Yeshua Explored
16th July 2022
Is this “Church?”
Big Church or Little Church?
(This series of articles was written a year after the first lockdown in March/April 2021)
Previous articles are still available on the Premier Christian radio website – https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Blogs2/Yeshua-Explored – (until they finally pull the plug!)
The Roman Catholic Church has over a billion members, 2795 branch offices (dioceses), over 400,000 managers (priests), controlled by a CEO (Pope) and a board of directors (Council of Cardinals). In 1994 it had an annual profit of $4 million, with $200 billion in cash deposits and several billion dollars worth of solid gold and other treasures in the Vatican vaults. It takes just over £1 billion a year to run the Church of England, financing 13,000 parishes and 43 cathedrals. Around 15% of this comes from its financial assets, which amounted to £4.4 billion in 2008. The Methodist Church finance division has a mission statement that offers practical solutions which combine Christian ethics and investment returns. This is not an attack on them, as I’m sure there are not many finance houses that have mission statements that offer Christian ethics as a foundational principle, but I wonder what John Wesley would think about a denomination growing from his efforts boasting £336 million of assets and that can offer a 42.8% return from its UK Equity Fund?
Is this “Church”?
“Big church” is not just confined to the major denominations. There’s actually a lot going on, lots of programmes, strategies, campaigns and initiatives. The Church really likes to do things big: The Call, Global Day of Prayer, New Wine, Pentecost Festival, Big Church Day Out, Spring Harvest, Alpha, all mobilising Christians in their tens of thousands, or worldwide in their hundreds of thousands. Even with lockdown restrictions these days most Christian initiatives for worship, prayer and celebrating our faith are big corporate events, the bigger the better. Just sling it out on Zoom or YouTube. Same old, same old, just socially and geographically distanced!
Our current Western society delights itself with big happenings in stadia, from sports events, to pop and rock concerts. It’s where our modern day ‘icons’ come to be idolised; that’s why people come to such events. However, they may delude themselves or rationalise it as just coming for the good vibes. These places are designed for worship, perhaps that’s why so many big Christian campaigns and outreaches tend to make use of football grounds. The big question is whether God prefers to be worshipped in such a way? Is the aroma of our worship more pleasing when facilitated by mega-watts of electronic amplification?
‘Big Church’ has taken a battering as a result of Covid-19. Here’s an extract from a recent open letter authored by a grouping of the larger UK Christian events, including Spring Harvest and New Wine. “As we contemplate two years without gathering in the normal way, we have had to rapidly learn to meet in new ways … ‘free ’is becoming increasingly expected … so from us all in the UK that run a Christian event, we need you to know that most of us can’t do it.” This is followed by a request for money. What they haven’t considered is that God may not want them to do it any more. Perhaps that is one of the lessons of Flockdown? It seems that this is not even to be considered.
Is this really Church??
Doesn’t God prefer to deal with His people in their weaknesses and in their vulnerabilities? Isn’t this the Biblical pattern?
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)
Didn’t God choose Moses as a great inspirational leader although he was “slow of speech and tongue”? Wasn’t Gideon the least significant member of the weakest clan of Israel, yet God chose him to defeat the Midianites? Wasn’t Saul from the least clan of the least tribe, yet he became King of Israel? Similar story for David, the greatest King of all! Even Israel, His chosen nation for revealing Himself to the world, was “the fewest of all people”.
God hasn’t changed His ways. Surely it is more in God’s revealed character to respond to Mrs O’Grady and her good friend Doris, meeting daily for prayer in their living room than with the Reverend Prophet Luke Atmee, broadcasting his religious declarations thrice daily from his gold encrusted pulpit in his million dollar cathedral of glass and steel.
God doesn’t do numbers. Neither should we.
This is an extract from the book, Flockdown Church: Back to the drawing board?, available for £5 at https://www.sppublishing.com/flockdown-church-278-p.asp
