Church as God’s family
The Church is the Body of Christ. This is something Christians are reminded of by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12. The use of the Body metaphor helps Christians to visualise what it means to be a member of the Church, where Christians—differently gifted, regardless of gender, social status, educational qualification—are integral parts of one body, under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
It is clear from the teachings of the Bible that the Church is primarily a network of people who named Jesus as Lord and Saviour.
Besides seeing the Church as the Body of Christ, Christians are also members of the same Household of God (Ephesians 2:18–20).
In other words, Christians belong to the same family.
The Church as God’s family must be shaped by the ethos of the family and follow the teachings of Jesus. We cannot claim to be a member of the Church and refuse to allow Jesus to play a decisive role in the way we view priorities in life and conduct ourselves.
We cannot claim to be a member of the Church and yet ignore Jesus, his redemptive story and the demand of discipleship. It is odd if Christians unwittingly or intentionally replace Jesus with the dominant ideology and godless cultures of our time.
As the Methodist Social Principles have stated, in the paragraph on The Sphere of the Church (in The Book of Discipline of The Methodist Church in Singapore 2022, ¶91): “The Church is a community of believers who are loved by God, informed and shaped by the Gospel of Jesus Christ and sanctified by the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. It is a community where Christians are taught by scripture, instructed by tradition, enriched by reason and affirmed by the corporate experience of the followers of Christ.”
The way we think, our attitude towards others, our response to issues we encounter in life, the rationale for the decision we make, and the lifestyle we choose to adopt—if we are to be true and faithful to our faith—must reflect the teachings of the Church (Romans 12:1-2). In other words, the Church as our family is a significant community which must command our unwavering allegiance.
In the world but not of the world
Recognising the Church as our significant community and therefore agreeing that the Church should have a decisive role in nurturing us and strengthening our faith is not difficult.
Our difficulty is this: How then should Christians who are members of this family respond to the real and often vexatious challenges we face in life?
Historically Christians have responded in various ways. Famous American theologian, HR Niebuhr, in his classic, Christ and Culture (1951) identifies five ways in which Christians have interacted with the wider world:
1. Christ against culture
2. Christ of culture
3. Christ above culture
4. Christ and culture in paradox
5. Christ the transformer of culture
This categorisation of five typologies has its critics but, when used judiciously, it has served us well in helping Christians to consider how we may relate to the world outside of the Church.
For ease of understanding, let me reduce the five categories to three. Christians can take a stance on:
1. Christ against culture at one extreme
2. Christ embracing culture, at the opposite extreme, and
3. Christ critiquing culture in a constructive dynamic tension, as a radical centre
While each approach can find support from the teachings of the Church, a biblically sound, responsive, and responsible approach is the third model which allows Christians to be in the world and not of the world.
The first model in my schema takes a negative view of the world. It tends to be more isolationist, inward looking and world denying. It can, nevertheless, serve as a warning against the temptation to accept blindly worldly cultures.
The second model takes on a utopian view of what is happening in our world. Those who favour such a view would accept whatever the world offers and adopt the thinking, trends, and tastes of contemporary cultures as evidence of the Church being “progressive”. This approach does not take the reality of sin too seriously. However, when handled with critical mindfulness, it can still prompt Christians not to reject, without giving fair consideration, the multi-faceted cultures of the world too quickly.
My preferred model lets Christians live out their life as the salt and light of the world, remaining faithful in our walk with God, exposing evil, calling attention to superficial life and wasteful lifestyle, and speaking out against injustice and godless value systems.
While we know that Christians, as members of the Church, should be the light and salt in the world, the sad truth is that often Christians have forgotten about who they are as redeemed people called out of darkness into light.
Instead of being more focused on allowing the teachings of the Church to inform and shape our minds and life, we find it easier to follow the consumerist and godless teachings of our world.
The Methodist Social Principles remind us to return to the teachings of the Church captured in our Wesleyan tradition by acknowledging who we are as members of the faith community called the Church, and as members who should be both responsible and responsive in the way we conduct ourselves and engage the wider world.
Christians, community and character
“Let the Church be the Church,” said leading American ethicist, Stanley Hauerwas. He has spent much of his time calling the Church, especially in the Euro-North American world, not to compromise who they are in the midst of strong temptations to accommodate and concede ground to the gods of our age.
According to theologians like Hauerwas, the Church, especially in the West, has been infiltrated and enthralled by the contemporary dominant ideological worldview represented by political liberalism, and pop cultures underwritten by an overwhelmingly materialistic consumerist value system.
The way to counteract what he denounced as the Constantinisation of the Church, that is, when the Church uncritically endorses and sometimes becomes the mouthpiece of worldly values and ideologies, is to re-affirm that the Church is A Community of Character (the title of his book).
Christians must be nourished and nurtured by a community that worships Jesus, narrates his redemptive Story, imbibes the central teaching of Jesus, and acquires virtues which will inform and form our character.
Part of the reason the Church might have been lured into following the ways of the world instead of the way of God is because of our neglect of character formation.
We have forgotten about cultivating the theological virtues of faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 13:13); the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23); and a widely accepted set of four Cardinal Virtues: Wisdom, justice, courage and temperance.
We tend to be attracted to and follow what others outside the Church are doing and promoting. We happily model our lives after secular gurus rather than ask what the Church should teach and what virtues we should seek after, to be the kind of Christians God intended Christians to be.
For the Church to be the Church, the members must remember who the Head is and continue to open ourselves to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit to shape us, equip us and empower us for our life-long journey here on earth, as faithful followers of God.
This article was first published in Salt & Light on 20 May 2024.
Rev Dr Daniel Koh Kah Soon, PhD, University of Durham, currently serves as a re-engaged pastor at Barker Road Methodist Church. A former lecturer at Trinity Theological College, he is an Advisor to the Board of Governance of the Methodist Welfare Services. He chaired the committee and was the main writer that produced the Methodist Social Principles.