Church Voices

I believe that in many ways when Christians operate ministries intended to operate beyond their local community it creates more problems than we realize, and may be a distraction from the way the church is intended to operate. Consider the following:

Communities Vary Dramatically
There’s an article every student in Anthropology 101 used to have to read entitled “Shakespeare in the Bush“. This anecdote is written by an anthropologist who tells the story of Hamlet to a remote African village. The villagers are confused by basic details in the story, such as why Hamlet would be angry that Hamlet’s uncle married his mother after the death of his father, after all, in their culture an honorable man marries his brother’s widow. The re-interpretation of the story continues until the story is nearly unrecognizable, it starts with Hamlet as the villain and ends with him being pardoned due to mental disease or defect. I moved about six hours north to start ministering at Owosso Church of Christ, and despite the fact that I moved across only one state line, was still in Big-10 country, and stayed within the same non-denominational denomination the mindset, and culture of Owosso is very different from where I was living. While I was hardly in Shakespeare in the Bush style culture shock, Owosso even when compared with the town I grew up (which was of a similar size, and relative location to larger cities) its a world of difference.

In other words, the needs individual communities have and the ways that they relate and communicate will vary drastically, even in places that are demographically similar. Not to put too fine a point on it, but exactly how and what each church does to live and teach the gospel will vary so significantly that anyone offering advise or condemnation from outside of a community is unlikely to have any idea what they’re talking about.

Individual Churches Vary Dramatically
I won’t spend much time on this because its very similar to the first point (but looking inward, rather than outward). The make up of a church in terms of talent and resources (not to mention how a church’s internal infrastructure allows for the deployment of those talent and resource) are so different that, again, advice or condemnation coming from anyone who hasn’t spent a significant amount of time in that specific church is probably clueless.

Individual Leaders Vary Dramatically
Are you seeing a pattern yet? Anyway, as Mark Driscoll has gained some national visibility his fanboys have tried to imitate his preaching style. The problem is that Mark Driscoll is a one in a billion talent. I’ve yet to hear anyone else who can pull off an hour and a half sermon the way that he can. Instead all of his fanboys that try to emulate him fall flat, and end up worse preachers than they were before, in fact, often it comes off, not just as terrible preaching, but as insincere, and insincerity is far worse than incompetence.

Love can’t be communicated nationally
Biblically defined, love is what you do for others. Especially when it comes to pointing out shortcomings, or leveling criticisms those words aren’t coming from love if you haven’t actually done anything for that person. This is true whether Christians are attacking each other, or are busy condemning political opponents. We are charged to speak the truth with love, not excoriate with prejudice.

Homogenization isn’t healthy
A friend of mine hosted a German foreign exchange student, when they broke out a map of the US and measured from the north west corner of Washington to the south east corner of Florida he was literally speechless. He was used to being able to drive through three or four countries in a single day, the idea that it would take several days of straight driving to get across a single country absolutely boggled his mind. We live in a huge country with huge variations in culture, and population, and the end result of national conferences, books, systems for doing church, etc. is to create a homogeneous culture of church in a country that is heterogeneous.

National sin becomes local sin
Whether its a fall to grace like Ted Haggard, ridiculous money grubbing TV preachers, or some big-mouthed fool like Pat Robertson the dirt sticks to all of us. What’s worse, because these things don’t happen on the local level there’s no way to repair the damage through the personal relationships the church has built.

Look, I’m not making the case that books, conferences, or other national level ministries shouldn’t exist, or are sinful. Rather, my point is that the local church is the place where the gospel’s heavy lifting is done. Its where the gospel is spoken and lived, and where love exists between the saints and for the community where our God-given charge of servanthood is carried out. In other words, the little things are the big thing, and when our most talented, motivated and energetic saints focus the main part of their time and energy on websites, books, radio shows, and other national level ministries we miss the forest for the trees.