EVANGELISM
AND THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH
Matthew 8:23-27; Ezekiel 37:1-14
July 20, 2008 – Rev. Jerry Duggins
I hate sermons that are about “what’s wrong with the church.” I mention this up front because this may sound like one of those kind of sermons. I ask for your patience and I promise to end with some good news. But to begin with, the news is not so good. Today, the church finds itself in a boat on rough seas and the waves are crashing over the bow. It is probably too soon to tell whether we followed Jesus on this cruise turned rather rough or somewhere on our journey we simply got into the wrong boat. Too soon to tell whether Jesus is on board and asleep or busily calming the seas on some other boat.
Critics, whether agnostic or prophetic would say the same thing, that the church stopped following Jesus a long time ago. Some will take you back to the fourth century at the time of Emperor Constantine as the beginning of our wandering astray. Others point to more recent events, citing a growing moral laxness and loss of theological integrity. This siege of criticism comes from all sides of the spectrum, extreme conservatism and radical liberalism, whatever those terms mean.
I’m not interested in that aspect of our problem this morning, but in rather more practical signs that the church is in trouble. Take for instance the membership decline experienced by every mainstream denomination: Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopalian, Baptist and yes, Presbyterians. If you were to make a chart of membership over the last fifty years for each of these faith groups, you would see the exact same pattern: a period of growth for about the first ten years and then steady decline for the next forty. When you realize that population is growing during this time, the decline is sharper than the numbers tell.
One would think that with this decline in membership, the church would experience a similar decline in financial resources. But long-time church members have steadily increased their giving and so far have made up for those who’ve stopped coming. I say “so far” because the picture here is also rather bleak. These generous members are sadly living out their days and, as a whole, younger families are either unable, unwilling or just not yet quite so generous.
Fortunately the IRS helps us out by continuing to allow a full deduction for church contributions, though their rules become more stringent from year to year. And taxing agencies like the IRS are becoming less and less friendly all the time, challenging churches on their exempt status, going after property taxes on para-church organizations like Christian camps.
The church has of course made some of its own problems here. Clergy, called out for sexual misconduct and abuse, are making lawsuits filed against the church and its leaders much more commonplace. Lots of people are walking away from the church after bad experiences, even if not as extreme this.
It is unfortunately true that large segments of society think of the church as misogynist, racist, even imperialist. We are a long way away from the days when church and society coexisted in friendly relations.
The decline in membership, the sense of a growing scarcity of resources, serious misconduct among its leaders, skirmishes with government agencies and the growing impression among the unchurched that Christians are judgmental and intolerant are just a few of the signs that the church is passing through rough waters.
There are also internal problems
in churches, from what have come to be known as the worship wars, to tension
between clergy and their congregations as professional and lay roles pass
through serious changes, to turf wars between individuals and committees. Even
if we haven’t been touched by all of this at
Perhaps I should be more
interested in diagnosing the causes of this unhappy state of the church, but as
I said in the beginning, I hate that kind of sermons. I don’t even like listing
all the problems, but it seems time to stop the denial and admit that all is not
well on the
A long time ago, a nation that considered itself a follower of the one true God (only it failed to live up to God’s standards), found itself in serious trouble. In fact it had lost its national status, having been conquered by a neighboring empire. Its leaders and skilled craftspeople had been taken into captivity and now served the interests of that other nation.
One day God spoke to one of its prophets, although he was just an ordinary man. Our translation refers to him as “Mortal.” We call him Ezekiel and he was probably the equivalent of a clergyperson, but in this vision he is regarded as just an ordinary man. God showed this mortal a vision: a valley of dry bones, a symbol of his people’s plight, already dead, the flesh long since decayed, seemingly without hope. “Mortal, can these bones live?”
You don’t have to imagine it.
There are images of real scenes you can no doubt google that are just like this.
