Golden cart before the horse.
I had an interesting experience recently as a newcomer at a church I have begun attending. I expressed an interest in joining a ‘connect group’ which is one of many names in the contemporary church for a home group. Such a group might focus on Bible study, fellowship (another church word) etc, in a smaller setting outside the main church building (if there is one) – usually someone’s home. As implied by the name of this one, a purpose of such groups is to help people ‘connect’ in ways which might not occur easily in a regular Sunday meeting where things are directed ‘from the front’. Too many quotation marks in that first paragraph.
The topic of connect groups came up a number of times in brief conversations I had with church members either following Sunday meetings, or over coffee which also happens after the meeting, etc. In the first of these conversations I was advised that there is a list of connect groups at the church office and if I contact the office, I would be able to join one. Being new to the church and not knowing the members personally I don’t know how I would choose a group, or whether I would be assigned to one, I do not know. In any case, I have an approach to such things – I prefer to be invited to attend, or requested if it is a matter of helping out with something, rather than to put my hand up or put my name down. Because then I know that I am welcome, or valued, and that another person has some faith in me that I will contribute suitably. Or even if the invitation is for my sake only, because someone has pity on me, then at least I know someone else thinks I am worth the risk. I am welcome.
Four times or so I had conversations with church members or attendees in which connect groups were mentioned, until on the last occasion I described my experience, that no one had invited me, and why I was reluctant to access a group by official channels. After all, if I was welcome to attend one of these groups, why had I not been invited to any when I made no secret of the fact I was looking for one? And certainly I have no desire to go where I am not welcome.
In this last conversation, hearing of my experience, my church brother with whom I was speaking described a group he himself attended. It sounded ideal. There were wide-ranging and informal discussions (and perhaps a drink or two) which I knew I would enjoy. And he invited me to come along.
I was happy at last to be invited somewhere, and to know that I was in fact welcome. After all, no one had invited me to attend the Sunday meetings for that matter, I simply turned up. And the meetings are public. So I had no way of knowing whether I was welcome there either. But now I felt some reassurance.
Things did not go according to plan. Before the date of the connect group meeting I received a message from my church brother. It turned out a couple of other men in the church also had no group to attend, and perhaps I would like to start a new group with those men? (My wife is not so interested in meetings such as these, hence this was a solo initiative on my part, to begin with at least.)
The earlier invitation to my brother’s connect group was withdrawn (implied, but I was left with no doubt – it was not mentioned further, only this other possibility for a different group, as yet unformed). I had no idea who these other men were with whom I might meet, or whether they might wish to meet with me. If, as I suspected, they were also new to the church – I could not see how putting together a group of newcomers on their own would promote our connection to the church, whether or not we might form some connection to each other. Though I could not say if that was likely. This was beginning to feel a bit like a blind dating service where the participants are not only strangers, but are not permitted to know anything about each other prior to the date. And it hardly seemed to me like hospitality, to put the newcomers in their own room by themselves so to speak, and also literally.
After a few days news came that one of the other ‘potentials’ had found a group elsewhere, so I made contact with the remaining prospect who was apparently at a loose end like myself. After all, I thought, this is not about my feelings only. There is another chap here who might have a great need to meet with others, to find encouragement in his faith. Contact was amicable, however, no meeting proceeded. Nor was there any further contact from my church brother who extended the earlier invite.
Prior to all this, my church brother had mentioned that part of his role in the church as he understood it (not by formal appointment) was to get people involved in the church. So I suppose the connect group business was within scope of that. And I began to form some idea of what perhaps had taken place. Because otherwise it just seemed that the whole pattern of social interaction I had been part of was dysfunctional and just plain odd, either for a church setting or certainly outside of that. People don’t invite others who are not well known to themselves to any kind of meeting, especially a social gathering which a ‘connect group’ certainly is on some level (that is its purpose, to make social connections) then withdraw the invite by making a failed attempt to get those people to set up a meeting on their own instead. Unless the purpose was to offend or to dissuade those people from participating at all.
But I have concluded that my church brother was in all likelihood completely blind to all personal, social implications of the communications he was making, or any possible offence or upset. Because there was no purpose in his mind to connect people personally. This was simply about numbers in groups, and numbers of groups – names, phone numbers, email addresses, attendance at certain times. The connections he was trying to engineer were purely administrative, not personal. Because the church my brother was seeking to build is also an administrative structure – not a living community. It has attendees, members, a building, a schedule, a budget, and ways of measuring ‘success’ (chiefly the maintenance and increase of the above elements).
And so I return to the vision of Daniel 2, as discussed in last week’s article. (Yes at last, here is some scripture.)
‘Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.’ (Daniel 2:31-35)
Having dealt with some of he global, prophetic implications of the above vision in last week’s article, I will now make some more direct observations.
The ‘image’ in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was an idol. There is nothing good or truly valuable about it, despite that its ‘brightness was excellent’ and ‘the form thereof was terrible’ i.e. awesome and terrifying. It was, and is (the vision is still being outworked) an object of false worship. A pathetic and disgraceful substitute for God, who alone is worthy to be worshipped.
