A few weeks ago, Christian Today published an anonymous story, written by a friend of mine, called 'When church lets you down'. It was the heartbreaking account of how he and his family joined a new church thinking they had found a place of healing and belonging, and in fact received abuse, rejection and loneliness. It was, as the author put it, a successful church with a culture where "those who cannot keep up are left behind". It was precisely as his family faced their greatest moments of struggle and difficulty that the church failed them.
Generally when I share articles on my own social media accounts, they're largely ignored (it's a link-saturated culture, I don't blame anyone). This one wasn't. It was shared over and over again. People posted comments of solidarity and sadness, and perhaps most worryingly, of identification; they'd seen or experienced very similar things. The emerging picture was clear: this wasn't just a one-off story... this happens a lot, perhaps all over the world.
It seems to me that as we strive to stimulate growth in a time of church decline, it's easy to define success in terms of how attractive our church is on the surface, and how good a job that does of drawing people in. Engaging preaching (the sort that even gets downloaded afterwards), great worship music, and even cool branding have become elevated as signs that we're doing it right. 'Visionary' leadership, ad-agency style mission statements and innovative staff job titles demonstrate some sort of exciting forward momentum. But is that what church is really about?
What my friend needed from his church wasn't a pastor on the verge of a book deal or a youth ministry with an expensive lighting rig. What he needed was a place of love, support and friendship, where he could ask searching questions and find people willing to wrestle through them too. He needed a place where in their season of brokenness, his family would be prioritised by the pastoral staff and volunteers. Instead they were identified as a problem; a blockage on the route to growth and success. It's sickening when you stop to think about it.
Their story is terribly sad, but it doesn't need to be told in vain. Perhaps my friend's brave words can act as a catalyst for a bit of self-reflection and even change in all of us. I think there are a few things we can learn from his family's story as we try to create churches which truly reflect God's heart for our communities.
Success doesn't always equal growth
The last few years have seen a whole new industry of books and conferences spring up around church leadership. Fuelled by the growth of American megachurches, which naturally inspire ambitious pastors worldwide to wonder if the same could happen in their parish, there's now an endless array of experts lining up to tell us how to become more successful. The big implication in this is that numerical growth, and a corresponding growth in the leaders' influence, is the clearest indicator of that success – and indeed the clearest goal. Yet there are other kinds of profound success: totally broken lives transformed through years of prayer and support; small churches in hard-to-reach-areas that have seen non-Christian families slowly devote their lives to Jesus.
So what? We need to avoid lazily conflating these two concepts. Of course we should want our churches to succeed; of course we pray that they'll grow. But one does not equal the other. The hard job for leaders is to slay the idol of growth which causes others to point and comment at how well you're doing. This didn't seem to be a factor for Jesus at all; why should it be for us?
Growth doesn't always equal success
Not only does growth become confused with success, sometimes it actively masks fundamental flaws in our churches. A church can grow for all sorts of reasons, and not all of them are good. If you put on an incredible show for your visitors, of course they'll turn up in number, and they'll probably even tell their friends too. But if at your heart you're not truly a community that cares deeply for people; if you're just preaching a message that's friendly to what Paul calls "itching ears" (2 Timothy 4:3), then you possibly haven't even built a church – just a Christian stage show. And when people join your congregation thinking they've joined a pastoral community that could actually support them, they end up getting badly hurt.
So what? Again, we shouldn't idolise growth, or the leaders who preside over large churches. Of course it's great to learn from them – as from anyone – but we need to be wise in trying to understand the reasons behind their growth, and what the reality of their church family looks like. There are some churches that do a good job of providing both a great service 'experience' and deep community behind it... but there are also some that do not.
We need to really 'see' the people in our churches
My friend and CEO Chris Curtis brilliantly opened up Jesus' encounter with the 'sinful' woman in Luke 7 at this Summer's Soul Survivor youth festival, and particularly the moment where he asks Simon the Pharisee: "do you see this woman?" (v44). Jesus knows that he can physically spot her of course, but that's not what he's asking. Instead he's pushing Simon to look beyond his judgments about her, and the flaws that she literally wears around her neck in a perfume bottle. To Simon she was the least worthy, least important person in the room; to Jesus she was the exact opposite. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have Jesus' perspective than Simon's, and that means truly seeking to 'see' even the most broken and difficult people in our churches as God does. Not just as suffering people with a painful past, but as new members of the family with a hope for the future.
So what? Our churches should be a place where the most damaged and even the most difficult people shouldn't only be welcomed, but prioritised. There's a huge cost to that in terms of pastoral time and energy (and as pastor once candidly confided to me, "the trouble with these people is that they don't bring in any money"). But I wonder if a different measure of success in church is how welcoming we are to the most broken people in our society?
This can't just become an opportunity to bash 'The Church'
The darker side of the online discussion which followed my friend's article was the gleeful opportunity taken by many people to bash 'the church' as a result. Yet the national and international church is an extraordinarily diverse body, and any attempts to characterise it inevitably creates a straw man. The church, as many have put it, is God's 'Plan A' for the world, and we can't just write it off and search around vainly for Plan B (there isn't one). Instead, it should be a provocation for self-reflection; an opportunity to ask how could my church do better in situations like this, and what can I do practically to be part of the solution.
So what? Talk is cheap, especially the critical variety. Of course we should shine a light on terrible abuses of power like this, but we can't just stop there. The best way to change the church is from within; so if we feel riled up by stories like my friend's, the best response is to roll our sleeves up and start to be that change ourselves.
Martin Saunders is a Contributing Editor for Christian Today and the Deputy CEO of Youthscape. Follow him on Twitter @martinsaunders.
