Post Series
0: Intro
1: Narrative Question
2: Authority Question
3: God Question
4: Jesus Question
5: Gospel Question
Theological Foundation Recap
6: Church Question
7: Sex Question
8: Future Question
9: Pluralism Question
10: What-Do-We-Do-Now Question
11: Final Thoughts

After setting down his alternative theological foundation, Brian launches into an exploration of “be-ology”—what it means to be as a Christian and human. (160) A natural first question after such a jarring experience with the first 5 questions is this: “What do we do about the Church?” Or more specifically: What is the Church?

Interestingly, up until this point Brian has not used the word church. I found this incredibly odd and disconcerting in a book that is supposedly exploring a new kind of Christianity. Odd that he would not use the very word Jesus Himself used to describe the group of people who are his followers, i.e. Christians; disturbing that his new theology and faith is not specifically for the Church. For someone who describes himself as “a lifelong churchgoer and a veteran pastor,” I wondered why in 160 pages (and beyond this chapter) he never utters the word. I think the reason becomes clear when we explore the answers Brian provides to his question.

He begins this section, and rightly so, describing the fear and antipathy modern culture has toward the church. The sentiments he describes reflect one which someone exclaimed in a conversation I describe in my book I had with a fellow Starbucks barista: “The church is fucked up!” ((the (un)offensive gospel of Jesus, 37.)) As Brian describes the current crisis, “When enough church leaders wake up and smell the Ben-Gay, when they realize that their faith communities are shrinking and wrinkling and stiffening, they start to ask the church questions very urgently: What are we going to do about the church?” (162)

He says that we should stop worrying about what forms the church takes (thanks you!) and start seeing “ourselves as servants of one grander mission, apostles of one greater message, seekers on one ultimate quest…What would that one mission, message, and quest be? Around what one grand endeavor can we rally? What one great danger do people need to be saved from and, more positively, what one great purpose do they need to be saved for?” (164)

In other words: Why does the church exist? According to Brian, “to form Christlike people, people of Christlike love…the formation of Christlike people of love naturally becomes the grand unifying preoccupation and mission of our churches.” (164, 165)

At one level this seems fine, but does the church in any way exist to save people as the earliest church themselves existed? Yes. According to Brian, the church exists to save people “from the great danger of wasting their lives, becoming something less than and other than they were intended to be, gaining the world but losing their soul.” (emphasis mine. 164)

In answering question 6, then, the Church must totally rethink the Her core mission and identify that mission along these terms. (165) That mission, then, is “forming people of Christlike love” (171) and “save them from…wasting their lives” (164)

That’s it folks.

It’s funny, because I thought the Church was a community of redeemed and rescued people sent on mission to reconcile the world to God through Christ.

Does not Paul explicitly explain the mission of the Church in 2 Cor. 5:11-21 when he explains the God gave “us” the community of believers the “mission of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them”? Are we not Christ’s ambassadors who have been committed the message of reconciliation: “Be reconciled to God”? Is not God making His appeal through the Church to be reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ? And is not the basis of that reconciliation that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”?

While I am with Brian at one level, that the mission of individual church communities is to form Christlike people. Christlike formation, however, is part of sanctification! In other words, forming Christlike people who follow the way of love happens only after that have been made new through individual “transformation moments.” What is that transformation moment? When a person choses to be “in Christ” (that incredibly key, distinctive theological rallying point for Paul throughout his letters) and the old person goes a ways and the new person begins.

For Paul humans are born “in Adam” and live out of the flesh, their sinful nature (Rom 5:12-20). They are alienated from God and His enemies and by nature people of His wrath (Col 1:21; Eph. 2:3). But “in Christ” Paul also makes clear that this condition is a past condition. “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.” (Col. 1:21) “Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.”

These and other pieces of the Holy Scripture make plain that there was an old condition and a new condition; a moment when someone is not a believer/follower and when someone is. Even more important there is a time when someone is not reconciled to God and a moment when a person is through Christ. To put it in more exclusionary terms: a person is part of God’s community or they are not, part of the Church or not. Brian cannot voice this, however.

All of this is incredibly important to Brian’s definition and mission of the Church, which misses a vital, necessary piece: faith in Christ. The church is NOT simply a group of people who act like Christ and follow the way of love (though this is an important, vital part of having a real, genuine faith in Christ) and saved from wasting their lives. This is the Kiwanis, a great group of people who’s current motto is “serving the children of the world.” Service and love is not distinctive to the Church nor to Jesus. You could say the same thing for the PeaceCorp, though such Imperial comparisons might draw a lightning bolt or two from Brian.

No, the Church is the community of people who have been rescued from death through the forgiveness of their sins by faithing in the final sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, who by His own blood entered the Most Holy Place once and for all, thus obtaining eternal rescue and life for those who faith in Him. Consequently, those who are saved and believe in Jesus act as the continuing presence of Christ to spread His Kingdom Reign on earth.

That’s the Church, Brian McLaren.

As Paul writes in Ephesians 2: “Because of His great love for us, God, who is rich and mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions— it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

The word “us” is used 4 times along side with/in Christ 4 times. Paul is speaking to the Church, the redeemed and the rescued and the reconciled in Christ. This is the message and banner of the Church: BE RECONCILED TO GOD IN CHRIST!

This is the very message of the earliest of the Church in Acts. They didn’t preach “live like Jesus” but “believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” (Acts 16) In the face of Jewish persecution and Roman imprisonment they didn’t proclaim “don’t waste your life” but “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” (Acts 2) God raised Jesus from the dead, and the forgiveness of sins and freedom from sins in Christ was the consistent message of the Church, stemming from Her mission to go into all the world and make disciples of Jesus Christ. (Acts 13 and Matthew 28).

In reality, Brian’s church is not church at all, but a social club devoid of any power because it is disconnected from Jesus Christ as exclusive Lord and Messiah.

This Holy Friday I am reminded how important it is for the Church to boldly, confidently shout from roof-top to roof-tops that Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again! Through the Church God is dispensing His grace and forgiveness and reconciliation and rescue from sin and death, because it is through Jesus Christ and Him alone that all of this is accomplished. The power for forgiveness and reconciliation and life transformation and individual rescue from evil, sin and death is through death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, both of which are mysteriously missing from the mission and message of Brian’s church.