bad intentions, and self-interest. While all those problems are present, I now think the reasons are much deeper.

The Christian community is guilty of forgetting--forgetting who we are and to whom we belong. Throughout history, when the people of God have forgotten who they are, they have always fallen into idolatry. Christians are controlled by forces stronger than anything offered in the church's life. We have not the strength to resist those forces, or worse, to even see the need for resistance.

The truth is that we are not just paralyzed by ill will, weak intentions, or mere self-interest. The cause of our malaise is deeper. It is that in the churches, our communion with God and with one another is so frail and limited that we simply have not the resources and strength to live by what we say. The tremendous gap of credibility between the confession of the church and the daily life evidenced among Christians is the principal cause of unbelief in our time and the primary reason for our political conformity and spiritual lukewarmness.

We have fallen away from the Lord, and we need to return. How can we return? How can we unhook ourselves from false securities, false assumptions, indeed, from the worship of false gods? How can we claim and live the victory of Christ and his kingdom?

Everyone seems to recognize that we have serious problems in the church. There is wide agreement that fundamental change needs to take place, but there the agreement ends. A variety of answers is offered as the solution.

For some, the answer to our problems is the preaching of the Word--renewal through evangelism. For others, it is the filling by the Holy Spirit--renewal by charismatic experience. For others, it is service to the poor and political action on behalf of justice. And for others, it is acts of resistance to the power and violence of the state.

We have all come from different places, traditions, and experiences within the church, and one or more of those answers have been part of our various histories. They are all right answers. They speak to great and glaring lacks in the church's life and contribute to a fuller understanding of what the church is to be in the world. But all those answers are inadequate.

The greatest need in our time is not simply for kerygma, the preaching of the gospel, nor for diakonia, service on behalf of justice, nor for charisma, the experience of the Spirit's gifts, nor even for propheteia, the challenging of the king. The greatest need of our time is for koinonia, the call to simply be the church--to love one another and to offer our life for the sake of the world. The creation of living, breathing, loving communities of faith at the local church level is the foundation of all the other answers.

Proclamation of the gospel, charismatic gifts, social action, and prophetic witness alone do not finally offer a real threat to the world as it is, especially when set apart from a community which incarnates a whole new order. It is the ongoing life of a community of faith that issues a basic challenge to the world as it is and offers a visible and concrete alternative. The church must be called to be the church, to rebuild the kind of community that gives substance to the claims of faith.

Commitment
The message of the gospel is that Jesus Christ wants to live his life in us. Christ is made present in ordinary men and women. God intends to reproduce the incarnation in the world through a people--a people who have been called out of the world, called into relationship with God and to one another, and then sent back into the world.

At the outset of his ministry, Jesus preached repentance and proclaimed the coming of a new order. He boldly called men and women to change their whole way of thinking and living. He said that entering the new order would come about through repentance--metanoia in the Greek, meaning to have the form, the character, the orientation, the whole direction of one's life turned around and transformed.

Matthew reports that soon after preaching the kingdom, Jesus called a band of disciples to follow him. Immediately they left their nets and followed him. Those nets were the chief source of security for these fishermen, representing their lives' fullest investment--and they left them to follow him.

Evangelists today generally ask people what they believe about Jesus instead of asking whether they are ready to forsake everything and follow him. That is the commitment Jesus asks of us--all of us.

I can't find anything in scripture to justify other levels of commitment. There is only one kind of commitment--the claim of Christ on our total existence.

Many say they are glad for those who commit everything, but regard them as extraordinary. Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker once said, "Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be written off that easily."

The kind of commitment made by Jesus' first disciples is intended to be normal for the church. The forms and structures may vary, but the commitment is the same. The church everywhere should have the same commitment and way of life.

Evangelism presumes that people begin at different places. Certainly discipleship is a process, but one which calls for a single and total commitment.

When a person responds to Christ, he or she should know what it will mean because of how the church lives. The task of the evangelist is not to make the gospel easy but to make it clear.

The New Family
From the calling of the disciples to the inauguration of the church at Pentecost, the gospel of the kingdom drives the believers to community. The new order becomes real in the context of a shared life. In the book of Acts and in the epistles, the church is presented as a community.

The outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost caused a bold proclamation of the gospel, repentance on the part of those who heard, and the establishment of a common life. The gospel reconciled people to God in a new community. The good news is that those divided by race, class, sex, nationality, fear, hate, and distrust have been reconciled to one another. So the preaching of the gospel is intended to create a new family. The church itself is to be part of the good news.

