Drew Marshall is a radio host on Christian radio in Toronto. He is one of these guys who likes to stir things up. So what has done, but hired a couple non-Christian people to visit five local Toronto churches and blog about their observations. It is fascinating to read their comments.
Do you know what outsiders think of your church? Probably not. Probably don't want to either.
Daryl Dash, a Toronto pastor, blogs about this project.
I really didn't like the idea at first. To me it seemed like hiring two vegans to go out and rate five steakhouses.
Maybe I was wrong. So far they've visited four churches. I don't agree with everything they've written, of course, but they've made some very perceptive observations.
Here's an excerpt from one report. Listen for the criteria for judging the authenticity of the church.
I was most impressed when he said, by way of introduction, “We believe it’s important to do things the way that Jesus actually did. Jesus gave the Good News to the poor first; that’s where we start.”
Sanctuary is a church - but also an outreach centre to women, the homeless, alcohol and drug addicts; a vibrant community; an employment centre; a small medical office; an art/music/drama programme; a support group, and much much more. In the words of Greg, “We consider everything that we do out of this building to be ‘church’. And the people that come here, they may not describe it as being in a church setting, but that’s how we see it.”
I can’t tell you how absolutely refreshing it was to hear those words. I knew I was in for a rare vision - real Christians in action. I wasn’t wrong!
And then a few paragraphs later.
Walking into the sanctuary, you see a big room with chairs in a circle, with a keyboard and guitar set-up at the base of the circle. In the centre of the circle of chairs was an altar made of wood - looked liked it was hand-carved - with “In Remembrance of Me” carved into one side. On top of this was a loaf of bread and a cup of wine - with several little mini-serving cups! As someone who has endured the horror of sharing a cup of sacred wine during cold season, I couldn’t get over the simple brilliance of this!
Opposite the keyboard (at the “12 o’clock”, if you will) was a simply-made wooden cross draped with a red cross. There was a tremendous amount of power in the simplicity of the symbolism.
Did you ever see “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”? There’s that scene near the end where Indy is faced with choosing, out of many different cups, the one that is the Holy Grail. He’s looking carefully, and amidst all the gold and silver and gleam, he picks out a simple cup that really would have befitted a pauper. And of course, that’s the cup of Christ. The metaphor is obvious, right? Jesus was a guy who valued simplicity, because keeping things simple means you can focus on what you’re doing - in his case, “being there” for the outcasts of the world.
This place is like the cup that Indy chose. Amidst all the pomp and circumstance of the Christian world out there, here lies a simple, honest place that really means it.
Here's a link to the entries posted so far. It is worth reading through them to see how people outside the church view the church, and what they expect from us.
A couple comments.
1. Culture, whether material or social, is a carrier of the Gospel. When the Gospel and the culture of the church don't integrate well, outsiders see that as inauthentic and hypocritical. The confusion about culture comes from two misguided notions. One is that style is universal and trans-temporal. In other words, there is one style for all time and every culture, and it happens to be the one that my church has.
Two is that trying to be contemporary is often confusing and distracting to outsiders. Remember McLuhan's dictum, "The medium is the message." In other words, what people see and experience is communicating to them the meaning of the Gospel. When there is a lack of integration between church style and Gospel, it probably originates in an inadequate or shallow understanding of what the Gospel and the church is to be.
2. The problem with the church trying to be relevant to a contemporary audience is that it is always copying someone else. As a result, it is always late to the party, singing a song that was sung an hour ago. If you are familiar with Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point, you'll remember his discussion about how ideas get adopted into a culture. There are four stages of adoption: Innovators, Early Adopters, Late Adopters and Laggards. Unfortunately, in many, many areas, the church looks like a late adopter or worse a laggard. This is because we are looking at culture too superficially or as if it is really neutral when employed for Gospel reasons. It doesn't matter what you intentions are if the results are destructive or counter to the message you want to communicate.
I don't think there should be one style of worship or approach to being the church. The human race is quite diverse and the church should reflect that diversity. I have no problem with large churches, small ones, urban, rural, suburban, formal, casual, etc. I don't think that homogeneous diversity is the answer either. These stylistic distinctives need to be integrated with what we believe and how we live. This is where the authenticity of the church is found.
So, if an outsider came to your church, what would they say?
Thanks to the Master of the Generous Web, Bill Kinnon, for pointing to Daryl Dash's posting on Drew Marshall's project. I look forward to reading what Marshall has to say when it is completed. I'll update when that happens.
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