Country Club or Radical Mission

 

 

A month later, I am still resonating with a sermon at the church I attend. The Bible passage was the one where crowds are following Jesus and he abruptly turns around and says that everyone who wishes to follow him must consider that the cost of following will be that they must hate their family members and take up their crosses. This was, in that cultural setting, a severe statement. To abandon family in that context was akin to abandoning your very existence, social network, and personal identity. And to carry the cross was to literally participate in one’s own public and gruesome execution. 

For a modern church fixated on the seduction of growing numbers (or avoiding declining enrollment unto oblivion), it is shocking how confrontational Jesus is, how uncaring he is (and perhaps even actively wishing) about reducing his follower count. Indeed, the crowd likely thinned out considerably when confronted with the need for a radical break from their present lives, leaving family and taking up crosses and giving up all possessions.

Very little of the modern American church actively expresses this sort of winnowing sentiment. Sunday morning too often resembles a country club setting in which a socio-economically homogenous group dresses respectfully and comes together for songs, intellectual stimulation, and social engagement. What it looks like on the outside may depend on the denomination or main ethnic make-up, but on the inside there does not appear to be any of the desperation, raw emotion, and undivided devotion to mission that characterized the first followers of Jesus and the early church that sprung up from that. 

It horrifies me to think that were Jesus to show up at many of our church services this Sunday morning, He would similarly turn around and give a call to radical mission that leaves many of us deciding the cost too steep to proceed. He has made clear what it means to truly follow Him; what will we do with that call? Will we accept the invitation and boldly go forward? Will we accept the severity of the cost we have to bear and decide to stop following? Or, perhaps worst of all, will we deny that to follow Jesus requires such a radical departure from the norm and keep up the appearances of our country club version of Christianity?