A Broken Church

The Church is broken.

(Which isn't a bad thing. It's just not broken in the right way.)

I am amazed at how hard the institution of the Church fights to remain whole and viable. "Unity" is the rallying cry as thousands of years of divisions within the church are officially healed, by legal sounding documents. Synod leadership rushes around to put out the smoldering fires in disgruntled congregations. Congregations face the shame and embarrassment of shrinking membership and the worry of unmet budgets. They begin to make decisions based not on who can be served but who can serve them in their attempt to stay open.

To be sure, there are many good things happening in the church and we can spend out time showing and telling what marvelous things God is doing through us. But you can also focus on the various pieces of a broken tea cup without mentioning that it is broken. You can talk about how well designed and useful the handle is and how it is secured to the cup. You can describe the way the base sits flat and true and how we designed that base together. You can keep your attention on the smooth porcelain finish and make a case that none of us could afford a tea cup this good by ourselves. But if you never step back and look at the condition of the whole tea cup you might never understand that it is broken.

I ran across this video clip by CNN about a Christian congregation in Texas that put up a billboard proclaiming that they (Christians) were a bunch of jerks. What I find interesting is the commentary by guest Gabe Lyons about the way the Christian church is perceived in our culture and how people are working to change it.

I'm sorry I can't embed the video in the blog. Restrictions of a free service I suppose.
or you can watch the video in the right column for a time.

Truth be told, the Church is supposed to be broken. In communion we actually celebrate that the body of Christ is "broken for you." In the Gospel of John, when the resurrected Jesus appeared to the disciples in a locked room and showed them his wounds; his broken body. They could even put their finger inside the mark of the nails. If the Church is the Body of Christ as Paul suggests in this letters (and as the entirety of scripture points to) then the Church is supposed to be broken.

The problem is that the Church is not broken "for you." It's broken exactly because it is no longer "for you." The church has become a place that is "for me." Divisions happen when people feel that the church no longer agrees with their opinions. When I can't be comfortable in my own pew (every pun intended) I find something to fault and build a theological case around it. The God that created everything is never given the chance to do anything new but is restricted to literal interpretations of past actions.

For the Church to be whole and at peace (shalom) again it needs to be broken. The Church needs to die so that it can be raised as a new creation. We need to sacrifice those Church things that give us the most comfort: Sunday mornings, low-commitment serving opportunities, drop-in visits with the pastor, soft seats and spacious fellowship areas, favorite musical genres and "the way we've always done it."

When the Church quits trying to be a church and becomes the Body of Christ it will be broken. But that is the way it is supposed to be.