Recap from Part 1: The church is in the midst of a deep identity crisis. In order to fix the mess in which it finds itself, the church has adopted either a posture of bunkering-down, attractionalism, or missional living. However, the church cannot truly change its identity by adopting a new posture; it must change at the story level. It must return to the true story of the world. However, the problem is just that—the church does not know its own story, so it cannot truly know who she is.
The church’s identity crisis exists because it does not even know why God has a church.
Why does God even have a church?
What role does the church play in God’s unfolding drama?
I think most leaders and Christians have never thought to ask these questions. Of course, individuals could provide answers by quoting a bible verse or two, like the Great Commission (GC hereafter). I feel like the church would be absolutely lost and have no idea what to do if the GC did not exist! So thankfully Matthew recorded it for us! However, if the church understood the overall storyline of God’s story, the GC would be a logical corollary. In other words, the church would know what to do without it, if they knew the Story! Jesus, when he gave the GC did not create something brand new! He was simply interpreting the OT in light of himself and gave the church the next step in God’s plan!
EXCURSUS ON THE “GREAT COMMISSION”
Why is it called the Great Commission? Who gave it this name? Jesus certainly did not!
The GC text has seemingly become the most important text in the modern, evangelical church. It is difficult to attend any missionary conference without this text leading the charge. This text, in many ways, has become a canon within a canon. Phraseology such as "the Great Commission is the “marching orders” of the church" demonstrates this reality. However, what is often not known is how relatively new the term “Great Commission” is within the history of the church. It is not certain as to where the phrase first originated, but it did not take on a life of its own until after the Reformation. Robbie F. Castleman states, “It turns out this passage may have got its summary label from a Dutch missionary Justinian von Welz (1621-88), but it was Hudson Taylor, nearly 200 years later, who popularized the use of "The Great Commission." Thus, the church for its first 1600 years plus did not derive its missionary impulse from this text. Rather, they understood Matthew 28.18-20 to be about the Trinitarian foundation of the church, not necessarily about the ‘marching orders’ of the church.
To answer the question of why does God have a church requires that we understand what God is doing in and for the world. So we need to come to see that it is not so much that the church has a mission, but the mission has a church. If the church wants to begin to crawl out of their identity crisis, it needs to put God’s mission first. Many churches put the cart in front of the horse. They devote incredible amounts of time to crafting their own mission and vision statements. And in one sense, this is not necessarily wrong. However, when it fails to build upon the already existing missional purposes of the church, it fails to be a missional church. Church’s mission statements need to be crafted out of God’s already existing mission statement.
The Church’s Predominant Storyline
The church, sadly, is overwhelmingly illiterate regarding God's story. This is not to say that the church does not possess a form of God’s story. It surely does. It is just often reductionistic. Their storyline of the Bible runs something like the following:
God made the world perfect in 6 days. Adam and Eve rebelled against God's good rule and has turned all humanity against God because of the nature of indwelling sin. God in his love sent Jesus to take care of man's sin through dying on the cross. If one repents of their sin and puts their faith in Jesus, they can be saved from their sin. When they die, they will then get to spend eternity in heaven. Those who do not believe in Jesus will spend eternity in hell.
Not every part of this storyline is incorrect, yet there are significant aspects missing. Moreover, even the parts that are correct are arranged in such a way that distorts the overall message. This storyline becomes thin and sub-biblical.
Here are at least three ways in which the church distorts the true story:
Individually: The contemporary storyline of the church is primarily concerned with the salvation of the individual person. It is all about how the individual can be right with God and have their sin forgiven. The church focuses on how each Christian can grow and have their personal walk with God. It is not that there is no individual component to the Christian life. There is! However, ignoring the communal aspects of the story is to misunderstand God's purposes for humanity. There is no true growth and no ability to participate in God’s mission without being part of a community.
Ethereally: The goal of the contemporary storyline is otherworldly. In other words, heaven is the end goal. It is the end all and be all. The church tells others to pray the sinners' prayer so they can go to "heaven." Heaven is the theme of our music. We wonder if we will know people “heaven.” Yet, heaven is not the end of the world. It is an intermediate stop on the journey to the final destination. It acts as a hotel on a long road trip. This otherworldly, eternal afterlife in a place called heaven is both doctrinally in error and practically damaging.
Temporally: This storyline leads Christians only to live for the future. Though not wholly unimportant, the present is viewed as nothing more than making sure one prepares themselves for heaven. Additionally, they advocate that the only thing that matters is other people's salvation because the only thing one can take to heaven is their souls. Thus, the goal is to make sure one is right with God and ensure others get right with God before they die. The earth itself, one's vocation, doing justice, personal hobbies, and other things in this life are viewed as secondary at best and evil upon at worst.
The church possesses and individualistic faith focused on getting to heaven where only the spiritual realities matter. These reductionistic theologies impair the church’s identity. Until the church includes the communal, physical, and present elements of God’s purposes, she will not be able to fulfill their purposes in God’s mission.
