THE FORGETFUL CHURCH

"... in all our preaching and teaching about the hope that the gospel makes possible, we have to keep steadily in view the fact that what the gospel offers is not just hope for the individual but hope for the world. Concretely I think this means that the congregation must be so deeply and intimately involved in the secular concerns of the neighborhood that it becomes clear to all that no one and nothing is outside the range of God's love in Jesus ... If the Good News is to be authentically communicated it must be clear that the Church is concerned about the rule of God and not about itself."

LESSLIE NEWBIGIN, A WORD IN SEASON.

There is a preoccupation with the self that has developed in congregations throughout the western world today. Only in rare moments of corporate introspection does it dawn on us that the church, somewhere along the line, has sadly started to exist solely for itself. We notice that the main duty of the pastor has become providing spiritual care for the members. That the main duty of the members, at least the more "committed" members, has become providing the manpower needed run the programs of the church, programs designed primarily for itself. Given enough time, most congregations become increasingly self-absorbed ... a hallmark of our rampant western narcissism.

Yet, in the midst of all this, the thing that fades quickly into a kind of congegrational amnesia is the call of the church to be for the community. We forget that, in the New Testament, as much as a church was "the church of Christ", it was also "the church of Corinth" or "the church of Rome" or "the church of Galatia".

In the insecurity of our self-obsession we have forgotten the millions caught in the cycle of institutionalized poverty ... some of whom live just a few blocks away from us, on the "wrong side of the tracks". We have forgotten the single mother of three who watches her children slip namelessly through the farce called "inner city education" to find that they have learned nothing but fear, violence and hatred. We have forgotten those who wander aimlessly in the streets that they call "home", and we stop only to remind ourselves (as they themselves do as well) that they're human, too.

The church, having been so consumed with itself, has lost its vision of itself. The biblical paradox holds true for the corporate body as well as individuals: it is in moments of self-forgetfulness that we find that we have truly been ourselves.