A New Church for the 21st Century- A Need for Courage
As I continue to think aloud about what it means to be the church in the 21st century we move on to a topic that is necessary for this time in history- courage. We need to have clarity (first blog) and community (the next topic) but also courage plays a major factor in the church today.
When we think of courage we often think of heroic gestures where someone risks their life for another. Of course this is a good image of courage. Firefighters and others have performed bravely to save others and that in my book takes some serious guts.
The church today needs to have a gut check. Do we have the guts to do what we need to do. In Matthew 25 we see that powerful passage that reminds us that we are to feed the hungry, care for the sick, etc. And when we do this we do this for Christ. Recently a friend told me about Christians who argue that our job is soul winning alone. I don’t know how such folks read Matthew 25. Our job is to minister to the whole of humanity. Evangelism and pastoral care can not be separated. We are to feed, heal, help, and while do this we share the good news. We earn the right to be heard by what we do. We can’t very well except people to listen to what we have to say if we let them suffer. And even if they reject our message we are to minister anyway. We leave the results up to God.
As you read the Bible it becomes clear that courage is vital to being a Christ follower. The life of Paul alone shows how challenges face the believer. In my church we are currently studying the book of Revelation. If you are interested in how I read Revelation and understand this complicated text you can find blogs in the archives of this site. But in a nutshell let me say that I read Revelation as a book that was a letter sent to believers in Asia Minor who were suffering under the heel of Rome. How does one survive in a world where Caesar demands to be called Lord? How does a believer handle a hostile culture? Christians would go through tough times under Rome and in time many would die. This book is about how God’s kingdom is greater than the kingdom of Rome and that in the end God wins. It is a book to encourage those first century Christians. And this helps us today because all kingdoms will fail but God’s. We must remain faithful even under our own ‘empire’ struggles. The book of Daniel is also a great book to study. It was about Jews suffering under Babylonian and Persian rule but was probably written during the time of Greek domination or at least became very helpful then. The book is one that talks about how even the Greeks will not win. The prophecies in that book (you can also find my thoughts on this book in the archives) point to the fact that the empires of Daniel’s day and those later (Greeks) will not win.
It takes courage even knowing this. We may know God’s kingdom is greater and that in the end we win it does not make the present suffering easy. We struggle at times but we must keep focused as the crowd of witnesses cheers us on (Hebrews) and that in the end God is greater than anyone or anything else.
So the church needs courage. Churches around us may be floundering and dying. People may be giving up. Those around us may not care much about our message or find it useless. Some churches may preach messages that oppress or hurt others. We must remain faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We must love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. We must have the guts to be the church in the 21st century.
Blessings,
Derik
leave a comment