Are we playing the wrong game?

I came across John Alexander's last book when I was unpacking and I set it aside to read again. I started it ages ago and never finished it (partly because the urge to edit it was so strong that I had a hard time letting go of that and just focusing on the ideas. But now that Rob Bell has inured me to this writing style, I'm hoping I'll be able to focus a little better. Besides, now it reminds me of John and brings back pleasant memories more than it stirs up the editor within me.) 

John starts right smack in with the good stuff and just a few pages in I've hit stuff I already want to write about. John compares the church to a baseball team and explains that we don't expect our favorite team to always be perfect, but we do expect them to be playing baseball when they're on the field. In the same way, we shouldn't expect our church to be perfect (it is, after all, made up of imperfect people), but we should at least expect it to be a church, a growing body of united believers achieving the full stature of Christ.

This is something that I've often tried to explain to people, but I feel like I've never explained it very well. John's analogy is quite good, though, and I'd like to share it, as he wrote it, here:

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not so much disturbed by the poor performance of us Christians as about whether we know what we're up to. Fans of the Chicago Cubs don't seem to mind too much that their team plays badly and drops the ball from time to time. But what if in the middle of a close game, the Cubs sat down in the infield and started playing tiddlywinks? Or eating lunch?

No doubt the illustration will prompt all kinds of supposedly entertaining remarks about the Cubs, but when the people of God forget what they're about, it's not at all entertaining. Dropping the ball is one thing. We all do that. I certainly do. And the most casual reading of 1 Corinthians or of Revelation 2-3 prepares us for churches to drop the ball. Often and badly. But it does not prepare us for churches playing the wrong game. Playing the wrong game is very odd. And very troubling.

In fact, it may be the most troubling thing I know--this gap between today's churches and the NT. But what's troubling isn't that churches fail. That's very NT. I don't expect Christians to leap tall buildings at a single bound. To catch every ball. To die rather than let Jews be taken to concentration camps. That is great when it happens, but the NT gives us little reason to expect heroics of ourselves or other Christians. Peter seems to have failed with some regularity. Besides I'm a pastor myself and have learned not to be too stunned by the sin and failure of the folks I pastor: after all, my own record isn't so great. It's God's grace that is great.

So, for example, I don't expect us to live up to the ethics of the kingdom as found in the Sermon on the Mount, but I do expect us to fail in such a way that those watching will know what we were reaching for, what we're failing at. I don't expect us to love each other as we love ourselves, but I do expect us to live in such a way that outsiders will be able to tell that loving each other is what we're about. 

So the problem isn't that we fail. Nor that we do church badly. It's that we're doing something else. We seem to be playing the wrong game against the wrong team at the wrong time. Not always, but pretty often. Maybe especially on Sunday mornings. 

 -- taken from John Alexander's manuscript version of the book that was, at the time, entitled Stop Going to Church and Become the Church (I think John talked about changing the title, but I don't remember what he wanted to change it to except that the focus was Love.)

 

What I've often wondered about is how we can expect the church to be playing the right game if we're not really talking about what game we're playing? It does come up in our congregation once in awhile, during Sunday School (which is poorly attended) or in a sermon. But there's not really any specific time set aside to talk about whether we're still playing the game or if we've gotten sidetracked with doing the wave around the stadium or dancing to the organ music. (OK, so I'm mixing a bit of hockey in here. But I suppose that's the point if hockey's not the game you're supposed to be playing.) I would expect discussions like this at congregational meetings but instead we often get sidetracked with what we spend on watering the grass or hearing reports on stuff that we pretty much already know. 

Of course, this brings up a favorite Christian catch phrase: intentional. But it fits here. How intentional are we as a church? I don't just mean are we, as individuals, thinking about what we're doing, but do we as a congregation communicate with each other on what we're all about and how we're doing in terms of going about it? I'd say that the congregation we're a part of glances across the topic now and then in a rather haphazard manner. How about yours?