Jesus tells us, "Love one another as I have loved you." He does not say love one another because I have loved you. He says love one another as I have loved you. He's telling us to love in the same way he has. The simplest definition of community is that we are to extend to one another and to the world the same life we have been extended by God in Christ. We give as we have been given--the same love, the same forgiveness, the same peace.

No matter from what tradition it springs, the experience of community seems to create fellowships where the celebration of the Eucharist is central. Perhaps that is because the Eucharist graphically reminds us of exactly what God has given us in Christ. It reminds us that the only authority we have as God's people is the presence of the life of Christ among us.

The principal cause of the church's accommodation to the values, spirit, and structures of our age is the fragmentation of our common life. We have succumbed because we are rootless and confused. We are easy prey.

Many places in the church today suffer from deep and brutal persecution. But our chief enemy is not persecution. It is seduction. We are not a persecuted people. Instead, we are a people seduced by a way of thinking, a way of living, that is irreconcilable with the lordship of Christ.

I have been asking Christians in local churches, "What is the most important social reality of your life? Where is the place, what is the group of people that you feel most dependent upon for your survival?" Very seldom have people in response pointed to their local church, their community of faith. Instead, the answer is the work place or some other economic, educational, or political institution. It is usually the institution most associated with economic livelihood, personal advancement, or social influence.

If in fact most Christians are more rooted in the principalities and powers of this world than they are in the local community of faith, it is no wonder that the church is in trouble. Clearly, the social reality where we feel most rooted will be the one which will most determine our values, our priorities, and the way we will live. It is not enough to talk of Christian fellowship while our security is based elsewhere. We will remain conformed to the values and institutions of our society as long as our people's security is finally grounded in them.

"Unless you give away all that you have, you cannot be my disciple," says Jesus (Luke 14:33). It's one of the "hard sayings" of Jesus. These sayings are a continuing reminder and challenge to the complacency and the comfort that is the natural drift of our humanity and is so powerfully reinforced by this society.

Where is our security? In things? In money? In people? In roles? In our self image? In our relationships? In status? In physical comfort and protection? In power over others? In intimacy with others?

We need to know where our securities lie because they can and will be used against us. Our securities will be used to intimidate and control us, to rob us of our freedom. Just when we really begin to respond to God's calling and move out too far into insecure places, the powers of this world reach out, hook us, and reel us back into the circle of control. The place where they hook us is right at the place of our deepest securities. We are attacked at the places where we are most vulnerable and most easily controlled by the rewards, punishments, and threats of the system.

Real change never comes without sacrifice. It never comes without cost. That's true on a personal level, a communal level, and a political level. The cross is the continual reminder of the price Christ paid to give us life.

I'm convinced that the cost of change, of healing, of justice, of peace is going to get higher in this nation and in the world. The question is, who will have the freedom to bear the cost?

Evangelism can no longer mean merely taking people out of the world, running them through a process of conversion, and then placing them back in the world and somehow expecting them to survive. Rather, conversion is the translation of persons from one world to another, one community to another. It is inviting them into an environment where it becomes possible to live a Christian life.

We have to create a base that is internally strong enough to enable us to survive as Christians and to empower us to be actively engaged in the world. The community is the place where the healing of our own lives becomes the foundation for the healing of the nations. The making of community is finally the only thing strong enough to resist the system and to provide an adequate spiritual foundation for better and more human ways to live.

There is no greater moral authority than that given by standing before the world free of its securities. There is no greater threat to the system than that of being free of its rewards and punishments, and therefore free of its control. And there is no greater power than that which comes from being free to offer ourselves for what we know to be true.

It's not surprising that communities first known for their politics have now become places where worship is at the core; and those first known for their powerful worship are becoming political. That should be expected: Worship and politics have everything to do with one another. In their deepest sense both raise the same questions. Whom do we love? Who is God for us? Whom will we serve?

Pentecostal Economics
There are various explanations of Acts 2 and 4. Some say that because the early church members expected Christ to come back before the end of their lifetimes, they developed an "interim ethic" until his return. Their economic sharing, therefore, was a temporary measure and not normative. They were mistaken in the apocalyptic expectation. Jesus did not come back, and a normal, more traditional economic pattern had to be instituted.

Others say that the sharing was in response to an economic crisis, a state of emergency, and therefore is not relevant in other situations.

I believe that the sharing recorded in Acts 2 and 4 was an attempt by the early Christians to make practical their understanding of the mind of Christ on economic matters. The narratives in Acts are simply a description of what happened when the Holy Spirit invaded their lives. It created a new economy.

