More specifically, the beauty of the church is:

• The hands and feet of Christ
• Edification of saints
• Equipping of saints to do the work of
Christ
• Devotion to the brethren
• Body and blood of Christ taken together
• The accountability that comes through the sacrament of communion
• Celebration of community throughout the week
• The memory line of pain that produces spiritual victory
• Celebrating the “Little Easter” (Sunday worship)

We do a disservice to the Christian name by diluting the message of the gospel, making it a product to be hocked rather than a way of life to be experienced. Additionally, we have been persuaded into thinking that we, as the church, need to be innovators of technology and disseminators of relevance to be a credible voice in the public square. This is veneer.

We forget that, in its infancy, Christianity spread exactly because it demanded much from the convert, it was winsome, it cared for people, and it inspired martyrdom.

Michael Green in his Evangelism in the Early Church notes, “Within thirty years of the founding of the new faith, to join the Christians meant to court martyrdom.”22 Yet the faith flourished. Through persecution, intimate community, and personal devotion to their faith, the infant church established a deeply rooted faith expression that would not be pulled up by any passing wind (trend) or threatening storm (heresy). It was a way of life that transcended culture.

The church fathers used their wisdom and discernment to keep the church on track—to keep it pure. We enter dangerous waters when we build church empires upon Christian celebrity. In his treatise Against Celsus, Origen writes, “The unlearned men were the establishers of [Christianity]. This was to check vainglory, this to repress arrogance, this to enforce moderation.”23 John (“Golden Tongue”) Chrysostom highlights a faith lived out:

Let us overcome by our manner of living rather than by our words alone. For this is the main battle, this is the unanswerable argument, the argument from conduct.… For it is not what is said that draws their attention, but their enquiry is, what we do; and they say, “Do your first to obey your own words, and then admonish others.… Let us win them therefore by our life.”24

“By our life.” Our unveneered lives should speak triumphantly, testifying that there is no need to hide true selves in order to gain acceptance. We are a holy brethren fumbling toward righteousness, a gathering of the imperfect becoming evermore whole, evermore beautiful, evermore less.25

END NOTES
1 This is a paraphrase of lyrics from Randy Travis’s “Forever and Ever, Amen.”

2 Peter Kreeft, Back to Virtue: Traditional Mural Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), 37.

3 Grant McCracken, Culture & Consumerism (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990), 11.

4I bid., 9-11. In her book Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism (1983) Chandra Mukerji argues that “consumerism predates the rise of capitalism and, further, that consumerism helped to create the capitalism it is conventionally supposed to have followed.” This puts consumerism present at the very beginning of modern Western society.

5 Penelope Green, “Yours for the Peeping,” New York Times, November 4, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/weekinreview/04green.h t m l ? p a g e w a nt e d = 1 & _ r = 1 & s q = s h e r r y % 2 0turkle&st=cse&scp=6.

6 Jason Tanz, “Internet Famous: Julia Allison and the Secrets of Self-Promotion,” Wired, August 2008, http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/magazine/16-08/howto_allison.

7 Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 26.

8 Craig Gay, The Way of the Modern World: Or, Why It’s Tempting to Live as if God Doesn’t Exist (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998), 196.

9 Klaus Bockmuehl, The Christian Way of Living (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1998), 57.

10 Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New Directions, 1961), 32-33.

11 Gabe Lyons first identified these distinct seven channels to us.

12 Fast Company, June 2008.

13 Ibid.

14 As an aside, we must say that we offer these observations for what they are: a clear and honest look at an honorable position in the body of Christ. We (Jason and Tim) meet with our pastor every Thursday at Waffle House. We love our pastor. Tim’s father has been a pastor his whole life. Both of these men have heard these observations and in large part agree with what has happened to the pastorate in the twenty-first-century church. We offer these observations in a spirit of love.

15 Michael Horton, “All Crossed Up,” Touchstone, March 2008, http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=21-02-011-v.

16 John Piper, Brothers We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry (Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2002), 84–85.

17 Ibid.

18 F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1977), 249.

19 David B. Capes, Rodney Reeves, and E. Randolph Richards, Rediscovering Paul: An Introduction to His World, Letters and Theology (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2007), 144.

20 Bruce W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001), 203.

21 Francis A. Schaeffer. A Christian Manifesto (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1981), 131

22 Michael Green. Evangelism in the Early Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004).

23 Steve McKinion. Life and Practice of the Early Church: A Documentary Reader (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 34.

24 Ibid., 136.

25 “He must become greater; I must become less” (John 3:30, TNIV).

This essay is adapted from Veneer: Living Deeply in a Surface Society

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