In one of Latin America’s larger cities a group of Christian students, disenchanted with the local churches, has dropped out. Now they meet on their own and call themselves cristianos descolgados, literally “unhooked” (like a picture taken down from the wall) or “unattached Christians.” Talking some time ago to a pastor who knew them well, I asked the causes of their disillusion. He said that they lack serious biblical and expository teaching and social concern, that they’ve seen a blatant gap between what was taught and what was lived, and that the laity, especially young people, have not been allowed to participate in or even contribute to church programming.
The young quickly detect any dichotomy between the Church and its founder. It seems to them to have lost the ‘smell’ of Christ.
In another Latin American city a crowd of students had just returned from a camp. The Lord had met with them and they glowed with enthusiasm. Several of their friends had been converted. They were so excited that they had even (mistakenly, as I believe) baptized these converts in a river. Now the anticlimax had set in. “Why can’t we form our own university church?” they asked. I had a hard time persuading them to stay in their local churches and to seek to be instruments of reform in God’s hands.
This kind of disaffection is doubtless part of the worldwide revolt against institutional authority. But it is serious among Christians precisely because the Church ought not be the kind of oppressive structure or privileged establishment against which modern youth feel bound to revolt. In the secular world leaders “exercise authority,” Jesus said, but added, “it shall not be so among you.” He came to create a different kind of community, and he initiated a new style—leadership by service.
So the young, with their strong loathing for the inauthentic, quickly detect any dichotomy between the Church and its founder. Jesus has never ceased to attract them. They see him as the radical he was, impatient with the traditions of the elders and the conventions of society, a merciless critic of the religious establishment. They like that. But the Church? Somehow it seems to them to have lost the “smell” of Christ. So many vote—with their feet. They get out.
Is it possible, then, to spell out what the Church’s priorities should be? Here is my own list. First, we need a preaching and teaching ministry that faithfully expounds the text of Scripture at the same time it relates to the burning issues of the day. Evangelical preaching tends to be biblical but not contemporary, liberal preaching contemporary but not biblical. Why must we polarize? It is the combination of the two that is so powerful. It is a rare phenomenon.
Secondly, we need a warm, caring, supportive fellowship. Young people hunger for the authentic relationships of love. Hobart Mowrer, emeritus professor of psychiatry in the University of Illinois and well known critic of Freud, though by his own profession neither a Christian nor a theist, once described himself as having “a lover’s quarrel with the Church.” Asked what he meant by this, he replied that the Church had failed him when he was a teenager and continued to fail his patients today. How? “Because the Church has never learned the secret of community,” he said. Unfair perhaps, because some churches are genuine communities. But it was his opinion, which was born no doubt of bitter experience. I think it is the most damaging criticism of the Church I have ever heard.
Thirdly, we need worship services that express the reality of the living God and joyfully celebrate Jesus Christ’s victory over sin and death. Too often routine supplants reality, and the liturgy (if any) becomes lugubrious. I think public worship should always be dignified, but it is unforgivable to make it dull. “The longer I live,” said the late Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher, “the more convinced I am that Christianity is one long shout of joy.” He was right. And the joy of worship needs to be more uninhibited than is customary, at least in some of our more stolid historic denominations.
The signs of spiritual renewal are exactly the characteristics of the newborn Church on the day of Pentecost.
Fourthly, we need an outreach into the secular community that is imaginative, sensitive, and compassionate. The true eccentricity of the Church is seen when it turns toward the world. Such an outgoing concern would combine evangelism and social action and would overcome the sterile polarity that has developed between the two. It would insist that if faith without works is dead, then good news without good works lack credibility. It would also involve a renunciation of “clericalism,” that is, the clerical suppression of the laity. Instead, all the members of the body of Christ would be active, their different ministries determined by their different gifts.
As I have thought about these four major signs of spiritual renewal in the Church, I have been struck that they were exactly the characteristics of the newborn Church on the day of Pentecost. Those first spirit-filled Christians “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers … And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:42, 47, RSV). Wherever the Holy Spirit is present in power, the Church is always characterized by an apostolic doctrine, a loving fellowship, a joyful worship, and a continuous evangelism.
