The Church’s Bottom Line

Here are my thoughts for the 5th Sunday of Easter

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Sometimes it is interesting how things work. For the better part of the week, I thought that this Sunday was April 27^th instead of April 20^th. So my thoughts about the Scripture during the week focused on both April 27^th and May 4^th (when I go back to Dover). I had not given much thought to the Scripture for April 20^th because of that.

But in my post of April 18^th, “The Bottom Line”, I said that I would consider the church’s bottom line at a later date. Then I reread the Scriptures for the 20^th and I found the thoughts that I needed. Isn’t it interesting how things work sometimes?

For those that didn’t read the post, I made the observation that the ultimate bottom line for the church is the number of souls that are saved. I also commented that such a measurement would be a little difficult to determine. In truth, the only way that you are going to know your impact on life, be it in the church or education or some other field, will be long after you are gone from this place on earth. But if we wait until such time to determine how well we have done we will have wasted many opportunities.

The problem is that we evaluate those opportunities in ways that often are counterproductive to the mission of the church. At times, we are more interested in the number of warm bodies we can put in the pews each weekend or we are interested in how much money we contribute to the missions of the church.

Yes, we should be contributing our time, talents, and funds for the missions of the church; yes, we should be seeking to have large numbers of people in worship each weekend. But those measures are often used as substitutes for the actual work of the church. And we measure the success of a church by those same numbers.

But what happens if a church is in an economically depressed locale? Are we to abandon that church because its numbers are dwindling and its monetary contributions are falling off? What is the mission of the church if it is not to bring hope to an area? What message of hope can be given if the church itself bails out of an area and says that it cannot survive there?

People have come to believe that if they attend church regularly and they tithe, then they have met the requirements for being a good and faithful Christian. They see the church in that same way as well.

This, of course, is contradictory to the major precept of the church that it is one’s faith in Christ that is the sole requirement. Too often we turn the words and thoughts of the Scriptures from what they are into what we want them to be.

We forget that the early Christians more often than not died because of their beliefs. We forget that the early Christians had to meet in secret because of their beliefs. We forget that the early church was a community brought together because of a desire to live a life that was demonstrated to them by Christ. And we have forgotten that we are take the message that was given to them into the world, not forcing people to believe but rather showing them what it means to believe.

As Peter wrote in his first letter (1 Peter 2: 2 – 10), we are a chosen people. But that doesn’t make us exempt or remove us from the world; nor does it make us “special.” In fact, it means exactly the opposite. We are to be in the world, showing the world what life can be. It does not make us special, other than we live with a confidence that the secular world cannot provide.

The road that we travel each day is the same road everyone else travels. And for many people, that road is fraught with danger and uncertainty. As Thomas first said to Jesus, “we do not know where you are going so how do we know the way?” (John 14: 1 – 14) Thomas’ thoughts are our thoughts; we do not know the way and we seek to find the answer within this world.

Of course, we cannot do that; for the way that we must walk is a way of life, not a road. It will not be an easy life and those that say that Christianity promises an easy life have no clue as to what they are saying. The only certainty is that we have a secure foundation in Christ and that foundation will be the protection that we need when the winds of change and uncertainty blow around us.

What is the bottom line for Christianity and the church then? We are called to bring the Good News to the people. That is the bottom line. We are not called to be prisoners or martyrs for Christ. We are not called to convert people or condemn them; we are not called to stand on a street corner in our home town and shout Bible verses at the top of our long. We are called, instead, to live a life that shows the power of the Holy Spirit present in our lives.

Is this dangerous? Yes, it is. People have died living the life that Christ taught us to lead. People have been criticized and ostracized for leading the life that Christ calls us to lead. And people have left the path because they do not want the criticism, the ostracism, and the threat of life. But when we lead the life of Christ, we can approach all those fears with a new found confidence. Stephen preached the Gospel to the people and the people reacted by killing him. But through it all, Stephen praised God and asked that the people be forgiven. (Acts 7: 55 – 60)

To be sure, to be willing to die for a cause does not make the cause right. But if we are called to die for our faith, then we can see the immense worth of our faith and the worthlessness of much that we hold to have value. In his trial Socrates taught that the purpose of life is not to avoid dying but rather to avoid unrighteousness.

During the Civil Rights struggle of the early sixties, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of the value of truth:

I can’t promise you that it won’t get you beaten. I can’t promise you that it won’t get your home bombed. I can’t promise you won’t get scarred up a bit — but we must stand for what is right. If you haven’t discovered something that is worth dying for, you haven’t found anything worth living for. (From Servants, Misfits, and Martyrs by James C. Howell)

The outcome of those days was a change in the mindset of the people, though I am not so sure it is remembered that way today.

What good did it do for Stephen to die? Remember that an on-looker to this event was Saul of Tarsus. Yes, he will soon begin prosecuting Christians but one has to think that this set the stage for his own encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus and his conversion to Paul.

I began with a focus on the bottom line and our need as a people and as a church to think about what that constitutes. The bottom line is not the number of people in the pews for a given worship service nor is it how much money is spent by a church or individuals on mission work. And the bottom line is not your death in the name of the cause. Those who seek their death in the name of their faith have a very poor understanding of their faith. But if you understand your faith and you are willing to live your faith, then you will face the outcome with joy and celebration. That is the bottom line.

Things That We Discover

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I have a concern for education and the direction it is headed.

There is a thread or discussion going on the Chemistry Education Discussion List (or CHEM-ED list for short) about the nature of education today.  It started with some questions about when classes were being scheduled and such schedules are driven by the needs or desires of the students.

If you are interested in reading this discussion, go to http://mailer.uwf.edu/listserv/wa.exe?S1=chemed-l and put “When did this happen?” in the first box (marked “string”).  You should get some 57 “hits” (including the new thread “Effective Teaching”).

But, as many discussions or threads do, there has been a shift from the need to accommodate or meet the needs of students to the demands students place on the instructional process (often called the “student as the consumer” model).  There is a passing reference to this model in my post for Transfiguration Sunday (“Transformation Sunday”); to save you the trouble, read “Avogadro goes to court”.

Now when I posted my note about the court case to the list, one respondent suggested that it was nothing more than an urban legend.  But, as I noted in response, a Google search for “students suing the instructor” produced 175,000 hits.  Some of these are legitimate cases but others point out the idea that many students come into class with the idea that they are consumers and they have a right to decide if what they receive is the what they wanted (i.e., student as a consumer).

I also discovered that this problem is not as new as some think but has been around for at least fifteen years.  See

1. “Student as Consumer”: A Critical Narrative of the Commercialization of Teacher Education (see http://www.jceps.com/index.php?pageID=article&articleID=56) and
2. ”Should We Buy the “Student-As-Consumer” Metaphor?” (see http://mtprof.msun.edu/Fall1997/Cheney.html).

Against this backdrop, I find a little bit of good news.  The George Lucas Educational Foundation has identified a number of educators, the “Daring Dozen”, who are working to change the system.  It may not seem like twelve people (the number that the foundation has identified) may make a major change in the ways things work but Margaret Mead reminds us “…that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever does.”  Or if you will, as Sonia Johnson (an American feminist who was excommunicated by the Mormon church for her activities), “We must remember that one determined person can make a significant difference, and that a small group of determined people can change the course of history.”

It would seem to me that there is hope for our educational system and that we need to be taking note of these changes.

This will be cross-posted to RedBlueChristian.com