Lessons From the Early Church: God’s glory should motivate churches’ decisions
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A little more than a year ago (Jan. 1, 2015), one of the largest churches in the United States disbanded.
Mars Hill Church, boasting more than 12,000 in attendance across 15 campuses in five states at its peak, dissolved as an organization. Allegations of abusive leadership and plagiarism against Mark Driscoll, the founder and lead pastor of the church, surfaced and the ensuing controversy led the celebrity pastor to resign. Leaving a massive leadership vacuum in his wake, the church liquidated its assets, dismissed its staff and helped satellite sites become their own independent congregations.
Mars Hill became a spectacle to the world of a failed church because of brash, arrogant leadership. Beneath what was so widely reported, though, lies the real secret of its failure, and it's one we've seen in church history before. Mars Hill failed for the same reason the church in Ephesus did.
That's right. Early churches failed, too.
Ephesus, in what is modern-day Turkey, is now only a ruin of an ancient city. Once a great port city, silt from its river filled the port and the city died, but only after its church did. Ephesus is the most-addressed single church in the New Testament. According to Acts, Paul spent more aggregate time with the Ephesians than any other church, and he wrote three letters to the church and its pastor, Timothy (Ephesians and 1 & 2 Timothy). Additionally, Ephesus is the first church Jesus addresses in his letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) in Revelation 2 and 3.
While recognizing their good works and good doctrine, this was Jesus' criticism of the Ephesian church, "But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent" (Revelation 2:4-5, ESV).
The Ephesians lost sight of loving Jesus in the middle of all the stuff they did. They became a good-works machine instead of an organic group of people who just loved Jesus. They stopped focusing on God's glory and started focusing on their own works and their own doctrine. They not only missed the forest for the trees, they missed the maker for the forest he created.
In a 2014 article of Christianity Today's Leadership Journal, Bill Clem, a campus pastor and elder a the former Mars Hill Church, discussed a pivotal point in the Mars Hill saga. The church hired Sutton Turner as the church's general manager, then promoted him to management of central operations. Clem discussed Sutton's impressive qualifications, "He had an MBA from Harvard and had just worked for the Prince of Qatar's royal family on a major real estate development where he oversaw 1,500 people." He then went on to discuss how Sutton transformed the organization and made it efficient with a new business model focused on return on investment and a prescribed manner of staffing satellite locations based on their attendance and revenue.
Again, missing the point.
God's glory is all that counts.
When we focus on attendance, growth, revenue, numbers, statistics, programs and business models, we stop focusing on the only thing that matter — God's glory. "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love" (Galatians 5:6b, NIV).
Mars Hill and the Ephesian church should have simply listened to what Paul wrote to them, "Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen" (Ephesians 3:20-21). The church should be giving glory to God and God alone. Not to a celebrity pastor and not to itself.
Churches that fail to give God glory fail utterly. History bears out what happened in Ephesus. The church was practically a Gnostic cult by the mid-third century and was overrun by Muslims just a few hundred years later. They fell just as Paul warned in Acts 20:29 and as Jesus warned in Revelation 2:4-5. So did Mars Hill and for the same reason.
So rather than fall, let's learn from failures. In your church, do you see programs, or do you see faith expressing itself through love? Do you see church growth or God's glory motivating the church's decisions? I urge you to turn your own attention to our first love: the carpenter who was also God who saved us from ourselves. Make his glory your primary goal, and as we do so together, we can change this city for the better and for God's glory.