By Ryan Keating
What we have discovered in the church family is not just a substitute for whatever we have lost as exiles.
Illustrations by Katie Howerton
I am a pastor in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a Muslim majority nation on the island of Cyprus that is not diplomatically recognized by the rest of the world. It is, in many ways, a precarious place to live and serve. Our church meets in the café that I own and operate here. We have separate church gatherings in Turkish, Russian, and English, reflecting the diversity of the island. Hostility to the Christian minority involves genuine dangers for the people I invite to our church. Christians, especially those from a Muslim background or those who are ministering to Muslims, face discrimination, government and police harassment, threats, loss of employment, rejection by family, and other risks. I have had to consider seriously the role and value of the church, particularly whether the risks are worth the benefit of encouraging people to join us. I served for many years in Turkey until I was deported for the ministry we were doing and labeled a “threat to national security.” Today, I still face regular government and police harassment because of our Christian identity, despite making very careful decisions with regard to the security of our family and friends.
And yet, I go to church. Over the years of our service in this part of the world, I have had to reconsider some of the traditional motivations that I absorbed as a young person in a Christian family in America. That has involved stripping away some of the reasons I used to have for going to church and developing deeper motivations that I don’t think I would have needed in the same way if I had stayed in my home country.
One of the most significant areas of transformation for me has had to do with how I understand the nature of the gospel. Although I might not have expressed it this way, I used to think about the gospel as a set of facts about Jesus that we get into our heads so that we can go to heaven when we die. I would have expressed it in terms of personal relationship with God initiated by a moment of believing and trusting in Jesus, and the focus was on securing my destiny in the afterlife. In this kind of understanding, the gospel is a lot like a fire insurance policy that guarantees protection against the possibility of burning forever. Thinking about it today, I recognize several ways that I have grown beyond that kind of understanding. If the purpose of the Christian life is to die and go to heaven, then discipleship is just an inconvenient hoop to jump through on the way; it discounts the example and power of Jesus for our transformation toward Christlikeness and our participation in the coming of the Kingdom.
And if the gospel is primarily a set of facts to be learned about Jesus, then it is essentially individualistic and doesn’t do anything to orient me toward others in this world. If that were an accurate picture, church would be an unnecessarily complicated and costly package for the gospel. I think many of my colleagues who have absorbed this kind of gospel picture can only imagine the role of church in terms of enabling more people to receive the right information about Jesus and helping them keep their fire insurance policies current. But that understanding of the gospel isn’t very good news. And it misses the central value of learning that the Jesus way of life is good now, that Jesus offers us the very best way of living. He knows how to live; he demonstrates it for us; and he asks us to disciple other people into his way of living.
God’s plan for the world is not just about saving individuals.
In our church this past Sunday, there were Turkish young men and women who have experienced rejection from their families as a result of their faith in Jesus, and some of them are estranged from their families for other reasons. There were Iranian families, including young couples, single mothers, older couples with adult children, etc. Almost all of them fear the consequences of having their faith discovered by their relatives or by the government of Iran. There were refugees from Yezidi backgrounds and young women fleeing the tyranny of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Some of them barely escaped those situations with their lives.
The value of our gathering and committing to one another as a church family is deep and multi-faceted. The need for community, especially for those who have experienced rejection, abandonment, and exile, is acute. Having a network of people who are concerned for you, recognize you, and relate to some of your experience is important. The New Testament church experienced the same value of community. However, as with the early gatherings of Christians in the first century, what we have discovered in the church family is not just a substitute for whatever we have lost as exiles.
We are learning to live like Jesus, which includes learning how to love people and be with them in community. We are learning to navigate difficult relationships and how to confront persecution, oppression, and injustice. We are learning to live the profoundly good way of life that Jesus offers through the empowering of the Spirit among us. I need the church around me because it is the context for the work of the Spirit to teach me and empower me to live. God is transforming my loves and longings, making me more like Christ, through the interactions of the people he has placed around me in the church. We need one another to learn the lessons that lead to the best kind of living. And the more I am growing in disciplines and attributes such as love, forgiveness, humility, reconciliation, sacrifice, and service, the more I want to participate in the life of the church.
The Christian life is not an individualistic life. As the New Testament emphasizes, the world will believe that God forgives when they see us forgiving one another; they will know that God loves them when they see us loving one another. God’s plan for the world is not just about saving individuals. God is building a people, not just by increasing the number of people in his club, but by building them together into a family that looks like Christ. I want my neighbors to encounter Jesus. I want them to benefit from the way of living that he can give them. I want them to experience the satisfaction that comes from gradually learning to love what God loves. I want them to find the kind of belonging and recognition that can happen in a truly Christlike spiritual family. And I want them to transform their communities with the attributes of Jesus.
