Balancing the Church
During the years we ministered in Germany, God graciously let us be part of a young church plant downtown. It was urban and young; seeking to change the way church is viewed and experienced by a culture who was over church and Christianity. In the small storefront space that served as an office and mid-week meeting space they had hung a poster with a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer that expressed their guiding ethos: “The church is the church only when it exists for others.”
Bonhoeffer was calling the church back to a focus on mission; back to its raison d’etre (my favorite French way to say “reason for existence”. I know. It’s pretentious.) The church tends toward isolation and introversion. From my experience, I can say there is nothing more stale, dull, and putrid than a church turned in upon itself, like a still, green pond. For that reason, I can appreciate Bonhoeffer’s corrective statement.
However, having grown past my idealistic 20’s and early 30’s, and having participated in more than one lopsided missional community, both the culturally hip version and a hyper-conservative version, I can also say that there is nothing more draining and spiritually anaemic than a church that only exists for mission. To be fair to Herr Bonhoeffer, one can not express everything important in one sentence. His book “Gemeinsames Leben” (Life Together) will give a fuller view of what he thought about the important purposes (plural) of Christian community. So, where do we find a balanced, healthy view of the purpose of the local church?
I am going to side with Dutch missiologist J. H. Bavinck who concluded after decades of fruitful missionary service that the church has a higher raison d’etre than to be focused merely outward. The church is Christ’s church and thus must fulfill, in correct balance, the activities for which Christ has redeemed her, gathered her, and left her here in this fallen world. He defines those activities as three:
The passionate worship of God (Worship upward)
The passing on of our faith to another generation (Theological education inward)
The expanding of the Kingdom of Christ through evangelism (Mission outward)
The health of a church depends on a correct balance. Like our physical bodies that require a balance of exercise (outward), good nutrition (inward), and Sabbath rest (upward), the church needs the right balance, too. But balance isn’t a state that we ever arrive at and sit in comfortably. Rather it is a constant pursuit for balance like the micro-adjustments that happen as you ride a bicycle…we lean slightly to the left and then slightly to the right all while moving forward. It may be better to drop the word “balance” altogether as a noun and only use the verb “balancing”. This will allow us to have grace with ourselves and with one another when we find ourselves slightly out of balance in the church. Its normal. Our constant job is to be balancing.
In the next three posts I will give a biblical defense for why these three activities are prescribed for the church. I also want to think deeply about how we can know if we are out of balance so that we can make adjustments in our pursuit of faithfulness to the high calling of Christ upon our congregation in Dearborn (and everywhere else).