Adventures in Missing the Point

The title of this post is taken from a Tony Campolo book that I never read, but had a cool title.
,
As some of you may know, I spent the last few weeks traveling the countryside of southern England in the provinces of Kent, Wessex, and even Wales. This was all part of a class I was taking called “Castles, Cathedrals, and Colleges.” As you might imagine, I spent a lot of time inside England’s greatest and most important cathedrals. I got an inside look, so to speak, (and yes pun intended) at the state of the European church, and I discovered that they are missing the point.

What do I mean when I say the church is missing the point? Quite frankly, that it is failing to fulfill its purpose. A theologian might say that the English church is suffering from an ecclesiological failure to understand and fulfill its missiological purpose. Allow me to explain.

During my time in England, the big cathedrals there were celebrating what is called “Christian Aid Week.” During this week, members of the churches were encouraged to donate money to a general fund that would then donate money to denominational charities that would help alleviate poverty and hunger in the world. By itself, this is all very good. One of the church’s responsibilities is to indeed do all that is within its power to aid the poor. The problem is that I believe the English church took this to be its only and primary task and mission. While helping the poor is wonderful and is certainly the Christian thing to do, it is not the only Christian thing to do.

In Matthew 28, Jesus gives the church its primary and fundamental mission prior to His ascension. This is commonly referred to as the ‘Great Commission’: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” From the evidences I saw (and I could be totally wrong), I was forced to conclude that the English church has either given up or subordinated its primary mission of preaching salvation through Jesus Christ in favor of helping people with temporal and material needs. Now there is nothing wrong with helping the poor and hungry: James reminds us that this is true religion. The problem comes when we see the church only as an agency to rid the world of social injustice with no relation to Christ. Social injustice will only come with the reign of King Jesus, and that only alongside the preaching of sinners to repentance. The church’s mission is first to preach salvation to sinners and then to help the poor and starving, for “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4, ESV). We would do well to remember that.