The key relationship is between the coming of the Spirit and the creation of a new economy, a new family, and a new common life. The Christians were making the teachings of Jesus real, and their decisions were motivated by the coming of the Spirit. Evidence of such sharing crops up many times in the first three centuries, and such economic sharing has been part of movements of renewal ever since.

In 2 Corinthians 8, Paul shows the vital relationship between spiritual unity and economic equality. We are called to share, not just to be ready to share. Accumulating wealth while brothers and sisters are in poverty is an evidence of sin in the church's life. Why should Christian congregations live such different economic lives in different places? Why should some Christians be poor while others have more than they need? Aren't we a family?

Money is a deeply spiritual matter. It is not a secular or private matter but an issue which tests faith. The sheer bulk of material in the Bible about money and possessions is overwhelming. Clearly, the God of the Bible is deeply concerned with the subject. "Where your treasure is, there is your heart also" (Matthew 6:21). That is an offensive statement to us because we believe the reverse is true--that it is our attitudes and what we say we believe which show our commitments. But Jesus maintains that persons' true values and priorities are shown in how they spend their money. Our real commitments are revealed in our economic choices.

The Bible sees the accumulation of money and property as a great spiritual danger which obstructs our relationship with God. God or mammon is a spiritual choice; we cannot serve both since they make opposing claims on our lives.

The church today is trying to serve both at the same time, and that attempt is idolatrous. The mere possession of wealth is evidence of serving money. We don't become wealthy by sharing with the poor, but only by a single-minded commitment to accumulation. The Bible calls this "slavery," a bondage relationship, and identifies accumulation with servitude.

The Bible also sees accumulation as an injustice. Justice for the poor is sacrificed by accumulating riches. Economic surplus in a world that is poor is a sin. A church that is wealthy simply cannot testify to dependence on the Lord.

We are called to relinquish what we have for the sake of our relationship to God and for the sake of the poor. Economic sharing and simplicity can bring a new life, a vitality, an authenticity to a congregation which it will never experience while still in bondage to accumulation.

Part of what it means to be the church is to share economically, to share control of our resources with others. Not only will we give when a need is made manifest, but we will give to each other all of what we are and what we have. Economic sharing should characterize the whole church and is a way of living intended for all God's people, not just the clergy, monastic orders, or special ministry groups.

The church will need to build a new framework for its economics if it is to impact society. No particular economic form or structure is normative, but whatever administrative means are chosen cannot become an occasion for sharing less, taking liberty to live at higher economic levels, insuring economic security, or living more independently. The biblical principle is a shared economic life for all God's people.

The severity of our present economic crisis, rather than moderating the experience of the early church, makes it even more crucial. There are more people and fewer resources. Most of the world is hungry, and there is more potential for violence and conflict than ever before. Future wars will almost certainly be based on economic disparity. To be peacemakers, we must be free of our money and possessions. The biblical material, the testimony of the early church, and our historical situation all lead us to the conclusion that a change in our relationship to money and possessions' is a crucial test of whether the church is being renewed.

Incarnation
When I was a university student, I was unsuccessfully evangelized by almost every Christian group on campus. My basic response to their preaching was, "How can I believe when I look at the way the church lives?" They answered, "Don't look at the church; look at Jesus."

I now believe that statement is one of the most pathetic in the history of the church. It puts Jesus on a pedestal apart from the people who name his name. Belief in him becomes an abstraction removed from any demonstration of its meaning in the world. Such thinking is a denial of what is most basic to the gospel--incarnation.

People should be able to look at the way we live and begin to understand what the gospel is about. Our life must tell them who Jesus is and what he cares about.

Identification With The Poor
The message of Matthew 25 is that the son of God especially cares for the suffering and the poor and, in fact, is found among them. The disciples ask him, "Lord, when did we see you hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, sick, and imprisoned?" He responds, "As you have done to the least of these, you have done also to me."

The creator and judge of the earth has so cast his lot with the lowly and oppressed that to serve them is to serve him. To ignore them, neglect them, to abuse them is to ignore, neglect, and abuse him.

The Matthew 25 passage makes a more radical statement about the poor than anything in secular literature. God loves people in all circumstances, certainly. He loves rich people. But God shows a special concern and compassion for the poor as a class. God loves both the rich and the poor as persons, but the Bible speaks against the rich as a class of people and takes the side of the poor.

