Tag Archives: historic

Will the Modern American Church Survive?

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It’s becoming harder to pretend that things out there aren’t coming apart at the seams. I mean, people are no longer joking about civil war. Some commentators and podcasters have already jumped ahead to predicting how such a war would end. Of course, the media continues doing its part to up the ante.

CNN admitted last week that it adjusted Alex Pretti’s image to make him look more attractive in order to stir sympathy for his death. CNN also had to backtrack after leaving out that Pretti had initiated a violent interaction with ICE a week earlier, resulting in broken ribs. In other words, federal agents already knew Pretti. They knew he was dangerous. And so, when he leaned into the officers that day, when he pushed into them, when he spit on them as they tried to get away from him and into their vehicles (as the videos show), and when he ultimately died in the scuffle, which was unfortunate—but it was no surprise to the agents that he was carrying a loaded weapon with two additional magazines. But the thing is, CNN knew all this stuff, too. And yet, they reported everything but these details. And CNN’s original narrative is still out there, gaining traction. All wars have their martyrs.

Other media outlets carried the “ICE is detaining children” headline as far as they could before eventually retracting it. And yet, it turns out the child in the widely circulated image had been abandoned by his illegal father, and his mother refused to claim him. Rather than simply sending the child back into the world alone—a world in which kids like him are almost always trafficked—he was kept in federal custody. He wasn’t locked in a cage. He was being protected, which is most certainly the government’s job when it comes to little ones left to a world of wolves. But again, the thing is, the news outlets knew this, and yet they elected to foster a completely different narrative, stoking embers and adding kindling to an already blue-hot climate. Add to this the irony of a progressive left that would butcher children in the womb while weeping over a child rescued from the wolves, but only because the rescuer wore an ICE uniform rather than an abortionist’s surgical gown.

And so, again, “civil war” is a term showing up in my feed more than I’d prefer. But what should any of us expect? So many are actively laboring to make the climate perfect for one.

Having said all this, civil war is not necessarily my chief concern. Yes, what’s happening culturally and politically is troubling. Still, I’m thinking ecclesially. I’m wondering if American Christianity would even survive such a thing, especially a conflict in which Christianity is a primary target for the opposition. The progressive left is already doing everything it can to snuff the faith (John 15:18-19). What would happen if that side were to win an armed conflict? I guess I’m just wondering out loud if anything in the modern faith is still fixed enough to be confessed in a way that would survive through such an event.

For the record, this weekly message goes out in various forms to about 7,000 folks worldwide. I don’t pretend to have a comprehensive map of global Christianity, and so, I don’t necessarily know the liturgical practices of most of the churches and people who may be reading this. But I do know my own church. And I know what kind of Christianity formed it.

Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hartland, Michigan, and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod with which we maintain fellowship, is creedal in nature. Creedal Christianity did not emerge from comfort. It was forged under pressure. It survived being surrounded by hostile empires, wars, internal heresies, and, most importantly, competing visions of who Jesus was allowed to be. Creedal Christianity is a faith maintained by precise statements—what we believe and what we don’t, why we do what we do, why we’re distinctly different from the world around us. Regardless of what the more fashionable Christian influencers may have told you, these things are not relics of an overly philosophical age. They are the Church’s collective memory, crystallized at the very points in history where the fires were hottest, where the culture was hell-bent on consuming and assimilating us, and where losing our identity would have meant losing Christ altogether.

While studying the Church’s creeds with the kids in confirmation over the years, I’ve often told them that confessional statements like the ecumenical creeds (the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds) are very important guardrails that protect our inheritance. What I mean is that by these confessional statements, the Church was essentially saying to the world, “We heard what you’ve said about Jesus, and we’re banning that interpretation from our midst forever.” They didn’t do that because the Church is allergic to questions, but because some interpretations—some answers to very important questions about God—can kill the faith (Galatians 1:6-9). The creeds exist precisely because the Church learned, often through blood, that not every version of Jesus is compatible with the Gospel.

For example, Arius, a bishop in Alexandria, came along offering a Jesus who was inspirational but not eternal. He insisted that Jesus was not God from eternity, but rather the first and greatest of God’s created beings. To be exalted, yes. But by no means divine in the sense that He is of the same substance as the Father. In reply, the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) gave birth to the Nicene Creed, which said, essentially, “Um, no. He is the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made….”

