photo by striatic

After considering Tim Keller’s strategy on advancing the gospel in the 21st century, I realized that much of what the church does today is a strategy and not a command. What does that mean? Much of what the church does is strategic and not a biblical mandate.

The bible talks specifically about sin and commands us to flee from sin such as adultery, homosexuality, anger, but it doesn’t say have prayer meetings every week, listen to sermons every Sunday, attend small group every week or even read the bible every day. The bible does tell us to be unified and to love one another and spur each other on toward love and good deeds, but much of the how is left up to us. It’s left up to our own interpretation.

God doesn’t write out a specific plan in the bible about how to encourage the body to pray. He merely tells us to pray unceasingly. How we manage that in the 21st century is a matter of strategy.

Now the problem is when two people disagree. For example, one person might say, “You need to come to morning prayer regularly.”

“Why?”

“Because the bible commands us to pray unceasingly. Without prayer in your life, you are disconnected from God. You need to seek after God in prayer.”

The person just made a case for prayer, but not necessarily for morning prayer specifically. Morning prayer is only a strategy for prayer but often we get the strategy confused with the command.

Strategies are judged on how well they work. Commands are judged on whether or not they are biblical.

If we start justifying our strategies using the bible, we are making a huge mistake.

For example, Tim Keller justifying his strategy of reaching the city with biblical support is a mistake. His strategy might be a great strategy (I personally believe it is) but it should never be justified using biblical support. For what if in 100 years the city is no longer relevant? (not likely but always a possibility) Would we still have to reach the city as if it were a biblical mandate? Of course not.

In churches today, we HAVE to have Sunday School, a small group fellowship, sunday worship, prayer meeting, retreats and mission trips. But what we don’t realize is that the bible never commands us to have ANY of these things. These are all strategies and they must be evaluated on how well they work. If small groups are not conducive to developing community and accountability, maybe you need to look at another strategy. If prayer meetings are not encouraging prayer in the church, maybe you need another strategy. Just because we cut prayer meetings doesn’t mean we don’t care about prayer. Just because we don’t have bible study at every fellowship doesn’t mean that we don’t have a high view of God’s word.

Collectively, these strategies form the ethos or culture of the church and they help us fulfill God’s commands which are to love one another and to build up the body. I challenge the church to think strategically and to evaluate things on whether not they work rather than getting dogmatic about it. Most of the things we argue about are not a matter of dogma. Rather lets have intelligent discussions on strategy and how we are ultimately going to fulfill the great commission, love one another and build each other up… which are biblical commands.