Zombie Church

In our media and popular culture there has been a heightened interest these days in a once largely ignored population.  Suddenly, movies and books and video games and television shows are popping up left and right all with this one “people” group at the forefront.

I’m talking about Zombies, of course.
Shows like The Walking Dead, video games like Dead Rising, movies like Zombieland, and books like Pride, Prejudice and Zombies have all seen widespread success in the past few years.  We are utterly fascinated with the idea of creatures existing in an undead state terrorizing the towns people as they try and feed their appetite for human brains.    With all this in mind I think it is high time that the church jumped on the Zombie bandwagon!
The thing is, if we are really honest with ourselves, I think the we've been on the Zombie bandwagon a lot longer than we’d like to admit. Let me explain.

A few years back when I was serving a church in Buffalo, NY I tried to have a meal with every family from the church in their homes.  During these visits I would have a meal with the family and try and get to know each person a bit more.  And then, towards the end of my visit I would ask each and every person what their hope was for the future of our congregation?  

Sometimes people would offer tangible suggestions: “I want to see a better Sunday School program,” or “I want our congregation to be more mission-minded,” or “I want our church to have more members and more young families.”   These are all admirable hopes, but in a way, all of these hopes are elements of the broader statement that I hear most often.  When I ask different people what they hope for in the future of the church nearly every time people will eventually say, “I just want the church to go back to the way it was.”
People love their churches, and they have fond memories about “the glory days” when 5,000 people showed up each Sunday, and 8,000 children participated in Sunday school, and the endowment fund was larger than the budget of most small countries, and every weekend there were 10 infant baptisms, 20 adult baptisms, and 30 new members.  

Part of the problem with “wanting the church to go back to the way it was” is that we often see the past through rose-colored glasses.  But believe it or not, this isn’t the biggest problem with hoping for the past to return.  While there is nothing wrong with thinking fondly of the past,  the problem with longing for the past to return is that God does not work like that.

We believe that God is continually making all things new.   We believe that God is a God of Resurrection not a God of reanimation.    When Jesus was raised from the dead, the disciples didn’t recognize him, he was alive again but somehow different, something new was beginning in the Resurrected Christ.

When we long for the future church to look exactly like the church of the past, we’re hoping for a Zombie Church.   And when we long for America to go back to the way it used to be, we're asking for a Zombie America.  We’re hoping for that which is dead to be reanimated into a world that is vastly different than it was 50 years ago.

The Good News is that God is a God of resurrection and the future is filled with hope and possibilities that we haven't yet imagined, because God is breathing new life into the church, and into this world.