Let the Church Be the Church

On Sunday morning, a group of protesters associated with Minneapolis’ “Black Lives Matter” chapter entered Cities Church, stopped the service, and confronted pastors and members. I personally know two members of the staff there. David Mathis is a friend and a professional colleague. We saw each other just a couple of weeks ago in Louisville. Senior pastor Jonathan Parnell I also know. Both men are closely associated with Desiring God and Bethlehem College and Seminary, two institutions founded by one of my heroes, John Piper.

I watched the videos of the protest, feeling sad and angry. It all felt close to home. To be clear, absolutely no one should be subjected to a terrifying hijacking of their religious gathering. We have laws for such things, and I sincerely hope that the organizers of the protest are held accountable, including ex-CNN journalist Don Lemon (who embarrassed himself while trying to embarrass Parnell, a model of calm, courage, and gospel witness). But I can’t deny that knowing some of these people—emailing and messaging them, meeting up at conferences, sharing theological convictions and many of the same priorities—makes it easy to imagine my young family in those same pews yesterday.

Invading a worship service to shout down its members over politics feels like another major line being crossed. In a post I published shortly after Charlie Kirk was murdered, I shared a bit about my own theological and political arc, and how some of my views have shifted away from an “evil on both sides” mentality toward a more honest realization that something is deeply broken about the American progressive tribe. What happened on Sunday sorts very neatly into that arc. You don’t need to litigate every question about immigration policy or enforcement to know that what happened at Cities Church was a gross violation—not just of civil rights, but of the public compact. That it was organized, led, and spearheaded by a veteran of prestige media, and then bragged about later on, confirms what I felt after Kirk’s murder. This is a different moral universe than the one I inhabit.

Invading a church has, of course, a rich symbolism attached. Don Lemon’s interaction with Parnell made a lot of people think that Lemon was pretending not to realize what free speech really is. But on second reflection, I think Lemon really believed what he said. I think he genuinely believes that there is no difference at all between a group of protesters organizing outside City Hall and going inside a worship service and breaking it up. Why would he think this? Because, just like Cities Church was invaded by activists physically, the church has been invaded by activists spiritually for decades.

Many millennials especially came of age with a copy of Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens in their hand, earning college degrees on campuses where devout—or even conservative—professors barely existed at all. What fills the God-shaped hole in the heart? In many cases, political activism did. Truth, goodness, and beauty are oaks that need deep, healthy soil in which to grow. But politics, ideology, and activism are quick growers and climate-proof. They have proven to be very convincing replacements.

And so, I’ve watched as many people in my generational cohort, including those who grew up in Christian homes, found a deeper purpose and emotional satisfaction in speaking truth to power than in encountering the God of power and truth.

Church is invaded by activism in the heart long before it’s invaded by activism in the sanctuary.

That’s what I’ve seen. I could tell you stories of friends who grew up in conservative homes that were strict or unloving. As adults, they deconstructed their Christianity but not their strictness; they feel about Calvinists and Republicans the exact same way their parents felt about gays and Democrats, and they will let you know. I could tell you stories of friends who have changed their views about Jesus Christ mostly because the people who taught them those views ended up voting for Trump. I could tell you stories of other friends who resent and distrust the church because they think it’s too “woke.” Some friends have had genuinely hard experiences that make faithful Christianity less plausible. Some friends have blamed their “fundamentalist” upbringing when really it was their desire for sexual or philosophical autonomy that drove them away from the church.

Church is invaded by activism in the heart long before it’s invaded by activism in the sanctuary.

The videos I watched of the activists inside Cities Church reinforced something important for me. I know my public writing accomplishes very little, and I hope I have no delusions of grandeur about that. But for whatever small platform I might have, I have felt compelled over the last several years to use it in order to make the gospel and the church seem as beautiful and as necessary as I know they really are. I’ve tried to do this by talking about technology, gender, dating, Tim Keller, winsomeness, evangelicalism, Christian nationalism, Trump, Charlie Kirk, literature, movies, sports, and more else besides. In all instances, the through-line has been this: Jesus Christ is real, he is risen, and he changes absolutely everything for the better.

This is why, for example, I talk about technology. The Internet is a formative liturgical environment that competes with the church for our thinking and our feelings. It’s why I talk about gender and the sexes: men and women need each other because they both need Christ, and Christ needs his bride. It’s why I talk about Christian nationalism. Giving authority to the state to try to do what only the church can do makes a tyrant of the state and a chump of the church.

Here’s my point: when I say the church is a “sacred place,” I don’t just mean that in the way our grandparents told us not to chew gum in a sacred place. When I say it, I mean the church is a place that must not be invaded, either spiritually or physically. The church has to be the church, because Christ is Christ. To invade the church with shouts of political activism is like trying to save a drowning man by cutting off his limbs. The gospel-believing, gospel-proclaiming church has what political activists say no one is willing to give them.

I want this for my kids, too. I don’t want my kids thinking that the church exists as an extension of their sociopolitical identity. I don’t want them thinking that they sit in a worship service for an hour each week just because that’s what their demographic group is supposed to do, or because this tradition somehow pleases our departed ancestors. And I don’t want them going to church because they believe it will fortify them against the kind of people in this country they dislike.

I want them to go to church to hear God. I want them to go to church to see and greet and talk to Jesus’ hands, feet, head, and arms. I want them to go to church to get what they—and everybody else in this universe—must have if anything in this awful world is ever going to get better.

I won’t keep the world away from them. I won’t forbid politics. I won’t forbid news. I won’t forbid stewarding the power we still have. But every activist with nowhere to be on a Sunday morning needs to understand that each time they break up a worship service, they not only make it harder on me—they make it harder on themselves. The love and forbearance and dignity and respect those activists demand from the world around them come from somewhere. They are bought with a price. And on Sunday morning at Cities Church, they interrupted that transaction.

Look: I’m not trying to pass the definitive Christian judgment on the Trump administration, immigration enforcement, or anything. These are complex issues. I have my opinions but they are not as strong as you might guess. Except, on this: Let the church be the church. It must not be invaded, by anyone, for any reason. Its worship must go on now, because its worship will go on far after the last election or law in human history has been forgotten. For the sake of our world now, and for the sake of the world to come, let the church be the church.