What's our job?

I love the church. Other than family, it is my singular passion. I believe the church is the only hope for America (and the world) today. That's why I do what I do. But the church, at least in North America, has some Goliath-sized problems. So much so, I would say, that we are at a crossroads: if the church in North America fails to readjust herself back to her mission, she will be even more impotent than she is today, and will utterly fail at the commission she has been given. It is one of those areas that needs transformation that I wish to delve into today.

So many followers of Christ in so many churches are content to focus on peripheral issues, and thus to leave the supremely important issues on the back burner. For example, morality is a concern to many people today, both to followers of Christ and to those who have yet to follow Him. But is the church's job to simply herald what is moral and what is not, or do we have a greater task?

Somewhere along the line, some of us confused Christianity and morality. They are certainly not synonymous. I have met non-Christians that I would much rather trust with my money that some Christians!

You see, we in the church are so caught up in the visible that we forget that what happens when a person comes to faith in Christ is internal in nature. The external change follows the internal change (accomplished by the Holy Spirit); it does not precede it. And because we in the church forget that, we focus our efforts on making people moral (as though we could do that anyway).

We cannot make people moral by passing laws or protesting or arguing or writing editorials or blogging or whatever. And we need to remember that that is not our job anyway! As my old buddy Marshall Johnston says, "The church's one task is to proclaim 'Jesus is Lord!'"

There will be many committed believers who love Jesus with a whole heart who will vehemently disagree with this assessment. Their number includes many leaders in the evangelical world today. I do not for a minute question their commitment to Jesus, to the gospel, to the church, or to her mission. I wish not to vilify them or to judge them. In fact, that very thing - the anger, mean-spiritedness, judgementalism, and lack of civility - is much of what is wrong with the church today, particularly my denomination. (That's a post for another day.)

I am simply saying that, while the church needs to stand strong on issues of morality and ethics, without fail and without exception, we can never let our mission be anything but paramount and foremost - even to the point that it far overshadows all else. And we would do well to remember that in many godless countries, the gospel is flourishing. The gospel does not need morality to make it flourish. It only needs people committed to Jesus who are anointed with the Holy Spirit. That will transform the church, and that will be the beginning of revival.