The Redeeming of the Church

Even the ever colorful Ted Turner finally seems to be coming around. It was recently announced that Turner is partnering with various denominations (both liberal and evangelical) to throw significant resources into the fight against malaria. Turner, who once declared that Christianity was a religion for losers, now says that religion is a 'bright spot' in the world that 'has a very good reputation for being able to mobilize resources.'

It is a sad reality that God's church too often brings disrepute to His name. Financial and sexual scandals are too common. Faulty theology is rampant. Empire-building in the church is thoroughly worldly. Idolatry is acceptable and even encouraged. Evangelicals divide over secondary matters and lose sight of the Great Commission. Liberals foolishly try to remake the church without bothering to address their faulty theology of church and Kingdom. The pride and self-delusion that underlie these trends go undealt with. With this kind of record, I have no trouble understanding why many oscillate between believing that the church is irrelevantly out of touch vs. believing that the church is foolish and dangerous. If this was the end of the story, I'd probably join them at least 5 days out of the week.

But some years ago, I came to understand something that even Ted Turner now seems to have some grasp of. Despite the church's chronic infidelity to its Owner and Master, the church often redeems itself (through the guidance of the Spirit) in times of tragedy and hardship. I've seen this firsthand many times, in efforts both big and small. I saw it when I was in New Orleans after Katrina. The evangelical church ran laps around everybody else, including the government, in its response to the devastation. The response was quick, comprehensive, and committed. It was the same thing in South Florida after Hurricane Andrew. It was the same thing after the tsunami disaster in Asia, and after the earthquake disaster in Turkey. In times of major disaster and despair, a heavily splintered church comes together to coordinate a response that puts everyone else to shame, and gets the attention even of someone like Ted Turner.

I've also seen this dynamic at work in smaller ways. My congregation is enduring a rough spell at the moment. Illness, disease, and death have come to visit several families in our congregation in recent months. Family and friends of ours who don't attend our church have also been stricken. My church has become a house of prayer in ways it wasn't before. We have stepped up to the plate with meals, visitation, and helping people with transportation and chores. If there had been a congregational vote last December about whether we as a church would have wanted to endure the season we are enduring, I doubt such a motion would have passed. Nobody wants to endure hardship and disaster, because they are the byproducts of universal sin. But I dare say that the redemption of the church through heartache and disaster provides me comfort that God is in control of the disasters, and that the church is still under his tutelage and is still being purified. The result has been that our church has not only grown closer together, we are also gradually developing a greater passion for outreach to a world that is filled with suffering.

My dream for our congregation is that we would be known in the community as a church that knows what it believes and doesn't need to substitute inventive techniques in place of core principles, and is a church that radically lives out what it believes and tirelessly welcomes the world to join us. It is my hope that the redeeming of our church through the purification of suffering will transform our congregation into one that speaks and acts prophetically to a world that needs to see orthopraxis as much as it needs to hear orthodoxy. Like so many times before, it is my hope that this season of suffering will be the church's finest hour. The ability of Ted Turner to see this on a bigger scale should give us hope that our neighbors will be able to see it in our community, in us.