I hope you like the “horror” genre, because I have an assimilation horror story for you:
A pastor friend of mine was visiting a congregation which was joyfully celebrating the ordination of the young man who was about to become his associate pastor. During the service, the pastor announced that there would be a potluck dinner at the close of the service and all were invited.
When it came time to enjoy the food that the happy worshippers had been smelling all morning, the pastor announced that families with young children should go through the serving line first, followed by the church’s other members, followed by – don’t miss this – the church’s guests, who definitely were being told to come through the serving line…dead last.
That’s an over-the-top true illustration of today’s subject: Not all of our assimilation challenges are caused by those we want to assimilate: some of them are caused by us.
Last week I shared three church assimilation challenges relating to our guests. Check it out here if you’d like to catch what you missed:
- “Broken Legos” – We’re all like Legos in that we can only match up with a few other people, but increasing numbers of people today are so damaged by life on this broken planet that they can’t match up relationally with anyone.
- The Fear Factor – Increasing numbers of people are afraid of Christians and afraid of churches. They walk in our doors with a bucket load of mistrust.
- Depersonalization and Cynicism – People today are so used to being treated like objects that they are quickly turned off by impersonal churches and even resistant to the best efforts of warmly relational congregations.
The assimilation challenges that arise from our hearts and lives as church members can be summarized with two words: inwardly focused.
But that begs the question: Why are so many churches so inwardly focused? The following are seven reasons. The solution is pretty much the same for all seven, so I’ll save it for the end.
(1) We don’t believe our beliefs. Do we really believe in the exclusivity of Christ, that He is (still) the only way to heaven? That religiosity doesn’t “cut it” with God? That a cognitive only faith isn’t saving faith? That the lost who haven’t heard the name of Christ (see Romans 1-3) are as lost as those who have heard of Him and rejected Him? That hell and heaven are real places and the only two destinies for any of us?
(2) I shudder to say it: We believe our beliefs but we don’t care. Or we only care about our family members and our oldest friends. Are we the “frozen chosen,” concerned about “us four and no more”? Have we become as hard-hearted as the older brother in the prodigal son parable of Luke 15 or the priest and Levite of the good Samaritan parable of Luke 10?
(3) We’re Legoed up – relationally saturated, like a Lego that can’t connect to anymore Legos – and don’t care enough about the lost to stretch ourselves to help make sure that our guests get Legoed up with somebodyin our congregation.
(4) We’re not just Legoed up, but like our guests, we are broken Legos ourselves, afraid that if we extend ourselves in friendship to “sketchy” people we might get hurt (which, of course, we will).
(5) We’re satisfied with the size of our church – as if we were ever doing evangelism in order to get our church to the correct size!
(6) We’re afraid of lost people. I understand this well because I’m kind of afraid of them too. It’s so much easier to confine ourselves to nice, Christian friends. Lost people are messy. In fact, many lost people look like “the enemy” to us and we haven’t taken seriously Jesus’ command to love our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48). In my own town, one congregation after another has been challenged by the same elderly, cross-dressing, church shopping man. Sometimes I wonder if God sent him to test us.
(7) We’re hiding from the world. The world out there is getting nastier and less friendly to Christianity and Christians all the time (Matthew 24:12, II Timothy 3). The knee-jerk reaction of many of us is to “go Amish” or become the kind of “almost Amish,” highly separated Christians my wife and I were for several years: Donna always says we were “Amish, with electricity.”
So there you have it: seven assimilation challenges that arise from our issues, not those of the lost sheep who occasionally stumble through our doors.
Quite simply, it’s time for us to repent of our hypocrisy, our hardness of heart and smallness of spirit. We have been called to love the worst among us, including those we see as our enemies. The size of our churches should have nothing to do with our concern for sinners. The needs of others are big enough to stretch us from self-absorbed, wounded victims to God-and-others-focused wounded warriors.
The beautiful promise of God is that He will always meet our repentance – itself a gift of God (Acts 11:18, II Timothy 2:25) – with an abundant supply of grace, enabling us to grow (or grow back) into the disciples Jesus has called us to be:
“But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says, ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’” James 4:6
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
- Does our church believe its beliefs? How consistent are we as individuals with our doctrinal statement (creed or statement of faith)?
- Have we put our church’s warmth to the test by recruiting “Secret Seekers” to experience our congregation on a Sunday morning? If so, what did they find?
- What are we doing to transcend our own “Lego issues” and make sure that our guests are not only welcomed on Sunday morning, but are truly welcomed into our fellowship?
- Are we a church which is afraid of lost people or hiding from the world?
- If any of these issues are problems in our congregation, what can we do, as leaders, to change our church for the better?
