It’s time to consider another covert (yet raging) idol in the Amercan church, the pursuit of “excellence”.

You know you have heard this before and most likely you have said it. We want the music, sermon, lighting, website, programs, mailers, brochures, bulletins to be excellent. OK. What’s the problem? Who in their right mind would argue that this attitude towards excellence is a bad thing? After all, doesn’t God want us to give him our very best (Colossians 3:23)?

An idol is often times something that is inherently good but becomes too important to us. Sex, career, family, food, approval are all good things but many times they begin to control us and that is when they cross the line and become idols (1 John 5:21). Same thing happens as we pursue excellence in the church.

TEN SIGNS excellence has become way too important to you…

• You have a hard time worshipping God if the music is not just right. Have you ever considered just how miserable many of us would be during corporate worship in the New Testament church?
• Church planting seems like an impossible dream because the expectations for the church planter and their future ministry are unrealistic. The planter needs to be a dynamic teacher, have CEO management abilities, boatloads of cash in order to make a splash with their Sunday morning “experience”.
• (Leaders) You slip into depression when the performance did not go seamlessly.
• (Leaders) The primary question you ask after a worship service is “how did things go?” instead of the better question, “did we sense the Spirit of God at work?”
• (Preachers) You compare yourself to celebrity pastors and live with a sense of inadequacy and failure instead of pursuing faithfulness to the best of your ability. I personally know a little something about this life-sucking idol…
• You find yourself critiquing the sermon (kinda like a taste test) rather than searching hard for what the Spirit is saying to you personally.
• You have subtly started to believe that growth in the church is the result of doing things with excellence.
• You confuse the activity of the Holy Spirit on Sunday morning with the activity of a great production team. Was your spiritual buzz the result of God being at work or killer technology?
• (Leaders) You find yourself inwardly dreading the idea of ramping back up for another performance on Sunday. You quietly wonder how you are ever going to beat what you did the week before. You are finding that the pursuit of excellence is stealing your joy in Jesus Christ.
• You have never reflected on the fact that so many underground churches across the world (like China) will never live up to our arbitrary standards of excellence and yet they are growing and thriving.

What SIGNS would you add to the list?

Later addition to the list: (Leaders) Most of our time, energy, and resources goes towards planning for the Sunday morning service to the detriment of living out the gospel in community Monday through Saturday.

This is, of course, obvious, but all the same it needs saying- sometimes requiring a raised voice. I have spent an adult lifetime with the assigned task of guiding men and women into living out the Christian faith in the place in which they raise the children and work for a living, go fishing and play golf, buy the groceries and park their cars. In the course of this work, I find that cultivating a sense of place as the exclusive and irreplaceable setting for following Jesus is even more difficult than persuading men and women of the truth of the message of Jesus. Why is it easier for me to believe in the holy (because God inspired it) truth of John 3:16  than the holy (because God made it) ground at 579 Apricot Lane where I live?

One of the seductions that continues to bedevil Christian obedience is the construction of utopias, whether in fact or fantasy, ideal places where we can live the good and blessed and righteous life without inhibition or interference. The imagining and attempted construction of Utopias appears is an old habit of our kind. Sometimes we attempt it politically through communities, sometimes socially in communes, sometimes religiously in churches. It never comes to anything but grief. Meanwhile, that place we actually are is dismissed or demeaned as inadequate for serious living to the glory of God. But Utopia is literally “no-place.” We can only live our lives in actual place, not imagined or fantasized or artificially fashioned places.

Our scriptures that bring us the story of our salvation, ground us in place. Everywhere they insist on this ground. Everything that is critically important to us takes place on the ground. The mountains and valleys, towns and cities, regions and countries: Haran, Ur, Caanan, Hebron, Tekoa, Bethlehem, Gibeon, the Kidron Valley, Ashkelon. Big cities and small towns. Famous landmarks and unvisited obscurities. People who want God or religion as an escape from their place because it is difficult, (or maybe just mundane), don’t find this much to their liking. But there it is- there’s no getting around it. But to the man or woman wanting more reality, not less, this is insistence that all genuine life,  life that is embraced in God’s work of salvation, is grounded, is good news indeed.

We must ourselves,  attend to a consideration of the place where we live and explore the ways in which the place itself with its many dimensions is integral to the Gospel way we live. We are used to having natural places, our mountains and rivers, appreciated as sacred places. And we are used to having secularized and problem ridden cities targeted as places for critical and sometimes dramatic missions. But we aren’t used to this, seeing the ordinary places where we live as gift places, as holy sites. -Eugene Peterson (quote is found in “Sidewalks in the Kingdom“)

Missional Community – Luke’s Story from The Austin Stone on Vimeo.

