For the last 15 years or so I’ve heard people in ministry bemoaning the shrinking of the “mainline Church.” This usually comes with the statistics of how many members were lost last year, what the trend has been the last 5 (10, 20, 50) years, and how churches and denominations are starting up programs to combat this decline.
And there are churches that have grown in the last 50 years, just as the “mainlines” have declined. Many independent and/or “non-denominational” churches have seen great growth in ministry. Some of the largest mega-churches have prospered outside the framework of the mainliners. Attending church doesn’t guarantee salvation and the numerical growth of a church doesn’t guarantee true spiritual growth. But statistics can tell us one thing: church membership in mainlines has declined and church membership in non-denoms has increased.
Does this mean God doesn’t like mainlines any more? I don’t think that’s the point here. God is seeking worshippers (John 4:23-24); God is seeking men and women after His own heart (Jer. 3:15, 1 Sam. 13:14); God is seeking people who will SEEK FIRST the KINGDOM and God’s Righteousness (Mt. 6:33). Whether a person seeking God is doing so in a mainline church, a nondenom, or another gathering of God’s people, God will honor the genuine heart centered on Christ.
I’ve been reading online a lot in the last year about politics, economics, and sort of a “how the US got where we are” with regard to our economy and society. In that reading I’ve come across people who believe the US as a nation is on the downhill slide, just like Rome or Greece centuries ago. For a variety of reasons, there may come a time when the US as we know it doesn’t exist. Aside from catastrophic events destroying it like nuclear war (or wonderful things like The Rapture!), there could be a time when the US government finally defaults on its debt, devalues the US$ so poorly, or does some other economically insane move (or moves). Or there may be a time when we find our federal government’s power finally returned to the states and local governments. Or we may find our current US broken up into nation-states, much like that of Yugoslavia or the former USSR. No matter which of these scenarios might happen, the upheaval and societal chaos is nothing like most of us have ever considered, much less thought we’d live through.
Decentralization. The church of Jesus Christ is stronger (in my opinion) by being “decentralized” from the mainline domination of the 1950’s. What if the federal government was seriously reduced and the power returned to the people and state & local governments? Could the governing structures within the US be stronger – and, more importantly, the people be stronger – if the power of federal government was “decentralized?” I believe so. (For reasons of brevity, I won’t explain all my reasons here.)
As, perhaps, a side bar, what if our current societal/political trajectory continues? It is likely that American Christians would then see ourselves not only as marginalized in the public debate but persecuted. In the history of our nation we’ve never ever had to fight to be legitimate; this nation was founded on Christian principles and by (mostly) Christian thinkers. For them, as for Christians now, it would be unthinkable to not be a nation hospitable to Christians. But, what if that happened? Would we, the Church, be ready?
I’m not advocating violent revolution. Instead I’m trying to see what God is up to. God seems to have allowed the Church to be pruned for greater fruitfulness. Maybe God has done that work as a preparatory step to something we’re going to have to face in the future. If the government takes away our rights to free speech (in the name of “political correctness” or “fairness”) or to raise our children as we like (in the name of the “greater good”) or to gather together (in the name of “hate speech”), then the Church would have to become a very different entity. No more mainliners or non-denoms; we would probably look much more like the persecuted house churches of countries like Vietnam or China.
Then again, Jesus said:
Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. (John 15:20 NIV)
He told us that believing in him was not without cost.
and
“Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” (Mt. 8:20 NIV)
If we are a follower of the Christ we, too, may find ourselves without our “home base” and our “normal.”
Jesus told us that:
1“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. (John 15 NIV)
Maybe the decentralization of the church has been because God is pruning his (universal) Church for greater fruitfulness. Unencumbered by the pharasitical issues of our day, God’s pruned-for-great-fruitfulness Church is making disciples and teaching them to love God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and spirits — and to Love our neighbors as ourselves. (Mark 12:30, Mt. 28:19) Jesus needed no central authority to live out his message of love and healing and grace. His marching orders came from directly from God. Do ours?
Are we personally pruned for great fruitfulness? Is our local church body (of whatever structure/denomination it may be) pruned for great fruitfulness? Do we allow God to prune us, even when it’s painful and goes against the “norm”? Are we seeking God first, trusting in God to provide our “holes and nests” as we follow where our Shepherd calls us? Are each of us loving God, ourself, and our neighbor in such a way the world sees a beautiful difference and we are able to eventually make a disciple? Are we so deeply connected to the vine our fruit of the Spirit is evident? (Gal. 5)
Anyway, some food for thought.
God of Amazing Wonders,
Thank you for challenging us to always be seeking your Kingdom, your ways, your righteousness, your Heart as we walk through this life. When we get caught up in the concerns of this world, whether it be church attendance statistics or federal government issues, remind us that YOU are the Maker of the World, the Beginning and the End, and you are the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Remind us you have the whole world in your hands and you are more than able to take care of everything. Help us be willing to allow you to prune our lives for greater fruitfulness. Help us surrender our bodies, our minds, our emotions, our relationships, our finances, our families — all that we are — to your capable care. Help us hear, confess, and repent when you point out our sin. Help us allow you to heal our wounds and our brokenness. Help us trust you to prune not only our individual lives but that of our churches. Help us to remain in you and to be deeply embedded in you, our Vine. Challenge us to become better at love.
Out of your glorious riches, strengthen us with power through your Spirit in our inner being, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. May we, being rooted and established in love, have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.*
(*from Eph. 3)