In one sense, it’s impossible not to bring certain expectations, desires, or hopes with us to church. Sometimes these are mere cultural preferences that can’t really be considered right or wrong. Generally, we understand that we need to hold those likes and dislikes loosely. But sometimes, the things we wish for aren’t just preferences—they’re categorically good, and clearly in line with God’s word. But even then, are they in line with God’s timing?
In 1939, German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who would later be hanged by the Nazis), wrote a book called Life Together, all about the incredible privilege and challenge of Christian community. He starts by describing the unspeakable gift of belonging to any Christian community—a fact known all too well by our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world, but too often forgotten in our consumeristic culture. Next, he sternly warns us not to bring a wish-dream to church. Yes, a “wish-dream”. It’s a little clumsy in the translation from German, but as we go along, you’ll pick up what he’s putting down.
Bonhoeffer asserts, “Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish-dream.” The Christian who takes the faith seriously, and sees the eternal things at stake, naturally develops all sorts of ideas about what changes are most needed to make the church more effective or enduring. These ideas are grown from a desire to succeed on the mission Christ put before us. And therein is the danger. They are based on God’s desires, but have taken on flesh as our dreams. In our zeal, we often replace Christ’s statement, “I will build my church” with our own cry of, “You will build MY church.” And that’s the space in which we then give our wish-dreams free rein.
Yet Bonhoeffer assures us, “God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves. By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world.” Have you ever experienced that sort of disillusionment? …The ministry program you so competently served in is discontinued. The preacher who has “decent” content but whose style you find annoying, ends up as the lead pastor. The outward image of the church feels like a turn-off to the people you most wish to invite. The new Children’s, or Youth, or Small Group, or Men’s curriculum somehow seems like a step backward. You feel like the mentor figure you respected just doesn’t have time for you. Or you feel like people you could really help aren’t open to your counsel in their lives….These, and so many other irritations and hurts, can all leave us feeling like, “This church could be SO good, if just ‘X’ could change!”
Bonhoeffer says that passing through such disillusionment is the first step toward really experiencing Christian community. And in fact, if we’re honest, these disillusionments quickly lead us to a disillusionment with ourselves. We come to see that at the end of the day, “This church is not what it should be because I am not what I should be.” When someone gets to that point, as my dad likes to say, “Now we’re cooking with gas!”
But I’ll let Bonhoeffer draw out the concept even more fully:
“Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community, the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later, it will collapse. Every human wish-dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive.”
And here’s the challenge that we all need to take away and chew on for a while: “He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.” May that warning slow us down and soften our insistence. May the beauty, wisdom, power, and sufficiency of our God shine brightly through our church, as a group of naturally stubborn and wish-dreamy people choose to push through an awkwardness, disappointment, relational tension, and disillusionment so great that it finally drives us to prayer. As we come together around nothing more than the gospel, it will prove that something truly supernatural is happening here.