The Bible refers to the poor as the oppressed, the alien, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow. Characteristic of their lives was their defenselessness. These people were the powerless, the disenfranchised, the voiceless. The poor are those on the bottom of the social structure, the victims and the expendable.

By his relationship to the poor, Jesus established their value. So must the church. The Christian point of view is that of those at the bottom. Their rights and needs should be the most determinative element of the church's political stance.

If Jesus identified himself with the poor, what does that mean for us? What is the place of the poor in the priorities of our lives? Jesus Christ is known for his position on that question. If we are his people, we must be known for the same thing. We must join him where he has already cast his lot. It's not just our relationship to the poor which is at stake. Our spiritual well-being and our relationship to the Lord are at stake.

Peacemaking
God has in Christ reconciled us to himself and to each other. In that work God has created a new people. It includes our friends (those similar to us), but it also includes those who have been our enemies (those divided from us by class, race, sex, or nation).

The extension of Christ's reconciliation in the world is the fabric of peacemaking. Jesus teaches us to love our enemies. He bids us follow his example in suffering violence rather than inflicting it, and in overcoming violence with suffering. To do otherwise is to put limits on God's forgiveness and reconciliation. It is to put a wall around the work of Christ and to contain it within the boundaries of our own group. Racism and sexism are not just political, social, or economic problems. They are theologically offensive.

War necessitates defining others as "enemies," less than human, so that we may justify hating and killing them. But the cross of Jesus Christ has established the value of our enemies by turning each one into a brother or sister. The readiness to exterminate millions in a nuclear war is the ultimate negation of the crucifixion.

There is no reconciliation without cost; so God's peacemakers need to put themselves in the places where the tensions and conflicts are greatest. Pacifism can imply a passive stance which stresses things a person is going to not do. But peacemakers are not just peace lovers. The vocation of peacemaking will create conflict, and the ministry of reconciliation will often make us misunderstood.

We can only confront the violence of the nuclear age with the very life of Christ among us. It is not us, but his life among us that disarms the principalities and the powers (2 Colossians 2:15).

The call to be peacemakers is first of all a call to live at peace with one another. The quality of that shared life is crucial: Does it nurture us in the way of peace, or does it distract us? Does it free us from bondage to material goods and security? Is our Christian fellowship healing us of our hate, fear, selfishness, desire for power? Does our experience in the local church root out those things which are foundational to the entire war system?

Christian community can put us in touch with the fear, hate, and violence still within and among us. It can help us to understand those same things around us, and can teach us the things that make peace in our life together which we can extend to the world.

The most controversial issue at stake in the church's life is always our obedience to Jesus. Do we understand ourselves as a continuation of his life and ministry? Is there a continuity between Christ's reconciling work and our own?

Ecumenical Communities
There is growing evidence of new alignments in the churches, a new coming together which is deeply ecumenical. It revolves around a radical response to Jesus Christ and his kingdom and the call to community. A new community is emerging from diverse traditions and strands in the church's life. To many of us, its nurture has become essential.

Being the body of Christ in the world is beyond the capacity of any one structure, including the local congregation. It pushes us beyond a narrow commitment to any one group or denomination. No one congregation can be Christ in the world in a full way. We need one another.

We must develop an ecumenical spirit in our gatherings which will keep us accountable to other communities and traditions in the church.

At Sojourners we began with a simple commitment to Jesus Christ and then discovered that to belong to Christ was to belong to each other. The healing, justice, and peace that God wants for the world begins with the love and unity shared by those who have been made a new family in Jesus Christ. Out of that discovery have come new relationships to many communities in this country and even in different parts of the world.

Those who have experience in pastoral counseling know what it means to be involved with persons who have lost a vision for their life. The pastor's task is to hold before those individuals the vision of their wholeness and healing, which they are no longer able to see for themselves, until they can grasp and claim it as their own.

So it is with the church. The church has lost any vision for its life. Without that vision, the people are perishing. The vocation of those committed to rebuilding the church must therefore be to hold forth the vision of a renewed people in a church that no longer has the capacity to see it for itself.

We must not be satisfied simply with a renewal of worship, evangelism, pastoral care, or radical politics in our churches. We must, like the prophets, call God's people back to an understanding of who they are and to whom they belong.

To hate the church for its failures is like a pastor hating the person who comes in need of healing. Only those who have come to feel a genuine love for the church will be able to confront it with its own faithlessness and call it back to its true vocation.

To rebuild the church means to have and to hold forth a vision of its healing and wholeness. Only then can we truly call the church to repentance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Jim Wallis was editor-in-chief of Sojourners when this article appeared.