“MakeGoodHappen with Randy Lovejoy is a Substack channel committed to helping everyone who has experienced this frustration. Though our focus is on creating on on-line community to help us move forward in our journey with Jesus in our everyday lives, each of us still has the challenge of building some kind of local community support for that journey.”
Sophie is struggling. She and her husband are “all in” on their spiritual journey. They agree that they want to go deeper in their relationship with Jesus. And that decision has madegoodhappen in their lives. Most recently they helped start a new church. They supported it as it became the multiethnic faith community of thousands that they had dreamed of. Their pastor was so good at what he did that we was invited to speak at large conferences. He wrote best-selling books that challenged others to consider Jesus Christ for their spiritual journey. They had come to know many in their congregation who had said “Yes” to that challenge. But then some of his indiscrete texts surfaced. The leadership of the church didn’t handle it well. Distrust among the congregation grew. Many friends that Sophie and Thom has known for years stopped coming to church. Even some of the staff resigned. They knew that church was supposed to help people makegoodhappen in their lives, relationships and communities. They had experienced it when the church was working right. But now nothing seemed to work. She and her husband were frustrated.
MakeGoodHappen with Randy Lovejoy is a Substack channel committed to helping everyone who has experienced this frustration. Though our focus is on creating on on-line community to help us move forward in our journey with Jesus in our everyday lives, each of us still has the challenge of building some kind of local community support for that journey. So, in a series of posts entitled, “Now What?” I want to offer you some advice that has helped me in my 20+ years of leading from inside of the institutional church as well as working from the outside. I believe these tried and true ideas, that have helped me and my family makegoodhappen in our lives, can help you as you continue your journey.
Sophie and Thom knew themselves well enough to resist the temptation to deconstruct an ancient faith according to their own personal desires. They had seen that Christianity in the non-Western world was doing just fine without their “Western intervention.’ So they started visiting other churches and meeting with friends in small groups from time to time to try to figure out what kind of community support they needed to take the next steps in their spiritual journey. Thom and Sophie both wanted a church with less focus on the pastor’s books and conference speaking opportunities. But Thom liked more contemporary music. Sophie liked more formal communion most if not all Sundays. Together they were struggling to find a place that fit all of their needs. So they decided to take a step back and ask a more basic questions: What is the purpose of the church?
As they visited churches near their home, the answer seemed obvious. “Church” is a building in the community where people go on Sundays to worship. It’s the place that has programs to support its members and a location where, during the week, various support groups meet, including something like a Boy Scout troop and an AA group. Oh, and the pastor has an office there. In the midst of all of the differences of size, style of music, how often they have communion, and who they baptize, all of the churches looked a lot a like in terms of their activities.
One Sunday when they got home from a church visit, Sophie went to her computer and began a Google search. She found a 2022 a study of church budgets in the United States that said the largest expenditure in U.S. churches is for pastors and staff; 49.1% of the budget. Then she found a 2014 study that said property expenses were a distant second to staff at 22%. As she continued her google search she found that the remaining 29% of American church budgets are divided between ministry programs to the congregation (10%), (with music and worship being an additional 2%) and that only 9% of church budgets were focused on those outside of the church (4% to ministries in the United States and 5% to ministries outside of this country). So, all together most churches prioritize 81% of their budget to staff salaries, building, and programs for the members.
The studies were confirmed by what she and Thom had seen from their visits. But as she and Thom talked about all of this they asked themselves another question. That may be what churches are in their community, but is that all that they are meant to be?
One evening Thom and Sophie got together with some of the friends they had been talking to about the church. After eating a meal together they began to look for a biblical definition of the church. They looked at as many passages as they could find related to their question. Then they grouped them around three key questions:
1-Is community essential to following Jesus? They found that throughout the Bible it is assumed throughout the Bible that following God is something you do in community. They all agreed that the most succinct passage answering this question was Hebrews 10:24-25a. “And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another…” With that really basic question answered they shifted to their second question.
2-What kind of building should house such gatherings according to the Bible? There were several interesting passages they found about this question, going way back into the Old Testament. Here are the key points:
There were a variety of “buildings” in the Old Testament before the Temple in Jerusalem.
there was the movable Tabernacle:Numbers 1:50-51
and later Shiloh as the worship center for the people of God. 1 Samuel 1:1-3.
It wasn’t until King David that the center of worship was established in Jerusalem and under his son Solomon the first Temple was built.
The last Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed almost 2,000 years ago and has never been rebuilt.
Instead, Jesus is the new Temple for Christians. (John 19:20-22)
Location was no longer the issue. Jesus with woman at well. John 4:19-24
Pilgrimage is no longer required. People can worship Jesus wherever they are. Acts 17:24, Ephesians 2:19-22, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20.
Early Christians met in a variety of places, including their own homes to worship. Romans 16:3-5, 1 Corinthians 16:19, Colossians 4:15.
3-This brought them to their third question. If the church isn’t defined by the type of building or even the location, then what is it that is essential to its purpose? What should and should not be happening as a result of these “encouraging gatherings” that Hebrews told them they should regularly have? Four passages stood out to them:
James 1:27: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
Micah 6:8: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Isaiah 1:13-17: “Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations –I cannot bear your worthless assemblies. Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood! Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”
Jeremian 7:9-14 really stood out to them because it was the passage Jesus quoted when he turned the tables over in the Temple (Matthew 21:13) : ‘“Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, ‘We are safe’– safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the Lord. ‘“Go now to the place in Shiloh where I first made a dwelling for my Name, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel. While you were doing all these things, declares the Lord, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen; I called you, but you did not answer. Therefore, what I did to Shiloh I will now do to the house that bears my Name, the temple you trust in, the place I gave to you and your ancestors.”
Thom, Sophie and their friends concluded that gathering with others is important, the building not so much. And what really matters, wherever you are gathering, is what’s going on outside of the gathering. What God is most concerned about is what’s going on in the lives of the people who then gather for worship and prayer. Thom suggested the following short statement as an answer to their question about the purpose of the church:
“The church exists,” he said, “to support the integration of faith into the everyday lives of its congregation.” They all quickly agreed and asked Thom to write out a one-page summary of the discussion for the group.
About a week later, Thom sent them an email which said:
“We believe the church exists to support the integration of faith into the everyday lives of Jesus-followers in a particular location. The fulfillment of the purpose of the church, then, is measured by makinggoodhappen in the lives of members, in their close relationships and in their local community. The key metrics, then, are not internal to the institutional church, but outside of the life of the congregation. They are measured by answering the following questions:
Are members changing their rhythm of life because of their faith in Christ? Are parents leading their family according to their faith in Christ? Are they passing on their faith to the next generation?
How are their relationships with friends, with other members, and with their co-workers? Are they practicing forgiveness and reconciliation in all of these relationships?
Are members building relationships of service and love with their next-door neighbors? Are they building relationships with the shop owners whose businesses they frequent in the local community? Have they found a way to strengthen their local community?
Everybody who received Thom’s email was excited about the questions. They agreed to meet together as friends at least quarterly to share a meal and talk about these metrics. They committed to encouraging each other so they could all say a whole-hearted “Yes” to each one of these questions in their own lives. They still hadn’t decided how they would be involved in the local churches housed in their community but they all knew they had taken some important steps forward in proactively working through their frustrations. They had found a way to continue to go deeper with Jesus, together, in their everyday lives. And isn’t that, at its heart, what the church is all about?