Here's some background on my story:
In the language of the American institutional church in 2017, I am the "leader" of a house church community.
I also have a full-time job apart from my involvement in our gathering.
You can't call me bi-vocational because I earn no money from the gathering for my service to Jesus and God's Kingdom.
In our gathering, I don't see myself as a parish priest/pastor. In our gathering, we are all responsible to be priests to each other.
At my job, my focus is on being a man of God's Kingdom. On the job, I see myself as an ambassador of the Kingdom of God in a spiritually foreign place.
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On that job, one of my coworkers has recently been diagnosed with cancer and her diagnosis has brought back a flood a memories.
Seven years ago today, Evie, my wife, was undergoing chemo treatments, expecting to have cancer surgery in September and radiation treatments after surgery until the end of the year.
She had Stage 3C breast cancer so her survival was, by no means, certain. (Stage 4 is when the cancer has spread to other parts of the body.)
Praise God. Seven years down this road, she is cancer free.
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The process of the diagnosis of Evie's cancer was a tense time. Her mammogram showed a tumor that was 5.2 cm. x 3.7 cm., (2+ inches x 1 1/2 inches). Later, cancer was discovered in some lymph nodes.
Here's where all of this background is leading...
AT THE VERY BEGINNING, EVIE'S ONCOLOGIST SAID:
"WHEN THE DIAGNOSIS IS COMPLETE, IF WE THINK YOU CAN SURVIVE, WE WILL ALMOST KILL YOU TO CURE YOUR CANCER.
BUT, IF WE THINK YOU CAN'T SURVIVE, WE WILL GIVE YOU MILD TREATMENTS TO ENSURE THAT YOU HAVE THE HIGHEST QUALITY OF LIFE POSSIBLE FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE.
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The American church has cancer.
Attendance at its services, its measure of health, is declining--and declining rapidly and tragically among people under the age of 40.
Even more tragically, based on the lifestyle Jesus commanded and modeled, the American church has turned most church attenders into passive consumers of religious products and services.
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In my denominational tradition as an example, congregations are failing, that is, churches are closing, at a historic rate, and, according to denominational leaders, 80% of remaining churches are either stagnant or declining.
We acknowledge that our denominational body has cancer.
The question is: Can the denomination survive?
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As I read the Word and study church history, I believe that if our cancer can be beaten, the only hope is through radical treatment that will leave what exists now all but dead in the hope that what remains can recover and thrive.
Sadly, to my knowledge, in my Conference, the only remedy being proposed by our leaders is a tweaking of what already is with the creation of yet another in a series of Strategic Plans and a restructuring of a failing Conference hierarchy.
This is the equivalent of the approach Evie's oncologist described if survival isn't possible. It's mild. It extends life but acknowledges that death is inevitable.
It will lead to, at best, a managed, longer and less traumatic process of dying.
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The Word is clear. It describes the process that leads to salvation where there is spiritual death in a church.
Paul said it this way:
"Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret." (2 Cor. 7:10)
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If what exists as Christianity in the West today is to reverse its decline and thrive again in the future, it will have to go radical in attacking what's killing it from within.
It can't tweak.
It must attack the cancer that is alive and thriving in the body now and kill it off so that what is of the Lord can, again, thrive.
In the denominational body that I love, the killing of the cancer in the body isn't being contemplated.
My heart is breaking.
We must repent.
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