Synopsis
Questioning the move on the part of several local congregations to uncritically capitulate to state sanctioned COVID restrictions and lockdowns? Wondering about how Christians could offer a prophetic response to the pressing societal issues like the George Floyd killing, cancel culture, critical race theory, and the invasion of gender dysphoria into our cultural institutions? The recent publication, Failed Church: Restoring a Vision of Ecclesial Victory, seeks to constructively critique and remedy the church’s problematic responses to these dominant societal issues, reminding Christians of Christ’s love for His church, while calling institutional churches to repentance over a cultural waywardness, which Christians have far too easily accepted at their own peril.
Failed Church, a book edited by P. Andrew Sandlin, is a collection of essays, written by several concerned Christian leaders (thoughtful laymen, educators, theologians, and pastors) over the complacency and capitulation of several institutional churches towards the broader secular influences, pervading the doorsteps of congregations. Of course, the societal issues, both confronting and challenging local congregations are, indeed, multifaceted, requiring a wide-ranging response from a diversity of voices, all concerned about a singular theme, namely a distinctly Christian application of faith to all of life.
The contributors address such topics as the failure to see the church as essential, prayerlessness, the Christian response to environmentalism, the spirituality and worldliness of denominationalism, the recovery of a comprehensive Christian worldview, the religious experience of COVID and the limitless power of the state, the failure of the church to grasp the limits of Romans 13, and failed eschatological frameworks and their consequences.
Readers will be delighted to learn that the contributors of Failed Church do not stop at addressing the social problems, facing both the church and the broader culture—like thorough physicians, the contributors endeavour to thoughtfully identify the ecclesiastical ills, preventing Christians from embracing Christ’s high calling for His bride, for the purpose of a needed cure, or as Sandlin puts it, Failed Church “is not only a diagnosis but [is] also a prescription: the specifics of ecclesial illnesses and their cure”(xiv).
Though the individual contributors approach the short falls of local churches from a diversity of angles, Christian readers will be delighted to learn that they are unanimously committed to biblical authority, and historic Christian orthodoxy, while all cherishing reformational leanings, which is, as mentioned, the application of biblical faith to all of life. This reformational stance on ecclesiology is refreshing because the authors jointly endeavour to address the ailing response of local congregations towards the invasiveness of secular humanism, while exposing the ineffectiveness of evangelical pietism, and theological liberalism to comprehensively confront the cultural enemy, lurking at the doors of local churches.
Most notably, the reformational stance of the contributors seeks to approach the dominant cultural issues of the present in keeping with a biblical direction and worldview, while, at the same time, they seek to honour the creational norms in keeping with God’s ordering of creation, and the time-tested organizational structures in keeping with those creational norms. Failed Church is, in turn, a prophetic exhortation on the part of faithful leaders, desiring to witness a flourishing church that worshipfully honours the Lordship of Christ in every area of life and the transformative effect of the gospel over culture. In cherishing this reformational view of reality, one of the central points of contentions that the contributors voice against the modern church has to do with how easily the modern church capitulates to the secular culture. The contributors of Failed Church provide real answers as to why the modern church so easily and uncritically surrenders to the whims of the broader culture.
The Need for a Comprehensive Christian Worldview
The strength of a distinctly Christian outlook on reality is that it uniquely provides foundational answers to the big questions of life, where all other religious outlooks fail dramatically. Beginning with the creator, creation distinction, a Christian worldview, for example, coherently explains the origins and goodness of the created order, the reasons for sin, pain, decay, and death, stemming from the fall, the redemption of all creation through the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ, and the anticipated consummation of all things in Jesus Christ. One would certainly expect that Christians, of all people, would approach reality through a distinctly Christian lens—after all, secularists, indeed, approach reality through a secular lens. Several Christians, however, (knowingly or unknowingly), particularly in the West, merge a Christian understanding of reality with a secular understanding.
Levi Secord’s contribution pinpoints the errors of this syncretistic tendency of the modern church, highlighting the fact that modern Christians do not evidence an integrated, holistic, and comprehensive worldview. In Secord’s view, Christians, alternatively settle for “a piecemeal view of life and reality.” This feeble status of worldview thinking is, in Secord’s estimation, a significant reason for several of the problems that the modern church faces (Failed Church, 119). Secord maintains that the restoration of a consistently Christian worldview among believing Christian is the necessary answer to this “piecemeal view of life and reality.” Secord observes:
Christianity is a unified faith that centers on the person and work of Christ. The Christian worldview recognizes this truth—that it is Christ or chaos. If Christians want to know and live rightly, they must reject the fragmentation of secularism and regain a robust Christian worldview. Christ’s work unites ‘all things in him, things in heaven, and things on earth’ (Eph. 1:10). Our faith offers a unified whole that opposes the fragmented living of secularism. This is good news we must proclaim—all of life matters because Christ is Lord over all of life. It is time for Christians to lean into a unified faith and to stop begging for scraps from lesser worldviews (Failed Church, 127).
