Carrying the Salt Shaker

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? (Matthew 5 :13, KJV)

Local churches have committees, generally. They’re composed of three or four elected people and their role is clarified by their committee’s names: trustees, education, music, hospitality, worship . . . and service & mission, the last name implying that the congregation needs to extend its good will, talents, faith and resources to the world around it. There’s plenty of Biblical foundation for this.

In a time of shrinking participation in church—numbers wise—it’s not surprising that there’s considerable hand-wringing and self-examination going on. What are we and what ought we be? What are we doing and what ought we be doing? How can we do what we need to do with fewer numbers? Expansion, growth are the normal thermometers of success in most every institution, after all; it’s hard to feel good about one’s community, organization, club or church when it’s in decline. Our despair is obviously going to be heightened when a neighbouring community, organization, club or church is growing, prospering at the same time.

It’s not hard to find explanations for the changes we see; pick and choose from the analyses around you and you’ll find a bunch to explain the fading of the traditional church, another batch expounding on the success of mega churches, yet another bundle of speculations on reasons for the big, broad, shifting demographics and cultural transformations, speculations that attempt to clarify why religion generally is experiencing decline. I have my pet theories; you probably have yours.

Most of us, most of our institutions exist somewhere between perfection and mediocrity. We’re smart one day, thick as short planks the next. We’re enthusiastic on Sunday, depressed and tired Wednesday through Friday. Despite our stated belief that the God in Christ has recognized our limitations and declared us OK (forgiven?) we continue to judge ourselves against the perfection benchmark. It’s just not true that our churches are broken, that our members are broken, that our religion is corrupt or unworthy of loyalty. “All we have sinned and come short of the glory of God” is not a courtroom verdict. It’s a description of reality.

The traditional church has many detractors, the most strident often being those who have drifted away to the day to day and need to justify sleeping in on Sunday morning as preferable to sitting through the hypocrisy of a church that’s not pure, that “doesn’t meet my needs,” that is far less than it ought to be. But what more is that than self-justification? What more is that than an inability or unwillingness to recognize the humanity in others, to forgive that in them? To see oneself as holier than Christ and his flawed and struggling communities of faith we’ve come to call church?

The Christian walk of discipleship—individually and in community—is not complicated. The record of Christ’s actions and teachings, flawed as they may be in the reporting and translation, are nevertheless guide enough to make the pathway clear. The list of obligations undertaken by the congregations of disciples (see the first paragraph) is not faulty, by and large, but is often haphazardly and sloppily carried out (see the immediately-above paragraph). To worship, to sing, to manage, to serve, to reach out and to educate are fundamental, even when they don’t achieve perfection.

We’ll never do it all perfectly, but to get better and better at it, well that’s a goal that ought to be a given. We’re not church-pampered people, we’re church-making humans. God forgive us when we throw down our tools and walk away in disgust because we don’t like the design of the structure. God forgive us when we balk at changes because we find comfort in keeping things the way they were. God forgive us when we come to see committee work—in whatever form it takes—as drudgery.

What could be more exhilarating than holding the lamp, carrying the salt shaker in the greatest revolution mankind will ever see! Where two or three are gathered, well, there you have a committee with means and a purpose . . . and with Christ’s blessing!