Small Christianity
I’m amazed at what passes for Christianity these days. In so many ways, we’ve made Christianity really small and insignificant. I’m not sure if that has been done on purpose, or by accident.
There’s a whole lot of junk that passes off as Christianity and I’m not sure why. Have we become theologically lazy? Maybe we’re just mixing things that don’t really belong together. Small Christianity is certainly not inspirational. It’s not really Good News. It’s not even nice news. It’s usually pretty crappy news, just like what the world offers. At the very least, it’s just something that gives a person a quick high and then lets them down just as fast.
The vocal fits that have been thrown about canceling some debt for people (most of whom still owe more than they initially borrowed and have been paying for years – you might want to look up predatory lending practices), is a great example. Scripture is literally loaded with references to God being about canceling debts. Don’t take my word for it. But you’d think that cancelling debt is somehow satanic. Makes me wonder what we really believe in – God’s message about cancelling debts, or capitalism? What is our faith rooted in after all? Where do we put our trust in – Our money declares “In God we Trust,” but our shouting declares something different.
Spinning what Jesus said so that it’s not what Jesus said is a common thing these days. “Welcome the Stranger” is something Jesus said. It’s throughout the Old Testament too. You can look it up. Yet, I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people spin it away while still claiming to follow Jesus. Interesting. But not really. Why claim to follow Jesus if we aren’t going to actually follow what he told followers to do? I don’t understand that. Maybe someone can explain that to me. But then again, I’m making a bad assumption – I’ve been assuming that the junk that passes for Christianity has some kind of consistent logic to it. It doesn’t.
I’m also making another bad assumption – that we all agree what Christianity actually is. We don’t. And that’s very clear. We don’t even agree on who Jesus is or what it means to follow him. That’s also very clear. Maybe we need to just start with some basics and strip all the assumptions we have about Christianity away.
We love the idea of setting people free, until we try to put it in actual practice. Then all bets are off. See, we like the idea, but we don’t actually want to do it. That might be because we don’t agree on what it means to set people free. Who does this apply to? What are we setting people free from? If these things aren’t spoken, then we’re making assumptions.
On Monday I went with a couple of people to a growing church just to check it out – see what all the talk is about, what draws people in, etc. I was curious to learn what this church offered and what was so attractive.
It was in a large building. They had invested in lots of great stuff. It looked fresh. It was clean. It was new. There were lots of people. Lots of smiles and greetings (from people who clearly have a job of greeting people and welcoming them in). Did I mention there were lots of people. There is nothing wrong with any of that. In fact, It’s great that there are people who are glad to be at church. Kudos to this church for having people who want to be there and participate and contribute to the life of the church. That’s a real blessing.
The feel of the service was pretty typical from what I’ve seen in other big box churches – a concert at the beginning, a plea for the offering, a message, and a semi-altar call, and on your way you go. Most of it in the dark – as in the lights were often very low.
Let’s just say the obvious – this isn’t my type of service. But then again, I’m not the target audience.
There were some great things that I took away. They were expecting families and children to be there. You could see it through a variety of aspects – all very authentic. They clearly care about making sure that families feel welcome. That’s a great thing to see.
They use the latest technology to enhance so many aspects of the church – again, it didn’t seem forced, but rather a natural part of the church. I think there are lots of things other churches could learn about using technology to enhance ministry.
I want to be really careful in my critique of this church – I think churches have a hard enough time as it is. We’re all struggling. And we don’t need other people ripping a church apart. And yet, I feel there are some core things that I observed that I don’t see as very positive.
Here’s what I will say by way of criticism – again, I’m not the target audience for this church, so I imagine some of this is because of that.
Everything was big – the building, the crowd, and more. And yet in the midst of that bigness, the Christianity was small. It was all about me and Jesus. No connection to the larger world, to the body of Christ, to the challenges in the world (except for what you are personally facing). No one could see anyone else (expect for outlines because we were literally in the dark for most of the service), and they didn’t have to interact with anyone if they didn’t want to. They didn’t have to look at their own brokenness.
I walked away saying “That’s American Christianity in a nut shell – you have a concert to get things warmed up, have some announcements, a YouTube video message, and an altar call” It’s about the individual. No need to acknowledge your brokenness. And in many ways, it’s all about who is in control. You can’t get a Christianity that is much smaller than that.
But here’s the thing – you won’t offend anyone with that kind of Christianity. People won’t get upset about that message. You’ll pull in lots of money. And you’ll speak to the culture through the cultural language it knows best – individualism.
The world is in the midst of a major societal shift. A Small Christianity doesn’t really have enough energy or voice to speak to this – not in any type of deep lasting way. Small Christianity is fine when everything is going well, or we want a distraction from the chaos of the world (especially when it feels overwhelming). But Small Christianity makes Jesus awfully small and insignificant. It makes all the members of the Trinity into something so very small. What the world needs right now is a big God. A God who is larger than everything going on. A God who does amazing things and transforms the world in amazing ways. We don’t need small change in our lives, we need major transformation in the world.
