Materials
What We Believe
#6
The One Holy And Universal
Church
by R. Todd Bouldin
The Christian writer Paul Tournier once said there are two things
one cannot do alone – be married and be a Christian. To be a
Christian, it takes a church.
Prayer
Robert Bellah wrote about a woman named Sheila in his book, Habits
of the Heart, in which he examined American society today to find
out what makes us tick. He was particularly interested in American
belief systems, and he made some startling discoveries. Sheila is
one of the people he interviewed. She is a young nurse who describes
her faith as "Sheilaism." She had this to say: "I believe
in God. I’m not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember
the last time I went to church, but my faith has carried me a long
way. It’s just my own little voice."
Bellah reported in his book that 81 percent of Americans say that
they arrive at their own religious views without regard to a body
of believers, and those statistics are pretty dated and probably have
only gotten worse in the years since. While most of us would not say
this, our belief in ourselves takes a more subtle form. Our own faith
tradition taught that the individual can decide what is true, based
on Scripture, but it’s still the individual who interprets and
decides for himself or herself. This is contrary to the notion that
we as a community study and interpret Scripture together and not alone.
Regardless of our tradition, many of us Americans are individualistic
in developing our convictions, and we don’t see the need for
any institution to tell us what to believe. In fact, we have come
to be suspicious of institutions like the church, and we question
what value they really hold for us. After all, people who go to church
sometimes seem meaner and greedier than those who do not. We are busy
people, so what’s the point?
In the New Testament, we discover a vision of the church that seems
so different than our experience of it. The New Testament claims
that the church is God’s community that is one, holy and universal.
What exactly does the Bible mean? Can these words really describe
a church that we experience as divided, hypocritical and narrow?
The church of Jesus Christ is that body of people who, in
its most literal meaning in the Greek, have been “called
out” by God and belong to Him. It does not refer to a building
or an institution, as we commonly think of it, but to a group of people
who have identified themselves as followers of Jesus Christ. We often
use the word "church" to describe a building or an organization
with an office and members, but there is not a single instance of
that usage of the word in the New Testament. In the Gospels, Acts,
and all the Epistles, the word “church” always means a
group of people bound together by their commitment to trust and follow
Jesus Christ together. It was, in fact, many years before the
church possessed any buildings at all, for the church was poor, and
what is more, the church was persecuted. While the church sometimes
met in synagogues or marketplaces in its early days, its most common
meeting place was in the home.
There are many metaphors in Scripture for the church. It is sometimes
described as the building of God, or the bride of Christ, and often
the body of Christ. These metaphors all point us to something more
than an institutional organization with members, rolls and boards
of directors. These are dynamic images of a community on the move,
a group that is organic, a gathering of diverse people around a common
faith. It is not their relationship with each other that primarily
draws them together – they did not choose each other -- but
their common relationship to Christ and their common possession of
God’s Holy Spirit. It is that Spirit that brings them together,
and that Spirit that unifies them so that their relationship together
is sustained in the midst of conflict and adversity.
This has been difficult for the church historically because we somehow
forget that God determines who the church is, not us. We have made
one’s doctrinal position on some issue or another, or the purity
of one’s life, the test of whether the person is a true Christian
or a member of the true church. But as I understand the New Testament,
the essence of being a Christian is not an extended set of correct
doctrinal beliefs or even well-formed personal character. It is not
that these things are unimportant, but to be a Christian is to
be connected to Christ in such a unique and special way that all other
relationships are defined by that union. The perfect triune fellowship
of God as Father, Son, and Spirit from eternity past has been opened
to us by the blood of Jesus at Calvary, and now we can participate
in that union. That participation defines who is the church –
but it is something God determines, not us.
It’s true that the process for how we come to participate in
that Body through trust, repentance and baptism is fairly straightforward
in the New Testament. But this confidence can easily lead to arrogance
in the certainty of our understandings. But as I understand the New
Testament, the church’s primary identity is not contained
in ourselves – in the name on our building, or on the correctness
of our doctrines, or on the superiority of our character – but
in our adoption and participation in the life of the Triune God.
We are the community of the children of God! We carry His spiritual
DNA. We bear His name. We have a great inheritance. The fact that
we belong to God is our primary identity.
Perhaps if more of us saw ourselves as children of God, rather than
members of the church, we would claim a nobler inheritance. If we
understood church as persons in relationship rather than names on
the roll, we would function differently as the church. If we saw sin
as the breaking of relationships rather than the breaking of rules,
we would both live better and deal with one another more gracefully.
If we really love God the Father, we will create churches that are
communities of love, accountability, and nurture where gradual spiritual
transformation takes place over time. As we do that, we will become
like Jesus in our doctrines, our character and our relations.
Peter says that the church is a “holy priesthood” of believers.
"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, a people belonging to God" (1 Peter 2:9). That word
"holy" is off-putting to many people, for it suggests a
holier-than-thou kind of attitude. For many of us, our experience
with the church has been a great disappointment, for in the church
we often encounter more sinners than saints. C.S. Lewis depicts this
attitude well in his book, The Screwtape Letters, in which
a new convert to Christianity goes to church, expecting to find it
full of saints, and instead discovers that it is full of ordinary
people like himself! Also, if we look at the history of the church,
we read of all the ways in which the church has been guilty of the
very sins it has condemned in others, and the institution smacks of
hypocrisy. History is replete with examples of the church's failure
to be the church Christ called it to be, and it doesn't appear to
be very holy at times. The church on a bad day is like the Superdome:
the stench inside would be unbearable if it weren't for the storm
outside!
