This is the first entry of four....
Para-Church or Para-site – Is there a difference?
Many are not going to like what I am about to say! Our next “declining moment in the church” has to do with the rise and prominence of parachurch ministries and their need to defer back to the church as God’s primary agent of grace in this age. In addition, the parachurch’s failure to properly support the efforts of the church and even take away the glory of the church by some of its actions. There I said it!!!
I don’t aspire to be controversial. I think that the real problem is that Christians have been getting more and more used to accepting error and so when I come along and point it out – people get upset with me! They lack ecclesiastical discernment and so when I share a clear principle from scripture, I am the one who is wrong! So they shoot the messenger because they dare not grapple with the message! Instead of being able to discern error, many in the church and its leaders accept error as the “norm” – correction is seen as controversial. That dilemma reminds me of a pair of “EarthShoes” I owned in high school.
EarthShoes were the forerunners to Birkenstocks and the popular rubber clogs – Gators! They were funny looking, but very comfortable and they were the craze in the younger generation in the late 70’s! In the spring of my senior year, I bought a pair and the same week or so, injured my ankle playing softball. The ankle wasn’t broken nor in need of a cast – but to relieve my pain, I over-compensated and began to walk on the side of my foot. This caused me to wear out the shoe unequally. School ended, the warm weather hit and I changed my footwear to sneakers and flip flops for the summer. When the summer was over I began wearing my EarthShoes again. The first time I wore them, they were extremely uncomfortable. The problem was that my ankle had healed up and I no longer needed to walk on the sides of my shoes – a matter of fact – it was painful to try walking in my unevenly worn shoes! I would tell people my plight and they would answer – “that doesn’t sound right – EarthShoes are always comfortable?” Not if you don’t use them right and wear them out by overcompensating your walk!
The lesson is simple – “if you do something wrong long enough that you become used to it, when you try to correct the incorrect usage – it will be painful!” Second lesson – if you try to point something out as being wrong after people have gotten used to it – there is something wrong with you!
For 40 plus years, evangelical Christianity has been walking on the sides of its shoes when it comes to doing ministry – overcompensating its failures by leaning on parachurch ministries instead of relying on the church. It overcompensated by empowering and debutizing the parachurch ministries as the torch bearer of the great commission because the church was broken and not faithful in carrying out it’s duty to fulfill God’s work on earth. So what did it do? It started walking on the sides of its feet – turning over its authority and ministry leadership – and now it’s painful to correct. We have gotten so used to walking on the side of our ministry shoe leather, to correct it or even suggest that we are walking incorrectly causes all kinds of emotional, intellectual and experiential pain! And to correct it we must make some significant steps of change – for some we will need to change our shoes – throw out the old pair of unequally worn EarthShoes.
The worn shoes I am describing is known as “Para-church ministries.” The phrase “para-church” means to come along side of; just like the Holy Spirit is called the “para clete” – the Holy Comforter who comes along side of a believer. These are organizations and ministries, that are NOT the church, but wanted to “come along side” of the church and help the Church fulfill it’s task of reaching and discipling the world for Christ’s sake. They were very good at what they did; combined with the church’s lack of ministry passion the parachurch ministries began to take a significant place in evangelicalism and in some respects supplanted the church!
Para church ministries vary from mission boards and agencies; youth organizations like Youth for Christ and Young Life; camps, publishing companies, counseling services and specialized teaching ministries, like Walk thru the Bible. There are evangelistic ministries like Prison Fellowship and the Navigators which focus their efforts on one select group of people, namely prisoners and servicemen and women. There are training organizations; educational and theological schools that all fall into the category of a parachurch. Again most started with a good intention or because the church was not doing what it needed to do and an opportunity for ministry had presented itself. The problem is that over time these parachurch agencies, which were originally to just “come along side” of the Church, in reality supplanted the church’s authority, primacy and in some cases “took the place of the church” in direct roles of evangelism and discipleship as stated in Matthew 28:19, 20 and the Great Commission. What was supposed to be “the tail of the dog” is now wagging the dog!!
So how are we to approach this issue? How are we to discern the validity of the issue or the conflict concerning parachurch ministries? Are we saying that all parachurch ministries are sinful and we should have nothing to do with them? Have we not seen God do some amazing things through some of these ministries? Hey Pastor Jamie – don’t you serve with Walk thru the Bible and teach at Lancaster Bible College – it sounds like you are saying that these organizations are “walking wrong” when it comes to doing ministry? Are you suggesting that we just fellowship with our church and have no contact with ministries outside of NewSong? What about a collection of churches that work together – isn’t that a “parachurch” organization?
As you can see this is an involved and complicated discussion. It will take a number of blog entries to handle this topic. So here‘s what I want you to do….take a few minutes and think through the issue of the parachurch. Can you think of any parachurch ministries that come to your mind? Ask this question – “If they did not exist would the Christian community really miss it? Could the church handle its responsibilities? How is that organization possibly hurting the church? Now run that through your mind. Next time we are going to consider all the scripture that identifies the church as God’s primary agent of the gospel and why, when we consider the church, it should be in the visible and local and not as “universal and invisible.”