This response was not a modern branding exercise. It certainly didn’t come from thin air. It came from God’s Word (John 1:1-3, Colossians 2:9, and countless others). It was an important clarification made to preserve the one true faith that saves. I mean, what’s the point of confessing faith in Jesus—even being willing to die for Him—if the Jesus you confess is false? Creeds are in place precisely for this reason—to preserve a right confession of faith (1 John 2:22-23).

Even better, creedal Christianity never just remained on paper. Creedal Christianity was always ritualized Christianity. What the Church confessed with her mouth, she inevitably enacted with her body. I should pause here for a moment and admit that resistance to rites and ceremonies has always struck me as weird. Enacting what we believe is natural. We already do this instinctively in ordinary life. When people love one another, they don’t merely say it. They demonstrate it. They show up, they make vows, they give gifts, they mark anniversaries. When a nation believes in its sovereignty, it doesn’t just write a constitution, and then that’s it. It raises flags, sings anthems, swears oaths, and builds monuments that enshrine it. Belief naturally seeks embodiment. It inevitably embraces postures and practices that make the invisible visible. In the same way, the rites and ceremonies that emerged were the Church’s way of training the faithful to live inside the truth they confessed, week after week, year after year. It was a very natural way for the body and mind to remain in stride with what the heart confessed to be true (James 2:17).

When this kind of synchronization happens, the Christian faith becomes incredibly resistant to drift. Without them, almost anything can influence direction.

I suppose the thrust of my concern is that this is precisely what much of contemporary church culture has abandoned. Mainstream American Christendom seems to thrive on elasticity—on keeping Jesus just vague enough not to offend anyone and flexible enough to serve every demographic.

The irony in this is that it’s meant to promote growth. And yet, the American Church has been in free fall for decades. This free-floating, syrupy, confessionless, “deeds not creeds” landscape has not resulted in growth. It has resulted in massive erosion. But that’s what happens when your Jesus is more life coach than the eternal Son of God who comes again in glory to judge both the living and the dead (Acts 17:31).

Interestingly, even as creedal Christianity isn’t so much about growth as it is continuity, the early Church did grow—and quite rapidly. Why? Could it be because it refused what American Christianity is all too eager to embrace? The early Church did not survive persecution by becoming more appealing to Roman tastes. It survived by becoming more precise—more dogmatic, more confessional, and in my humble opinion, more liturgical. By its faith, life, and practices, it told the surrounding empires in no uncertain terms, in effect, “We will not adjust Christ to fit your world. You will have to adjust your world to Christ.”

Creedal Christianity can speak this way because it’s anchored in otherworldly things. It is, therefore, by design, capable of surviving this world’s storms. It doesn’t roll over when the challenges come. It can and does remain fixed in place even as everything else tries to pull it apart.

I know I’ve already gone on long enough. I’m guessing the skimmers left five minutes ago. For those who stayed to the end, I suppose I’ll circle back to where I started.

I’ll just say, again, that civil war is not my chief concern. Empires rise and fall. Cultures always burn themselves out eventually. Still, the real danger is not whether America fractures entirely. I’m just wondering if the American Church still possesses a faith sturdy enough to remain standing through it.

I don’t have this concern for creedal Christianity. It’ll survive. History has already more than proven that when and where the pressure mounted, a Church built on crisp confession remained immovable. Our Savior in Hartland is an heir to this hope-filled reality, and so, we enjoy that future. This is true because Christ did not promise His Church an easy path, but He did promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against the fixed Gospel confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:16-18). That’s a creedal statement, and where such confessions remain, so does the Church and the Lord who preserves her.

Ash Wednesday 2024

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I felt the urge to reach out this morning. Lent arrives this Wednesday. If there was a season to contemplate mankind’s dreadful predicament, it’s Lent.

I suppose, in a broad sense, death’s predicament is not lost on humans. We’re all facing it. Still, believers have the best handle on it. We have the Gospel—the proclamation of death’s cost and the Savior who accomplished its payment by His own death.

During staff devotions this morning, I shared a portion from Luther. He spoke of the cross and the Christian’s desire to be worthy of it. He wrote, “Is it not a wonder to be possessed of a ready will toward death, while everyone dreads it? Thus is the cross sanctified.”

I’m concerned that far too many mainstream churches seem to have lost their formal grip on this. They demonstrate as much by their crucifix-less worship spaces. One pastor (if you can call him that) in a church not far from my own won’t allow crosses to be displayed in his facility. He openly admits that crucifixes—and even bare crosses, for that matter—are offensive to visitors. And yet, Saint Paul preached so fervently, “We preach Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23), knowing that such a message would be received as offensive and foolish by an onlooking world.

