I'm not a very patient man. I've gotten a little better over the years, but not much. Impatience is a character flaw for anyone who has it, but it is a particular liability in ministry. Ministry in the established church takes a mammoth amount of patience.
Discipleship, which I'm proposing here as the Biblical answer to the deficiencies of today's church, is a slow process. Jesus, himself, spent three years with his first twelve disciples, and it is painfully clear that even at the end of that time they are still "not getting it" a good part of the time. We tend to think we are doing much better — that the vantage point of history and years of Sunday School have provided us with the clear answers. I sincerely doubt this is true. I imagine Christ looking on us today and thinking, "Two thousand years of trying and they still don't get it!"
A few years ago an influential member of our fellowship accused me of thinking I had all the answers. I thought about that for a while, then responded by explaining that I actually know more about where I don't want to go, than where I want to go. And that is really true. Discipleship is a journey with an undefined (from our human vantage point) destination, because it's truly about following Jesus. And Jesus has not offered us a complete description of the journey. Trusting him is really the point of it all. And our need to control the journey and its outcome is not really about discipleship.
It's been my observation, and my frustration, that the church would rather repeat well known mistakes than take the risk of making new ones. And, in order to facilitate that dynamic, the church will pretend that it's well known mistakes are good ideas.
All of a sudden I realize I'm no longer a ministry rookie. I've been at this for quite some time. I'm no longer just the idealistic, inexperienced upstart who tries to change things, I'm the battle worn and experienced idealistic upstart. And as I reflect on that journey so far, I see the thing I've had the hardest time with, the thing I've tended to become angry and bitter about, is the unwillingness of the church at large to concede its own failures.
The model of church that we've evolved is relatively easy. We take very few risks. Our commitment level is moderate at best. And our expectation is generally that we will feel "good." We are understandably reluctant to trade all that for a life of discipleship. In fact, we probably won't trade it, unless we come to the conclusion that the journey we could take is more virtuous and honorable than the one we are on. We would have to conclude that righteousness demands it.
But that is quite a leap. The fact is, the church today does a lot of good. It is feeding hungry people and, at least at a minimal level, it is spreading the Gospel. When good deeds are done, and the Gospel is repeated, good things are going to happen. But the church is also losing membership and influence. It's members are less Biblically literate. We cannot seem to cultivate an organic discipleship. Concluding that the church is healthy because of the good it does is a bit like eating in a restaurant that can't pass its health inspections, simply because we like the flavor of the deserts.
I ordered Hugh Halter's new book. The description talks about the outward signs of church success, and the reality of a church that is in decline. This is an extremely well documented reality. And yet, we seem to prefer the superficial signs of success over the embrace of what is. I've tried to present hard numbers at times, to people who responded by saying, "you can make statistics say anything." These are people who rely on such hard data for their jobs and their investment decisions. But in regard to church, we would much rather embrace blissful ignorance.
This is, perhaps, the most formidable barrier to discipleship truly recapturing the heart and mind of the church. And it is the one thing I have the most trouble forgiving us for.
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