A Dangerous Flattery
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and now that my daughter is two and parroting everything my wife and I do, I’d like to think that they’re right. I wonder if the first-century Christians would be flattered by our imitation? I was raised in California at the tail end of the heyday of the churches of Christ; when Acapella was selling out church auditoriums and brotherhood lectureships. When weekend youth rallies regularly numbered 1000+ teens and the summer bible camps were turning kids away because of bunk shortages. I remember climbing Half-Dome in knee-high socks at the annual Yosemite Family Encampment until it grew so large that the national park service asked us not to return- we were cratering their alcohol sales. Most of all, I remember our common aim and rallying cry, instilled into me from my very earliest days- Restoring New Testament Christianity.Today, I am serving Jesus in Lisbon Portugal and the spirit of the restoration lives on in our lives and our work among the churches of Christ. When I read the New Testament through the lenses of our heritage I feel the weight of responsibility to carry on the church of Christ legacy, New Testament imitation; we don’t merely want to be like the first-century Christians, we want to be first-century Christians. This has been and remains our common goal. While this is a well meaning and spiritually sounding goal it carries with it a treacherous weakness that I fear will be our ultimate downfall. It is our Achilles heel, which if left unaddressed threatens to undermine the churches of Christ as a movement.
I will concede that not everyone nowadays shares the restorationist passion, nor does everyone subscribe to this as creed (“Have no creeds but the Bible”) but in general, among the churches of Christ this aspiration comes as close to creedal teaching as anything else we profess. Historically, it formed our core and established our identity yet today, for many in the churches of Christ it is no longer a noble desire it is the goal to be maintained at all costs, This high cost I’m afraid, is insidiously diluting our momentum.
Why is having this goal so dangerous? Because it is fundamentally different than of those we claim to imitate.
World’s Apart
If the numbers prove to be accurate, the churches of Christ have already begun their slow decline. I am in no way insinuating that should the churches of Christ cease to exist that God’s work on this earth would cease, God will not be moved. Nor do I believe that this trend is irreversible. However, the churches of Christ have much to add to Christian dialogue and therefore we who wish to see the movement advance have a responsibility to get our priorities straight. Listen carefully; if our goal is to be first-century Christians, we will never see that desire fulfilled because as noble a goal as this may be, it is a different goal altogether than those we’re professing to imitate.How can I be so sure? First, we know that the aim of our first-century forefathers was different because we have Jesus’ instruction “…go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20 ESV) Second, we know the goal of those first disciples was to go and make more disciples because of the results. The early church grew by tens of thousands very early on until it turned the Roman Empire on its head. Not only did they accept Jesus’ mandate, they succeed in it, leaving for us a legacy to follow. However if you visit our congregations today, attend our lectureships, or talk with the members you will discover that, for many, the noble desire of “first century Christianity” is itself the objective; the means have been swapped for the end.
The telltale signs are all around us: shrinking congregations still arguing about baptismal regeneration, arguments about instruments in the first century, one cup or two, or the King James as the litmus test for fellowship, ad nauseam. The longer we ignore the fact that the goal we’re striving for is the polar opposite of our first-century brethren the quicker our demise will be. The more effort we exert in trying to be “first-century Christians” the less passionate we’ll be in making new disciples, planting new churches, and sending missionaries to reach the unreached. Most intriguingly I’ve discovered that the opposite is also true; the more passionate we are in being and making disciples of Jesus Christ the more like our first century brethren we'll become.
If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery then we need to start imitating by doing what the first century Christians did. Anything else is just a cheap knock-off.
