Chekrovei Cho-o
[dropcap]C[/dropcap]ulture plays an important role in the life of the church as well as the individual. Culture impacts the functions and activities of the church besides its traditions and belief. For instance, preaching has always borrowed its style from culture. During the scholastic period preaching was full of allegory and stories of the saints. Preaching style in baroque period was as flowery and ornamental as baroque architecture. The enlightenment brought rational, highly philosophical and doctrinal preaching to forefront, while the romantic era saw an emphasis on emotion and nature (Stephenson Bond).It should not be surprising, then, that in our age prosperity gospel dominates our preaching styles due to the culture of materialism. We’ve also put infrastructural development above spiritual development in our churches. There is nothing wrong about being culturally relevant as long as the biblical principles are not compromised; nevertheless, there are very high chances of being swayed away by the popular culture of the day at the expense of biblical foundations of the church and its activities.
SOME CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES
CONFRONTING THE CHURCH TODAY
The church is never free from being influenced, even dictated by a system informed by the popular culture. The followings are some of the crises confronting the mission of God through the Church.
Success Syndrome versus Servant Lifestyle: Materialism has hindered the church from its inception. Congregations often perceive ministerial effectiveness as numbers game. By equating Bigness with Greatness, this “nickles and noses” mentality has frequently diverted the attention of the church and her ministers from faithful service. The servant motivation in Christian ministry has given way to grasping for prestige and power. As Christians have drifted away from the simple life-style of the New Testament toward the pursuit of materialistic success, the church’s inconsistency has scrambled its message of care (James Reed and Ronnie Prevost).
Think about the mega events of the church such as jubilees, crusades, and conferences. Particularly, jubilees among the Baptist churches in Nagaland have become a mockery than an occasion to fulfill God’s purpose. Celebrations need not be in material sense. Why jubilee gifts for VIPs, missionaries, and church workers when jubilee is all about deliverance from bondage of all kinds. Why jubilee memorial buildings? Why not send out the message of care to the poor and needy by providing their basic needs in the name of jubilee? Why not sponsor an orphan or two in the name of jubilee instead of a giant structure called house. Why not send out a few missionaries for the spiritual deliverance of the lost in the name of jubilee?
And for heaven’s sake, jubilee is held only in the 50th year, not 25 or 75 or 125 years. Our superficial understanding of the Scripture accompanied by our willful negligence of the biblical principles has made our “celebrations” abomination to God.
Equating bigness with greatness is a misconception and a bad culture too. Every great thing has a humble beginning. We seem to have forgotten this fact. If you want to clean up a jungle, it is better to uproot the unwanted trees than to set fire on the whole jungle causing wild fire. And, by the way, you don’t plant jungles you plant tree saplings. The good thing is that, Nagas are very ambitious in doing things but not many are good at embodying what they do with vision. If we want to see change, we must climb down the ladder of pride and begin to serve at grass root level. Biblically speaking, mega events in the bible were all the result of the outpouring of God’s Spirit on the faithful (e.g. Day of Pentecost – Acts 2:14ff.). They were never human made events.
We cannot appropriate God’s plan with human wisdom. God must be allowed to do great things in us by being faithful and obedient lest we reduce our spirituality to “spiritual anorexia.” Spiritual anorexia is a kind of giving up the possibility that God will meet our spiritual needs. Thus we begin to appropriate God’s plan for our lives and our churches. This thing happens not because we don’t rust in God but because of our wrong trust and wrong step. Sarai’s (Sarah) suggestion for Abraham to marry Hagar to bear a son for them (to fulfill God promise) was a typical example (see Genesis 16:1-16). We must allow God to manifest His mighty works in us than initiate mighty works for God in contrary to the biblical teachings.
