What is Public Church?
Church for the World
Public Church witnesses to God's love and restoration for and to the world. God sent God's only son not to save the Church, but to save the world. (John 3:17). Public Church is a way of being the communal embodiment of Jesus Christ that recognizes the full and inclusive scope of the redemption offered by God revealed in Jesus Christ. Not only does faith offer salvation to individual souls and individual lives. God offers salvation to the world.
Nothing, no sin lies outside of the redemption possible through God. Everything, all human and even all natural imperfection, falls within God’s watchful love and promise of grace-filled restoration. Racism, homelessness, hunger, prejudice, economic and social inequity, human trafficking, addiction, violence, climate crisis and other modern sins: God weeps over and seeks to redeem them all.
Nothing lies outside of God’s promise of redemption. Thus nothing lies outside of the concern of the Gospel and the Church. This isn’t about the church being “political” or “relevant.” As the Church, it is our task to bring the Gospel into intersection and interaction with any human condition and endeavor that we encounter. To do anything less is to try to contain the Gospel. But that would be the opposite of our evangelical charge. Our charge is to proclaim and bring the Gospel into the world at every stage, state and community we find ourselves in.
The Church Has Always Been Public
Being Church is a public act. Following the instruction of Jesus Christ, we remove the light of Christ from the bushel basket of private consumption and place it on the lamp stand of public access for all to see, experience and be transformed by. Whether that means our worship services: in person or carried into the world via livestream. Whether that means our words: our sermons and pastoral writings for the local community of believers, as well as our Gospel-filled statements for the world. Whether that means the many ways we proclaim the Gospel with our mouths, our feet and our wallets. Whether that means anything we do with our assets and resources for the public good of our local communities, or the wellbeing of people and the earth around the globe. Whether that means the relationships we form and maintain or acts we commit as individual people of faith, or the relationships we form and maintain communally with other individuals and organizations in the communities in which we are called to participate.
The Church is accountable to the Gospel
Being Church is a public endeavor, accountable not to public values and political platforms, but accountable to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel that in crystalline manner proclaims and promises God’s values and vision of love, equity, peace, righteousness and justice revealed in Creation, the Prophets, the Law, and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (the Gospel). To do Public Church means being grounded in these core pieces of the Bible, and what they reveal about God (theology).
Public Church is powerful
People will ask me: why do you always wear your clerical collar when you give public comment at City Hall, or when you are running your drop-in access center for people experiencing homelessness? And I answer, somewhat flippantly: because the politicians and the heroin addicts behave better. But it is true. Public Church is powerful: people recognize that when the Church acts publicly and claims its public commission, God’s vision and God’s promises—not just human preferences—are at work and at stake.