Christianity does not belong to, nor is it the possession of, any country, culture, ethnicity, or place. Nor does Christianity give its endorsement to any. Efforts to capture Christianity as the brand of a nation or culture are an abomination to God and an offense to everything for which the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ stand.
The human origins of Christianity are rooted deep in the ancient Near East, where God revealed himself to humanity through a particular people, the Israelites, who were called to bear the light of God’s revelation not for themselves alone but as a sign to the world of God’s presence and purpose. When the time was right, the fullness of God’s revelation to the Gentile world came through the Word of God made flesh, Jesus Christ.
The Jewish people from whom Christianity emerged continue to preserve and protect the tradition that forms the foundation of our shared faith. The worldwide assembly of Christians—that is to say, the Church in its broadest sense—is called to represent in life, word, and deed the good news of God’s saving grace for the whole world, guiding us toward a more just and faithful way of life now while lighting the path toward the fuller life that awaits beyond death.
To follow Christ is to become an agent of healing, reconciliation, and peace, living in accordance with what God revealed through the prophets and sealed through the living Word, Jesus Christ. However well-intentioned we may be, Christians have often gone astray by clothing the good news in the straitjacket of our own cultures and social expectations of what is right and acceptable. If there is any miracle in Christian history, it is that God’s word has spread in spite of our ineptitude and the obstacles we have placed in its way.
The institutional church, as the most visible representation of our shared faith, is more than important—it is necessary. But it is not sufficient. Sufficiency lies in the lives of individual Christians. What we say and do reveals the faith we claim to have.
None of us is completely autonomous. Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, and whatever we are saying, we are always in relationship with others. Every relationship, every interaction, is an exchange of mutual influence that subtly reshapes reality. The adjustments may be incremental or life-changing, but they are always present.
It is relatively easy to recognize the major influences in our lives—family, friends, teachers, coworkers, and the like. Less obvious are the brief exchanges with strangers that fill our daily lives. Yet each of them, no matter how fleeting, can become a moment in which the kingdom of God is near, absent, or quietly rejected.
We may be able to anticipate some of the encounters a day will bring, but certainty is never possible. Chance and randomness are always present. As the physicist John Polkinghorne observed, it is within chance and randomness that God has considerable room to act when and where God chooses.
We would go stark raving mad if we tried to plan every word and discipline every action so that it consciously reflected the presence of God’s kingdom in every interaction. What carries us through the day are our habits of the heart, which guide our words and actions without our having to think about them.
Every person has such habits. Whether they are good habits is another question. Whether they are habits that reflect something of the good news of God in Christ Jesus is another matter entirely.
If the institutional church has any essential purpose, it is to provide the teaching, example, and community needed to form habits of the heart that make Christian discipleship ordinary and unobtrusive.
Such habits must be empty of pride—empty of the assumption that one’s culture, role, or place in society determines the worth of others or the value of their cultures and lives. To put it another way, they must be unaware of their own righteousness while remaining deeply aware of their own vulnerability and of the contributions others have made to their well-being.
A community of Christians formed by such habits of the heart—habits shaped by the way of Christ—is the only authentic source of evangelism available to the institutional church.