On Being A Hopeful Church

In the past few posts I have been focusing on "Help" in the I-HOPE acronym.  I believe that the method of hope can best be represented by the acronym, “I-HOPE.”  Those letters stand for:

·       I—Identity: who I think I am shapes my hopes.

·       H—Help: hopeful people get the help they need and give the help they can.

·       O—Optimistic thinking styles: people of hope see possibilities rather than problems.

·       P—Pathways to the future: hopeful people are open to alternative life paths.

·       E—Ends or purposes that matter.

Hopeful people give all the help they can.  Do you want to feel more hopeful in the midst of personal struggles?  Don’t worry so much about getting fixed up yourself.  Find someone else to help.

This applies directly to mainline churches in North America.  I believe the mainline Protestant movement on this continent stands under God’s judgment.  

I believe we are suffering for our institutional selfishness and our obsession with worldly success.  As mainline Protestant churches decline, we look for all kinds internal fixes.  We change the musical style.  We offer new programs for youth, families, elders, singles, and every other interest group.  We pay organizational and marketing consultants to make us prettier.

None of that really works.  And we get more desperate every day.

Do we want to feel more hopeful as the Church?  Let’s stop worrying about get fixed up internally.  Let’s find someone to help.

We are in the same situation as Jesus in our gospel.  Whether the church cooperates or not, the world is coming to Jesus for help.  Whether we want to get involved or not, the world hopes Jesus will do something to help.  If the Church won’t welcome, the stranger, the foreigner and the outsider, the Holy Spirit will find someone who will.  And the world knows that the next hopeful step is to help someone else.

Reggie McNeal describes the “emergence of the altruism economy.”  The world understands the value of helping others with no expectation of return.  The world, he says, “beckons the church to move from being the recipient of a generous culture…to actually being generous to the culture.”  The world doesn’t owe the church a living.  We in the church need to stop acting like it does.

In fact, McNeal writes, the world “challenges the church to move beyond its own programs and self-preoccupation.”  He suggests that the church has tremendous opportunities for mission in the community—“But only if the church is willing to get over the delusion that the ‘success’ of the church impresses the world.  It does not.”[i]

Hopeful people get all the help they need and give all the help they can.  And that is especially true of hopeful churches.

A Facebook post had a good line this week.  “Don't ask the Lord to guide your footsteps if you're not willing to move your feet.”  This is the challenge that goes with today’s promise.  As churches, we we do what is required when the Spirit guides us into new mission and service?  I pray the answer will be a resounding “Yes!”

Hopeful people get all the help they need and give all the help they can.

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[i] Reggie McNeal, Missional Renaissance, page 5.