A Small Jesus is your friend who will listen to you and give you an inspirational quote to make you feel better. Big Jesus though is the God who takes on flesh, picks up his cross, takes the worst the world has to offer, is killed, and then in spite of it all, is resurrected. That’s not supposed to happen. But only a Big God does resurrection – transformation on a scale that can’t be contained by the world. I don’t want Small Jesus. I need Big Jesus and so does the world.
I wonder if the church prefers Small Jesus. A contained Jesus. A Jesus who doesn’t really mess with the status quo. A Jesus who doesn’t mess with finances. A Jesus who doesn’t say anything controversial. A Jesus who has no opinions about Justice in the world. A Jesus who allows us to stay away from “those” people. A Jesus who doesn’t mess with our lives. A Jesus who is just fine to keep us comfortable. That’s the Jesus we get to dictate what his role is and what impact he has on the world. A Jesus that protects the institution. A Jesus that doesn’t question policies or economics. A Jesus that supports our way of doing things and never asks us to change. That’s not just a Small Jesus. That’s a junk Jesus that no one really needs.
I’ll take Big Jesus any day. Big Jesus is the opposite of all of that. And Big Jesus messes with things. He messes with our lives. With our churches. With our systems. With our institutions. With our politics and policies. With our culture and attitudes. With our money. With everything. Because nothing can get in the way of Big Jesus. That’s where transformation actually happens.
The church has been in the way of this Jesus for far too long. And now it is beginning to see that it can’t keep it up. But boy will it keep trying. Jesus will not be contained any longer. And there are pastors and the faithful who are no longer willing to put up with the walls around Jesus. We aren’t willing to shut up about it either. We’re willing to put it all out there, speak the truth regardless of the consequence, to be all in. Because that’s the type of Jesus we need – he is all in and calls on followers to be all in too.
Transformation happens when we are all in. We are changed and so is the world. The time for hesitation is over. The time for softening the message of transformation and grace and mercy and love is over. The time for comfortable Christianity is over. The time for maintaining the status quo is over. The time for transformation is now. The time for life, death, and resurrection is now. That’s a message of hope. That’s Good News. That’s what God is all about. And that’s what the church is going to be about, even if it has to be brought kicking and screaming along the way because the church is changing whether anyone wants it to or not. Jesus is reclaiming the church and it’s not Small Jesus. There is no containing Jesus any longer. Thanks be to God.
About The Author
Comment
American “Christianity” used to be about “freedom of religion.” That’s not in the Bible, btw. But it was the foundation of our nation. Pilgrims and Puritans. They escaped persecution, which sounds really great in some important ways, but escaping persecution is not what Jesus does or calls us to do. If we follow him, it involves taking up and carrying a cross. (That’s in the Bible.)
So, now we have this nation with “freedom of religion” as a cornerstone. Boy, that seems good. And suddenly we are “the New World” hosting all manner of expressions of “Christianity.” All except for expressions involving the Lordship of Jesus over anything public.
Okay. That statement is overly simplified, but it does encapsulate the eventual shape of American “Christianity” which bends to all religious freedom. (For instance, when I was prison chaplain 20 years ago, I thought I had signed up for “Christian ministry.” But part of my job was to go into the records room and change the designations of people who converted from one to another. NORMALLY this meant making someone who came in a Methodist into a Baptist and so forth. However, this phenom spread to become a dietary thing since pork in prison sucks and if you designate as either Jewish or Muslim, they don’t feed you pork!)
(Ahhh but I digress…
(I became the Ronco Religion Changer when in the summer of 2000, an African American convict who wanted to be moved to a different unit to get away from some undesired gang or whatever, discovered that in the State of Texas there is only one unit with a Native American chaplain. So, he changed his religion to Native American, and suddenly he was shipped off to that unit!
Then word got out.
Every day, I went to the records room to change dozens of African Americans from various Christian faith designations to Native American as they manipulated the system in hopes of moving to a different prison. It worked for the first dozen or so African Americans who tried it, but soon it quit working. But word that it wasn’t working didn’t get out nearly as quick. And so for over a year, the office was flooded with requests from African Americans to switch to Native American.
Feel me?
But the pinnacle of chaplaincy experience was the day I officially converted a man from Baptist to Satanic. Not that I performed any ritual ceremonies except the records room thingy. But in all my “Christian ministry,” I never performed a duty more malproductive, pointless, and demoralizing than that. )
Sorry, long digression.
Anyway, so the Americans establish this “freedom of religion” idea as foundational and then set out to exercise it. But of course, God is cut out of the actual governing business in the process. FUNCTIONALLY and CULTURALLY this REDUCED Christian faith to matters of private, personal, piety. We literally put God in a box! We squeezed out all the power of God and faith and reduced it all down to this almost pointless matter of your personal, private FEELINGS.
NO ONE CARES about that.
It might not quite be NOTHING, but it sure is close.
And THAT became “American Christianity.”
