The Present Future, Chapter One (Part Two)

Okay, so it's been a month since my first post on this book called The Present Future - a book that pretty much smacks you in the face with reality. I'm sorry it's been so long, it's been a long month of campaign stuff. Now that the first part of the stewardship campaign is over, I can now start posting on this book again.

Anyway, we left off chapter one with the first wrong question that churches are asking, which is this: "How do we do church better?" The truth, the reality, is that no matter how much better you do church, no matter what program you buy into - whether it be the purpose-driven church, or the servant-driven church or whatever - unchurched people still won't care. They really won't. They don't wake up on Sundays thinking, "If only there was a church that was purpose-driven in my community - then I would go to church!" Unchurched people don't think like that.

Let's switch gears from the wrong question to the tough question of this chapter: How do we deconvert from Churchianity to Christianity? We ended the first part of this chapter saying that the church needs a mission fix. What is our mission as the Church?

McNeal says this: "North American Christians think in terms of its institutional expression, the church, as opposed to think about Christianity in terms of a movement." In other words, the church tends to exist for itself. What will it take to have our eyes opened and begin to realize that we've been barking up the wrong tree, so to speak? "It will require a disentangling, an intentional self-differentiation from church in order to gain perspective, a willingness to abandon church club member mentality for the sake of following Jesus." In other words, deconverting from a mindset of "the church exists for itself" to "what is the mission God has called the church to fulfill" is a hard thing to do.

When I was reading this part of the chapter, my mind wandered to a scene from one of my favorite movies. You may have heard of it, it was called The Matrix. Anyway, there's a scene where Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) is explaining to Neo (Keanu Reeves) that the world that he thinks is real is not real. In fact, Neo thinks it's 1999 when in reality it's somewhere around 2099. Neo thinks he is a free person who has lived a regular life; Morpheus tells him that he actually has lived in a pod all his life, and that the supposed real life that he thought he was living was actually fake neurological impulses that machines have been "feeding" him while they used the energy from his body for their own purposes. (There are several very good "backstories" to the beginning of the Matrix, the rise of the machines - The Animatrix DVD is a good starter. Yes, I'm still a little obsessed.) Neo has a very hard time accepting these facts. In fact, Reggie McNeal reminds me a little of Morpheus - rather blunt, no beating around the bush. After Neo collapses from the weight of the truth, Morpheus appears in his room and apologizes for being so blunt. He tells Neo that they have set a certain age limit of people whose minds they free, because at a certain age, one can't change their thoughts about what is true and what isn't.

I wonder what that age is with the blunt realities that McNeal is driving home in this book. I wouldn't say it is an age as in a number of years; I would say it is more likely how long one is immersed in Christian culture that determines whether someone can really change their mind about what the church should be all about.

The next point that hit me like a brick was this: "In America, the initiative to become a Christian has become largely an invitation to convert to the church." This is true. We baptize people so that they can become a Christian and so they can join our church. "Anyone serious about being a Christian will order their lives around the church, shift their life and work rhythms around the church schedule, channel their charitable giving through the church, and serve in some church ministry." Here is a painful truth. This is why most people, once they become a Christian, lose most contact with their unchurched friends. They are expected, after becoming a Christian, to jump with both feet forward into the church culture and quickly become homogenized into the church. "In other words, serve the church and become a fervent marketer to bring others into the church, to do the same."

Okay, enough of the "sickness" diagnoses. What is the remedy?

"We need to recapture the mission of the church."

What is that mission?

"The church has forgotten why it exists. The church was created to be the people of God to join him in his redemptive mission in the world. It was never intended to exist for itself."

"Jesus didn't teach his disciples to pray "thy church come". The kingdom is the destination."

There were two things I was very good in college. One thing was the ability to skip chapel (I didn't say they were good things) and almost get kicked out of college two weeks before I graduated (which was not related to skipping chapel). The other thing was write papers that professors really liked. One thing that I wrote in a class reminds me of what McNeal is talking about. In this paper, I compared the nation of Israel to the church of today (well, the church of the early 90's, I should say). I made the point that the fall of the Jewish nation wasn't primarily due to evil leaders, the worship of idols, and the imitation of the detestable practices of its neighbors. True, those things contributed, but they weren't the only reasons. The biggest reason, in my opinion, as to why the Jewish nation went into steep decline, is because the people of Israel were so focused on their pride in being God's chosen nation that they forgot the responsibility that God gave them as a nation: "to be a light unto the Gentiles so that they would bring salvation to the ends of the earth." (Acts 13:some verse) The nation of Israel began to exist for the preservation and exaltation of and complete focus on itself, and when that happened, all you know what broke loose. Can you see the parallels between Israel and the church?

We need to rediscover our mission as the body of Christ. This "rediscovery" will be painful for most of us, because our minds aren't ready to let go of what we think reality is.

Neo asks Morpheus something right before Morpheus apologizes for being brutally honest. He says, "I can't go back, can I." Morpheus says, "No. But If you could, would you really want to?" Most Christians, when confronted with The Present Future, would find any way possible to be "plugged back into the Matrix", because it's a lot easier than trying to change oneself and the church. I choose to face the honest truth about the church and to face the real world.

Let me end with this last quote by McNeal: "The church has lost its influence at this critical juncture. It has lost is influence because it has lost its identity. It has lost its identity because it has lost its mission."