"On The Verge"

What If I told you that the church as we know it in America was slowly (but surely) dying. What if I told you that the church as we know it in Europe was virtually dead in the water already and that the same disease was spreading to the United States?
              What if I then told you that the church in India and China were at the same time growing exponentially- for example the Chinese church is estimated to have grown from 2 million to 120 million in the past 60 years. The craziest part is that those numbers aren’t new, the church has seen this kind of explosive growth. Namely during the years following Jesus’ resurrection as his apostles spread the gospel throughout the Roman empire and beyond. So what happened to the church? Why are we seeing decline in the states- while the church is flourishing in nations that oppress Christianity and force Jesus followers to meet underground.         
            Well, to begin to understand think about this- we know that church is not a building or a place we go to but it is who we are as followers of Jesus… yet despite our knowledge of this we don’t live like we really believe it. Even the language we use such as “going to church” or “getting married at the church” or “the Presbyterian church on the corner” etc etc shows what we really believe. So we believe that "we are the church" aesthetically on a surfacy cosmetic level, but we have not let it permeate to the core of who we are as God’s people. Unfortunately however, what we have allowed to permeate who we are is an institutional understanding of our identity. So let’s break this down a bit to make sense of it.
             Jesus tore the curtain in the temple and told us that our bodies are the new temple of his spirit. He gave to all who would believe in him gifts as different parts of the body of Christ- so that we together could live our lives on a mission- the mission to spread the gospel (good news) of Jesus. Thus he gave to us a priesthood of all believers, where we no longer needed professional clergy to sacrifice and do ministry for us...Why? because Jesus played the intermediary priestly role once and for all. Jesus sends his apostles (sent ones) to spread his gospel. So what you have at the start is a missional ( the mission to proclaim/show the whole world that “Jesus is Lord”), apostolic (sent ones), people movement (grassroots person to person). This is what the church looked like at the start when it initially exploded, and also what it currently looks like in China and India. So then what happened in Europe/the U.S.?
         To make a long story short,it goes all the way back to when the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and from that day forward Christianity received a privileged position in society- the grassroots people movement was turned into a political power structure and given big fancy buildings and lots of money and influence. Eventually the church in Europe refused to admit that the church is not meant to function as an institution and died an institutions death for it. Now we are facing the same situation here in America, if we cling to the old ways that we have added on to God’s original intent for the church we will also die an institutions death. OR, we can find new life as the grassroots missional apostolic people movement we were meant to be.
         But how? What will this look like for the church in America? Well believe it or not there are already some Jesus movements in the US that have begun to take root- these movements are growing exponentially and reaching the more than 50% of people who would have never stepped foot in an institutional “church building”. This is incredible stuff! So what does it look like to make the shift from being an inwardly focusing institutional structure to reclaiming our God given identity as a Jesus movement sent out to all the world? This is the part where I point you in the direction of my most recent read – a book called “On the Verge” by Alan Hirsch and Dave Ferguson. This honestly is one of the best books on the topic of the future of the church that I have read to date- it goes beyond theory and actually lays out practical examples of people that are doing it (and admittedly it is where I got the majority of the material for this post). Because the truth is, God is moving and we are in fact "on the verge" of a major movement of the church! Check it out and tell me what you think, also if you have any questions or thoughts about this post or the book if you've gotten to read it let me know!