BY BRETT CHRISTENSEN, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Church Reset: God’s Design for So Much More, by Jack Wilkie, Focus Press, 2020.
Talk about good timing! Jack Wilkie, a Christian in Texas, began writing Church Reset around September 2019. Of course, he couldn’t have known Covid-19 was around the corner, but his book proved timely. It was released in 2020, when most of our attention was taken with the spread of Covid, and how God’s people should navigate the situation. He wrote,
“The situation has already been a catalyst for readjusting our focus on what is really important. As we’ve lost access to our buildings we’ve realized that church never was the building. As we’ve watched worship services online we’ve figured out just how hollow that experience can be without each other’s presence. As our church events have been cancelled and plans have been changed we’ve had a chance to see that the real work of the church is found in the way we connect with each other and those around us. All of this represents an opportunity to begin applying the principles we know to be true.”
His 178-page book expounds those principles at length, grappling with the question so many have been asking: “Shouldn’t church be more?” He recognizes that he is not the only one who can’t “shake the feeling that God had something different in mind for His people” to the typical modern church approach, and acknowledges that his book is not the only one to deal with this. But what is particularly helpful about this book is that it is written from the perspective of a member of the body of Christ.
When teaching about God’s church I like to point out that, of all the things to which God has likened his church — from a body, to a temple, to an army — he did not describe us as a business. Wilkie makes the same point, emphatically and with some detail. Early on, he gives a chapter to “Going Out of Business”, where he writes (with a touch of overstatement),
“Why isn’t church more? Perhaps because the church isn’t really a church. When it’s run like a business by providers and for consumers, it’s not a family where everybody provides for each other and looks out for each other. It’s not the body God intended it to be where every system, bone, and muscle helps the other do its job. Until we break out of the provider/consumer paradigm…and get back to the image of church that the Holy Spirit painted for us, church can’t ever be more.”
He uses an effective analogy of a “pot-luck” lunch, as opposed to a restaurant, to get across the idea of what the Lord’s church should be. A “pot-luck” is where everyone, or nearly everyone, contributes something. In a restaurant, most people merely show up to consume. Paid staff set it up and dish it up.
Much of what he says is, I imagine, telling us what many of us already know. The reader has to wade through a lot of (often repetitive) polemics against the prevailing church paradigm. But perhaps it’s needed. Centuries of tradition have entrenched the institutional religion paradigm in our thinking, and it’s consistently reinforced by current-day practices. But readers may grow impatient, waiting for Wilkie to get around to giving us pointers in the direction of a church ‘reset’. He does get there.
He has things to say to leaders and those being led. Working together, all members can play a part in “resetting” what we do as a congregation of Christ-followers. He says it’s often not a matter of what is taught, but the way it is taught. “When it comes to helping people grow in Christ, the kitchen table can be just as effective as the pulpit—possibly even more.”
Wilkie focuses on how we apply the great commission, how it’s played out in God’s family. “Obviously we’re still going to gather on Sundays … but what we put forth as ‘church life’ must shift from scheduled, building-centred, event-based Christianity to life-based obedience to Christ.”
He discusses the making and maturing of disciples whose lives are devoted God’s kingdom and Christlikeness, as described in Acts and beyond, and warns, “The biggest mistake we could make, and one we will be tempted to make, is to try to shoehorn this kind of family-oriented, disciple-making centred structure into what we already do in our businesslike churches.”
He says it would be “like trying to install Mac software onto a Windows machine.” It simply won’t work, he says.
Wilkie is careful to make a distinction between the church which God designed and “what we as humans have done with it”, about which he says “there is always room for improvement”. He stresses that he is not claiming that everything we do now is wrong per se, but that doing it within the “business model” is hampering the body from being the spiritual family environment God intends his family to be.
Wilkie covers a lot in 13 chapters, and could have said more. But he gives the disclaimer that “This book is not meant to be a manual” and “is not meant to address every single situation”. There are some misapplied scriptures which the reader will have to overlook, rather than dismissing the book’s overall point, which is “that we have more to do when it comes to restoring New Testament practice.”
This side of the pandemic, we have had to “reset”, and Church Reset is a timely call to focus on what God expects of us. Wilkie doesn’t presume to offer new answers. He says the answers have been plainly in view in the scriptures all along. He leaves it up to us readers whether we will rise up and follow the One calling us. That’s the uncomfortable challenge Church Reset presents us.
“The answer isn’t to come up with an answer—it’s to get out of the way and let God lead. By knowing His commands, determining to follow them, and letting Him strengthen us for the task, more starts to come into picture.” –Jack Wilkie
Reaction?