In light of my previous post concerning Chesterton’s point that the church is not a movement, I ask:
If the church is said to be a movement, should it not be concerned with vertical movement primarily?
- 2 Kings 19:30 And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward.
- Isaiah 37:31 And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward.
Downward and upward. Deep and high. This means that our movement is not away from the world or toward the world. But, within the world, we seek to be like a tree with deep roots whose branches reach up to the sky. If this is the case, then, really, there is no movement at all, in the sense that we normally speak of movement. For who says that a tree moves?
Rather than movement, we call this growth. The kingdom is not a like a moving car, but a growing tree:
- Luke 13:19 It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”
The kingdom is not like a rolling stone, but a growing stone:
- Daniel 2:35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
The exodus was a movement, and it went in a circle for 40 years. The blessed man is like a tree planted by streams of water, and his movement is down and up. He stands still while all the world moves around him. Jesus was said to be a peripatetic. False. His face was set like a flint. All of his movement culminated in his being lifted up on a cross, planted in a tomb, and then being taken up into heaven:
- John 3:13 No one has ascended into heaven except him who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
- Ephesians 4:10 He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.
No circles, only down and up. That’s the whole point. So, if you consider your church a movement, take note that you must either be moving down and up, or you are not moving at all. And really, even this is not movement, but growth.
As Chesterton puts it in another place,
A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it (The Everlasting Man, p. 256).
A tree defies gravity and earth – gravity as it grows up, earth as it grows down. A dead dog can lie on the ground. But it cannot go up or down unless someone lifts it or buries it. A tree has power of its own. It takes the elements of its environment and uses them for fuel without actually becoming them. Imagine if a tree became the sun. Imagine if a tree became water. It would no longer be a tree. It would no longer ascend, rather it would stay still or go in a circle.
Even Jesus’ command to ‘Go into all the world’ is a call to go downward – ‘into’ the world. A dead thing can go with the world, but only a living thing can go into it. When a tree grows into the soil it changes the soil. Take deep root in his world and let your arms, and alms, reach up to heaven. The church in such a condition can attract ‘the birds of the air’ who will desire ‘to make nests in her branches.’ Take deep root in Christ, be buried, and then ascend with him into heavenly places. Up and down. Then, perhaps, you will go somewhere.
John MacArthur has said many times that he determined early to be concerned with the depth of his ministry, trusting that God would take care of the breadth. That’s a good resolution.
It is interesting to note that those churches that were founded on movements, have a tendency to become shallow and worthless over the years because the movements die out and thing used to plant the church doesn’t hold. Think of the seeker churches and now the emergent churches, and the fad of wearing skinny jeans. 🙂
Hey Timothy. Good point – and then if the church built on a fad doesn’t die out, it winds up changing and becoming more ‘traditional.’ Go figure.