Failing Upwards

A lot can be said for a church’s mission statement. It’s often one’s first impression of a congregation. A placard reading “Making Disciples of Christ” conveys something very different from one that reads “Enjoy Your Forgiveness.” While each parish advertises its unique purpose and calling, it makes one wonder about the greater church’s mission. If the church is the body of Christ, what is its chief bodily function? What exactly is its purpose? Is it to change the world? Transform lives? Win souls? Speak truth to power? If you visit any ten churches today, you will likely get ten different answers. Whatever the church’s self-appointed purpose might be, God likely has his own purposes in mind.

One of my favorite church mission statements is “We don’t have a mission statement. God has a mission for our church.” The message implies that its purpose was not invented by the church itself but divinely ordained. A congregation that is willing to surrender itself to God’s vision may be more on the right track than a church hunkering down on its own self-appointed assignment. A church’s self-portrait is often unreliable. God, on the other hand, is often an artist before his time.

Our intentions, however pure they may be, often risk running perpendicular to God’s intentions. From the Spanish Inquisition to parading partisan politics, our most fervent campaigns are often misguided. As Mark Twain famously said, “Half of the results of a good intention are evil; half the results of an evil intention are good.” In that sense, ministry is often a crapshoot. Certain projects we feel are destined to succeed are doomed from the start (small groups, anyone?). Thankfully, the opposite is also true. The Bible shows that what we mean for evil, God often works for good.

More often than not, the Holy Spirit exists in the unexpected. While Jesus’ death and resurrection serve as the firm foundation of our salvation, the Spirit often specializes in throwing us off-balance. Every good preacher has one story about when they completely bombed a sermon that subsequently changed someone’s life. How often will the church fall backwards into helping people in a way it least expected?

Cue the powerful opening lines of Catherine Lacey’s novel Pew, from the perspective of a homeless person:

If you ever need to — and I hope you never need to, but a person cannot be sure — if you ever need to sleep, if you are ever so tired that you feel nothing but the animal weight of your bones, and you’re walking along a dark road with no one, and you’re not sure how long you’ve been walking, and you keep looking down at your hands and not recognizing them, and you keep catching a reflection in darkened windows and not recognizing that reflection, and all you know is the desire to sleep, and all you have is no place to sleep, one thing you can do is look for a church.

What I know about churches is that they usually have many doors and often at least one of those doors, late at night, has been left unlocked. The reason churches have so many doors is that people tend to enter and leave churches in groups, in a hurry. It seems people have a lot of reasons for entering a church and perhaps even more reasons for leaving one, but the only reason I’ve gone to a church was to sleep. The reasons I’ve left a church were to avoid being caught sleeping or because I’d already been caught sleeping and was being asked to leave. Those are the only reasons I can remember, though I’m having trouble lately with remembering. I left some place, began walking, slept in all those churches, then everything else happened — that’s all I know.

There is something blessedly ironic in an exhausted homeless person seeking out a church for a place to take a nap. The reason why this person even got inside is likely because some sexton or vestry member dropped the ball (insurance companies tend to freak out at such things). And yet, by the grace of God, we miraculously fail upward. Church sleeping is a stunning picture of the church accidentally providing relief against its own intentions. Whatever the placard outside the doors said that day, it was beside the point for this world-weary soul. At that moment, the church’s main function was to provide a brief respite, not even for spiritual renewal but literal rest. Who would have thought, except God alone?

Tim Keller, who founded Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and was one of the most respected Christian leaders of the 21st century, had a policy with church planting: “Encourage creativity.” The idea involved being merely a cheerleader for the surprising work of the Spirit popping up in unexpected places. Want to explore a healing ministry? Go for it! Want to bring in a jazz quartet to lead worship? Why not? The impression Keller gave was a kind of buckshot approach to ministry where he rarely said no to ideas and gave his enthusiasm to whichever ones took off.

We often think church growth is about us and about what we bring to the table. We think we can plan our way out of a budget crisis, or that church growth will surely occur if we follow the market research. We assume God will use our strength and grit for his greater glory, but rarely — in ministry or in life, for that matter — do things ever go to plan. The Spirit simply moves where it wills, most often in ways that surprise us.

Ministry is more like recklessly scattering seeds than following a building blueprint. Preachers sow God’s word willy-nilly and hope that the Spirit will move in at least one person’s heart. College ministers sit in coffee shops hoping they won’t get ghosted by another freshman yet again. Groundskeepers forget to lock the side door on a cold night. Children’s ministers may very well convey the grace of God in the simple act of cleaning up spilled juice and pipe cleaners. And to what end? To make disciples? To know Christ and make him known? Whatever the case, we can trust that the harvest will come one way or another.