The future of the church, the church of the future

[AI translation] With these words Jesus directs our gaze to the future. The future: there is a great deal of optimism in this word: whoever speaks of the future has hope. Can we look to the future with the same hopeful optimism about the Church? Are we convinced that the Church has a future? And will the Church have a future? What does the future of the church look like, and what will the church of the future look like? This is what I would like to talk about in relation to this word.We tend to think of the future as a solid reality, as a landscape that lies ahead. We can almost see the outlines of its hills and valleys from afar, and we are moving ever closer to it, ever closer to it. It is still hidden from us by the fog of distance, but with each step we take towards it, it opens up more and more, unfolding from the mist, but we never know what it really hides. We look forward to the future of the world today with rather mixed feelings and expectations. For on the one hand, there seems to be no doubt that for an ever-increasing humanity, only ever-advancing technology and industrialisation can guarantee life in the future; on the other hand, there is no doubt that it is precisely the possibility of misuse of ever-advancing technology and industrialisation that threatens the life of humanity more than anything else in the future. As someone once put it: modern technological superiority will either end war or end humanity. In the secular sense, it is only possible to talk about the future in the hope that a possible nuclear war will not destroy life on earth, and thus render the whole problem of talking about the future obsolete. So we can only talk about a future for humanity at all if humanity remains alive. Now, in this age, in an age moving towards such a future, what prospects can we have for the future of the Church? In an age which is increasingly determined by the development of technology and the growth of industrialisation, and by a third factor: secularisation, that is to say, the spread of irreligious, atheistic, godless thinking. What prospects for the future of the Church in such an age?
Well, the future of the Church is generally seen in two ways: optimistically or pessimistically. Let me say up front that both views are wrong because they are not biblical!
The optimistic vision is that the church has the future. The loss of prestige which the Church is suffering today throughout the world is therefore only temporary, because the soul, slowly becoming disillusioned with everything, with all humanity, and humanity, whose very existence is increasingly threatened, will eventually be forced to seek protection and help from the Church of Christ. So the Church is the future, the Church is the future! This is the optimistic vision. And according to the pessimistic vision: the Church belongs to the past. Its old glory, its shine, its influence, its power, its authority is fading and is slowly fading away! There are many signs of this in the world. In East Germany, a young pastor circulated a questionnaire to the members of his congregation asking them what they thought the church should be like in 1970. What percentage of the people who are still in the church today (1964) will still be in the church then? Of the people still attending church today, what percentage will still be attending services then? And of those who are indifferent or hostile to the church today, how many will become active church members? The vast majority of the responses received expressed a pessimistic view of the church's near future. Also in East Germany, the names of those who have announced their intention to leave the church that month are posted each month on the door of an evangelical church. Each month there are 8-10 names on the list. Such phenomena give rise to a pessimistic view in many people that the future of the church is very much in question - the church is a thing of the past!
Well, I emphasized at the beginning that both these visions are wrong, because they are not a vision according to the Scriptures, but a vision purely derived from these worldly phenomena. How Jesus says to Peter, when he confesses him as the Son of God who was recognized in him, "But I say to you also that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my mother church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Mt 16,18) For the moment, I would just like to emphasize "my mother church". And this "I", this possessive adjective, is particularly important. Because it is a reminder of the great truth that the Church is neither of the past nor of the future, but belongs to Christ! The future of the Church does not in any way mean that we dream of a future which the Church will conquer for itself, or that we fear a future which the Church will lose even more. The Church never belongs to the past or to the future, and therefore not to time, nor is it the case that this or that time is the century of the Church, the age of the Church. The Church, past, present and future, belongs to Christ alone! It was not born of time, but of Christ, and therefore its existence does not depend on the passing of time, on any future development of time, but on Jesus Christ! And one more thing: the Bible never speaks of the future as a distant land towards which we are heading, but as something coming towards us, as something coming towards us - indeed: Someone! The Bible always talks about the coming of Jesus, about his future. The biblical expectation of the future is the expectation of Jesus coming towards us, the hope of Jesus coming to us, coming into this world! The future of the Church is therefore guaranteed by Jesus himself, the future, the Jesus who is always coming! The hope of the Church is always the coming Christ Himself and His Kingdom! That is why the whole Church prays the last word of the New Testament: "Come, Lord Jesus" (Rev 22,20b) - Come, come to me, always come to me, Lord Jesus!
