Real Church: Does it exist? Can I find it?

PRAISE FOR REAL CHURCH

"Larry Crabb’s Real Church burns with passionate clarity for what the people of Jesus Christ on earth could be—must be. Beyond deadening practices and snappy projects, he leads us into the raw interface between love and honesty, where we can dwell with one another under Trinitarian presence. It is the fearsome place of holiness and power. Dare we go there? Dare we not?"

—DALLAS WILLARD

Author, The Divine Conspiracy

"In Real Church, Larry Crabb is voicing questions a lot of people feel but may not ask aloud. It is time to ask."

—JOHN ORTBERG

Author and pastor, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church

Larry Crabb helps us take an intensely personal and honest look at ourselves and the church. I thought I would skim this book, but I ended up reading it all and repenting. Pastors, elders, and church folk need to read this book. What’s missing in our lives and churches is still waiting to be discovered . . . together.

—DR. JOEL C. HUNTER

Senior pastor, Northland, A Church Distributed

Orlando, FL

"I’m a raving fan of the local church. It’s God’s leading edge of His work in our world—warts and all. So, needless to say, it troubles me that my friend Larry Crabb has a problem with church. But I quickly remind myself that he’s not alone. Thankfully he has been honest enough to put his struggles in print, and thankfully he leads us to constructive resolution. We all need to read this book; even if you like church because you can count on it, some of your friends don’t."

—JOE STOWELL

President, Cornerstone University

Grand Rapids, MI

Is anyone better at getting real than Larry Crabb? With keen insight and jaw-dropping transparency, Larry deconstructs the contemporary church—the one people are staying away from in droves—and then builds one I’d like to attend. Along the way he offers a vision for a church that offers truth, transformation, community, and spiritual mission. What a gift! Hope that the church can once again make theology experiential.

—GARY W. MOON, PhD

Vice president and integration chair, Richmont Graduate University;

director, Renovaré Institute for Christian Spiritual Formation

© 2009 by Larry Crabb

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from The English Standard Version. © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Crabb, Lawrence J.

   Real church : does it exist? can I find it? / Larry Crabb.

       p. cm.

     Includes bibliographical references.

     ISBN 978-0-7852-2920-9 (hardcover)

     1. Church. I. Title.

     BV600.3.C73 2009

   262—dc22

2009001100

Printed in the United States of America

09  10  11  12  13  QW  5  4  3  2  1

To James (Trip) Moore—

as close a friend as one can have on earth.

Your life is anchored by Christ and by His vision for the church,

a vision I share.

We walk together.

Does real church exist? Will I find it? Can I help build it? Could I, with you, be it?

Wouldn’t it be something if followers of Jesus became known for what they are against in a way that revealed who they are for: people, no exceptions, who either are or could become masterpieces-in-the-making, corevolutionaries with God in His plan to make all things new?

    (A plan, by the way, that will work.)

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface: The Question Takes Shape

A Beginning Statement of What I Want in a Church

Introduction: I Don’t Much Like Going to Church Anymore (and I’m Not Alone)

1. Why Have We Lost Interest in Church?

2. Why Do So Many People Still Attend Church and Like It?

3. So What Is It that Makes a Gathering a Church?

4. So What Is It that Causes a Gathering to Cease Being a Church?

SECTION I

WHY SHOULD I GO TO CHURCH?

THREE ANSWERS THAT DON’T WORK FOR ME

5. It Will Make My Life Better: Is that What God’s Up To?

6. What’s Better than a Better Life?

7. It Will Show Me How to Change My World: Is that the Center of Church?

8. Authenticity and Mission Are Good Values, but Are They Enough?

9. It Will Offer Salvation and Help for Righteous Living: Is that the Deep Change God Wants?

SECTION II

WHAT CHURCH DO I WANT TO GO TO?

