I just read an article from England that says the country may lose one in five churches in the next generation. The sad reality is that the main concern is the loss of the buildings, which represent the country's cultural heritage. The people most concerned seem to be government officials who are prepared to work via tax laws and funding for maintenance of the buildings. When the church simply becomes a building, is it still a church?
The church in many places in the west has given up on its own story. When its leaders ceased to believe the story, when they ceased to believe God had created all that is, ceased to believe He had spoken and had clearly expressed His will for life, ceased to believe Jesus was God incarnate, ceased to believe God in the form of Jesus had died on a cross for the forgiveness of sins, and ceased to believe He had been resurrected from the dead, ensuring our own resurrection to eternal life, its demise was predictable. I would argue that the demise of the civilization created by those beliefs, that story, was equally predictable.
I believe also in the power of the truth of the story so I don't believe all is lost. We may be living in a time when a 1700 year old institution breathes its last breath. "Christian" countries and societies that came into being with Constantine may now be coming to an end. What organizing principle(s) replace those is up for grabs. Maybe it is time for church buildings in England to go away so that Christianity can recover its own identity as "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." (1 Peter 2.9)
No comments:
Post a Comment