And it also means, Come, always again, come into the world through me, through the church, come into this world, Lord Jesus! And that is why Jesus taught His Church to pray, "Your kingdom come" (Mt 6,20). And this coming, this future, is not only imagined in terms of Jesus' reappearing in this world at some time in the future, in one of the centuries to come: rather, the New Testament testifies to the permanent coming, arrival, coming to us, and therefore to the real presence of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ! And the future of the church depends solely on the extent to which the church believes in, recognizes and corresponds to the present reality of the risen Lord in its whole existence! This is the meaning of these words of Jesus, "But I say to you also, that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my mother church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." A more correct translation would be: not the gates of hell, not the gates of Satan's kingdom, but the gates of death (Hades = death).
And the rock on which Jesus builds His church is not the person of Peter, but His confession of faith in Jesus, that is, the conviction of faith in God as recognized in Jesus and the confessed testimony of that faith. Jesus' promise, therefore, is that the church which has recognised in him the divine Saviour who is coming into the world, and bears witness to it, will never die, but will live! As long as the church bears witness to Jesus Christ, it lives! For no outside intrusion, attack or violence can ever cause the death of the church or of a congregation. If ever a church or a congregation has died, it has always been because of its own unbelief, because of the loss of its faith in Christ. Of course, it is possible that the outward form of the Church, the way it presents itself in this world, may change in the ever-changing course of history, but the Church itself remains the same as Jesus, who is the same yesterday and today and forever!
If this is how we see the future of the Church, then the outlines of the future Church are already beginning to unfold before us. In the first place, the Church must take its place in the world in a much more modest way than it has done in the past, if only because of its numerical minority. External events do not diminish the church, but only expose how small the church, the congregation, really is. To this humble modesty, which also corresponds to the real social strength of the Church, belongs the realisation that a thing or an undertaking is not necessarily wrong or wrong if it is not Christian; and that faith in Christ is not a patent right to the only right solution to the problems with which the world is struggling today. For we can by no means say that the great (social) problems of the world are better solved within the church than in the world. In one thing the Church should be much more expert than the world: in the practice and practice of love of humanity, and even of love of the enemy. In this, the Church should become a master teacher, a role model, a model for the world!
The Church must understand more and more that it can no longer be the guardian of the world, because the world has come of age, has outgrown the guardianship of the Church. This, moreover, is the famous thesis of one of the greatest theologians of the world today. Faced with the many, many current problems of the world, the Church is just as clueless as the world. The world will not seek solutions to the world's great political, economic, nutritional, educational, racial problems on the basis of church counsel. Nor, of course, does the world's coming of age mean that the world will now be able to solve all its problems. This coming of age is like the coming of age of an 18-year-old, which means that you are responsible for your own decisions. The church must acknowledge that the world wants to take responsibility for its own actions.
Of course, this does not mean that the church is now only for itself. It is certainly not a community of people who, cut off from the world, are now concerned only with nurturing their own spiritual lives and securing their own salvation. In fact, the church lives precisely by proclaiming its conviction of Christ to everyone in the world, especially non-believers, by its words and actions, turning everyday life into a pittance. The church of the future will increasingly become a church of the laity, that is, the self-conscious faith and service of the so-called laity in the world will be increasingly emphasised rather than the official church bodies. In the increasingly differentiated problems of mass society, the influence and power of the Gospel will be brought and applied less and less by theologians and more and more by believers in the world. Jesus promised those who believe in him that he would remain with them until the end of the world. Much depends on believing this promise of Jesus not only when believers in him are among themselves in the church, but also when they live in him in the world. Yes, it is precisely in the world of everyday life that Jesus wants to be with us, with you: to be with us in such a way that through us - with them! He wants to be with us, with you, so that he can meet the people around you! We must always behave and move among people with the awareness that Jesus is among them, because He has promised to be with us every day - so He is there, watching and hearing everything - and He wants to use our every word and action to make His nearness and His presence felt.
The Church will never be superfluous in the world, and the fewer the followers of Christ, the greater the task that awaits them in the small ministries of everyday life: in reaching out to the sick and the fallen, in standing up for justice, in bridging divisions between people, in deepening the sense of fraternal belonging, in working for reconciliation and forgiveness between people, in the service of comforting and warning one another. For this whole world lives towards the coming of Christ! Jesus is coming! He is coming all the time. Precisely because of the coming of Christ, His Church is never the Church of the past, but always, now and here, the Church of Christ who is always coming!
Amen
Date: 6 December 1964.