Church - only messy people allowed!
Definitely something to think about in this article by Sam Alberry which originally appeared here on the Gospel Coalition website : Only messy people allowed
Only Messy People Allowed: Toward a Culture of Grace
May 9, 2018 | Sam
Allberry
Some time ago a Christian friend came to me
in distress. He’d had too much to drink while out with some friends. He’d known
them for years and would regularly drink in moderation with them, but on this
occasion he’d lapsed in his self-control. As far as he was concerned, he’d just
blown several years of witnessing to them.
A group of us at church were discussing how to promote the
prayer ministry offered every Sunday at the end of the service. We were
thinking about how we could encourage more people to make use of it, when one
lady said, “Well I’d never use it. I’d hate for other people to assume that I
had a
problem.”
Both these incidents reveal an underlying malaise in many of
our churches. I’m not sure we really believe in grace. We do, in the sense that
we teach it and assent to it in our confessions. But perhaps we don’t, in the
sense of really living it.
PR Agents for Jesus
The problem, I suspect, is something of a misstep in our
formula of what it means to live for Christ. We think we’re his PR agents: If
I look good, then Jesus looks good.
So we hate the thought of not looking good. It’s Christian
failure.
I don’t need to look good so Jesus can look good; I need to
be honest about my colossal spiritual need so he can look all-sufficient.
If this mindset permeates a whole church family, however,
our life together becomes a matter of performance. We put on our best Christian
mask, take a deep breath, and head to church. If Christian parents adopt this
mindset, parenting becomes about trying to perform well in front of the kids,
making sure they only see the highest standard of Christian behaviour from us.
This may be a common way of thinking, but it’s disastrous.
It leads to hypocrisy. The fact is, we’re not good, and we can
only keep up the façade for a little while before the cracks begin to show. Our
children see it right away. They know what we’re really like and can
immediately tell when we try to put a Christian sheen over it. And when we
really make a mess of things, the last place we want to go is church. We’re
supposed to look Christian there, so when we know we can’t remotely pretend
things are together, it’s easier simply not to go. Best to keep the mess away
from the sanctuary.
All this is a sign that while we may be professing grace,
we’re not actually inhabiting a culture of grace. We’re not Jesus’s PR agents,
and he is not our client. We are broken men and women, and he is our Saviour.
It’s not the case that I need to look good so Jesus can look good; I need to be
honest about my colossal spiritual need so he can look all-sufficient. I don’t
increase so he can increase; I decrease so he can increase (John 3:30).
That means being honest about my flaws, not embarrassed about them.
Culture of Grace
Imagine the difference this would make to our witness.
Rather than thinking I have to constantly be looking less sinful than every
non-Christian I know, I am instead liberated to be myself, warts and all, so
that I can show that my confidence is not in me. My friend who had too much to
drink now has an amazing opportunity to be an authentic witness to Christ—not
by pretending we Christians don’t have any sin, but by demonstrating what we do
with it. If it’s about performance, then my friend really has blown
it and will be too embarrassed to see his friends. But if it’s about
forgiveness, then he gets to model repentance, to show brokenness about sin and
sheer relief in a Savior.
Imagine also the difference this would make to our church
life. Rather than having a stigma about being anything less than spiritually
sorted, we can come together as a group of people who are open and free about
our colossal spiritual need. The assumption stops being “We have to be good if
we’re coming here,” and instead becomes “You have to be a real mess to show up
here—thank goodness I’m not the only one.” Which do you think sounds more
inviting? Which is going to foster deeper confession and public repentance?
Instead of feeling embarrassed about going forward to receive prayer, we can
experience the joy and relief of knowing we’re all ultimately in the same boat.
Grace, then, becomes not just a formal doctrine but a felt
reality. No one is too low, too far gone, too needy—too anything—to worry about
not fitting in around here. Our testimony is not “I was a mess, then Jesus
showed up, and now I’ve got everything together,” but “I was a mess—and I still
am—but I’m a mess who belongs to Jesus, a mess he is committed to sorting out.
He came to me, has stuck with me, and continues to be my all in all.”
Indeed, we can say with John Newton, “I am not what I ought
to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another
world—but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am
what I am.”
Sam Allberry is an editor for The Gospel
Coalition, a global speaker for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries,
and a pastor based in Maidenhead, UK. He is the author of a number of
books, including Is
God Anti-Gay? (Good Book,
2013), James
For You, and most recently Why
Bother with Church. He is a
founding editor of Living Out, a ministry for those struggling with
same-sex attraction. You can follow
him on Twitter.
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