Superficial Evangelism versus Nurture: Throughout history, new converts to the Christian faith have received too little and shallow instructional training and organic nurture for Christian living. Many Christians seem to have directed their attention more toward orthodoxy of belief than orthodoxy of life. We have even reduced mission to numbers game. The number of converts is rising every year, but lack of leadership among the local converts continues to persist. This is because the church has misunderstood the Great Commission. The emphasis in the Great Commission is not “go” or “conversion” but ”make disciples”. . . “teaching them to obey all I have commanded” (Matthew 28:19-20). Of course, without going one cannot make disciples of all nations, but evangelism without nurture is half-done.
We are responsible for the crisis in mission fields. As the saying goes, “little learning is dangerous.” There are people who do not believe in the gospel because they do not understand, while others become Christians without understanding the cost being a disciple. The church cannot afford to count the gospel eggs by spending huge amount of money without enabling them to hatch and mature.
Institutional Form Versus Individual Faith: Christian bodies are turning into religious organization rather than the Body of Christ because the church is institutionalized. Thus the believers are forced to remain spiritual infants. Findley Edge, Bill Rogers, and others have described a cyclic process of institutionalism. First, as a reaction to errors, abuses, and injustices, a movement is born in a time of great stress. Second, the new movement must organize its own institutions to survive. Third, society rejects the growing movement as a hated sect. Fourth, the movement passes from rejection to toleration to acceptance by society. Finally, once the movement’s dogma has become accepted, either an individual or group demands conformity. Thus the cycle repeats itself. In contrast, individual faith stresses a direct relationship between God and humans. Such radical faith has almost always met persecution. Jesus’ crucifixion provides the supreme example of this truth. In reality, the church as a living body of Christ is much more than a structured institution.
In order to overcome this crisis and initiate effective mission of God in the church we must first understand the purpose of the church. Most denominations and scholars agree that the church exists for three purposes – Fellowship, Worship, and Witness. This idea is drawn from the New Testament characteristics of a church based on Acts 2:42-47. The very purpose of the church – assembled people of God – is to have relationship with God and with one another and to witness the God in whom and for whom they exist.
Current Lack of Purpose: Jim Wilhoit points out the current crisis in church ministry stems from a lack of clear purpose at the grassroots level. The people most directly involved in Christian education – Sunday school teachers, youth counselors, and Bible study leaders – often have no idea of the ultimate purpose of their educational endeavors. We are good at copying others and do what others do, and even do better. The only problem is doing things without expecting results, thus our activities are reduced to busybody than a purposeful activity. Think about children’s department where most of the time is spent on crafts and work books that have only an incidental relationship to the Bible passage of the week. The teachers believe that they should not bore the children, so they do their best to make the class a lot of fun.
Often, however, no one knows the ultimate purpose for the class. At times, Sunday School teachers become “fire fighters” struggling with how to keep the children quiet so that there’s little time to impart in them what they need to learn and become. I used to be ashamed of myself, today, of how I had no direction whatsoever when I was forced by my church to teach Sunday school children during my early secular college days. Such a lack of purpose can devastate the personnel in ministries where the results are slow and where mere hard work goes unnoticed. We are very eager to know what it means to do something. We are even more eager to know how things are done. But, we tend to ignore the most important one: Why do we involve in the things that we do?
The way we understand something will determine the way we will do things.STRATEGIC SHIFTS TO UCCESSFULLY
TRANSFORM THE CHURCH
Sóren Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.” Likewise, when we look at our past as the church – the body of Christ – we can see so many challenges. Dwelling on these challenges can be overwhelming, but looking forward with renewed strength with a desire to see positive change can make a lot of difference. The followings are strategic shifts suggested by Mark Conner for a healthy church.
A Power Shift from Self to God: It is a confidence in self to a greater dependence on God. It is a recognition that true success is, “not by might or power, but by the Spirit of the Lord” (Zechariah 4:6). When we look at the fall of mankind (Genesis 3:4,5), and even angel – the Morning Star (Isaiah 14:12-14), both the causes were pride or ego. Indeed, “pride goes before a fall.”
