The Third Thing Matters Most
One is doctrine: what does the church believe, and do
I agree with it? On Scripture, soteriology, sacraments—what do they teach, and
is that correct?
Doctrine does matter. Ideas have consequences. Christianity
is a propositional religion, a religion of belief, centering on truths of first
importance about the work of Jesus and then seeking to have our thoughts
conformed to His thoughts in every way.
The other is practice: what does the church do, and do
I resonate with that? Practice includes things internal to the life of the church—how
liturgical is it? What style is the music? What programs does it offer? It also
includes more general ways of living out faith, in terms of calls to obedience
and focuses of mission and activity.
Practice also matters. God is not just concerned with out
thinking but our doing. The choices we make in terms of praxis can be good or
bad, wise or foolish, helpful or an impediment to Christian growth.
Doctrine and practice are important, but I don’t think
either is the most important part of a church’s life.
There must be a third thing in churches that shapes those
experiences. It is notoriously difficult to pin down. Some people talk about it
in terms of “values,” others as something like “theological vision.” I often
use the term “culture” when I talk about it, although I’m wary of how that
language can be burdened with ideas from the business world.
Regardless of what we call it, I’m convinced this third
thing is the most important one in deciding whether churches are actually Christlike
places. It shapes how and why they inhabit their doctrine and pursue their practices. A lot of the discourse of the New Testament is aimed at shaping this
third thing, once we have eyes to see it. When we get it wrong, it leads to
malformed Christians and Spirit-less communities. It’s the thing I as a pastor
spend the most time thinking about shaping, and it’s the thing I think people
should look for when they move or otherwise have to seek out a new church.
To try to bring that third thing into the open, below are
some questions that highlight potential problems in this third thing and help
us diagnose where we need it to become more like Jesus.
How Are People Motivated?
Here is a simple question to start with—how are people
motivated to do what Scripture and the church calls them to do? The question isn’t
about the what but the why, the (often implicit) reason people are encouraged
to obey the call of Christ.
Are people motivated by guilt and fear of punishment?
Sometimes it’s explicit, often it’s more masked, but is the reason for
obedience ultimately that, if we don’t, God will be angry?
Are they motivated by shame in relation to others? This
approach is almost always implicit, but you can hear it if you know the signs. “You
are doing this bad thing. Look at Sally, who isn’t, who is instead such a good
person. Don’t you feel bad you aren’t more like her?” That is the approach of
shame.
Are people motivated by pride and a desire for
self-congratulation? Pride can often look more positive than guilt or shame,
but it is also more destructive. Obeying in order to be a “good person,” which almost
always means “a better-than-them person,” is the motivation of religious
self-righteousness.
God’s Word is clear about the motivations we should aspire
to: love for God that flows from His love for us, hopefulness, delight in the
beauty of goodness, and a pursuit of joy. A church that motivated obedience
through love and joy might issue the same calls as one motivated by guilt and
pride, but the aroma of the obedience will be as different as life and death.
How Exalted Is God?
The church and its members exist to glorify and delight in
God and enjoy His divine life made available to them in Jesus. Our call as
Christians is always that of John the Baptist, to make God increase while we
decrease. Of course, most churches will say this theoretically. They will
insist on it, as a matter of doctrine. But it doesn’t necessarily feel like it
on the ground.
Do we talk about God in ways that are self-serving or
self-forgetful? Jesus turns toward humanity in love. We receive innumerable
benefits through Him. The gospel is good news for us. But it is a good news
that should ultimately turn us away from ourselves and make us make much of Christ.
When a church fails to take this second turn, it easily makes God into our
servant rather than us into His. We start by saying He is for us and end up
thinking He exists for us. We make Him into a way to satisfy our desires. In consumerist
America this is an especially easy way for people to get confused.
Scripture instead calls us to a deep sense of humility
before the living God. That posture provides the context for our blessings,
recognizing each of them as astoundingly undeserved. Rather than focusing on
our needs as the end goal, it meets them in Christ so we can forget them and
instead focus on Him and the world He has called us to love.
Do we let God constantly challenge us in the places of our
greatest sin? To treat God as ultimate means hearing and submitting to
everything He says. Christianity always seeks to apply the grace of God to our
places of greatest need—which means exposing to us the areas of our greatest
failure.
Too many churches only
speak the truths that are least challenging to their members or most helpful to
their bottom line. And I don’t just mean ostensibly “squishy” churches; I’ve
seen many pastors who pretend to be brave truth-tellers but would never
actually call their members to account for the sorts of sins they are prone to
commit. We need to tell ourselves the truths we most need to hear, and while
that will always include God’s welcome, it will also always include our failures.
Do we confuse God’s kingdom with the ministries of a single
local church? One more way we can fail to exalt God is by wrongly exalting
ourselves. We don’t intentionally pull him lower, but we lift ourselves up too
highly.
A subtle example is when churches end up equating what God
is doing to what they are doing. This confusion can be hard to pin down,
because an obedience church will be seeking to institutionally obey Scripture,
especially as it grows. It should have ministries of care, of evangelism, and of
hospitality. But if it isn’t careful, it can start to equate those things with
what God is doing in a way that makes the church more than just an obediet
community of believers and into the embodiment of God’s kingdom on earth, or at
least in its city or neighborhood. This way of talking breeds an arrogance and
a divisiveness that bleed out of confusing our service with God’s reign.
How Are People Viewed?
While both people and the institution of the church ultimately
exist to serve God, under His glory the church exists to serve people, not the
other way around. The church in Scripture exists to minister Christ to human
beings and to help those human beings do the work of ministry.
It is easy for churches to start to view people as resources
rather than objects of service. It can start to treat people as existing for
the ministries and activities of the church, and so they end up as fuel for an
impersonal machine. This leads to burned-out, tired saints who leave the church
emptier than when they came rather than built-up saints prepared to do the work
of ministry.
Human beings also exist as goods in themselves, and they should
be valued and treated as image-bearers of God and, if believers, as royal sons
and daughters of His household. It is shocking to me how little delight some
churches take in each other. They end up
as “communities” that largely despise and look down on one other. There will
always be relational tensions and hurts in any gathering of people, but if the default
way church members view each other is with something other than joy in
fellowship, the culture of a church has gone horribly wrong.
Conclusion
There are many other diagnostic questions we could add. I
think looking for the growth of the fruit of the Spirit in a community’s life
is a good test for culture. Or just asking whether it feels like a system full
of anxiety or one of rest. But the point is to invite us to reflect on that
third thing from different angles and ask, “Does this look like Jesus? Does it
feel like a gospel-rooted community should feel?” And in the places that it
doesn’t, to give ourselves to asking why.
Another way of thinking about this “third thing” is as a
church’s heart. Doctrine is the head; practice is the hands. But we know from
Scripture that, for individuals, both the head and hands are subordinate to the
heart. “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of
life.” (Proverbs 4:23) I think the same is true for communities of faith, and
when there is an issue with those hearts, we must give all vigilance to seeking
for it to be healed.