Secord effectively reminds us that, if Christians are to comprehensively and effectively address the problematic issues such as the invasive influence of secularism, the secular/sacred divide of evangelical pietism, and critical race theory, then they are going to have to do so through the lens of a unified faith, focusing the narrative of all reality on the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Secord’s outlook on this unified faith also has significant implications on the manner in which Christians approach issues of
- The essentiality of the local church;
- The prominence of the Kingdom of God over the ministry of the local church;
- The prayerfulness of Christians;
- Christ’s exclusive role as shepherd over His Church;
- Environmental ethics;
- creational economics
The Local Church is Essential
The question over the essential role of the institutional church in the broader society was one that generated discussion and debate among Christians during COVID. Several within the church definitively maintained that local churches ought to have obeyed the public health officials, who heartedly assume that church participation is a non-essential activity, in keeping with a popular interpretation of Romans 13.
Roger Wagner, however, reminds us that faithful Christians must, despite these secular leanings of health officials, return to the biblical emphases, which highlights the vital importance of the visible church in its “worship, sacraments, officers, and discipline” (Failed Church, 10). Wagner bemoans the view of professing believers, tending toward a low esteem for the corporate fellowship of Christian believers. Wagner, thereby, urges Christians to view the regular gathering of Christians as essential in fulfilling the great commission (Failed Church, 3). However:
The Ministry of the Church must not over-shadow the Kingdom of God
Christians have typically maintained that the New Testament term ecclesia means the house of the Lord, existing within the confines of a cultic structure. But Stephen Perks contends that this popular understanding of ecclesia is misguided. Perks maintains that ecclesia is a reference to congregation or assembly as opposed to the common understanding, which assumes that the church is a liturgical institution, overseen by the clergy. Perks, thereby, seeks to remedy this misunderstanding of the church as a cultic institution, stressing that ecclesia is a political term—“an assembly of the citizens regularly summoned, the legislative assembly” (Failed Church, 14). Perks, consequently, contends that ecclesia, at least as the Apostles understood the term, referred, not to a cultic entity, but a political one.
Perks, thus, maintains that the ‘chief error’ of Christians has to do with wrong priorities, which over-emphasize rituals, worship services, and prayer meeting as a greater imperative than the advancement of the Kingdom of God (a political term). As those redeemed by Christ, Perks highlights the reality that Christians are those who have been transferred from one political order (the world) to the enduring political order, namely the Kingdom of God. In the effort to correct this misunderstood interpretation of ecclesia, Perks exhorts Christians to “incarnate the Kingdom of God in its life as a social order” (Failed Church, 22).
In Perk’s view, incarnating the Kingdom of God involves organizing a distinctly Christian approach to education that conforms to God’s will, as opposed to the whims of secular humanism. Furthermore, Perks states that Christians, in the effort to incarnate the Kingdom of God in the social order, need to reorganize justice, welfare, and medicine after the standards of God’s design as opposed to secular humanism. Though Sunday worship is a vital aspect of the Christian’s life and fellowship, Perks prompts us not to allow these important traditions to over-shadow the Great Commission and Kingdom, warning us that confessing Christians can turn the cultic traditions of the local church into idolatry if they are not careful.
Therefore, Christians must, in application, offer petitions before God that the modern church in our day might be open to an understanding of ecclesia, patterned, not after church traditions, but after the Apostles, who spoke the Word of God.
“We are to Pray”
Prayer, at least for the Christian, ought to be one abiding habit, marking genuine faith and communion with God. The success of the church hinges on the dependence on God’s providential grace which He mercifully bestows to those, in Christ, who come to Him in humble dependence. Furthermore, prayer is the Christian’s weapon against the enemies of Christ and His church (cf. Eph 6:12). George Grant’s contribution, however, exposes the partial manner, in which, modern Christians, as he puts it, pray, throwing “out petition rapid fire on the run”, and rushing “through our shopping lists of wants and needs” (Failed Church, 28).
Needless to say, the modern church, as Grant explains, treats the sacred act of prayer in a mournfully cavalier manner, contrasting the humble diligence of the Christians who have gone before us. Citing such texts as Ephesians 6:18, and Matthew 7:7, Grant stresses that as a Church, “we are to pray” (Failed Church, 30).,
Following the principled model of the Lord’s Prayer, Grant highlights the need to pray in such a manner as to not pray for the purpose of self promotion, as the throne room of God reminds us of our humble position of dependence. Furthermore, Grant explains to us that the Lord’s Prayer bids us to be habitual in our prayers. And finally, Grant observes from the Lord’s Prayer that the petitions of God’s people must be hedged within the will of God. Grant’s contribution encourages reflection on the hope that prayer is the church’s consolation in times of difficulty as we, both individually and corporately, look to the Lord in humility to rescue us from Christ’s enemies (who openly oppose the people of God and their mission), precisely because God has redeemed us in His Son.
