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Church
The Veneer of Church
by
Andrew Palau
Editor's Note: This seven-part series explores the "veneer" of each channel of culture. It is inspired by the latest Q book by Jason Locy and TIm Willard:
Veneer: Living Deeply in a Surface Society
.
If these ideas resonate with you, consider
picking up a copy
and diving deeper into this conversation.
I have much to learn about the Church and the interplay of evangelism, specifically in terms of how full-time, dedicated evangelists can and should undergird the work of local churches. I'm committed to uphold and encourage those within the Church. After all, one of the key components of the Palau Association is to “work with, through, and for the local church.” Yet, given the myriad of issues and "veneers" among the community of believers, it would be naïve to think navigating those waters would be so simple.
As I reflect on the many veneers that exist in the church, it would be the height of hubris for me to not first look within and wrestle with the way these facades play out in my own life (Matthew 7:3-5). After all, the veneers we deal with are just more examples of a loving God working in and through sinners, like me.
The first, and perhaps most obvious veneer I encounter within myself, as well as the church, is that of acceptance. That is, the desperate need and attempt to be accepted by our peers and those we seek to serve. I just finished a seminary course at Multnomah University on vocation and calling. Of the four personality indicators, I was off the charts skewed toward the need for unanimous reassurance and acceptance from others. I can relate to Paul when he told Timothy that of the sinners whom Christ came to save, he was the worst.
God has generously allowed me to travel around the world and speak before hundreds of thousands of people. If I am not centered on the Lord, totally surrendered to him and his calling and rule in my life, this type of constant visibility and desire for acceptance easily lends itself to pride. (How embarrassing is that? But we all know it’s true in our lives.) And worse yet, our celebrity-driven culture only feeds this tendency, pushing us to seek acceptance, praise, even service from those we should actually be serving.
When I look at the current church culture in America and see it sometimes embraced and other times ridiculed from overseas because of this very thing, it causes me to check my spirit. Yet, I can see this struggle emerging more and more. While these issues of acceptance and pride are cyclical and swirling—"there is nothing new under the sun"—we must struggle against it together in order to break free.
Another veneer I see infiltrating the Church is that of nuance. While I have spent the past 18 years serving the Church in unified, citywide evangelistic outreaches, I am often surprised by the reaction of believers, and even pastors, to our organization's simple approach to evangelism. I'm a straightforward thinking guy and believe that I need to anchor my ministry in clear biblical concepts. Sadly, that simple-minded, laser-focused approach is not always accepted by the Church. We feel the need to sugarcoat messages and add culturally relevant adaptations. In other words, we nuance the message to death. And, sadly, it’s not always for the purpose of more effectively sharing the Good News. Instead, the adjustments and nuances are simply there to ease sensitive brothers and sisters whom we don't want to offend.
Though I understand how important it is to be thoughtful in our cultural expressions of evangelism, I believe we often get so stuck in the discussion of how to evangelize that we never get to evangelism itself. No one would dispute that we need to incorporate elements of relevance into our evangelistic ways and means. Throughout church history, we find Christians using creative means to bring the Word of God to new lands.
I also understand the missiological aspects we must be wary of as full-time, dedicated evangelists and pastors—balancing word and deed in a symbiotic relationship of love and truth. It is why our ministry has incorporated community initiatives known as Season of Service into our evangelistic festival model. The success of
Season of Service
not only opens up doors in our city, but it also allows us to share the reason why we are serving. It's not bait-and-switch. It's pure service, a commitment to the full message of Christ.
[WATCH: Kevin Palau and Tom Krattenmaker talk about season of service at Q Chicago.]
Even with all that effort, we can still become bogged down with details and nuances. We can easily veer off course, burdened with evangelistic strategies. We can stumble in our work, stuck in the confines of the "culturally cool" factor. Eventually these ideas become a veneer—just one more comforting excuse to not share the Good News. I think this quote conveys my passion well: "The strategy of a man like St. Paul was basically simple," writes British Theologian Michael Green in
Evangelism in the Early Church
, "he had one life, and was determined to use it to the greatest extent and at the best advantage possible in the service of Jesus Christ. His vision was at once personal, urban, provincial and global."