The ‘image’ was in the form of a man. But, notwithstanding that this image may have contained a large quantity of precious and less precious metals, its true value even as an object would be infinitely less than the value of one human being, whose potential and complexity is beyond imagining, even in this age of biotechnology and every artificial wonder. Yet I suspect few human beings have been worshipped to the extent many idols of wood, stone and metal have been, either historically or in the world today. And that is not to say that men should be worshipped – but why do we prefer an immeasurably inferior model to the real thing? Let alone to God, the Creator of all.
Somehow, this has to do with worshipping the works of our own hands (e.g. Romans 1:22-25). Somehow, a painting of the sea draws multitudes of admirers to a gallery, while the sea itself, a far greater wonder, is passed by as commonplace. Though we may occasionally comment on it.
The golden calf is worshipped – the calf itself, the substance of which can only be mimicked or manipulated by even the most advanced biotechnology today, a wonder beyond our means, is considered of little account.
Somehow, the things into which we have invested our being – our hands, our thoughts, our imagination, our time, our creativity, our lives – and things which reflect our power to design and control – capture our hearts in a way which the astonishing works of God all around us do not. I am making here only a basic attempt to explain this phenomenon, because I do not understand it. But it seems abundantly evident that it is so.
But the idol is an abomination, and shall be broken to pieces and scattered as ‘chaff on the wind’. So shall be the greatest of our works which are not for the honour of God only.
I realise now that my troubling encounter with church systems described above in relation to ‘connect groups’ was a brush with the manmade idol of the church.
There are men, and then there are golden statues of men. It is the latter which are worshipped.
There is a living church, the most wonderful creation of God, beloved by him, and there is a manmade church – an inanimate object constructed of schedules, rosters, real estate and money. I fear it is the latter which so often captures our time, our energy, our money and attention. It is the church idol which receives the tribute of our heart, soul, mind and strength, all of which are for us to love the Lord our God, in the words of Jesus (Mark 12:30).
For some reason we prefer the artificial image of the church created by our own hands to the real, living body which is created, and being created, and indwelled by our Lord. Because the former is ours; the latter is his.
If you thought the first example I gave above of the callousness of the inanimate church was petty and rather self-centred (have I no worse concerns?) then here is one that may seem yet more trivial. But I share these examples not because they are necessarily important, but because they give an accurate picture of what I am trying myself to perceive and uncover, and they are my own experience. Sadly, I suspect far worse things are done by the ‘great church image’, if not in my own church or community (thankfully) then in a global context.
Op shop prices have gone up. Yes, that’s it.
Opportunity shops (‘op shops’) used to be where the poor could afford to buy things they need. Not just ‘the poor’ – also students, bargain hunters like me, and others. And certainly, I expect the shops still made money. Selling donated goods using volunteer labour is a fairly sure-fire business model in many cases, I would think. But they served the poor, among other things.
Op shops are no longer for the poor. They position their prices higher, targeting those who could buy new but would rather not, and who are tickled by a bargain. And they limit their goods to those types of things – goods good enough to tempt those who can afford to pay. At the rear of the shop there are now skip bins full of goods that wouldn’t make enough to be worth shelf space, going to landfill instead. Lines of old exercisers, low value bed frames, things that would take up too much floor space for what they could bring at the checkout. More than once in recent times I have bargained at an op shop for some perfectly good item they were throwing out (yes, you have to pay for those too).
Many of these are church enterprises. My wife returned from the shop operated by my own church reporting that it was too pricy for her to feel happy buying what she wanted. Four dollars for a good ball of wool – new price, essentially. Fifteen dollars for a few balls, not enough to make a jersey.
What has happened here?
Op shops now have one target, to make money. Not a dual purpose, also providing affordable goods. They aim for the sweet spot, maximum profit, and apparently, maximum affordability is not it.
What is the justification for this? To build the ‘church’. Because after all, that is what saves the world? Right? The better for the church, the better for the community – right?
The cart is now well and truly ahead of the horse. The church is so busy building itself to serve the community, it has left off serving the community to build itself.
At this time, with a new pope elected in recent days, if you have been observing the sheer size, wealth and established structure of parts of the world church, you will be aware just how massive the church image now is in places. And the image will be ‘broken to pieces’ at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Does that mean we should shun this great church image, the shape and form of which mirrors the living church but is in fact an inanimate object, an oppressive and artificial idol?
Remember, even while Nebuchadnezzar thought on the great image of his dream, and received the interpretation from Daniel, in which Nebuchadnezzar himself was the image’s head – at the same time God moved through Nebuchadnezzar and his kingdom to bring about things appointed in the earth, the destruction of other kingdoms, ultimately destroying the Babylonian kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar also, but not before revealing himself in powerful ways to Nebuchadnezzar who also learned to praise and worship the God of heaven, and to proclaim him throughout his realm (Daniel 4).
God neither condoned the image nor was threatened by it. And according to the vision and interpretation, the image of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream still stands. God works without the image and through the image so long as he chooses, and in the end abolishes the image and establishes the everlasting and true kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So it is with the church image, the great, artificial likeness of the true church, which neither lives nor breaths but persists as a great idol in the earth, the object of untold works, labour and sacrifice. God works through the true and living church without the idol and through the idol so long as he wishes, after which it shall be abolished forever. And within the idol, and without the idol, the true church, the bride of Christ, lives now and forever in his love.
Amen and amen.
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