Church Voices

Recently, I’ve been reading a post-apocalyptic comic book. It was pretty standard fare, civilization has fallen, and what’s left of humanity is scavenging the corpse of the fallen civilization to survive. During the course of this looting the group of protagonists come across a store house of wealth. There’s gold, cash and other valuables. One member of the looting party sees the lucre and says, “how much is all this worth”, the response by the de facto leader of the party is “nothing”.

Michael Spencer has a post up called One Stock That Needs to Drop. The stock in question is evangelicalism and Spencer makes several points as to why it needs to drop. I would guess that Spencer uses this metaphor because the current financial crisis is on everyone’s mind and the attending stock market drop that goes with it is the focus of many, many news stories. But as Spencer is clearly aware, the stock metaphor is especially apt because the value of stocks are based on the perception of how valuable they are.

A rumor made the rounds that Steve Jobs’ health is in decline, Apple’s stock goes down. There was no change in sales numbers, no change in assets, no change in anything but a whisper about the health of the lead man at Apple, and the panic sales were on.

While I doubt there will be a single watershed event like a post-apocalyptic event, or rumors of a health scare that will cause a single day drop, I do believe that the value of the stock of evangelicalism will leech away over time.

And that’s ok.

In fact it might be preferable. Because much like the character who, in the middle of a post-apocalyptic meltdown where food is scarce and safety is fleeting is busy gathering defunct currency, much of the current valuation of evangelicalism is based on a whole list of job descriptions that just no longer apply, and the more evangelicals try to chase those things the more time, and resources are wasted.

Politics, health, wealth, better living, wisdom, Amway, the power to force moral choices on society as a whole and marketing dollars have all been a big part of the valuation of evangelicalism, and all of it is an illusion. And if that illusion were to go away this instant, many people would go with it. And that would be a good thing. Because the church shouldn’t value any of those things, and the Christ didn’t resurrect to bring us those things. And eventually churches and lives built on those things won’t be able to sustain themselves.

Salvation, love, community, lives of service, humility, disciples, and redemption however, are all a part of the real value of the church. And none of those things have ever moved a stock price upward.

Some day, probably a day not too far away if it hasn’t come already, Christianity in the United States will be a shadow of itself in terms of measurements that matter to people who matter. And it doesn’t bother me at all. Because its time for the church to stop its two-fisted gathering of defunct currencies while the world around them is dead or dying.