The Resistance – Unholy Dualism – Part 3C – In the Church

It’s been a week since we began our third part in The Resistance series. We are focusing on how Christians and the church have been captured by dualism. Today we are looking at statements 5 & 6 from the original article. I’ll post them here again to refresh your memories before we take a machete to them.

Statement 5: The pinnacle of service to God is full time paid Christian ministry because saving souls is the most important business on this earth. Our job in this world is to seek to see people saved from hell – worrying about society is like polishing the brass on a sinking Titanic. We are heaven bound. Earth is important but doesn’t matter as much

Statement 6: For those who are laity, their most important service of God is found in personal evangelism and doing things for the local church institution. This is what the works of service spoken about by Ephesians 4:12 is talking about – welcoming visitors to the Sunday service, playing in the music team, making cups of teas and running the AV desk.

In evangelical circles, dualism has spread to such an extent that the pinnacle of service to God is seen as full time paid Christian ministry. While many pastors and church leaders would perhaps not express the concept in such a stark manner, the implication is there in much of the church’s current practice.

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An Invitation to Your Mission

One of the issues I have thought through a lot in recent years is the place of a man in the church and the kingdom. Too often, for lots of men, the church seems ‘ho-hum’ and irrelevant. One of the reasons for this is that the role of men in the world is often denigrated. I’ve heard too many sermons that suggest serving Christ could mean dropping more of your vocational work to help in institutional church ministry. Other sermons critique wealth and suggest saving is not trusting God despite God calling men to provide for their families. I’ve seen videos of men at church valuing their role as a doctor only because it means they can fund ‘ministry’ in other parts of the world. Often sermons use examples of people in ‘full time Christian ministry’ (a phrase I find frustrating) as positive examples of Christian sacrifice. Rarely, if ever, are the laity and their ordinary lives looked upon as examples of godliness in Christ’s kingdom.

The problem with all of this is that it ignores core truths about masculinity in Scripture. While I am aware of some of the key issues with Wild at Heart by John Eldredge, there is a certain amount of truth in his diagnosis. One of his core arguments is that men are made for adventure and battles and a beauty. I might not put it in exactly those terms, but I do think Scripture teaches us that Adam was made for dominion. He was to go out into God’s earth and take dominion. He was designed to image God as he took what God had made and in an analogous way to God, fill up emptiness and give it shape.

Here’s how Eldridge puts it. Most men think they are simply here on earth to kill time – and it’s killing them. But the truth is precisely the opposite. The secret longing of your heart, whether it’s to build a boat and sail it, to write a symphony and play it, to plant a field and care for it – those are the things you were made to do. That’s what you’re here for. We are designed for dominion, and in Christ we are called to work to extend Christ’s lordship to the areas of his world that we touch. But too often we feel denigrated and tarred as ‘worldly’ for wanting to do these things. What we need to hear is the call that Christ lays upon every man to get out there and subdue his sphere of influence for Christ. This is the way you as a man are Christ’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works. We need to be encouraged to wage war in this world – not with worldly weapons, but to take every thought captive as we seek to demolish the strongholds of Christ’s enemies in the arenas we have been called. That’s a lot more encouraging than to hear that most of our lives are irrelevant except for the times we are at church helping out.

Bring Back the Doctrine of Vocation

In a recent sermon I heard, the congregation was encouraged to be at a second Sunday meeting (in the evening) as well as the morning service. They were encouraged to attend other weekly meetings of the church, and it was insinuated that it was Satan’s temptation that was causing people to stay at home. There was even that old chestnut, that we need to be careful we are not turning spending time with family into an idol. This was a fairly egregious example of what I have noticed is a serious temptation for many pastors – that of thinking that the church organisation and meetings they run are the most important thing in the lives of every member of the church, and that to miss one indicates a lack of seriousness about one’s faith.

This brow-beating approach to shepherding in order to get the flock to come to more church meetings is unfortunate. As one who has been a Christian for decades, I shrugged it off. I’m not about to be guilt-tripped into attending something because a pastor insinuates it is a sin to not attend. I know the Scriptures. It is dangerous for leaders in the church to put burdens on those they lead that Christ himself does not require. Young Christians however may be fooled by zeal into thinking this is indeed a requirement. The pressure this may put on them when they have a spouse or children and work may indeed cause unhelpful and illegitimate feelings of guilt.

Additionally, I’ve noticed and mentioned in a previous post, the tendency of many pastors to use the Sunday morning service as the opportunity to be evangelists. Instead of feeding God’s beloved sheep and assisting them to apply the gospel to their daily lives, some pastors focus on the gospel message of salvation every week as if their congregations are hardened heathens hovering over the fires of hell.

All this makes me think that our modern clergy need a reawakened understanding of vocation. A book helpful in this area is God at work by Gene Edward Veith Jr. Veith writes, “Churches should not demand so much “church work” from their members that it takes away too much time from their primary vocations.” We the laity are also called. God calls us to our vocations, be they son or daughter, husband or wife, doctor, teacher, labourer, retail assistant, nurse, or homemaker. Yes, pastor, God calls you as our shepherd, but don’t forget that he calls us to our vocations too. It’s easy for pastors to see the good things they are doing (and the vocation of pastor is a good and holy calling!) and expect everyone to turn institutional church-related things into the most important thing in their lives too. But it might be that in attending every church event, I may neglect my God-given calling as a husband or a father. Indeed, it might be that a pastor who fills his time with church events could well be neglecting his God-given calling to be a husband and father too.

Veith puts things this way, “We may assume that what happens on Sunday mornings is not enough, as if coming into Christ’s presence through the proclamation of His Word is a small thing, and as if the daily lives of ordinary Christians are not themselves arenas for divine service.” Pastors need to see their role as shepherds as Paul explained in Ephesians. Pastors are to equip the saints for works of ministry. Unfortunately, because we do not have a solid understanding of the doctrine of vocation, we miss that those works of ministry will often occur outside the institutional church meetings. The sum total of my ministry is not handing out the order of service at church, manning the kitchen, playing in the church band or being part of a welcoming team. These are good things, but my core ministries are being a father and a husband, and whatever God calls me to as I earn money to provide for my family. Paul writes earlier in the epistle of Ephesians, that we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. On a Sunday morning, what we need to see from our pastors is an acknowledgement of the good works God has called us to do in our vocations, and then the opening of the Scriptures to help us in that regard as we are reminded of Christ’s kingship and authority. As Paul writes to the young pastor Timothy, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” Preach that word so that your congregation may be ready for every good work during the week.