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Church, Here’s Some Good News and Some Bad News

Shift happens.

I have some good news and some bad news about the Church.

There is a movement happening in these days. It is undeniable. If you open your eyes you will bear witness to it all:

Women are taking their rightful place of leadership in local faith communities, sharing the full breadth and depth of their gifts without constraint or caveat—and without needing the permission from those who don’t realize how redemptive this all is.

More and more Christians are through debating whether or not LGBTQ people are the Church that one day could or might be, having realized that they are the Church that already is; that they are full image bearers of God and that their presence is nonnegotiable. To so many people of faith this is simply no longer a question.

The fight for justice and equality is again becoming the centerpiece where local faith communities recognize these things not to be optional, extracurricular activities for those claiming to follow Christ, but the disciple’s very heartbeat.

Millions of Christians are coming to experience the Bible in a new way; not as “God’s Inerrant Answer Book” to be yielded as a weapon against those who differ from them, but as the honest record of similarly flawed, failing, striving ancestors trying to understand and reflect the character of God where they find themselves in the story together.

Christianity is being slowly wrestled away from being the sole property one political party, and these folks are being gently reminded that they never rightfully owned it anyway; that Jesus transcends our systems and overruns our borders and denounces our power moves.

Many people are departing the church campus and becoming the Church in homes and pubs and galleries and parks. They aren’t showing-up in the pews on Sundays but they’re finding deep spiritual community and beautifully altering the planet, finding new ways to express faith together. The institution is shrinking but the organism is thriving.

Rigid dogma and man-made doctrine are being recognized as the idols they have been, and a generation of people of faith are realizing that God is far bigger than anything we construct to hold or represent God. We are right-sizing Divinity together.

Christian, this is the news today about the Church. It simply is. The Church will continue to grow more diverse, more inclusive, more open. It will never go backward. It will never again shrink the table. It is slowly but surely outgrowing the bigotry, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and misogyny of its past and it will not be stuffed back into it again.

Now whether this news is good or bad to your heart, well that is the bigger story here.

Should this all discourage you or fill you with panic, you may find yourself doubling down, digging your heels in and becoming more bitter, more angry, more certain that the sky is indeed falling. You may be seeing the world as spiraling hopelessly downward and be fully convinced that these are terrible, Godless days and that all is lost.

If you find this all to be very bad news about the Church, I can only tell you that I respectfully disagree. I can only invite you to the table to share your worry and your fear and your story, and to let me and those like me tell you what we see from where we stand—and why we are so encouraged that it is of God.

But if this all gives you hope; if it is the Church that you see being built, the Church that you are about building in the world, then be greatly encouraged today. You are in good company. Every day I hear from your many kindred spirits walking the planet. They like you, are questioning their assumptions, challenging tradition, praying different prayers, dreaming bigger dreams, and yearning to be part of a Church that is as diverse and expansive and interconnected as creation. Every day, they find greater courage to give voice to these things and to declare it as very good news. And as this happens, that goodness begins to go viral and humanity evolves into a better version of itself.

If you have been the recipient of Church-sanctioned bigotry, racism, and homophobia, know that while the pace and the scale of change may not be what you desire or deserve, it is still happening; like yeast in the dough it is permeating everything and people are being renovated from within, heart by heart. That is how revolution begins and in fact, has begun.  

That’s the news for today, Church.

Whether it seems good or bad to you, live accordingly.

 

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