10. One that Knows I’m Not Okay and Neither Is Anyone Else

11. One that Acknowledges Where We Are and Meets Us There—with Truth

12. One that Understands My Need to Talk to God About What’s Going On in Me

13. What Will Make Me Want to Go to Church? (Not Another New Program!)

SECTION III

MARKS OF THE CHURCH I WANT TO BE PART OF

14. Mark #1: Hungers for the Truth that Sets Addicts Free

15. What Is Living and Active Truth Exactly?

16. Truth Comes Alive When It Tells a Story

17. Signposts Pointing into the Fog

18. Mark #2: Respects the Necessary Ingredients in the Remedy for Addiction

19. Helping Me Become More Like Jesus, Inside— Where It Counts

20. Mark #3: Finds Contentment in Wanting What Jesus Wants

21. Mark #4: Is Mission-Energized

22. Now What? Where To? What For?

23. Let the Conversation Continue

A Closing Statement of What I Want in a Church

Postscript

Real Church—Real Responses from Real Pastors

Notes

Bonus Material : A Sample from Larry Crabb’s Next Book 66 Love Letters: Discover the Larger Story of the Bible, One Book at a Time

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the great team at Thomas Nelson. You’ve all been wonderful to work with, both professionally and personally.

Thanks to our prayer team, both local and worldwide. I thank God for you every time I sense His power and prompting.

Thanks to the more than one thousand graduates of NewWay Ministries’ School of Spiritual Direction. You’ve strengthened my belief in the power of spiritual community.

Thanks to our ministry board: Ken and Lesley (my younger son and one of my two favorite daughters-in-law); Jody and Jeanie; Steve and Elaine; Glen and Angela. Your vision for what we’re about helps me press on.

Special thanks to my brothers and sisters at Valley Springs Fellowship. You are living my vision.

Extra special thanks to our little team: Andi, your passion for personal growth and kingdom advance is contagious; Kep (my older son) and Kimmie (his incredible wife), working so closely together is one of the great joys of my life; and Rachael, my partner—can I have this dance for the rest of my life? Except for knowing Christ, nothing means more.

Preface

The Question Takes Shape

It was December 24, 2007, at ten minutes past eight in the evening. As I walked out of church into the cold, snowy dark toward my car, I turned to my wife and, with surprising fervency, said, That was the best Christmas Eve service I’ve ever attended. It was a liberal church. And I’m a conservative evangelical.

Earlier that afternoon, together we had scanned the neighborhood newspaper that served the mountain village where we were staying and found six area churches offering Christmas Eve services. Two were evangelical, the kinds of Bible churches we had attended since childhood. We quickly crossed them off the list. I wasn’t sure why.

One church advertised itself as spiritually connected to the god-in-all-of-us. An easy cross-off. The remaining three seemed more mainstream, the kinds of churches I’ve ref lexively judged as having a form of godliness—all the right God-words—but lacking God’s power. I looked at each one more closely, with strange interest.

With my wife’s approval, I chose the church that we guessed would be most liturgical. Neither of us had any desire to hear a local celebrity strut whatever stuff he had. We found a back row seat in a sanctuary already crowded twenty minutes before the seven o’clock service began.

A quick study of the ten-page red-covered bulletin made it unmistakably clear that we were in a liberal church. It favorably acknowledged other ways to God than ours. Grace meant total inclusiveness without judgment of anyone.

Diversity was celebrated; diversity of belief, opinion, and lifestyle (including, and these were specifically mentioned, gender identity and sexual orientation) was welcomed. No one, the bulletin announced, would be excluded from full participation in the community of faith. I gathered that to be a person of faith meant you believed something about God. I think (though I’m not certain because the bulletin didn’t directly say so) that not only would same-sex couples be welcomed (which they should be), but they would be affirmed.

We sang Christmas carols that declared the clear and familiar good tidings: Christ is Lord; incarnate deity veiled in flesh; come to give us second birth; bringing the dawn of redeeming grace (Does that mean forgiving grace?If so, forgiveness for what? What needs to be forgiven in an inclusive community?); inviting the faithful (Faithful to what? To whatever we choose to believe?) to come and adore Him (Why? Is it because He is the only way to God or because He is a really nice person?).

