A few weeks ago I read this simple conclusion of a church leader,
“I’ve been a Christian for 32 years. I’ve worked for or been a part of many churches. A good chunk of my degree work focused on analyzing how churches operate. I think I have some qualifications to express my opinion here. If anyone were to ask me what the one essential ingredient was for a successful church, I’d say this:.
The people in the church are genuinely friendly
and loving toward strangers and each other.
.
Now before I get thumped by some watchblogger out there, I am, of course, assuming that the church assents to one of the Christian Church’s major creeds, such as the Nicene or Apostle’s. Otherwise, the use of the word church would be gratuitous.
As I see it, a church filled with loving and friendly people can overcome just about any obstacle. I’ve seen it too many times to think otherwise. And churches that lack this trait can have everything else in the world and fail miserably.
Can Jesus make any pagan misanthrope into a loving believer? Sure He can. My only question: Why then are so many supposed Christian churches filled with people who could care less about the person standing next to them?” (here’s the original link. The comments to the post are also worth reading).
Pretty simple stuff, but it helps explain why so much of what Jesus tells his disciples, and what Paul tells the young churches he writes to is related to the command to love our neighbors, especially those in the “household of faith.”
Personally, I would want to emphasize the centrality of the gospel more overtly. The author hints at this in his last sentence and stresses it in the comments that follow the article. Perhaps it would be better to say, “The one essential ingredient for a successful church is the gospel” and then move point out that the fruit of the gospel in our lives is expressed most clearly in loving and holy living. Interestingly, this is the flow of thought in John’s first epistle.
The big questions, of course, are the Why? and How? ones. If love is the fruit of the gospel, as the New Testament so clearly teaches, why are we not seeing more warm, welcoming, loving behavior in our churches? If this is a problem in our churches, how do respond as leaders? Which again brings us back to the gospel and its importance for believers.
I’m the author of the original post, so thank you for adding insights.
I purposefully avoided making comments about the “quality” of the Gospel being preached at a church because I have seen too many churches who preached the Gospel perfectly by most theological standards yet the people didn’t love each other–or anyone else for that matter.
In fact, I would argue that a church of loving people is already living the Gospel, even if it is not as overtly preached as some would like. This may sound like splitting hairs, but I think that truth is in the final product. A church of loving people can overcome deficiencies in their Gospel preaching while a church that preaches the Gospel perfectly may not be able to overcome the coldness of their people.
Don’t ask me why this is because you would think that the Gospel would warm even the coldest heart, but I think that some churches simply are filled with people who call themselves Christians, who understand what the Gospel is and how to live it, yet that same Gospel has not penetrated to the core of who they are.
Case in point: I have friends who attended a hardcore Calvinist Presbyterian (PCA) church in a tony neighborhood that ended up splitting because people in the church got upset that some of their members were attempting to evangelize poor Hispanics in a downtrodden neighborhood that bordered the high-class one. No one can fault that church for their preaching, yet many of the people didn’t want poor Hispanics “ruining” their “idyllic” church.
Those people were unloving–pure and simple, regardless of how pure their preaching was.
Thanks, Dan, for your comments.
I’m trying to look at things in a more “Hebraic” way, which I think is the worldview of the Biblical writers. In that way of thinking, you can’t really “know” something unless you are living it out – unless you “know” it by experience. So if you are not “living” in line with the gospel, your “knowledge” of the gospel is flawed.
I think that’s the perspective the apostle John was working from when he said “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar” and Paul was working from when he wrote Timothy about “sound doctrine” (I take Pauls use of the phrase to mean basically, teaching which produces healthy living, including relationships).
Thanks again for interacting on this – I found your post helpful.