This is my personal prayer: that I can move and act within my calling with a clear-minded simplicity as I strive toward the goal. That I would recognize the pitfalls that surface in an age where acceptance and pride can blur our focus. May we, as church leaders, strive to keep Jesus' command to "go" ever in our minds as we serve his bride by leading it ever closer to him.
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Are there any "veneers" in the church that you feel Andrew missed? Do you agree/disagree that nuance constitutes "veneer" in the church?
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Comments
Lori Adams
One of the veneers I would add is the need to fill up our time together with words in church. How I long for silence together to allow the words said to sink into our souls. A sermon full of great words and thoughts deserves meditation. The need to "make the most of our short time together" misses the best speaker on many occasions, the Holy Spirit. Let's be more still. I believe it would help us to be more real.
John Parton
I identify with your comments about the veneer of acceptance. In our desperate search for acceptance do we lie and deceive each other when we gather? I think we frequently do.
Could it be that the absence of this flaw(sin) is what drew people to Jesus?
John Parton
I identify with your comments about the veneer of acceptance. In our desperate search for acceptance do we lie and deceive each other when we gather? I think we frequently do.
Could it be that the absence of this flaw(sin) is what drew people to Jesus?
Don
I believe the church has gone into side alleys of intellectual thinking in the Church. The gospel is and was meant to be simple, but leave it to us (the church) to over think it, like the first man and women to eat from the tree of (knowledge of good / evil) to be stuck on trying to be more like God and missing what is right in front of us the lost world that Jesus came for. But no we need to write another book and have a group study . The Gospel of Grace is about BEING NOT TRYING TO GET IT RIGHT OR TO AVOILD THE WRONG WAY. We are living in the last days people.
Larry Barker
Don,
In a sense, I "feel your pain". I recognize the realities of the fact that this world is indeed lost and without hope apart from Christ, and that ought to radically impact the way we live our lives, the way we "do church", and more.
However, I would just offer a simple word of caution. As a young man who is eons from having everything figured out, but who is striving to love God and love my neighbor to the very best of my ability...we must not discount "intellectual thinking" when we talk about what the church should look like. I agree with you: some Christians, often zealous young men like myself, fall into the trap of accruing knowledge and sharpening their intellect, without letting it actually impact the way life is lived. That is wrong, and here is why:
The gospel is meant to affect our lives holistically. It ought to affect our minds (intellect), heart (emotions/passions/desires), and our hands (actions). When we isolate the effects of the gospel to only one or two of those areas, we've hit a dangerous spot where we are likely to become off-balance.
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once shared a great sermon on Romans 6:17 on this topic, entitled: "Mind, Heart, & Will". It's a part of his "Spiritual Depression" series. I highly, highly encourage you to check it out.
God bless my brother! Let's strive to run the race well!
Don
I have been walking with the Lord for close to 40 years that is short for some long for others, and I have seen a lot and most of it is a repeat the same dog and pony show just propagated . We taking great care to understand the deep things of God or we are so caught up in trying to understand our culture and in that we are setting still. Colossians 2:20-23 You have died with Christ, and he has set you free from the spiritual powers of this world. So why do you keep on following the rules of the world, such as, 21 "Don't handle! Don't taste! Don't touch!"? 22 Such rules are mere human teachings about things that deteriorate as we use them. 23 These rules may seem wise because they require strong devotion, pious self-denial, and severe bodily discipline. But they provide no help in conquering a person's evil desires.
Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.
The Church has been for to long stuck in (nurturing and not in our new nature our new DNA, Acts 1:8 )
Our belief system is simple, no God does not want us to leave our mind at the door, but we are so caught up in things that don’t matter mainly to the world. Remember we need to get our eyes off of the tree and set them back onto our life (Jesus) . Jesus said; John 5:39-40
"You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! 40 Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.
Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.
Jeff Nelson
In a proper operating body a veneer is sanded away to expose a transparent view of the inner working temple. A veneer is merely a cover up to shield what we fear others will find out about us and then reject us. So if we are not ashamed of the whole Gospel then we will slowly remove our cover so to speak and hopefully Christ will be revealed under the surface. I like what Andrew Palau has to say about this topic. But even with our masks and veneers and subtle nuances if we are following Christ we are all part of one body. I like the way Spurgeon says it "God speed every effort by which Jesus is set before the fallen and degraded, so long as it is the real gospel. Our fears begin only when Jesus is no longer in the message".
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