One of the most common questions I have been asked as I visit churches in Los Angeles concerns what I am learning about the church. Well, here is the long awaited answer: I have found that the church’s focus will greatly influence the community. Here is what I mean. If the church focuses on attracting people, then attracting people will be a major aspect of the community. Focus on being relevant, relevance will be the outcome in our community. Church communities are reaping what they sow.
No wonder there is often confusion about who Jesus really is. We say church is really about the good news, but culture is well aware of the what and the how of church. This presentation of church says something drastically different than we may want it to say. Whether we want it to or not, the focus of our community will define our community.
We often want to steal ideas and models from the world and reproduce it in a church context in order to make church successful. Don’t’ get me wrong. I think there is a lot of wisdom and merit in this approach. However, is church simply identical to what we would find anywhere else, just with a Christian bent? We hope that the Christian label we add will make it different. But everything else in our community will ultimately be the influencing factor.
Nothing gets reaped unless it is sowed in life. The entire spiritual formation movement understands this concept. We have not been as good at making disciples as we have of making worldly people with a different vocabulary. We need to sow Jesus.
Our invitation to follow Jesus must be different than anything else. If what Jesus did and who He claimed to be is true, it must change everything and not just filter it. What we talk about and what we do must be something that is attractive to the world not because it is like the world, but because it is so radically different.
I was leaving a very well-known church in Los Angeles. As I left, there was a homeless man asking for money. What caught my attention is not that he was near a church service asking for money, I don’t think I have been to a church in Los Angeles where this didn’t happen. What grabbed my attention was that as people walked by him ignoring his plea for money, he declared, “false spirituality!” Not that I agreed with what he said or his approach, but it did get me thinking about his perception of the church.
It seems to me that many of the problems we have in church are due to the fact that we are reaping what we sow. We either expect to reap what we are not sowing or not reap what we are sowing. I don’t think the homeless man’s comments would have bothered me so much if I walking out of a church known for its generosity, love, and grace. But I was walking out of a church known for its very high production and relevant worship services. And if the church was known for its radical love would he have yelled, “Please help me, you have what I need!”
We are perplexed that our church communities don’t do what we say but rather what we do. If we were radical enough to make the main thing the focus in church again, what would happen? Are we willing to risk letting Jesus be the focus? Is Jesus enough to be the only focus for us?