We all know what it is like to stretch, unless you’re dead. We do it daily when we take in a deep breath in the morning. We do it to get the seldom used carafe from the cupboard’s top shelf. We do it before running or swimming or biking. We do it when we are too lazy to walk around the fence to retrieve the morning newspaper. We do it when we try to look taller (thus thinner) than we actually are. I could come up with dozens more times of stretching. You could too. Stretching is part of living.
Same with church. Every church stretches, unless it’s dead. Churches stretch to make more people fit in the sanctuary. We stretch to allow for more services. We stretch our belief to allow for more miracles or more suffering or more challenges than we think we can face. We stretch to listen to music that is not our preferred or most worship inducing kind. We stretch to let uncomfortable people have a place in our small group even though they always seem to make life awkward for everyone. We stretch to pray and/or to fast beyond our previous limits or historic patterns. We stretch to use what everyone else calls our spiritual gifts, when we don’t necessarily agree that we possess them. We do that out of obedience to Christ and his body. Churches stretch. It’s part of living.
Faith is, by nature, a stretching activity. So is love. Neither come without moving us beyond the easy, familiar and comfortable.
Here’s the catch. If it is inherent to the Christian faith and church expression, why so much pushback when we ask the church to stretch? We’ve all read the new wineskins and the new patch of cloth parables of Jesus (Luke 5:36-39). The religious folks of Jesus’ day didn’t stretch much at all. In fact, they were committed "anti-stretch" folks. If it were a political platform they would have opposed the stretch folks calling them "Rome insiders". They couldn’t see themselves moving away from tried and true practices that seemed to be inextribably intertwined with the truths they historically were thought to promote.
Jesus talked about a Kingdom where stretching would be the norm- expansion to include other cultures and races, new ways of doing "church", a new way of observing Sabbath, a new way to look at law (motive rather than method) and a new way to look at entering into fellowship (born again rather than physical circumcision). [The apostle Paul jumped firmly on the last one.] I have only scratched the surface.
I have folks ask me occasionally, what is more important in our Sunday morning experience- "worship" (assuming music is synonymous with worship) or the "word" (assuming preaching is the primary way to get the "word" through). I have heard preaching that doesn’t get much of the word out, but certainly prompts personal and corporate worship. On the other hand, I have heard some music do a better job of communicating the word than the preaching it preceded. But, stretching the idea altogether, how did anyone come to the conclusion that one person teaching the word to everyone else sitting in a seat is the best way of teaching the word? Perhaps a rabbinic "teach as you walk through life together" is a better way. And, how did anyone come to the conclusion that music is the best medium to incite worship? [Note that in the Bible there are more references associating "sacrifice" with worship than there are "music." Likely for us, sacrifice would be less favorably expressed through cutting up cattle than general financial philanthropy. But, the point is the same.] We walk through our conversations about doing church with assumptions that some of the apostles may have wondered how we developed them.
My desire is for the church to look at structure as subservient to servanthood. Serving Jesus and the church and the world he created is more important than feeling comfortable. So, I am hoping that church takes on more forms than we are accustomed to it taking. That requires constant stretching. I am hoping to see prayer meetings that are stretching, church plants that are very unfamiliar, community ministries that are hard to put in categories, outreach that makes everyone feel a little uneasy about the hard-to-predict outcomes. These are all signs of stretching. Don’t worry about the bishops or superintendents or pastors dealing with the mess that all of this creates. We’ll catch up and figure out a way to structure it or build systems to nurture it or ways to maximize or facilitate its effectiveness. The bishops would rather have church stretching in ways that make us stretch, rather than expressing uncompromised comfort that makes us need to take out the crowbar.
Speaking of stretching, prayer over our son yesterday in a concerted way was a stretching kind of prayer. People were praying in groups, alone, fasting, feasting, silent, noisy, hands extended, hands folded, hands on the house, standing, sitting, prostrate, begging, pleading, demanding, weeping, stoic, praying neatly in turns, praying all at once and on and on. I am confident that the Holy Spirit could translate and sort it all out (Romans 8:26). It was a stretching time for prayer. I believe God was pleased at the stretching efforts. He has never been and is not now stretched to figure out how to bless his people.