The sermon, carefully scripted but engagingly delivered, also declared a clear message: we can see the face of God in all God’s children, in all people, Christian, Jew, Muslim, skeptic, whoever. Conversion isn’t necessary. Acceptance is the route to peace. At least that’s how I heard it.

The pastor went on. We live in the darkness of exclusivism that brings loneliness and judgment. But the light of Jesus has dawned. And we live in His light when we love all people as they are and open ourselves to being loved in return. I heard nothing to suggest that conversion from something wrong to something right, from lies to truth, from Satan to Jesus, was necessary. If it was, it has already happened, to everyone. The money is already in the bank. All that’s left to do is to spend it. Don’t hate; love. Don’t exclude or judge; include, accept. That was the message.

Every bone in my conservative evangelical body felt assaulted. Every spiritual nerve ending vibrated with alarm. As I walked forward to take communion, I had difficulty holding back tears as I looked around at the five hundred plus worshipers. Who, what, were they worshiping? The holy God who judged our sin in Jesus or a nice God who wants all His children to get along?

I felt a momentary urge to rip the clip-on microphone off the pastor’s robes and shout to the crowd, Are you saved? Do you realize the child born in Bethlehem was the man who went to Calvary to die for your sins and mine? Do you really believe that you’re nice people enjoyed by a nice God as you live nice lives?

I suppressed the urge. I dipped the bread in the wine and, with gratitude and wonder, thanked God for opening my eyes to see the real Jesus. I then returned to my seat and with quiet astonishment realized that, except for my brief but smothered outburst of evangelical fervor, I had really enjoyed the service.

It was more than the kind of enjoyment you feel from a pleasant experience. I felt strangely alive. I had paid close attention—it seemed as if for the first time—to the words of the familiar carols. I had listened with awe to the two gospels from Isaiah and Luke read by celebrants.

And I loved the sermon though there was not one direct reference to Scripture. And I wondered: Does evangelicalism, at least the version with which I’m familiar, somehow suffocate with Scripture the very life that Scripture offers? The pastor spoke movingly of seeing one another, of recognizing in everyone the face of a person Jesus loves. I felt moved with convicting joy as she told the story of Bono’s trip to Africa where his heart was broken by the ravages of AIDS and how, like Jesus, he did something about it.

Through the liturgy of music, gospel readings, the sacrament of communion, prayers (all read), and the sermon, I felt alive to God. I felt alive to community, to hope, to compassion, to a kingdom of love, to the King of love. I felt alive to my wife. I saw her face as a window into her soul, into the beauty of God’s image in female form, and my heart swelled with love. I felt alive in a way I rarely feel in an evangelical church. And I wondered why.

Church as I know it usually leaves deep parts of me dormant, unawakened, and untouched. Maybe it’s familiarity, the predictability of pattern and content that I find boring, superficially exciting at best, where emotions sometimes get stirred that get unstirred by the time I reach my car.

Christ boring? How can that be? He was the only man who never bored anyone He met. People either hated or worshiped Him. At the very least, people were profoundly curious about this strange man with a strange message and strange power.

I don’t much like going to church. I wonder whether I meet the real Jesus there. (I sometimes wonder whether I’ve ever really met the real Jesus. If I did, would I recognize Him?) When I attend an evangelical church, I feel like an outsider, a subversive spy, an undercover agent for a gospel that is more transforming than comfortable, a gospel that radically unnerves before it deeply comforts, a gospel that speaks more of release into the enjoyment of God than of effort to meet the requirements of God. In most evangelical church services I’ve attended, my hunger for truth that transforms, for love that liberates, is rarely satisfied.

I did like going to that liberal church on Christmas Eve. But I realized I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it. I’d feel again like a coconspirator with God’s Spirit, this time to plot the overthrow of a well-disguised devil by unmasking the real Jesus, assuming I know who that is. My thirst for forgiven-soul- to-forgiven-soul connecting would, I fear, remain unquenched.

