There is an enormous gap between the life Jesus offered and the life we are living, according to Mark Buchanan in his book Your Church is Too Safe: Why Following Christ Turns the World Upside Down. When did we start making it our priority to be safe instead of dangerous, nice instead of holy, cautious instead of bold, self-absorbed instead of counting everything loss in order to be found in Christ?
The book goes on to describe the author’s ideas of how the church can recover the “dangerous” quality of life that Jesus offered, and the experiments in dangerous living that his church has tried, including:
- Showing extravagant love to those who are in need, rather than trying to be “relevant”
- Finding, meeting, befriending and helping the people in our cities who need Jesus, rather than separating ourselves from them
- Taking risks with the resources God has given us like the good servants in the parable of the talents, rather than playing it safe like the bad servant
- Following and imitating Christ, rather than just holding certain beliefs
- Presenting the good news to the world through show-and-tell, rather than just tell
- Dealing fairly and honestly with each other, and being committed to do justly and speak truthfully
- Practising hospitality towards people who are very different from us
- Recovering the vision that the church should be devoted to teaching, fellowship, sacraments, worship and stewardship
- Wading into the mess of people’s lives to bring cleaning, rather than staying sterile and expecting people to clean themselves
- Practising holy indifference towards people who exhibit “religious spirit” on petty matters
- Making every effort to live reconciled lives with one another
- Sharing whatever God has richly provided
There is no doubt that a church which is truly faithful to Jesus will look radically different from a typical contemporary church, in many of the ways that the author has outlined. The problem is that I think most church leaders know this already. The problem is not in knowing what they should be doing – that is fairly plain from reading the Bible – the problem is in having the courage to do it. Read the book, and pluck up the courage to get started.