Stories Have Consequences
A wrong story produces wrong actions.
Think, for example, if you were an actor and were given a role in a play but did not know the overall storyline. You would be forced to create some overarching storyline and then act out of that metanarrative to create meaning to your character and his actions. Further, you wouldn't know when to speak, where to stand, when to leave the stage, etc... You would completely embarrass yourself and the director of the play. I often wonder if this is the present situation in the church, who, in sincere zeal for the Gospel, are just making a mockery of themselves and the church of God in our day?
Or take, for example, The Lord of the Rings. What if one diligently studied the middle volume—The Two Towers, but did not read the first and last books. How well could one make sense of hobbits, rings, and talking trees? Sure, one could study this second book and know everything about it. One could memorize it and even exegete it. However, one would form so many wrong conclusions without the other two books that a distorted interpretation of the story would inevitably result. This is similar to the church and its biblical interpretation. We have read the middle part of the book well. We know Jesus and the Gospels. We know Paul's writings. However, we necessarily misinterpret the middle without a sufficient understanding of the story's beginning and end. This manufactures a deficient, sub-biblical view of Jesus, and it has nothing to ground the church's role and purpose.
The best stories possess cohesion within its unfolding plot line. The conclusion interprets the beginning; the beginning informs the conclusion; and the body moves the reader in between the two. So if the church is misinformed about the beginning (the creational purposes of God), it will necessarily be misinformed about the ending (the new creational purposes of God. Moreover it will get how the story moves from creation to new creation wrong!
Last time I asked you the following question: Where are the streets of Gold? If the answer was not they are depicted in a new creation, then your understanding of the conclusion of the story of God is deficient. They are clearly laid out in a new world that God is going to renew on the Last Day!
This time I want to ask this question: Why did God create the world in the very beginning of the creation week? What was his purpose? Too often Genesis 1-2 is depicted as a polemic against evolution or non-Christians origin theories. However, how exactly God created is not necessarily the point of the text. As Christians can we find common ground in that God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the source of all that we see? Thus, creation theories such as old earth, young earth, or theistic evolution are not the point of the text. It is not that these debates are unimportant, but it is that these debates miss the point of the theological meaning of the creation account. At the risk of being pejorative, Moses had no idea who Charles Darwin was as he wrote almost 3000 years before Darwin. Thus, Moses’ theological purpose was not to deconstruct evolution. Rather, as it will be shown in later posts, Moses’ intention was to provide a theological framework as to the purpose and meaning of creation. He was concerned to show Israel who their God was and why their God created the universe.
I will demonstrate this in later posts, but God made the earth to be his dwelling place. This is what the end of the story tells us about the beginning of the story.
So most Christians possess sub-biblical understandings of the beginning and the end of their own story! How in the world do we think we have the middle right? How do we think changing our structures, or implementing new strategies, or just reinforcing the old ways are ever gonna change the trajectory of the church? We need to get back to understanding the story of God and our participation within it in order to make any progress.
Someone rather wise, Thomas Edison, once said to do the same things repeatedly and expect different results is insanity! Well, the church has reached the level of insanity!
Next time we will unpack how story, identity, and mission are interact with one another.
Hey Scott- Thanks for this. Super timely and important.
I have had the privilege and journey of attending many churches in my adult life, all different denominations. I will say a number of them, perhaps unintentionally, focused so much on the rewards of salvation after death that it did feel like there was nothing to do here on Earth but hope it passes quickly.
I would never put myself on the same level of God, as He is the Great Creator. So this next bit is just my poor human mind trying to connect. I am blessed to have a vocation that requires me to create, specifically books. It would displease me and hurt me if my readers never enjoyed reading the stories I created and only got through them as quickly as they could to slap the title down as "Done. Read it." As though the most important part of enjoying a story was the completion, not all of the devices and plot I put in specifically to delight them as they turned the page.
In that way, I think sometimes we have forgotten that prior to the curses in the Garden of Eden handing down, God did not create the Earth to be a terrible place. Yes, there is suffering here and sin, and there is a struggle. But I do believe it's important we consider if we are spending all of our time worrying and warning about the evils of the world and forgetting the parts that are miraculously created by Our Father?
Regarding the GC: As someone who became a Christian as an adult, one of the first reactions I had to being taught that Scripture was "Wait, why does the all-powerful God need ME to make this happen?" And because I was someone who was 18 when I first began seeking, I know from my personal experience, there was something in my heart and mind that changed first and then it was easier for me, though at time setback as well, to pursue healing that brokenness I couldn't fully understand or fix on my own, because there were "Church" people in my proximity. But it would be 9 years later before I was baptized and could truly tell anyone I knew without a doubt I had the Holy Spirit in me. And yes, for me, it was disciple first (learn what is this all about) and then baptism.
This post was very inspiring to start exploring the gaps I hold about God's story, despite being a faithful follower for 13 years. Thank you.