I want my neighbors to encounter Jesus.
That has often been our experience of church where we live. People from diverse backgrounds are drawn to the love they experience among us and are motivated to seek out the source of that love. They feel a sense of belonging and recognition before they have a sophisticated comprehension of what we believe about God. As they take steps in spiritual maturity, they begin to recognize the kind of deep goodness that is worth the risks involved. The men and women in our church are discovering the desire and empowerment to contribute to Christ’s work of renewing all things.
These experiences of the value of church inform my motivations for participating and inviting others to participate in church meetings. I have benefitted from an understanding of corporate worship as an offering that we present to God as a community. We aren’t trying to summon God to our meeting when we sing or pray together. God is already here. In corporate worship we cultivate our awareness of him together. We have a shared experience of God as part of our formation into a real, Christ-centered community. When we sing together, we join our voices to give to God a kind of sacrifice. It is the togetherness that makes it unique. I have often heard worship leaders encourage the congregation to close their eyes and try to forget the people around them. While I understand the sentiment they would like to convey, I want to give the exact opposite advice. Look around. Be aware of the people you are gathered with. Add your voice to the chorus to contribute something to the offering we are building and giving to God.
When we gather with our small congregation for worship on Sunday morning, everyone’s voice is heard. The music quality isn’t always good. Sometimes one of us sings off key or sings the wrong words. (Sometimes it’s me.) But each song is our offering to God. We have talented, well-practiced musicians leading or accompanying, but they aren’t trying to drown out the sound of the congregation. That is a value that I have protected more strongly in recent years as I have noticed the churches I visit in the U.S. moving more and more toward a performer–spectator kind of model for corporate worship. I want to encourage people to add their diverse voices to the corporate offering because their voices genuinely belong there.
On a related note, we can’t lead our congregation to maturity if they are only motivated by what they will get out of a connection to the church, be it a musical performance or something else. It is our job to disciple people, to help them see that we should aspire to come to church not primarily to receive a blessing, but to be a blessing. One of the consequences of that conviction is that I am not willing to attract people to the church with gimmicks. If we reduce our church to a vendor of goods and services, people won’t have any real reason for participating in the life of the church if they find alternative sources for those. I don’t want to create the expectation that church is like a casino with lots of comps to keep people playing.
When we gather with our small congregation for worship on Sunday morning, everyone’s voice is heard.
Often, people are curious about our church because they wonder whether the “Westerners” there can help them get a visa to a new country. Many of my Turkish neighbors are convinced that we are buying the allegiance of people with money or other incentives. There is a ridiculous but persistent rumor that there are $100 bills in our Bibles, for example. It is difficult for them to imagine being motivated by a desire to give and serve sacrificially. Yet I believe that if we are a Christ-centered community demonstrating our commitment to the particular group of people gathering with us, we can cultivate the long-term mindset of participating in the coming of the kingdom by serving the world around us.
Our small church is actively providing food and clothing for people in our community. We’re serving refugees all over the island. We’re coordinating trash clean-up events and hosting prayer and discussion opportunities related to global issues. It often takes time for people in our church to be motivated to participate in those kinds of activities. People are struggling financially, often experiencing crises here in Cyprus or in their home countries, and sometimes trying to avoid persecution. But I have found that, eventually, people learn to recognize that serving sacrificially for the sake of others is a genuine part of the best kind of living. That lesson of discipleship and ministry has proven true in all of the places I have served. Regardless of social or economic status, ethnicity, or geography, experiencing the inner maturity to grow in our motivation for selfless giving is rare and valuable. The church community has a responsibility to cultivate the conditions for that kind of growth in all places.
This Sunday morning, I will set up rows of café chairs in a semi-oval around a table with the elements of the Lord’s Supper, and maybe some candles or incense. (Not everyone likes the incense.) A Turkish carpet at the front next to the podium is for parents to sit with small children. We’ll sing songs in Turkish, and I’ll include a reading from the Bible and a historic prayer from another tradition. One of our Turkish Cypriot believers will preach. We’ll hear some prayer requests and testimonies. We’ll pray for one another. We’ll share announcements about the week’s activities, including a food drive and a Soup Day on Monday. We’ll spend another hour or so drinking coffee and chatting and passing babies around. I’ll have an eye on the door, wondering if the government will send someone to interrupt us today. And I will be glad to do it again next week.
Illustrations & Lettering by Katie Howerton; Photos by Unsplash photographers.
Ryan Keating is a graduate of Biola University and Yale Divinity School. He is a pastor, wine maker, and coffee roaster on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. His writing can be found in publications such as Ekstasis Magazine, Christian Century, Saint Katherine Review, Agape Review, and Miras Dergi, where he is a regular contributor in English and Turkish.