To understand this aspect of the church, we need to recover the true
meaning of the word "holy." In the Greek language, the word,
"holy" means "set apart by God to be unique."
You and I as followers of Jesus Christ are to be holy in the sense
that we are set apart for God's special purposes in the world; we
are called to be about His mission. What makes us unique, what makes
us "holy," is not just the fact that we don’t cuss,
drink or engage in immoral sexual practices. It also means that we
reject the world’s notion that money, power, and prestige is
the way to find happiness. We believe that love is self-emptying,
not self-expression. We reject the idea that sexuality is purely biological
and hormonal and not connected to intimacy and who we are as persons.
We believe that Jesus was right when He said that in order to save
your life you must lose it, and if you want to be great in The Kingdom,
you must be a servant. What makes us different, what makes us "holy,"
is that instead of lauding the path of upward mobility, we celebrate
the path of downward mobility that Jesus chose to take in order to
come to this earth and die the sinner’s death in our place.
Holy also does not mean removed from the world but to be different
people who are actively living in it and engaged with it. Randy
Harris, Mark Love and Doug Foster write in their new book Seeking
a Lasting City: The Church's Journey in the Story of God:
"The church in a post-Christian, postmodern, post denominational
world is the exilic church, the missional church, the prophetic church,
the marginalized church, the church of the cross that stands outside
the city gates. They are all embedded in our story. While their specific
confluence in our time and place may be unique, that's true of the
church in every time and place. No church is exactly like any other.
This reflects the wisdom of God and the genius of the Gospel; its
story is always the same story, its good news the same good news,
its church the one and only church. Yet within this framework, God
is constantly creating us anew for the sake of His Kingdom work in
the world. The church doesn't accommodate to the culture in order
to grow. It grows because it follows Christ to the place of service
and sacrifice outside the city gates. In this, it is radically counter-cultural,
affirming that this is not our home.
But the church can only have a counter-cultural message if it is deeply
engaged in culture. The church subverts the worldly values of culture
while it is in the world, actively and genuinely serving the lost.
What we often take for a counter-cultural stance is simply irrelevance.
When the church is irrelevant, it does not subvert the darkness of
culture; it simply stands aloof from it." Holiness is counter-cultural
in the midst of culture.
Finally, the church is part of the universal, worldwide church
of Jesus Christ as it exists now in the world and as it is before
the throne of God as the communion of saints. Our church here
in Camarillo is but a small sliver of the larger church of Jesus Christ,
and we are one with believers the world over throughout history.
This universal aspect of the church is prominent in the New Testament.
The book of Acts describes a church that began in Jerusalem, expanded
throughout Palestine and the Roman Empire and then “to the uttermost
parts of the earth.” (Acts 1:8). Paul speaks often of the church
which knows no national or racial boundaries, and the vision of John
in the Book of Revelation is one of a church of many tribes, languages
and nations (Revelation 5). Hebrews 12:1 speaks of the “great
cloud of witnesses” who urge us on in the faith. As I’ve
noted in prior weeks, the church is the place where God’s
garden is growing again – it is where it is all coming together
again. It is in moments like those in the Gulf Coast region during
the past week that we have seen God’s universal church being
God’s agent of healing and hope in a suffering world, and then
we are reminded of the vastness of what God is doing through His Body
which extends so far beyond our borders and comprehension.
It’s time for us to rediscover the universality of the church.
We must move beyond the arrogance of our past that assumed that God
was at work only in places that look and believe exactly as we do.
God is doing something much bigger – and if we do not lift our
eyes beyond ourselves we will miss it.
Further, it is time to embrace the global nature of our faith. In
our past days as a tradition, we felt connected to other churches
around the world. I believe this is something we have lost of late.
Ironically, this has happened in a world much smaller and more connected
by technology than anytime in history. If we reconnect to this church
universal, I believe that we will experience a shocking reawakening
as we see God’s Kingdom increasing everywhere. In fact, Christianity
increasingly is becoming a predominantly Third World religion. Can
you see The Kingdom advancing or are you too worried about how many
attend our services each week? Lift up your eyes. The church is
becoming a global community. If we can see this, our faith will
be encouraged. Our own beliefs will be challenged as we see how faith
takes shape in cultures different than our own. Our hopes will be
renewed. And we will pray more fervently than ever.
To be a Christian is to be called into one holy and universal church.
It is to be made part of a community on the move, a band of pilgrims
on a journey, a tribe who share a common Tribal Leader. Church may
not seem like such a perfect place sometimes, and it isn’t.
But it’s still the unique people who are choosing to live on
their best days by a different ethic, to believe in an alternative
story, and to trust fully in a most uncommon Savior. That’s
why I keep believing in the church. People that are the church still
do the most extraordinary things, they still serve in amazing ways,
and they are still giving themselves unselfishly for each other and
the world. That’s why I believe in the church.
It has little to do with who we are. It has everything to do with
who we are becoming.
September 11, 2005
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