Once THAT was established, even the Puritans imported hell-fire-n-brimstone preachers to basically scare people into believing in God (God’s own word says perfect LOVE casts out fear, but suddenly preachers from various denominations are trying to outscare one another’s flocks into their respective houses of worship.
This worked pretty good at acquiring, maintaining, and making money off people. You were a preacher which was now practically like being a salesman who sells practically NOTHING to people who are scared not to buy it. It worked pretty good up through the 1950s, eroded a lot in the 60s, and by the 80s was in freefall. By the 1990s, these sales persons and peddlers of God’s Word realized they needed gimmicks.
Now I can visit churches all over Lubbock any given Sunday and get a free latte, a frisbee, a tee shirt, probably the pastor’s latest book, and I am invited to shop in the gift shop too.
We got rid of the LORDSHIP of Jesus over creation way back at the start. We got rid of his lordship over our piety in the 1980s. Now if you are a preacher in this country, you basically are a snake oil salesman. IF you are not, you are lumped in with them and are an exception, NOT THE RULE.
Welcome to America with a K. Would you like a latte with your Jesus bumpersticker?
You are right on target. Although the Puritans didn’t come here because they were persecuted. They couldn’t get the Church of England to adopt their beliefs and got mad, so they left for Holland, which practiced true freedom of religion. But they got mad there too because that’s not actually what they wanted. They wanted the freedom to impose their religion on everyone else, like the Church of England was doing back home. So they left and came to the “new world.” It helped that there was a trade company that was willing to partner with them for a profit. So even in early America, there was a profit to be made from American Christianity. The Puritans were authoritarian at their core and didn’t care about religious freedom as in free to practice whatever religion you choose. We’re still paying the price for their influence on this country. They weren’t interested in personal piety alone. That was only a part of it. They wanted to created a theocracy that everyone had to follow.
We have modern day Puritans trying to do the same thing, calling it Christian Nationalism now. Same story, just a different name. And both unhealthy.
And at the same time, a personal piety only Christianity is pretty worthless. If there is no outward expression of faith, then what’s the point? If there isn’t a public impact, then can there really be transformation at all? That doesn’t have to happen through government control by religion either.
Comment
Let me amend my close above…
We are finding new potency in joining Jesus and creation through Republican politics these days. This is the latest move in “American Christianity.” It has a way of restoring “bigness” to the faith, to use your language. But it’s not the loving Lord of creation in charge. It’s mean spirited people taking the Name in vain and pushing around people they don’t like.
The piety and FAITH in that is microscopic if there at all. But it is a big bluster.
It’s an attempt at a Big Jesus, but misdirected, as you point out. It’s nothing more than the Puritans wanting a theocracy again – controlling what everyone says, does, and believes. It’s still rather small, just as you point out.
Comment
Pastor Matt,
I need to inform you about another blog/blogger I found. I don’t know where, now. Could have been through you, but since I don’t see your interaction or his mixing up on each other’s blogs, I doubt it. But he fits a general category of blogging that I sense you appreciate.
Here’s a link:
https://from-under-the-rubble.com/
Cheers!
I’ll check it out. Thanks!
Hello Matt
Amen to everything you wrote. Thank you.
One thing that struck me was your reference to everything being big at the church you visited, while they proclaimed a small Jesus. I believe there are churches in our tradition that proclaim a big Jesus, but unfortunately the liturgy and symbols proclaim a small Jesus.
In our tradition many churches have a baptismal bowl that is barely bigger than a soup bowl, and baptism is accomplished with little more than a sprinkling of water. If an unchurched stranger walked into such a baptism happening over a soup bowl size font, and saw the sprinkling with hardly enough water to wash ones hands, I doubt they would think we were worshipping a BIG deity. Same goes for the tiny wafers and mini shot glasses to God. If we proclaim a BIG Jesus why not a large loaf of real bread, and a generous cup of wine to be shared, or from which smaller glasses are filled? And when it comes to reading the Word of God, people reading from a piece of paper that can (and will be) thrown away at the end of the service hardly symbolizes that we believe in a Word that is big and powerful enough to cause all creation. Along the same line, the place from which the Word is proclaimed is often a portable lectern, or no lectern at all, the proclaimer simply stands in open space (or reads in front of a computer screen), opting to present a friendly, folksy demeanor rather than embodying the profound reality of stepping into a place reserved for the proclamation of an eternal Word. And don’t get me started about the presiding ministers who bless the assembly by making a miniature sign of the cross over them with a hand that is bent into some arthritic looking shape that makes it look weak.
Some churches miss the mark with their BIG symbols, and small proclamations. I think many in our tradition miss the mark by trying to proclaim a big Jesus, all the while setting out small symbols that can not carry the weight of the proclamation.
Again, thank you.
I think you are so right on target on this. We miss so many opportunities with this. The words just don’t match the symbolism, or the material. I remember in seminary a professor saying that architecture trumps theology every time. Meaning that the space will dictate what the actual belief is every time. This is why the church needs to change – to better match what we claim with what we actually mean in our space and with our material.