Stories of transformation

"From death to life"
by Steve Boots

“The unbelieving world says: the church is dead; let us celebrate its funeral with speeches and conferences and resolutions, which all do it honor. The unbelieving world, full of pious illusions, says: the church is not dead; it is only weak, and we will serve it with all our might and put it on its feet again. Only goodwill can do that; let us make a new morality.

The believer says: the church lives in the midst of death, only because God calls it from death to life, because God does the impossible toward us and through us — so would we all say… "

From the book entitled A Testament to Freedom, edited by Geffery B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson, p. 103.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these words in the summer of 1932. The context was a youth conference in Gland, Switzerland. The church he was referring to was the church as it was at that time in Europe. There was a world wide depression and international crises related to the rise of Nazism in Germany. What he wanted to do was tell the participants at the conference not to sink into pessimism about the Church or world affairs. The perceived anxiety among Christians was “everything which we undertake here as church action could be too late, superfluous, even trivial.”

He also warned them about the unbelievers in the church who thought all the church needed was positive thinking and the will to resurrect itself. He told the young people gathered that what they needed to be about as members of church was to “Let Christ be Christ.”

Congregational transformation is about letting Christ be Christ. To believe in the future of the church but not believe that is our “might” that will resurrect it. We cannot resurrect the church by working, harder, faster, smarter. Christ can transform a congregation that is willing to face death and is open to a new life that God is creating.

Blessings.

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