It’s heartbreaking when a church views the cross through the world’s lenses.

You should know what I’ve described is rarely lost on liturgical churches. A liturgical church will likely have crucifixes displayed throughout its expanse—and not just one or two, but many. Interestingly, Paulo Freire, the father of Critical Pedagogy (which is foundational to Critical Theory), insisted that for his Marxist theories to prevail, traditional liturgical churches needed to be deconstructed and their symbols dispensed and forgotten. Freire wasn’t concerned with contemporary churches. Why? Because traditional liturgical churches are by nature impenetrably linked to faith and its symbols, and in Freire’s research, far more dangerous. They don’t roll over when persecuted. They produce a far sturdier commitment than churches devoted to cultural appeasement. Hitler agreed, calling the more contemporary churches in Germany “mushy.” He was more so bothered by historically creedal churches and their believers. The historic Creeds define, teach, and defend truth. A church’s historic liturgies carry it. The church’s calendar—the liturgical seasons—imposes it in long-lasting and unforgettable ways. And by long-lasting and unforgettable, I mean it stays with a congregation generation after generation, binding it to those who came before and those who will come after.

A persecutor laboring to destroy such a church won’t have an easy time. Its identity is built from ranks the persecutor can’t even see.

Here’s some free advice: When any organization (whether it’s the Boy Scouts, your favorite car company, football team, or whatever) begins obscuring its symbols, jettisoning its creeds, or altering its traditions, beware. These are essential to the organization’s identity. When they change, so does their identity. They’re inextricably linked.

I suppose I’ve wandered too far already. So, here’s what I really came here to tell you.

A critical Church season begins this week. It starts with a crucial moment epitomizing the Church’s identity. It deliberately resists desires to loosen our grip on who we are and what we are to believe, teach, and confess.

Epiphany and the Gesima Sundays become Lent. As these season’s crowds approach, Lent’s somber doorman, Ash Wednesday, will clatter through its ancient keyring with cinder-stained fingers to open Lent’s door. Year after year, Ash Wednesday’s digits have etched a cross upon the foreheads of countless believers passing through this entry, elbowing them toward honesty, nudging them toward a vital confession that matters when pondering Golgotha’s truest weight: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). And yet, Ash Wednesday’s participants do this wearing a black-powdery smudge in the shape of a cross. Yes, we are dust. We will die. And yet, in Christ, by His death on the cross, we’ve been made alive (1 Corinthians 15:22). Death in Christ is not to die but to live (Philippians 1:21).

Ash Wednesday’s liturgy amplifies what the Christian Church knows about death. It amplifies what we know about a certain Someone who met with death and outmaneuvered it. Ash Wednesday brings us in. Lent will take us the rest of the way. It will dive so much deeper into our genuine need for rescue while showing us over and over again the One who can meet the need.

Ash Wednesday, and therefore Lent, remind us that the clash between Jesus and death won’t be pretty. Death won’t just hand us over to Him. Death is the last enemy, and he’s been waiting his turn in line to consume us (1 Corinthians 15:26). Rest assured, war will ensue, and it’ll get ugly. At first, the glorious rescue will look more like defeat. Jesus will confront the challenger, submitting to its dreadfulness. He won’t lift a finger to defend Himself. He’ll endure, taking all of it in. The results will be His mutilated body nailed to a blood-soaked cross lifted high above the warfare’s haze. We’ll see Him pinned there like an animal; an outcast doled an awful demise.

And that, right there, is the message we preach! We preach Christ crucified! The Lord’s greatest work is His humble submission as the sacrifice for sin! This is His truest glory (John 12:23-33; Mark 10:32-38)! His resurrection is the proof pointing to this great deed. He owned the death we deserve, and He rose from the grave, proving He beat the specter at its own game, giving the spoils to all who believe.

This is Ash Wednesday’s message. Admittedly, it’s gritty. But it’s thoroughly consolidated and good. If you’ve never considered attending an Ash Wednesday service, I encourage you to do so. If your church doesn’t offer one, find a church that does. We’ll offer two here at Our Savior in Hartland, the first at 8:10 am and the second at 6:30 pm.

Consider these things, and in the meantime, God bless and keep you by His grace. Indeed, Lent has come. But rejoice, the fruit of the Lord’s greatest work—Easter—is coming, too.