My Christmas Eve experience left me asking a question with new urgency: What church do I want to go to? Conservative? Liberal? Evangelical?Mainline? Big? Small? Liturgical? Charismatic? Reformed? Seeker-sensitive?Emergent? Or maybe a kind of church that is marked by other things.

I began 2008 with that question burning a hole in my mind and heart:The church I want to go to—where is it? What is it? What church would compel me to attend? What kind of church service would I hate to miss?What church would I feel privileged to be part of ?

I had a hard time coming up with an answer. So I decided to think more about it. I think best with a pen in my hand. Hence this little book.

A Beginning Statement of

What I Want in a Church

Unplanned and unanticipated, this book jumped out of my personal disappointment, frustration, and concern with church as I’ve experienced it. Before you leap into these pages from your ledge of disappointment, frustration, and concern (or perhaps from the delight of your satisfaction, excitement, and appreciation for church), I want to provide a pencil sketch of the picture that comes to mind when I try to envision the church I want to be part of.

If my sketch intrigues you, or if it confuses, troubles, or irritates you enough to be reluctantly curious, you might keep reading. If not, if you find yourself bored or hopelessly confused, depressingly troubled or seriously irritated, well, I’ve saved you time. You can heave the book into the nearest trash can and be grateful you didn’t spend too much money or waste too much time on it. Or you could give it to someone you don’t much like, maybe the pastor of the church you left.

If you do decide to plow through the fifty thousand or so words I’ve written, know this: at the end I’ve added some color to the pencil sketch. What I’m saying in these introductory, stage-setting few pages will make more sense when you read my concluding remarks if you first make it through the whole book.

Now I know that the church I want to be part of might not be anything like the church you want to be part of. What I call a real church might not strike you as real at all. Or you may not want to be part of any church. Been there, done that.

But the idea won’t go away—call it a persistent vision if you like—that people who want to know God better and live more like Jesus and represent Him well in this messed-up world could get together in ways I wouldn’t want to miss. That’s the church I want to find or, with you, to be.

We might, however, separate over small things. Things that some churches do that annoy or deaden me might wake you up to new possibilities of living like a Christian. For example, I have trouble staying engaged—and awake—during a drawn-out, highly liturgical service. My mind wanders. But maybe when you hear the prayers of great saints from a thousand years ago read aloud or confessions from historic church councils recited, your mind stays engaged, and your heart resonates. If so, good for you. I’m jealous.

If I can (and it is difficult), I tune out preaching with more volume than content. I easily discount messages that feel more like a theater-worthy performance designed to draw me to the actor’s talent than a learning opportunity presented by someone who is passing on what he or she hears from God.

But I realize that noisy sermons (you might call them passionate) and polished performances (you might see them as expressions of spiritual giftedness) might keep you awake long enough with ears open wide enough to hear God say something. Again, good for you. Not good for me.

And too much contemporary church music—you know the kind . . .happy music sung by always smiling singers—irritates me, especially songs that repeat one line again and again. I realize, however, that line might keep you humming one great truth all week. But it makes me want to leave church and find the nearest Starbucks. Oh well, to each his own.

One more thing for now: I don’t like small groups where personal vulnerability is more valued than spiritually discerning wisdom. God sometimes seems to get lost when people get real. The focus in small groups too often falls on revealing more of ourselves than learning more from God. In our therapeutic culture, it’s often assumed that a growing knowledge of the Bible doesn’t have much to do with why it’s good to get real or with what good it does to get real or with how we can draw on the Spirit to live well in the middle of whatever’s going on in our lives.

The best thing for you, though, might very well be to find a group of people safe enough for you to risk talking about what you tend to hide. The profound experience of looking bad in the presence of love might do for you what it has done for many (me included); it might arouse your hunger for the truth that makes that kind of nonjudgmental, accepting, forgiving love possible. And if you do really search for love-empowering truth, you will be drawn to God and to the Book He’s written. There’s no other source.

But with all the ways we might differ, I suspect we have a few important things in common. Four come to mind.

I’ll guess