Coming to know Jesus as Lord and Saviour, the Forgiver of sin and the Ultimate Freedom, was indeed the most liberating thing I ever did. Set free from the confusion and pain of a multiple-broken home and coercive sexual abuse, I also found purpose, truth, and self-esteem. My new found understanding of who I was, why I was on earth and where I was going was enough to make me dance in the streets. I did literally walk and dance my way to work listening to joyfully inspiring Christian music on my then Walkman.
At first, church was the same way, liberating, exciting, full of spontaneity and healing moves of God’s Spirit. But as we moved away from our home town after marriage and set up life in the first of many new places, we began to see another side to it. It wasn’t so much what was preached from the front that was the problem, but what was said during the rest of church life. These messages were always connected in some way to the Bible and to Jesus. It was these more subtle messages that became the culture of the church and my own thinking. However, years later, I realised they reflected the culture of thinking adopted by the church, not the freedom of knowing Jesus Christ. There is a big difference! Here are a few:
1. ‘Don’t promote yourself’. Often preached based on the words in Psalm 75:6-7 that states promotion comes from God. In this message, God is portrayed as some kind of head-hunter who will seek out the gifted who are humbly hiding themselves and their gift away. Not so. God encourages us from Romans 12 to use our gifts, not hide them under a basket of false humility. What will happen if you drum into the mind of an actor, singer, or speaker the idea that they should not ‘promote’ themselves? Well, it can cause great confusion. After all, the very essence of singing, acting or speaking is about being at the front, standing before people, using a microphone, often in the ‘limelight’ and with all eyes on you. Being able to rise to that is an essential part of the job. The ‘don’t promote yourself’ message can make a person with this kind of gift feel very self conscious about what they are doing, shake their confidence, and cause doubt, fear and anxiety that they may be wrongly ‘promoting’ themselves, and therefore somehow risk the ‘wrath’ of a God who might bring them down a peg or two for shining just a little too bright. Bad message.
2. ‘Sit under the Word for a while’. This phrase was used at a large church in the north of England. We had moved there after working for some years in both China and Thailand. What we really needed was to feel engaged and have a sense of purpose and involvement, not be relegated to being bottoms on chairs on Sundays. We were used to far more than that! How many long-term, faithful, gifted, useful and experienced believers who could have significant contributions have been side-lined and put on ‘probation’ by a pastor or other minister simply because they moved house and are new to that area or church? It does seem like a convenient way to increase numbers, and ensure everyone is towing the theological line rather than taking the time to get to know them, find out their gifts, and trust these adults to have the intelligence and capability to do something good. The message here: You are not fit or ready to do anything until you have listened to my preaching for an indeterminate amount of time while you mature.’ Bad message. And pretty arrogant. Interestingly, in global missions, we found that God works the other way round. He gives people gifts and purpose, they get to work, and they mature and garner great experience in the process. The church does need to start allowing people to be adults. Leaders also need to learn to recognise when they may have experienced people in their church who have something to give and let them get on with it. How about actively encouraging and supporting them to fulfil their purpose too? And maybe there might even be something from which the leaders themselves might learn?
3. ‘If you don’t have a regular church, you must be unreliable, ‘flaky’ or a ‘spiritual gypsy.’ By the way, what is a spiritual gypsy exactly? If you mean someone who wanders from place to place, sharing life with people, visiting different church gatherings, and sharing the love of Jesus as the opportunities arise, then you’ve just described Jesus Himself! Or perhaps you were thinking of His disciples? They did a lot of that too. When will the church stop equating Christianity with going to church on Sundays? Even faithful attendance at the same church for a few years doesn’t signify a ‘good’ Christian! Since when did Christianity become based on our performance when it comes to church meetings? Jesus love for and obedience to the Father wasn’t based on regular attendance at the temple. He fellowshipped with his Father, then He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed by the devil. Jesus tells us to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, to love our neighbour whoever and wherever they are, and to love the Lord God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. Some people who go from church to church may be trying to find a place they can fit, and that is not always easy. Some people have lived outside ‘normal’ church life, working overseas, or working as missionaries, and ‘normal’ church life just doesn’t feel normal any more, no matter how hard they try. Are these people to be condemned with the denegrating words ‘spiritual gypsy’ because they have chosen to go beyond the comfortable bounds of Sunday Christianity? Some people have experienced damage at the hands of controlling or abusive church leaders and will not find it easy to trust. Becoming part of one single church ‘family’ again can be very hard for them as they look for patterns of control and abuse in their visits to new church gatherings. When a visitor comes to your church gathering, or someone remains for a time and moves on, you don’t know where they have been or what they have experienced. People are to be treated with kindness and gentleness, not branded. Also, if ‘spiritual gypsy’ is a term you have ever used or thought in the culture of your church, please refrain from its use or anything like it. It is very insulting to actual Gypsies who have chosen a travelling lifestyle. Just because it is different to your lifestyle of staying put in one place doesn’t make their choice wrong.
Those are just three of the messages that can come across in the life of a church, through preaching, or just through a culture it has adopted. There are others. Perhaps you can think of your own examples. These hidden messages do not reflect the true Jesus. Many of them can damage lives and thinking. And Jesus never does that.