“Jesus is Gone.” Are we lagging behind?

November 16, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

Our little parish church happily accepted three new members recently. Two more will likely be joining our company before the year is out. This is always good news for a small community. It means new energy, new enthusiasm and commitment to the congregation’s vision of an inclusive, loving, active ministry in its neighborhood.

But around us it seems there are churches closing or about to close. “They are circling the drain,” says my colleague Pastor Ruth. Given to introspection, we might easily re-examine ourselves and check our pulse for shortcomings, failings, errors, that cause a church to wither and die. Last year the oldest Lutheran church in Los Angeles, dating back to the 1880s, closed its doors.

But it is not simply that any one individual’s or any one congregation’s failings and errors cause a congregation to shut down. It seems as if THE Church is shrinking, at least in the “First World.”

In Germany churches have been closing in record numbers — even village churches, once the vibrant enter of village life. Churches which have held worship services for more than 700 years are now becoming restaurants, clubs, music halls or private residences. “Jesus is gone,” said young filmmaker Juliane Beer who bought the whole brick church in Briest in east Germany for $10,000, according to a Los Angeles Times story April 22.

Clearly, the church as a central cultural fixture is in decline in the West. In Africa, where it is growing, only the fundamentalist arm seems to have any strength, and if Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola’s constant diatribes are any indication, it is a conservative or fundamentalist slant on the Christian faith that many of us in the declining Christian West would find odious. (See my blog for October 10, “Culture war is not necessarily disunity.” I remember saying, when I was younger, that if fundamentalism were the only form of Christianity left, I would not be a Christian. Now it appears that even during my lifetime, I may be tested with the choice I had pictured.

If “Jesus is gone”—from the church in Briest, Germany, or for that matter gone from the churches of the West, that would certainly explain why the churches are in such sorry decline. If Jesus is gone from what we are doing as a church, then we’re doomed to fail, as Gamaliel reminded his colleagues (Acts 5:38). But I take a spiritual slant on this phrase from the young filmmaker, who wants to turn the church in Briest into an artist’s studio. If Jesus is gone from the church we know and have given our lives to, then where is he moving?

I put faith in Jesus more than in the church, although both are named in the historic Creeds of the church among that which Christians “believe in.” But the Jesus I know is not static, and certainly not hanging around in church buildings waiting for the faithful to show up every week, or several times a year, to admire him. Jesus is living in the world — serving, ministering, healing, challenging, suffering and dying. Jesus is rising again places where he is not expected to be alive (as the first apostles’ came to realize). Our mission, as followers of Jesus is to continually learn where he is working now and to follow him in his work.

We are constantly being urged by Jesus to “keep up!” If his work can be done in and through churches, fine. If not, our faith is in Jesus, through whom the church has its life. I really hope I don’t need to make the hard choice between them, so I remain vigilant, diligent, hopeful and hard-working to keep my church centered upon Jesus, not upon itself.

And if people come here seeking Christ in us, in our church community, then we will grow, not shrink. We will be born again, not die.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

[Talk amongst yourselves:  also see “Spirituality: Do we look like Jesus?”  October 1, 2007]

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