How Now, Brown Cow?

Lately the topic about church keeps creeping up. So I’m using this space as an avenue to straighten my thoughts.

The church needs to distinguish itself from being a mere social gathering. Sometimes, we tend to borrow things from our work and from social events, thinking that there are some very useful skills/methods we can employ, that will be of help. And they’re really helpful. Sometimes, so much so that we end up forgetting we need to be more than merely a social gathering.

What’s the difference? Its all about the motor that drives the vehicle.

Right now, I see a lot of programs being organized. Attendance is dropping? We’ll organize gatherings, have tea refreshments, celebrate events, have camps, do outreach. Lots of programs. We think that by implementing the right system, the problem is solved. Then when nothing much changes, we put the blame on the system, or the implementation. So we try even harder, come up with better programs, newer activities, increase the budget, and rally more.

My take? There’s nothing wrong with the program. The problem is with the motivating factor.

All this while, NOBODY would contest the statement that it is the Word of God that gives life to the church. After all, who could be THAT stupid?? We all know that is true!! Yet we seem to suffer from chronic blindness when we are running our ministries. We spend a lot of time equipping our people in skills or ministry, and hardly any time at all in nurturing people to grow in the Word. The two most common platforms for teaching – the pulpit and the life group, have been mostly reduced to pep talk sessions, where we don’t ground people in the Word of God, merely in the “10 steps to being an effective Christian”.

Instead of teaching, we merely equip.

(Just to further distinguish the two – When we equip someone, the implication is that we are preparing someone to DO the work. When we teach and nurture someone, we are giving the people the ENERGY to do the work. So do the math, and you’ll see that equipping is seldom the problem. People with energy will find ways to equip themselves. People with no energy won’t move even with the best equipment.)

Sure, we have Sunday school. But how do you convince the congregation that the Word is central, when we so blatantly marginalize it on the pulpit and in our life groups? In fact, if we did a word count of everything said on the pulpit, we’ll find that we spend more time pushing programs, than emphasizing the importance of God’s Word. Its almost as if we have an attitude where we take it for granted that the Word is most important, so we ignore it and just go straight to our agendas.

Its no wonder that people don’t respond when we rally them to serve. They have nothing in them to give!! We don’t feed them properly, leaving them malnourished. Then without a proper support system in place, we spend all our resources trying to invite more people into church where they proceed to tax the system further. To borrow an analogy from the finance sector, its akin to living life on credit when expenditure dramatically outweighs income. Someday, the whole market is going to crash, and there will be hell to pay.

Its been three years now, since we’ve been pushing for better support and structure for the life group ministry. We have a few groups in crisis-state. Our leaders are always left to fend for themselves, and nothing much has been done at all. Instead, we channel our energies on the new church building, on missions, on Life Games, on events, and think that by having all these other activities, we can paper over the cracks that are staring at us in the face.

The saddest thing is, we’ve become so far lost, that we don’t even know what the real deal looks like anymore. That’s why nobody knows how to address the problem. Its like the time when we dissolved youth fellowship for a few years, and totally lost the culture. The tragedy that resulted was having something so precious lost, and even till now, the youths never did manage to regain what was once there. I’m afraid that it’s the same thing happening now to us with regards to the Word. Nobody knows anymore what its like to have a Word-centered congregation. Nobody seems to know how to build such a congregation anymore. So we make feeble attempts at addressing the problem (e.g., using DVDS to supplement the teaching in life groups, have Sunday school to compensate for the lack of teaching…), and then go back again to the comforts of doing what we’re comfortable with – programs.

And I’m also equally lost as to how to go about it. The best face I can place on what I’m feeling now, is to call it what Bill Hybels labels as a “Holy Discontent”. Of course, maybe its just me being a complain king. But I do believe that this is the key to reviving our congregation. I think what we really need now is a King Josiah, someone who restores the centrality of the Word to its primary place. Only then can there be genuine repentance, and only then will the Lord find favor with us.

Of course, if I were to raise this matter up to the leadership, I will be told that things are not that simple. And as much as I used to scorn such an answer, I’ve come to know that they’re just being honest. Life presents just so many variables that nothing is as clear-cut as we make it out to be. As if I’m not in their shoes, its unfair of me to just sit where I am and point fingers.

But that brings us back again to square one. How now, brown cow?