What is the Church to do?

LOCH A TUATH NEWS January 2002

Society is changing drastically, according to a recently published report. The report, on the subject of 'living in Britain', shows the radically altered trends of lifestyle which have become commonplace. More people are living on their own than a generation ago, more couples living together with 'partners' instead of spouses, fewer children being born, more divorces than ever before.

The statistics bear out what observers have already noticed within our own community -- for Lewis is just a microcosm of the nation as a whole. The beginning of a new year is a striking metaphor for the journey that society is making. We are constantly reinventing our standards, and continually crossing new thresholds.

The Bible is profoundly interested in society. Although the Gospel is deeply personal, faith is never individualistic. God created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and immediately laid the foundation for marriage, home and family life, social and communal life. The one thing that was not good for man, even in God's good, paradisaical world, was that he was alone. God's provision addressed that need. Just as God is triune, personal yet relational, so man in his image needed, and needs, the company of others.

But how is the church to respond when social standards are altering, not only from what they were a generation ago, but altering from where God himself placed them? How are we to bring our Christian conscience to bear on the rapidly evolving world in which we live and work?

First, the church is to proclaim the ideals of the Bible. It is still the case that God has ordained marriage as an exclusive, life-long relationship for a heterosexual couple. That does not mean that marriage is problem-free, or that divorce is unnecessary. But it does mean that we have a blueprint, which we must work to. Society has not benefitted from the gradual erosion of these standards.

Second, the church must communicate the message of the Gospel sensitively and practically to the changing society in which she serves. People do not have the same standards or expectations as they did in the 1950s or 1960s; children think in a totally different way to the way I was taught to think. The problem of the human heart remains the same, but the reality of the human condition is quite different. The church proclaims the remedy for human need in Jesus Christ; but she must -- we must -- reach out in empathy and tenderness to win men and women for Christ.

Third, the church exists not to preserve a world that is gone, but to Christianise the world that is all around us. We must have the boldness to review our strategies and to walk alongside a world which we may not altogether approve of. We may lament the death of Christian Britain; but if we are to challenge men's thinking as Christ did, we must reach out to the Britain, and to the Back, that is before us.

May we learn, if we are Christians, to be the church in an ever-changed world. And, if you read this thinking that the church is an outdated irrelevance, why not come along and hear just how relevant the Gospel is?