Prayer is the key to everything both in our personal lives and in the Church because it is the greatest source of power. It is said, a prayerful person is a powerful person. If our Lord Jesus Christ had to spend so much time with his Father to sustain his earthly ministry, how much more would we need to spend with God. Power belongs to God and to wait on God no time is lost.
A Priority Shift from In reach to Outreach: Today, many say that they find increasing attraction in Jesus but growing alienation from the church. But why this loss of faith in the integrity of the church? Chevis F. Horne points out three reasons:
First, some say that the church is introverted, that it turns in upon its own life, and that it is more concerned with serving itself than serving the world. The church is really a servant, existing not for itself but for the world, it seems to have forgotten that.
Second, the charge of irrelevance is leveled at the church. It is not in touch with real life and its crucial issues. It has been too tethered closely to sacred buildings and holy hours. It has not freed itself to be the church in the world.
Third, the church reflects too much the spirit of its culture and too little the spirit of its Lord. Rather than being controlled by the mind of Christ, it has embodied the values, standards, and fragmentation of its society. The church, like its Lord, is to be a servant, but it has sought power, prestige, and status symbols. Unless the church is able to live out beyond these crises it will soon be overwhelmed by its own problems.
The church must become evangelistic community. The church is a community of believers but it does not exist for itself but for the ones who need to know the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. One thing the church must guard itself from is self serving or being served.
A Program shift from events to relationship: The church is becoming too much event-oriented at the expense of relationship. We have even reduced church administration to activities. Charles A. Tidwell maintains that, there are things to be done in the church, but church administration is more than doing of things; it is “growing of people.” We cannot grow people if relationship is ignored or neglected. God wants us to shift our focus from just having events to the development of meaningful relationships between people, so that the church becomes a caring Christian community.
As highlighted above, there’s severe deviation from the biblical teaching in regards to our church jubilees when it’s not about the event but people, especially people in need. It is everybody’s responsibility to initiate change in our local churches as well as Associations/Councils today.
The Church is God’s new community that is to be known by its love and the quality relationships between God and His people and among God’s people (see John 13:34-35). In Acts 2:42-47, we see the distinguishing qualities of this new community. These first believers ate together, prayed together, shared their material possessions, praised God together, met together to learn the Word of God and experienced opportunities to witness Jesus Christ. As they did, they attracted others from the city to follow Jesus Christ and be a part of their community. Perhaps, we as the church know very well what we ought to do but are not willing to move a bit to practice what we believe. This is called “abusive spirituality.” The fact is that, if your faith doesn’t change you, you change your faith.
A leadership shift from ministers to equippers: Leadership crisis is not foreign to the Nagas even among church leaders. It is because the biblical understanding of leadership is either not grasped or misunderstood. It is obvious things that, what one can do, two can do better provided proper guidance precedes the action. According to Charles A. Tidwell, “all ministry is equipping ministry.” What Jesus did throughout his earthly ministry was equipping his disciples for the challenges ahead of them in His kingdom business. Church leaders need to take on the role of a COACH, who empowers others to reach their ministry potential. As cited above, church administration is “growing of people” developing people as effective ministers is vital to the ongoing growth and health of the church and its ministries.
We know that Moses had “Messiah Complex” in his leadership style until his father-in-law Jethro gave him a word of wisdom that enabled him to delegate and mobilize others to help him in the work of ministry (Exodus 18:13-27). Nehemiah was an excellent leader, who led a group of people to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. The task was too big for him to do by himself, so he made sure every person had a place and a job to do to contribute to the overall task (Nehemiah 1-6). Jesus was a Shepherd, but He worked like a rancher. He trained twelve disciples and told them to go and make disciples, who would raise even more disciples and thereby multiply the ministry.
That was Jesus’ priority; that was the disciples’ primary task (Matthew 28:18-20). Paul was a great leader because he was able to train others to join him in ministry. Paul told Timothy to take the things he had taught him and pass them on to the faithful people who would be able to train others (2 Timothy 2:1-2). In the words of Dr. James Longkumer, “discipleship is not limited to the clergies or people in ministry. Every member of the church must be made disciples in order to follow Jesus and contribute to the gospel ministry of Jesus Christ.” One common failure of the church today is inability to equip the laity for ministry. Leadership that empowers others is a powerful leadership.
