Rules of Engagement

After sifting through the “cheers and jeers” in response to my article “Six Ways I Quit Church,” I found some themes worth exploring. Did I really quit? If not, what did I mean? And what does it mean for our ecclesiology and our personal holiness?

Here is further explanation of my “quitting” and what it meant for me personally and for the churches I have served. I also want to offer my three rules for engaging our culture.

Some people took the article quite literally. I received some kudos from people who dropped out of Christian community. Other readers didn’t engage the tongue in cheek boat/fish metaphors at the level I intended, taking them too seriously, taking them beyond their usefulness, or not getting the spirit of the metaphors. What I offered as a winsome word picture some received with a vitriolic spirit, which probably makes quite a few people long to quit church for real.

Still other readers were steamed because they concluded that not only had I lazily and selfishly disconnected from church, but also that I was encouraging others to do the same. I wrote “I did not attend church on Sunday mornings with any consistency.” To interpret that phrase to mean that I merely “attended Bedside Baptist and the Bagel Church” is a misinterpretation.

Another cause for alarm may have been the phrase, “We must find ways to disconnect from the church way of thinking, feeling, and living.” I admit that this was a sloppy sentence that didn’t carry the full meaning I intended. It was too easy to take literally, but it does touch on the first important theme for conversation: the church.

Ecclesiology: How do we understand the church?

Some readers wondered which church I quit. A reader in South Africa expressed a beautifully balanced concern: “Church is meant to be a real living relationship/friendship in Jesus with a community of friends who also trust, love and obey Jesus, not just a Sunday meeting. Did you stop being in friendship with other believers for four years or just stop attending a Sunday meeting?”

What a great description of what many of us are going through. We want church to be “a community of friends” but experience it as just “a Sunday meeting.” My four years were marked by some time away from Sunday morning meetings, but never away from church as community. In fact, for the majority of that time I served a church that met on Sunday evenings for worship, Tuesday nights for discipleship and fellowship, and most Friday mornings for accountability. This atypical church allowed me to engage people who were out and about during the sacred 11 o’clock hour of Sunday morning, something I’d never been able to do before.

The impact on my life was a focused desire to help people connect to God and to one another—a mission bigger, better, and more biblical than (but not necessarily opposed to) getting people into a Sunday morning meeting. What I learned during those Sunday mornings away from church meetings had great impact on the church I served then and led me to plant a new congregation based on those lessons.

People who wondered when I decided to “unquit” may not fully appreciate the dual meaning the term church carries for so many people today. All across the globe, there are Christians who want “church” to be more like church ought to be. They desire more than an event to attend, a place to go, or an institution to serve. They are fed up with 501(c)3 organizations that are far less than the authentic Christian communities they are called to be. They want a community of faith with whom they can share life and they desire a common journey that is guided by Christ toward the Father.

Holiness: How do we stay spiritually healthy while engaging a sick world?

Some readers were aghast that I’ve put myself in unseemly environments in order to get to know people with whom we’re called to minister.

A reader in Virginia put it this way: “Oh, I get it, instead of going to church, mix with the world until your head is so full of garbage thinking that you feel that you need God again.” This response highlights a fear many people have toward culture.

Another reader put it this way: “How far can one go down this road? Would he, for example, go to a drunken orgy? A spouse-swapping party?”

These concerns deal with a good question: How can we remain spiritually safe while interacting with and having impact on a dangerous world?

Through prayer and conversation with other believers, I’ve established for myself three principles for engaging the pre-Christian world.

(1) I want to follow the example of Jesus. I am amazed at an aspect of his ministry that is so obvious, but which we often miss: he partied with sinners and never sinned; he touched the unclean without becoming dirty; he healed the sick, but didn’t catch any of the diseases. I take his example as a mandate to mingle without undue fear of being contaminated.

(2) I understand that I am not Jesus. This principle balances the first one. Jesus had the full Spirit of God empowering him to resist temptation. I don’t. So I try my best to discern what situations will be too much and I avoid them.

For some people, going to a KISS concert or experiencing a mosh pit is an unbearable flirtation with sin, so they rightly stay away. Realizing the danger involved, I make such expeditions in prayer and in Christian community.

There are other expeditions I chose not to make. For instance, I know that certain stores will foster in me an unholy consumerism (a sin that many fail to recognize and which is even encouraged by much of the Christian subculture). Humbly asking, “How far can one go?” is a good endeavor. However, the church leader who believes “too far” is a step or two beyond where he or she draws the line is self-centered.

In my opinion, we are right to carefully engage the world but wrong to assume others aren’t simply because their actions differ from ours.

(3) The center of my theology is the wondrous concept of grace. I need it and Jesus gives it. When it comes to mixing with the world, I try to be diligent, but I still know two things: I will sometimes fail, and Christ will always be there to catch me, heal me, clean me, and forgive me.

More than likely you also have some standards or principles for how to engage the world. And yours may differ from mine. If you have not yet established such guidelines, perhaps you will sit down with a community of Jesus followers to search Scripture and your heart for your own rules of engagement.

If you wish to continue the conversation, consider reading:

Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission by David Bosch (Orbis Books, 1991)

A Peculiar People: The Church As Culture in a Post-Christian Society by Rodney Clapp (InterVarsity Press, 1996)

The Continuing Conversion of the Church by Darrell L. Guder (Eerdmans, 2000) “Sometimes You Just Need to Disappear” by Gordon McDonald (Leadership, Summer 2003)

Christ and Culture by H. Richard Niebuhr (reprinted by Harper San Francisco, 2002)

The Prodigal Hugging Church: A Scandalous Approach to Mission for the 21st Century, by Tim Wright (Augsburg Fortress, 2001)

Chad Hall serves as consultant/coach with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (www.bscnc.org) and as the lead pastor of Connection Church in Hickory, North Carolina (www.connectionchurch.com).

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