Preface: This was written for my Discipleship Essentials class when I was a student of Bible & Ministry and submitted October 13, 2000.
“Church: Why Bother?” By: Phillip Yancey
Some people have a knack for being able to write in a motivational and stimulating way, mentally, spiritually and physically. Phillip Yancey is easily one of those people. Just a note on who this wonderful author and fellow Christian is, “Phillip Yancey serves as an editor-at-large for the Christianity Today magazine. His book The Jesus I Never Knew was a national best seller and the winner of the 1996 Gold Medallion Book of the Year Award. Yancey has written six Gold Medallion Award-winning books…he also co-edited The Student Bible, which also won a Gold Medallion award.” In his book “Church: Why Bother?” He addresses many topics including what the importance of the church is—the people, not the building.
In the first chapter of the book, entitled “Why bother with church?” he makes mention of looking up, looking around, looking outward, and looking inward. This chapter has some rather awesome insights, as does the whole book, and I will share some of them here. People often give up on church for problems involved inside its walls, but “we do not give up on the institution of family because of its imperfections—why give up on church?” For those who have stopped going to church or have never been should know that “one does not always go to church with belief in hand. Rather, one goes with open hands, and sometimes church fills them.” Yancey tries to encourage the importance of attending church can do for a person by saying, “Whenever I abandon church for a time, I find that I am that one who suffers.” Under his sub-topic ‘Looking Up’, I think he may literally referring to our physically ‘looking up’ to God as we worship in church, as most may not in embarrassment where you fear that the people of the church are looking at you. “Church, though, should be the opposite of the theater. In church God is the audience for our worship.” In addition, “gradually, thought, the truth [has to sink] in that God, not the congregation, is the audience who matters most.” The next sub-topic, ‘Looking Around’ refers to how we view the fellow Christians and their view of us. “Our commonality comes first; the issues that divide us come later…A family of God emerges, in which unity does not mean uniformity and diversity does not mean division.” ‘Looking Outward’, another sub-topic, seems to be referring to those who are non-members of the church, whether they are believers or not, and our service to them in an unselfish manner. “The church…is ‘the only cooperative society in the world that exists for the benefit of its non-members,’” and “actively serving others causes you to think less about serving yourself.” He reminds us that “our need to give is as every bit as desperate as the poor’s need to receive.” In the book, Yancey quotes an evangelist Luis Palau when he said, “The church…is like manure. Pile it together and it stinks up the neighborhood; spread it out and it enriches the world.” Quite vivid, yet it shows the need for us to spread the word throughout the community at a minimum through the church. The final sub-topic of the first chapter, “A New Sign on the Beach,” contains one of the best comments of the book, which is a quote from Paul Tournier; “There are two things we cannot so alone, one is to be married and the other is to be a Christian.”
The second chapter, named “What God had in mind” contains a riddle of metaphors to explain what or how God may have wanted us to be. Yancey first references to 1 Corinthians, in his sub-topic “Groping for Words,” and the metaphors used by the Apostle Paul in the book as he uses a field, building and a temple. He concludes that perhaps Paul was thinking out loud trying to figure out the best way to accurately describe what we are, as Christians individually, according to God; with the best way being the reference of us being the temple, God’s sacred building. The second sub-topic, “God’s Twelve-Step Program,” discusses the support program that exists in an AA Group, in contrast to most churches, by saying; “Church is a place where I can say, unashamedly, ‘I don’t need to sin. I need another sinner.’ Perhaps together we can keep each other accountable, on the path.” The next topic, “God’s Driver’s License Bureau,” is comparing the diversity of the local DMV and the lack of, I believe, in most churches and how we shouldn’t wait until we are at the DMV to actually know what people are in the community. He goes on to sub-topic number four, “God’s Emergi-Center” to compare “the church as one of those Emergi-Center: open long hours, convenient to find, willing to serve the needs of the people who drop in with unexpected emergencies.” “God’s CTA Train” is the next topic, which is where Yancey expresses what amazement he came to when riding a passenger train on a daily basis. That from the rich to the poor cities, there were always churches scattered throughout the town and how “again I [Yancey] was struck with the enormous breadth of Christian faith.” The sub-topic, “God’s Family” is the next one, which refers to the acceptance between our family through blood relations and our ‘church’ family. How a sick or underachieving child is not kicked out of the family for that reason, but rather probably paid more attention to those that are ‘healthy.’ “Similarly, in God’s family, we are plainly told, ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free.’” The second to last sub-topic is “God’s Locker Room” he compares a basketball player making the final free throw that can make or break the game and a Christian ‘making or breaking’ his salvation-which actually cannot be ‘’broken’ in the game of life. He closes it by saying, “ He [Jesus] has already earned for us the costly victory of God’s acceptance. As a result, church should not be one more place for me to compete and get a performance rating.” Yancey closes out this chapter with the sub-topic “One Final Metaphor,” which he refers to the church very loosely as being God’s welfare office, God’s neighborhood bar, and he concludes by saying that the church is Christ’s body; with us each being a part of a larger body and being a whole body of Christ as an individual. He jokes how his pastor responds to people “when someone says to him, ‘What a beautiful church!’ he replies, ‘Why thank you. I have been dieting—glad you noticed.’” Yancey also quotes how “Martin Luther called us ‘God’s masks’: because the world cannot withstand the direct force of God’s glory, he [Martin Luther] said, God uses human beings as the prime expression of himself.”
