What should the Church do next?
By Revd Matthew Firth
What should the Church do next? It’s a question that many people will have differing answers to.
 Some will say, ‘We need to focus on mission; we need to get out there and serve a hurting world; we need to do church in new ways to reach out to those who would never think of stepping inside the door.’ Well, I agree!
On the other hand, though, others will say, ‘We need to focus on God. We need to revitalise our worship and our prayer. We need to find ways of worshipping that will really connect us with God and refresh us.’ Well, I agree with them, too!
And still others will say, ‘We need to focus on community. We need to serve each other within the body. We need to rediscover what it means to be a true Christian community.’ Well, I agree with them as well!
Seriously, these are three things that need to be kept in balance in our lives as individuals and as a body: Up to God; in to the Christian community; and out to the world. Or, worship, community and mission. Different people will tend to put more emphasis on one of these than the others, and that’s fine. Some will be worshippers, preachers and evangelists. Others will serve by building up the community. And others will reach out into hidden corners of the world. We need all of them.
It’s interesting to note that these preferences are actually mirrored in the various movements of the Holy Spirit within the Church. We have the spirit of renewal that encourages worship and preaching. We have the spirit of justice and action that encourages mission to the poor and oppressed. And we have the spirit of unity and community that seeks to build up the common life of the Church.
Over the years, the Church has rediscovered all of these different strands. We’ve seen charismatic renewal. We’ve seen movements for justice. And we’ve seen church growth.
But still, there seems to be something missing. There’s this nagging feeling building up in various streams of Church literature and thought and discourse that something’s not quite right. We’ve put the jigsaw together, but the central piece seems to be tantalisingly absent. We hear talk of charismatic renewal, radical social action, and strategies for building the Church, but our impact seems to be muted to say the least.
 Think about the times we live in. Society is unravelling as it descends into an amoral, secular, individualistic and materialistic worldview. From that position, its philosophical, spiritual and moral defences against harmful ideological cross-winds have been fatally weakened. Or, to put it another way, society is broken and confused, and will only be healed by a collective spiritual revival that goes much deeper than anything that happens on May 6th.
And, it could be argued, the Church hasn’t fared much better either. Have we stood firm? How are we doing on ethics? How are we doing on basic gospel truth? Have we sold out to an individualistic and materialistic culture? Why are we in decline? Why are we, as a national Church, in financial meltdown?
In the face of all this, we come back to that crucial question: what should the Church do next? In the face of the decay of society and the decline of the Church in the West, it seems rather simplistic to say that the solution is fresh expressions of church, or more engaging worship times, or strategies for church growth, or more focussed and joined-up social action. As I’ve said, I agree with all those things, but there’s something more. There is something much deeper. And that something more, that deeper thing is...Jesus.
We need to rediscover Jesus. Not the Jesus that we carry around in our heads, but the real, historical, crucified and risen Jesus of the Bible, who often surprises us and shocks us. The charismatic renewal taught us to rediscover the Father-heart of God. Thank God for the charismatics! Various justice movements taught us to serve the poor and oppressed. Thank God for the social activists!
But I believe that, as well as those things, we all need to become aware of a renewed emphasis on Jesus himself. We need to be Jesus’ people. We need to know him. And, the biggest and most shocking challenge: we need to become like him. This is the missing piece of the jigsaw. This is how we can really impact our communities and nation as a whole, if we truly live as Jesus’ people, becoming more and more like him, together.
In July of 2007, the great evangelical Anglican statesman John Stott delivered his final public address at the Keswick Convention. At the conclusion of his sermon, Stott asked everyone to bow their heads for a few moments of silent prayer. Everyone did so, and when they lifted up their heads again and opened their eyes, the stage was empty. No rousing send-off. No applause. No presentations of flowers. Nothing. Nothing, that is, to distract attention from the Christ whom John Stott has proclaimed so effectively, and with such modesty and humility, for so long. By his absence from centre stage, Stott was placing Jesus at centre stage. And that’s exactly what we need to do as individuals and as a Church.
Here are some words from that final sermon that John Stott preached: ‘I want to share with you where my mind has come to rest as I approach the end of my pilgrimage on earth. And it is this: God wants his people to become like Christ. Christlikeness is the will of God for the people of God.’
It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But it’s actually profoundly challenging and lies at the very heart of what we are called to be.
Consider these verses from the New Testament. Romans 8.29: ‘For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.’ 2 Corinthians 3.18: ‘And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect? the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.’ 1 John 3.2: ‘Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.’
So, here we have the three tenses of our conformity to Christ: we are predestined to be like him, we are being made like him, and we will be like him. It’s all about Jesus. It’s all about being like Jesus.
And that’s the challenge. The New York Pastor Tim Keller writes, ‘Jesu[s]…consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day.
However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.’ [1]
Now, Tim Keller sometimes overstates his case in order to shock, but sometimes we need it. He forces us to change the way we think. He makes us stop asking, ‘What should the Church do next?’, and makes us ask the question, ‘How can I be more like Jesus?’ He makes us take our un-Christlikeness seriously.
The Times newspaper once sent out an inquiry to famous authors asking this searching question: ‘What is wrong with the world today?’ This was one of the responses: ‘Dear Sir, I am. Yours, G.K. Chesterton.’ What is wrong with the Church today? Dear Father, I am. We need to become like Christ. God’s will for you and me is to become like Jesus.
But, I hear you asking, is it attainable? Is it possible? Can it really happen? It’s a big ask! Well, in our own strength it’s clearly not attainable, but God has given us his Holy Spirit to dwell within us, to change us from the inside out.
Let me illustrate with some words of Archbishop William Temple: ‘It’s no good giving me a play like Hamlet or King Lear and telling me to write a play like that. Shakespeare could do it – I can’t. And it’s no good showing me a life like the life of Jesus and telling me to live a life like that. Jesus could do it – I can’t. But if the genius of Shakespeare could come and live in me, then I could write plays like his. And if the Spirit of Jesus could come into me, then I could live a life like his.’
That’s the foundation - the filling of the Holy Spirit to make us more Christlike day by day. And that, really, is the theme of our whole life as Christian people; depending on God the Father who, by the power of God the Spirit, will form us into the likeness of God the Son. And that’s why we need to sit at Jesus’ feet as he preaches the Beatitudes to us, because the Beatitudes are all about becoming like Christ. They are all about being Jesus’ people. They are all about taking on the character of the Kingdom. If the Beatitudes make a heart-level impact on us, then real and solid transformation in Church, society and nation will be the result. If we become even a little bit more like Jesus, how can people not taste and see that the Lord is good?
The above is an extract from a sermon given by Revd. Matthew Firth on 11 April 2010. Matthew is Curate at St Matthews with All Saints and Triangle church in Ipswich.
The views carried here are those of the author, not of Network Ipswich, and are intended to stimulate constructive debate between website users. We welcome your thoughts and comments, posted below, upon the ideas expressed here. You can also contact the author direct at mpf1983@hotmail.com
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