Successful Church

Earlier today I received an email asking me to think of a big vision for our church conference. I thought this would be a simple task. I mean, you just DREAM BIG, right? After I jotted down a few things (after a time of prayer, of course), I asked Val what she thought. We began talking about what constitutes a successful church. Some interesting thoughts were shared, and I thought I'd share it with you:

Can a church be successful? I read through Scripture and fail to find anywhere the idea of church being a success. Well, Revelation speaks of two churches that were successes, but we would not recognize them as "successful churches" if we were to measure them in today's standards.

I realized that the difficulty of finding a vision for our conference is not the "dreaming big" part. I didn't know how to dream big because I wasn't sure what a successful church was suppose to look like in the 21st century. I mean, if there's an image of what church should look like, I can dream big and say, "We want to look like the successful church described in the Bible!" But, there's no image of a successful church in the Bible.

When people ask me, "What is the great plan for our church?", I answer, "we'll be A, B, and C." There's always a person who says, "but that's not church. A church should be X, Y, and Z." Why didn't Jesus spend time teaching about the church? Combining all four Gospels, He only mentions "church" twice! No wonder there are denominations. Everyone disagrees on what a successful church looks like.

I think this happens because church is not an institution (at least its not supposed to be). It is a group of believers. It's a gathering. How can you fail at being a group? You can't. As long as two or more are gathered, you're a success. If you and your friend go camping, and you sit down in the middle of a forest and talk about what God is doing in your life, you're a successful church.

The problem (not sure if it really is a problem) is, we've made church into an institution. This means, we measure success and failure based on "institution standards." The bigger the more successful. The more income the better. The stronger the leader, the awesomer. When church is an institution, we've brought something (that wasn't meant to be measured) into a system that is all about comparison and analysis.

We can't deny it. Church is an institution now. And I'm a part of it. I can't change it either. Why? Because my employment is grounded in this system. Because there are laws in the country about religious groups (when Westlight was planted, we had to deal with the government a lot). Institutions are comfortable and are protected by the government. In the Western Culture, we've come to a point where Church has to be an institution.

Jesus was God clothed in flesh. Church is God's children clothed in institution.

So, when I am asked to come up with a vision for the church, my mind automatically goes to institutional ideas like, "bigger church, more people, stronger leaders!" and there's nothing wrong with this. But what I was asked to do is to come up with a vision for the church, not the institutionalized church.

hmmmm....