The “killing fields” of
It is not as bad as all this in the church today, but many have wondered whether the church can survive the hostility of some in the world and the indifference of a great many, whether it can survive its own self-destructive tendencies in the form of internal squabbles and conflicts, whether it will have enough people and resources to sustain itself into the future. More than one preacher has offered this image to his/her congregation and challenged them with the question: “Can these bones live?”
Most go on to claim the promise implicit in this text that God can raise the bones, put flesh on them and breathe life into them. Most preachers go on to speak quite eloquently about the power of God to raise the dead, to transform life, to breathe new life into the community of God’s people. David Buttrick, William Sloan Coffin and Martin Luther King all have powerful sermons from this text.
These preachers are absolutely right. God’s grace and love does desire to breathe new life into the pain of the world. Everywhere Jesus went, he felt the person’s need and pain and then spoke good news into their bad news.
But the future of the church depends on more than the goodness and love of God. It certainly cannot go forward without God’s grace, but it needs something besides that. It needs ordinary people willing to be transformed by God into prophets who call forth the wind to breathe life into the pain of the world.
“Mortal, can these bones live?” Listen to Ezekiel’s answer, “O Lord God, you know.” Do you hear this ordinary man playing it safe? Not a simple yes or no, but more like a “why are you asking me?” Do you hear Ezekiel’s initial shock at the scene behind his answer, and then maybe his skepticism? Or do you hear in his answer a feeble effort to avoid what he knows is coming next? “Can these bones live?” Where do you stand on this question in relation to the world’s pain? Reluctant to answer? Paralyzed by the possibility presented? Skeptical? Or afraid of what comes next?
Then God said to me, “Prophesy to these bones….” God wanted an ordinary person to speak to the bones. Maybe God needed Ezekiel to speak new life into the death, destruction and despair that had become a part of his people’s experience.
“Can these bones live?” What a question to ponder! It makes us step back and rethink the power and love of God. It challenges us to never give up hope. But I think the question is child’s play next to the command that follows: “Prophesy to these bones….” It’s relatively easy to expand our ideas about what God can do in our world. It’s another matter entirely to imagine that I might participate in what God is doing. It’d be very easy to say, “I’m no prophet, just an ordinary person.” But if God cannot find prophets willing to speak good news into the bad news of the world, the church will die. There is no future for the church without evangelism. There is no limit to what the church might become with it.
I’m not talking about some canned evangelical message, though that can have its place, but about followers of Jesus who are willing to look deeply into the pain, the death and despair so prevalent in the world, and then say, “Breathe, God wants you to breathe.” I’m talking about the kind of evangelism that is simply about speaking good news into the bad news of people’s experience. I don’t care whether their bad news is a sense of personal guilt for which they don’t know where to turn or an experience of oppression. The gospel is about freedom whether for the individual or from the oppressive structures of society. There is no difference between the gospel of personal salvation and the social justice gospel. They are both good news spoken into an experience of bad news. Both Billy Graham and Martin Luther King were moved by people’s pain. Both preached a gospel of compassion. Both spoke to the dry bones, calling forth the wind to breathe new life into the pain that they witnessed.
It’s a stormy season in the life of the church, but I do not think Jesus has abandoned ship, nor do I think he is resting. I hear us saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” But I do not think he will calm these seas for us again. He has already set the example for us, offering sight to the blind, food for the hungry, healing for the ill, forgiveness for the guilt-ridden. He has already demonstrated that love is more powerful than death. It is time for us to leave the age of little faith and enter the new age of the gospel. It is time for us to enter into the world’s pain, to understand its pain and to prophesy to the bones, to speak good news into the bad news. It is time for the church to take on its task of calling to freedom oppressor and oppressed, of calling to love hater and hated, of new life for the dead and the forces of death. It is time for the church to offer the assurance of forgiveness to the chronically guilty. Whatever the pain, the church must speak the gospel or it will die.
We can begin by trying to understand our own pain within the community of faith. We can begin by speaking good news to one another. But for the sake of the church’s future, we must learn to expand our compassion for one another to the pain in the world.
Prophesy to the bones. Ezekiel
spoke it in his vision and he offered it as comfort to the people of