Choose Your Anxiety

Your goal, of course, should be to create a church culture that is so vision-centric that there is more anxiety about losing focus than making changes.

Deep and Wide, Andy Stanley

Have you ever thought about what makes you anxious? There is, of course, a wide range of possibilities. Perhaps it is the uncertainty of the future. Perhaps there is the gnawing in the back of your mind that something could go wrong with yourself or someone you love. Sometimes, we just have a general feeling of anxiety, and we may not even really be able to pinpoint why.

In the context of the church or local congregation, there are reasons for anxiety as well. It’s a kind of group anxiety, or dread, about the potential of everything falling apart. I’ve heard people say that they are worried that their church isn’t going to be open for much longer. Finances, the inability to find quality pastoral leadership, and general changes in the community can lead to this anxiety. It is often a concern for churches that are built on generational attendance, but the community has reached a point where the younger generations are moving away. It’s one of the downsides to the more mobile world in which we live.

However, apart from anxiety disorders, which are real, psychological issues that need to be addressed through therapy, many times, we choose what it is that makes us anxious. If we have a big event coming up, we fret over the details. We want everything to be perfect. And so, we’re anxious about it. Sometimes, our anxiety is a result of our inability to make a decision or the concern over making the wrong decision.

In the local church, there are reasons for anxiety. As I mentioned, more than once, I’ve heard from people who are worried that their church isn’t going to be around for much longer. They remember the days when “everybody” went to church on Sunday morning, and the sanctuary was standing room only for special events. Now, they look around at the empty spaces in the pews, and are concerned that things are going to get shut down. What we need more than anything else in such times is a change in culture. We need to get so focused on the mission of the church that there isn’t time to be anxious about what might happen.

Through a lot of the denominational dysfunction that the UMC is going through right now, my counsel has been to make decisions based on what is, not what might be. There are a lot of soothsayers out there right now who seem to know – and I mean really know – what’s going to happen in the future. It would be impressive… if it wasn’t so focused on fear-mongering and division.

What local churches (in general, but especially UMC right now) need to do right now is focus on what is really important – the ministry to which they have been called. How much time and how many of our resources are spent because we are completely unfocused on the task at hand?

Andy Stanley suggests making the church so focused on it’s vision that the only real anxiety comes from not living into it. Churches are notorious for not liking change. Our society is constantly changing, and the belief in some circles is that the church should be one place that is exempt from it. Why? Yes, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, but even in Scripture we see an evolution of God’s approach to the world. In Genesis, God hits the restart button with the flood. Abraham is the beginning of a new approach to God’s people. The foray into having a king over the people was a change in how God interacted with the people. Along comes Jesus and upsets the applecart.

Now, you could argue – rightfully so, I think – that Jesus’ ministry was a call back to the way things were supposed to be. The call to love God and love your neighbor is intended to be a simplistic guiding principle for the Law. Instead of getting caught up in the details and specifics of the Law, living out those two commands would be an easy way to do it.

What if we, as the Church, were more concerned about whether or not we are loving God and loving others, instead of how others are behaving and whether or not it fits into our understanding of how things should be? After all, we can’t control the actions of other people, and being judgmental about it isn’t going to make them care about it any more either. However, if we live by the simple commands to love God and love others, then by our example and by our interactions, we demonstrate a better way of living.

In the end, if we are focused on what we should be doing, I believe Andy Stanley is correct. We’ll be more anxious about not living into our vision than we would be about changing things so that we could.