The third and final chapter called “Reaching beyond the walls” mainly shares an odd comparison between the church and the bunion on his left foot, and how it can be hypersensitive or calloused at times. Under his sub-topic “Nourished by Tears” he refers to a study that was done by Dr. Jurgen Trogisch, a pediatrician who devoted himself to severely mentally handicapped children. Bluntly, it was done to see what value is added by having people in the world today such as his patients. For a year, 20 people worked with the children and the responses of the twenty people at the end of the time led the doctor to the realization that “we tend to focus on the objects of ministry…yet as [you] read in the New Testament, Jesus seems equally interested in what effect ministry is having on the people who are doing the work of ministry themselves.” The “Strength through Weakness” sub-topic opens up by stating, “Paradoxically, when a church avoids ministry because of the pain and complications it may bring, the church itself suffers. It remains stunted, and does not mature.” Yancey continues with the reference to Paul’s thorn in his side and asking for it to be removed. “Why did God allow Paul’s suffering to continue? The apostle himself gives the blunt reason: ‘To keep me from being conceited.’ God said to him, ‘My power is perfect in weakness.’” (2Cor 12:7-10) There are a few profound statements throughout this last chapter such as, “When we can come to realize that our guilt has been taken away and that only God saves, then we are free to serve, then we can live truly humble lives.” Also, “we tend to think, Life should be fait because God is fair. But God is not life…We can learn to trust God despite all the unfairness of life…in doing so, [our] faith [moves] from a ‘contract faith’—I’ll follow God if he treats me well—to a relationship that could transcend any hardship.” In addition, “ministry is a ‘calling,’ and the only effective minister, whether volunteer or professional, reports to the One who called…for God’s faithfulness already spans the world like a rainbow: [we] do not need to build it; [we] only need to walk beneath it.” With that in mind, a lot of people try to ‘play savior’, aka “savior complex.” This creates an obsession to do it all, and to do it in one day, which Yancey compares to the “sisters who run the Home for the Dying and Destitute in Calcutta. I [Yancey] see concern and compassion, yes, bit no obsession over what did not get done. Theses sisters are not working to complete a caseload sheet for a social service agency. They are working for God. They begin their day with him, they end their day with him, and everything in between they present as an offering to God. God and God alone determines their worth and measures their success.”
This book overall was very motivational and insightful. As I read the book at some points I felt like just speaking up in agreement. When you finish that last page and close the cover, you just want to say…Wow! One final thought from the last chapter of the book that I offer as a beginning for you to re-innovate you ‘church’ life with God, “for [your] outward journey to continue, [you need] to give a higher priority to [your] inner journey.”
1 - Phillip Yancey, Church: Why Bother? Copyright © 1998 by Phillip D. Yancey, back flap of book cover. All references to the book of topic from: Phillip Yancey, Church: Why Bother? Copyright © 1998 by Phillip D. Yancey
2 - See note 2, pg 21
3 - See note 2, pg 21
4 - See note 2, pg 23 emphasis his.
5 - See note 2, pg 24 emphasis his.
6 - See note 2, pg 25
7 - See note 2, pg 30
8 - See note 2, pg 31. Sub-quote by Archbishop William Temple.
9 - See note 2, pg 31
10 - See note 2, pg 33
11 - See note 2, pg 33
12 - See note 2, pg 37
13 - See note 2, pg 52
14 - See note 2, pg 55
15 - See note 2, pg 60
16 - See note 2, pg 63
17 - See note 2, pg 67
18 - See note 2, pg 68
19 - See note 2, pg 68
20 - See note 2, pg 80 emphasis his.
21 - See note 2, pg 81
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© 2000 Shannon Yáñez