In my view, the common Christian declaration that ‘this world is not my home, I am just passing through’ is unhelpful to mission in suburbia. To be deeply in vested in our context requires that we are fully at home; that we are able to raise  our hand and say this is where I belong; I am fully invested in this place and fully present. Mission in suburbia is not a well-intentioned ‘sortie’ into a foreign land. It is about incarnational presence. Those engaged with the mission of God in suburbia must begin by naming their own suburban identity. We are not people of another land come with good news of a God who resides elsewhere. Rather, we are neighbours, fellow suburbanites who have discovered and continue seeking the presence and liberating power of the gospel where we are. We, too, have been drawn to suburbia by longings common to those up and down our streets. We are no different. We do not inhabit as alternative universe. Suburbia is our home.

In the Christian tradition, images of spirituality are most often cited to acts of withdrawal and relinquishment, treating all present attachements as counter to discipleship. At it’s core, it’s a spirituality of detachment. I would argue that spirituality in suburbia requires not detachment but even deeper attachments. In his book The Good Life: Genuine Christianity for the Middle-Class, theologian David Matzko McCarthy calls us to just such spirituality, one of deep attachment to the places we inhabit, treating a house and a neighbourhood not as an investment in some elusive future-a commodity to be bought and sold for financial gain-but a place in which we put down our roots and invest our lives. In essence, mcCarthy calls for a ‘middle-class asceticism,’ a simplicity and moderation of life that nurtures long-term attachments, and deep genuine investments in the people, places and things of our suburban lives. This is a counter-cultural act, a radical statement of contentment in a consumerist society that thrives on our discontent. Indeed, there is nothing more counter-cultural in consumer-driven suburban Australia to say with conviction, ‘what I have and where I am is enough’

On an individual level, this requires Christians living in suburbia dig deeply into the present, caring for and nurturing good neighbourhoods. According to McCarthy, ‘we ought to undertake small acts of living well, or preserving and caring for a place as a part of our calling to friendship and peace. He continues:

“With God’s grace, we have the capacity to make and cultivate things and places that are truly good. In making and tending to things in this world, we cultivate human life.”

For the church, this intentional investment in the ‘now’ of the church’s presence will perhaps require less aspiration to becoming the large, regional congregation that draws people from a swag of suburban postcodes in favour of a deeper contentment with being a genuinely local community of faith, one that is committed to its immediate locality.

“You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe-and shudder.” -James 2:19

Slysnare: Mindpleasure, did the enemy have their Bible study again this past Wednesday night?

Mindpleasure: Yes, they continue to meet faithfully every Wednesday night from 7:00 till 8:30 PM. They are like clockwork.

Slysnare: Good, good. What did they discuss this week?

Mindpleasure: You won’t believe it. They were discussing some of the most dangerous teaching in the enemy’s book. They read from James 1, the stuff about true religion.  You know the garbage, “religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit the orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” Makes me shudder to think of what would happen if….

Slysnare: Yes, if they only knew the hideous power of those words. I trust that you made sure all they did was talk, right?

Mindpleasure: As you know, it is not in my nature to be honest, but I must tell you that I did not have to do much. Jimmy and Sarah, who have been in the enemy’s camp for years, were only concerned with the style of teaching and so they were mentally distracted the whole time. Craig was mad because someone had offended him earlier in the week so he’s been existing in a self-imposed prison. The beautiful power of unforgiveness!  Chris and Stacy had brought their highlighters and were marking up their Bibles like crazy but I know that they are so busy with life that there is little chance that these words from James will ever seriously impact them. Child’s play.

Slysnare: Mindpleasure, I see a promotion in your future. Tell me about the neighborhood in which they have their Bible studies.

Mindpleasure: That is the best part! Their Bible studies have had almost no impact on their neighbors or their neighborhoods. Don’t get me wrong, there have been some close calls. There are rare occasions in the Bible study where I can see the enemy begin to open their spiritual eyes and they start using phrases like “living it out” and “let’s do something.” But very subtly I remind them how busy they are or get them to argue about the exact meaning of a Greek word. Sometimes it is just too easy.

Slysnare: Good, good. I have noticed that for some in the enemy’s camp Bible study is like a drug. They are always chasing the next buzz, the next high. They pursue a little bit more knowledge believing that this is the end game. Long ago we came to realize that dead religion is just as effective as crack, maybe even more powerful when it comes to immobilizing the enemy. Keep up the great work and let’s meet again after their next Bible study.