Dear Friends of Lakeview Community Church:
You are receiving this letter because you are now or have been a part of our fellowship. As we move to within days of the Easter celebration, I want to let you know about some of the things we believe God would have us do in the coming days.
It has been my long-held belief that there are foundational changes that need to happen to the modern Church of Jesus Christ. I will attempt to list a few of these things in the coming paragraphs.
At Lakeview we are far from perfect, and we have found the changes we have made have come as part of a journey that brings us to new territory at each bend in the road. We also realize that there is an innumerable group of people who attend church meetings each week who love the Lord and want to serve Him. Our emphasis is not the people, but the system–a self-perpetuating organizational structure of processes, doctrine and, of course, thought.
Here are (briefly) some of the things we will give our effort to change, in our own hearts and minds and in the Christian world around us.
Believers, alone and together, should be about building people, not organizations. In the United States, there are millions of members of the Lord’s Church and tens of thousands of qualified leaders. Think of what could be accomplished if our attention was turned from building organizations and meetings to equipping people.
Christianity is not a meeting. It is unfortunate that most churches believe that their meetings are the most vital spiritual time their attendees will have during the week. Of greater shame is they believe that is the way Jesus wants it. Churches even go so far as to teach their people to expect it. Don’t we understand that Christianity is not a meeting, and that an emphasis like that diminishes the value of the everyday lives of believers? Those days and hours lived in no one’s presence or accountability but that of the Lord. Life is not lived in a meeting; Christ is glorified by my work-a-day life, if I purpose it so.
Attendance at a meeting is not a measure of God’s blessing. I’ve been to many church growth and pastors’ meetings that emphasized how to grow our meetings. You would think this was a command of the Lord. I can find no direct command or indirect encouragement in the New Testament to make our meetings bigger. Unfortunately, we have few if any qualitative measures of maturity, only quantitative measures based on attendance, conversion cards or offerings. We don’t know how to measure success and maturity in life because we cannot count the lack of failure. Children who do not stray and marriages that stay together have no place on the tally sheet. Our emphasis on numbers has caused us to be carnal in our outlook and evaluation.
There is no biblical basis for modern children’s and youth ministry. Study after study tells us that parents are the most influential people in their children’s lives; yet when we get to church, we separate them. We tell parents our children’s workers are trained to minister to their children, implying it takes some special enablement to tell them about Jesus. Our constant repetition of that refrain minimizes the importance of parents (to whom God gave the task) and makes it easier for parents who now feel inadequate to relinquish their kids to a youth pastor. Why not keep families together? A place can be provided for the occasional restless or screaming little one and families can worship and study together. Kids can see their parents respond to the Word of God and parents can see the same for their kids. Why have churches taught parents to abrogate their responsibility in this most important area? I’ll write more later about the false premise of adolescence.
The gospel of self is not the Gospel of the New Testament. The true gospel tells the story of God’s amazing grace. It is the story of a Holy God who loves us and sends His Son to die in our place. It is amazing because we are completely undeserving and have no value except that which God applies to us. In this Bible Gospel, we must acknowledge our unworthiness and utter helplessness to better our situation in order to receive this gracious gift. We bring nothing except our helpless and hopeless state; and we receive because of His grace, not our worth.
Modern Christianity, in an effort to make the story more palatable, has watered down or removed the part of the story about the unworthiness of humanity. In telling only part of the story, the Church has produced followers who believe the Gospel is about them. They are demanding of God, without basic humility and without an understanding of God. They cannot grasp the concept of Christ’s Lordship, or God’s sovereignty. They believe God is there for them rather than their existing to honor and glorify Him.
I’m asking for your help. My heart goes out to the untold multitude of believers who have been frustrated and hurt by the modern church system. There are also millions who do not know Jesus and who cannot hear our message because the culture of our church system speaks louder than our words. I hope that if you agree with any of the above, you will take some time in the next weeks to visit our web site. We will be adding to these topics regularly. Further, if you agree I ask you to join us, not with your attendance or money, but with your heart and mind and prayers.
May the Lord bless you with a Christ-filled Easter.
Respectfully,
Pastor Jess
Rev. Jess Jessup
Pastor, LCC