The Lord Jesus, not the State, is the Christian’s Shepherd
COVID has undoubtably rocked, not just the broader society, but also the church down to the core, exposing an uncritical and unwitting dependence on the state as the messianic deliverer of all society’s ills. On a very practical level, many churches tragically capitulated to the state as lord, keeper, and protector from the plight of disease, employing Romans 13 as justification for an ungodly dependence on the state, who would much rather uncritically follow the ever-changing science, rather than submit to the Word of God over creation in worship. Joseph Boot, quite effectively, identifies and confronts the folly of such a dependence, noting that “a redefinition of the individual’s relationship to the state has quietly taken place” (Failed Church , 129).
So long as people rely on the state as lord and protector, Boot observes the quick and uncritical tendency of people to surrender their liberties at whim to stalk comfort in a misdirected understanding of safety, not under the umbrella of Christ and His Word, but the benevolence of the secular state. In the face of this secularized dependence, Boot thus appeals to Christians from Psalm 23 to make the Lord, not the state, their shepherd. Christians, of all people, can take assurance from their rich heritage, grounded upon Christ’s conquest over His enemies and the advancement of His Kingdom.
A Unified Faith and Environmental Ethics
As office holder of the King of kings, Christians have the privilege of leading the direction and narrative of creational stewardship. The Christian understanding of reality does, after all, instruct us on the intrinsic goodness of creational reality as creation itself is the product of the wisdom of God. Calvin Beisner, though, explains that young evangelicals have uncritically accepted and borrowed from the broader (secularIzed) environmental movement, which blatantly ignores the goodness of God’s creation for an alternative doomsday scenario, rooted in pagan ideology.
Beisner reminds us that the Christian confidence for a Christianized environmental ethic is that God’s purpose for creation will prevail, and so, Christians do have the moral responsibility to care for the environment in a way that is distinctly Christian. By way of contrast, borrowing from the wider secular environmental movement has misled young evangelicals in a direction that demeans God’s purpose for His creational order. Beisner effectively leaves no excuse for young evangelicals to accept this secular approach to the environment, since, as he puts it, “all of life matters because Christ is Lord over all of life,” as he concludes with this needed exhortation: “It is time for Christians to lean into a unified faith and to stop begging for scraps from lesser worldviews” (Failed Church, 127).
Missing the Mark on Creational Economics
Capitulation to a “Marxian class envy,” followed by a deafening silence on a Biblical understanding of economics and human flourishing is one of the great travesties of the modern church. David Bahnsen maintains that such capitulation marks the church’s unwitting desire to imitate the humanistic leanings of our broader culture, instead of a wholehearted submission to the Word of God, which should oversee the use of the earth’s good resources for the good of humanity. Bahnsen remarks: “The contemporary church’s desire to emulate the humanistic leanings of culture is a default position taken as a tactical response to the church’s surrender in the public square” (Failed Church, 112).
Bahnsen highlights that the church should, indeed, voice criticism against post-modern economics which reduces economical transactions to a mathematical discipline. Moreover, Bahnsen stresses that Christians must resist the temptation to uncritically accept the popular and profoundly unbiblical Marxist narrative that assumes class envy between the “haves” and the “have nots,” and the scarcity of the Earth’s resources. Bahnsen, instead, asserts a foundational answer on economics, beginning from creation and man’s status as divine image bearers—Christian economics, as Bahnsen puts it, must “start with Scripture.” Bahnsen, thereby, insists that economics begins with the human person and the created realm in which God has placed him.
Economics is, therefore, not, in Bahnsen’s view, centred on a mathematical exercise, class envy, nor the scarcity of resources (which could very well be a mark of poor stewardship of the secularized West), but, instead, on bringing “out the potential of creation.” By this, Bahnsen alludes to the reality that God has established creation with all of its raw resources for His image bearers to actualize the potential of those resources for the benefit of human flourishing.
Conclusion
The contributors of Failed Church exhibit a genuine love for Christ’s church, calling God’s people into submission to the Lordship of Christ, not just within the walls of the institutional church, but most importantly as His dominion applies to all of life. Failed Church is, in other words, a reformational call to Christian faithfulness in every sphere of God’s created reality. The faithfulness of Christians, as the contributors remind us, has a direct bearing on the Christian response to how the church ought to have responded to COVID restrictions and lockdowns, as well as the influx of the broader secularized society. The critique of the contributors will, undoubtably, be a difficult pill for many within the church to swallow, but their critiques come with helpful remedies, which church leaders and lay people would do well to heed for their spiritual blessing and benefit.