Let God be God over the Church. It seems a rather silly thing to say. After all, who can prevent it? The point is that many Christians and churches live as practical deists, as though God is not really interested in how we operate, and as though he does not sovereignty direct all things that come to pass. Letting God be God means trusting him to work through the means he has ordained, without feeling the need for innovation, and simply doing as he has directed.
Letting God be God also means being who God wants us to be, recognizing that being is fundamental, and doing is only consequential. If we are who God wants us to be, we will inevitably do what God wants us to do.
Letting God be God over the church, seeing him as its center and glory, its source and its life, is a truly liberating experience. It liberates us from thinking that we have to do, in ourselves, what we are entirely incapable of doing. That is, growing the church. We cannot do the work that only God can do. We can work in the church, preach and teach, spread the gospel, encourage and urge each other on, but we cannot impart new life. Nor can we ever sanctify the church. Indeed we cannot even feed the church. It is God who supplies the food; we are simply called upon to serve it (1 Cor. 3:5). This, however, is precisely why Paul says, a little later, that “we do not lose heart” (2 Cor. 4:1, 16) but are “confident” (3:4; cf. 5:6).
While all of this is conventional enough, it is not common enough in evangelical churches. Lip service is paid to these ideas, but when we get really serious about “doing church” we turn to what we know best. We turn to structures and programs, appearances and management, advertising and marketing. Our preoccupation is with what we do and therefore with what we control. This is what animates the conversation among evangelical leaders, what fills the pages of magazines like Leadership, and what attracts pastors to the really big important conferences. This is what they are willing to pay serious money to hear.
Alas! It is missing the point, if I may say so. What is of primary interest in a technological world is technique, for that, after all, it how we manage everything else. In the kingdom of God things are different. It is not that we do not do things, but that our doing is rooted in our being. Who we are is more fundamental than what we do. Character is more basic than action. Being mastered by God is infinitely more important than having the know-how to manage the church.
Letting God be God over the church means that he becomes foundational to its being, thinking, and doing. In a highly pragmatic culture, such as we have in America, doing cuts itself off from thinking. The only thinking that gets done, at least with respect to the church, is about the how-to questions. The kind of critical thinking, the serious evaluation that should go along with all of this, is impatiently brushed aside as irrelevant. If something works, if it is successful, that means what was done has validated itself. What more needs to be thought about it?
I believe that today there is a deep yearning for churches in which God is God. Those are the churches that most easily become the communities we have all lost, where relations are developed, even in this fallen world, in the sight of God. They are where people strive to be truthful in those relations, which really is the key to integrity, and the integrity ties together our public and private lives. Churches, in fact, need to be communities that love the truth God has revealed and, in so doing, become serous and joyous about the God of that truth and intent upon serving him in his world. The church is not a business, not an experiment, not a product to be sold. It is an outpost of the kingdom, a sign of things to come in Christ’s sovereign rule, which is now hidden but will be make open and public. Then all the world will bow before him in recognition of who he is.
And this, I dare say, is the only answer we have for the church’s existence and service. It is the anticipation of that great day. It is pointing beyond itself to that great day. It lives in this world, but it lives because it has seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. This is the knowledge that changes everything. Business savvy, organizational wizardry, cultural relevance are simply no substitute for this. Unless the Lord rebuilds the evangelical church today, as we humble ourselves before him and hear afresh his word, it will not be rebuilt.
—David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Eerdmans, 2008), 247–248.
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Posted in: Church & Culture · David Wells · The Courage to be Protestant
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