For the Transformation of the World

Psalm 82:1-4
God has taken his place in the divine council;
    in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
“How long will you judge unjustly
    and show partiality to the wicked?
Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
    maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
    deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

A good number of years ago a church consultant asked me, “If your church were to close its doors tomorrow, would anyone outside of your members care or notice?” That question has stuck with me ever since. In every church that I’ve served I’ve been able to answer that question affirmatively, but there have been many times where I struggled to answer it confidently. 

I think sometimes the church can get itself confused. Somewhere in the midst of the potlucks and the Sunday School lessons, the youth lock-ins and the senior adult lunches we can lose track of the idea that the church largely exists for the benefit of those who are not its members. Realizing this, the 2008 General Conference of the UMC amended the church’s mission statement from “making disciples of Jesus Christ” to “making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” In other words, we can have the best preaching, teaching, and programs in the world, but if we aren’t expressing our discipleship in acts of love to our communities, then we are as St. Paul might say, not much more than a clanging gong. 

This is difficult work. It demands something of us. For the hungry to be fed, the naked clothed, and the poor cared for, the church has to provide. For the weak, the lowly, and the destitute to receive justice, the church has to provide a challenge to systems that harm them. All of this can be scary, but this is the work to which we have been called.

El Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero once asked, “A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed–what gospel is that?”

Rev. Ryan Young