(RNS) — We should expect the Christian church to be a community that faithfully preaches and teaches the word of God, a place where people are safe from predators and fraudsters (or where predators and fraudsters are dealt with swiftly, justly and openly when they are discovered). It should be a place that upholds Christian teaching not only in word but also in deed.
But should the church also be our social club, our finance guru, our accountability group, our sex therapist, our voter guide, our income stream, our sugar daddy, our self-help source? Ought it be the place where our deepest longings for significance and self-fulfillment are satisfied?
The church cannot be, nor should it be all — or even most — of this.
Yet modern American evangelicalism often implicitly (and at times explicitly) suggests the church should play an all-encompassing role in the life of the Christian.
With the development in the 20th century of what Christian writer and podcaster Skye Jethani calls the “evangelical industrial complex” and the accompanying rise of celebrity Christian leaders and influencers, a false expectation has been cultivated within evangelicalism about what the successful Christian life looks like—and the role the church should play in attaining that vision of success.
Sometimes Christian success is portrayed as creating or consuming a Christian version of whatever the world is doing: Christian education, Christian music, Christian publishing, Christian stores, Christian conferences, Christian movies and so on. Other times it is portrayed as having all social and relational needs met by the church: small groups, men’s groups, women’s groups, teen groups, college and career groups, craft groups, parenting groups, senior groups and grief groups.
Sometimes success is portrayed as having a career in the church or in Christian organizations: a ministry position, a contract from a Christian book publisher, a gig on a conference stage, a seminary degree, a “leadership” role, a place on the worship team or status as a Christian “influencer.”
Of course, there’s nothing wrong and much that is good about all (or most) of these endeavors. Indeed, I have done many of these things myself. The fact that I never expected that a doctorate from a secular university would lead me here is only proof that God’s ways are not man’s ways. Nor has a voice in evangelicalism prevented me from looking outside it in what I study or where I get my support.
Somewhere along the way, the idea that the church could provide everything we need became the idea that the church should offer these things, which has become the idea that the church must also fulfill all of these needs for everyone.
But this is not the purpose of the church. It is not meant to be the whole of life or to meet all our needs in life. The church is not a sugar daddy whose purpose is to meet all our personal, social and vocational needs.
Indeed, one of the significant developments of the Protestant Reformation was the insistence by Martin Luther and others that there is no secular-sacred divide, and that the holiness of the Christian life is not confined to church life.
To be sure, in order for the church to fulfill its rightful purpose it needs some who are called to preach, teach and answer the phone. But that’s not most of us. Most Christians are simply exhorted in Scripture to be part of the church by assembling together and encouraging one another in the faith. Most of us are called to serve by serving our neighbors in the world through our work, our passions, our gifts and our time.
Of all the reasons to be disappointed in the church (and there are many), we ought not be disappointed because it fails to provide us with income, employment, fame, security, spouse, purpose, prominence, platform or political power. I don’t know of any studies that document this evolution in our collective vision for the Christian good life, but I know anecdotally from countless relationships and conversations over the years that many Christians become disappointed and disillusioned by the church when falsely raised expectations for places in or alongside church ministry go unfulfilled.
The purpose of the church is simple, narrow even. The church is where we go to worship God together, to learn and grow in the faith together and to be equipped to go forth into the world to make disciples.
Let us do that good work — wherever God calls us to do it — and make disciples along the way. Let us be the church.