A Ministry Shift from Consumers to Contributors: We live in a consumer mentality society today. What is “important” for many people is how much one gets than how much one can contribute. The measure of ministry is not how much we get but how much we give. Mark Conner says, “I believe that people are looking for significance in life and this is found by giving their lives to a cause beyond themselves. God has a vision, a dream, and a destiny for each individual person and this includes a significant contribution to the local church.”
A number of years ago, gospel singer Michael W. Smith had a hit song called Place in This World. The message of this song touches on one of the core needs that every human being is born with – to find their place in the world. We have a deep desire for our lives to have a sense of purpose and meaning. Each one of us wants to know the answers to the questions, “Who am I?” and “Why am I here for?” Thankfully, the Bible teaches us that God has a plan and a purpose for each person (Mark Conner).
God is in recruiting business. History is full of examples of ordinary people that God chose to do extraordinary tasks. God is doing a great work and he has selected you and me to be on His team. No one is too insignificant for the task God has entrusted to him or her. “Priesthood of all believers” (1 Peter 2:9) gives you ample opportunity to do what you can do in God’s team. Conner reiterates that, you are a part of the body of Christ; you have been given a spiritual gift; you have a specific job to do; the growth of the body of Christ is dependent on you; and God sees what you can become, not just what you are now.
A worldview shift from church mentality to a kingdom mentality: In Mark 9:38-40, we have an interesting story involving Jesus’ disciples. While traveling along ministering in various villages, they observed someone else ministering. They said, “Jesus, we saw someone who is not one of us casting out demons in your name. Should we tell them to stop?”
See how their reaction revealed an attitude of pride and exclusiveness that Jesus has to rebuke them for. This story reveals some common attitudes that can easily become part of our way of thinking concerning other churches and ministries. Today, many churches have become their own stumbling blocks in mission fields. Scuffle among the Christian churches or denominations are causing confusion among the new believers in many mission fields. Our ego-centricity and selfish attitude displayed in our claim for ownership in the mission of God has done so much damage than promote the mission God has entrusted to us. We need to change our thinking patterns in order to adopt a kingdom mentality. We need to shift our focus so that we do not merely concentrate our attention on our own local church or ministry, but begin to see what God is doing through the wider church and body of Christ.
It is said, “Humility is the right estimate of yourself.” We must not think of ourselves more highly than we should (Romans 13:3). We all need each other. The Great Commission is too big for any one of us to fulfill. We need all churches and all Christian ministries working together to achieve God’s purposes. The book of Proverbs tells us that, a mark of wisdom and maturity is a willingness to listen and learn from others (9:9; 12:15). We should look for common ground and not focus only on our differences (Philippians 1:15-18). God wants us connected to others, not isolated from them. God values diversity, not uniformity and so should we.
God is building His Church, and His Church is an extension of the kingdom of God in every locality. It is not one particular denomination or nationalistic group. It is His people, out of every nation and cultural background.
As the true Church of Jesus Christ turns from competitiveness to co-operation, we will see the task of reaching our cities and villages accomplished much more quickly.
A kingdom mentality sees the church in the world as a body comprised of many local churches, all working together for God’s purposes.
Finally, I know very well, there is neither a perfect church nor a perfect church leader and that every fallible leader is bound to lack perfection his or her ministry, but one must be reminded of biblical principles as often as possible than being swayed away by the cultures of the world. As echoed by Dr. Pangernungba, “the church needs to be informed by culture but it must transcend the contemporary culture and retain its own culture, that is, biblical and spiritual principles. It is because the church is to be ‘in the world although it is not of the world’” (John 17:11-17).
Therefore, culture should be understood as a vehicle to direct the church in its functions and activities for the sake of relevance, but it must guard itself from being polluted or swallowed up by the popular culture.
