Tending the Soil of Renewal
Coping with a broken church.
It’s no secret that the church is broken. Human beings are involved, so brokenness goes along with the territory. But there is also a pervasive myth that the church, and Christianity’s influence on the wider culture, is irreparable. In fact, the myth demands that in order to meet the larger goal of a just and sustainable world, everything to do with religious expression, spirituality, and faith must be jettisoned.
In Mark Sayers’ new book, Reappearing Church, he describes how the secularist-progressive myth, “seeks to gain the fruit of God’s kingdom — such as justice, peace, prosperity, and redemption — but without the King.” To conform to this myth, one only has to ascribe allegiance to the idea that in spite of the challenges that beset us, humanity will find a way to survive and thrive. As Sayers’ puts it, “In the post-Christian vision, progress replaces God’s presence as the engine of history.”
But there are cracks in the armor:
“Our current Western context deforms our hearts and lives in profoundly destructive ways. Big Business, Big Data, and Big Porn’s ability to reshape our inner worlds is unparalleled in human history.” — pg. 38, 39, Reappearing Church
There is a growing sense of discontent that the secularist-progressive myth is failing. The standard of living in the West is at an unprecedented high, yet we are rapidly destroying our planet. Nationalist leaders around the world are drawing hard lines in a hopeless effort to sustain an unjust status quo. Anxiety, depression, and suicide rates are skyrocketing. What’s going wrong?
In Mark 4:1–20, Jesus tells a story about a farmer that sows seed around his property. Some falls on a barren path and is quickly eaten by birds. Other seed is sown in gravel, grows rapidly, but withers in the heat of the sun. Still other is sown among weeds which choke out the young plants. Finally, some seeds fall on good soil and produce an abundant harvest. Later, when Jesus is alone with his disciples, he explains that this story illustrates how the message of God’s Kingdom either fails or thrives depending on the quality of the soil in which it is planted.
It’s interesting to note that Jesus mentions four kinds of soil and only one of them is good. We should not expect good soil to be in abundance. It is, in fact, a scarce resource.
For would-be hearers of the Kingdom message in the West, the soil in which they have been sown is becoming thoroughly hostile. The birds eat our young while they are consumed with social media. Consumer Christianity sells an inch-deep-mile-wide faith that is destroyed by the challenges of everyday life. The liberal-conservative divide feeds our anxiety, fear, and anger, which chokes out hope.
Sayers points us to the Chinese general Sun Tzu’s strategy of establishing a “death ground” for battle:
“There are only two choices: do or die…The church in the West is at a renew or decline moment. Our cultural crisis is burning the boats for us. By continuing with the status quo, we plug ourselves into the anti-renewal machine. Business as usual, the satiating of consumer Christianity, the mere provision of pleasing religious goods and services, will see us infected and eventually die of the toxicity in the system of the culture.” — pg. 53, Reappearing Church
Hope comes in the form of renewal, which is the reconnection of the church to God’s presence and our involvement in his plan to redeem the world.
My wife and I have been organizing and leading small communities of faith in South Florida for the past twenty years. They have never been substantial in number, but have consistently had a thread of renewal, which is the expected and natural, organic outflow of our being with God and each other. Sometimes they have looked like recovery groups for failed churchgoers. Sometimes a raucous dinner party, complete with fights and too much sangria. Sometimes, they are a spiritual Crossfit gym where we equally share our triumphs and failures. But in this soil, a death ground of church-on-the-margins, we have witnessed the transforming presence of God when the soil is tended well.
In the next article, I will talk more about our experience and about how we have planted and tended seeds of renewal. Then, I will show how these young plants bear fruit according to Jesus’ parable in Mark 4. But in order to get there, the soil must be prepared. As individuals, we have to recognize that the soil in which we are planted is toxic to kingdom growth. We have to pull out the weeds and rocks; drive a shovel into the hard pan of our functional atheism. As communities of faith, we must create spaces of respite where minds and hearts can reconnect with God’s world and perspective. And finally, we must learn to submit ourselves to prayer, acknowledging that in order to see authentic renewal in our lives, our churches, and the world around us, we need the living power and presence of King Jesus.
