Church as a Costume
It’s fun to dress up.
When we celebrate Halloween or go to masquerade parties, dressing up becomes a way to explore our inner desires. When I was a kid my best friend and I once dressed up like Ninjas for Halloween, complete with fake throwing stars and swords. We stole out at midnight and scaled neighborhood trees, hacked random bushes, and kicked and chopped at each other savagely.
Of course, neither of us actually knew any martial arts fighting techniques – mastering any martial art requires years of intense devotion and practice, a price we certainly weren’t willing to pay – but wrapped in black gear and brandishing fake weapons made us feel like the real thing, and we bloodied each other all the more for it. There’s something about dressing up and pretending that ramps up our short term enthusiasm and it’s far easier than becoming the real thing. It’s easier in the same sense that buying new running shoes is easier than becoming genuinely fit. Sometimes we buy these things because they make us feel the part for a little while.
Productivity expert David Allen calls this “costuming,” and he actually recommends it as a way to give yourself a little short-term burst of motivation. Buy yourself a nice suit, use a high-end fountain pen, get a leather-bound personal calendar, or pony-up for a new iPhone. Whatever it takes to fool yourself into playing the part. As a friend of mine used to say, “Look good, feel good, do good.” Others say, “Fake it till you make it.” Of course David Allen sells these little bursts of motivation in the form of productivity materials, so he would recommend that, wouldn’t he? In the meantime, the West is obsessed with buying fitness apparel and time-management tools, but we’re fatter than ever and more stressed than ever.
Church is a lot like that.
Jesus described what his followers would look like in Matt 5-7; they would be people who live conspicuous lives of goodness, hope and justice in the midst of a dark world. Reading Jesus’ description, it’s impossible to imagine people like that being irrelevant in any culture. But, as Jesus’ band of followers amply demonstrated, learning to live out that kind of life, one naturally imbued with the love and grace of God, takes years of devotion and practice.
It’s just easier and more fun to dress up.
Creating snappy logos, edgy websites, and impressive facilities is easier than building genuine character. When churches do this they’re simply wearing an elaborate costume. They’ve bought into the delusion that dressing like the identity they want equals possessing the identity they want. But it doesn’t. It might signal intentions, and it might in some way equip you for the work, but in the end there’s no short-cutting the hard work and devotion which catalyzes real transformation.
In the long run, of course, the short-cut of costuming is actually much harder road because no matter what we happen to be wearing we actually remain fat, lazy, unhealthy, and gasping for breath every time we try to climb a flight of stairs. Jesus poked fun at the Pharisees for this all the time. He said,
“Look. Underneath the costume you’re still lazy, fat, and wicked. Dress up your heart and you won’t have to wear a costume” (Matt 23:25-26).
(Okay, maybe that’s my paraphrase.)
As Jesus points out, individuals do this all the time. But entire churches do it too. There’s tremendous pressure on church leaders to be conspicuously successful, so we often pretend to be bigger and more impressive than we actually are. Usually that is accomplished by projecting an image of size, success and impact by manipulating numbers, aesthetics and stories. But, relative to actual character change, it’s also fairly easily accomplished by erecting facilities.
What’s really interesting to me about this is that there’s nothing inherently wrong with gear or tools when used properly. Serious runners tend to wear good running shoes; good actors on a stage dress up well; the best workers use time management tools that actually work for them; and real ninjas do wear black (right?). All of these are good. The problem is when we try to pass off a falsehood as the real thing.
So, when do we as leaders cross the line from gearing up to costuming? What practices of the church tend to perpetuate a false identity? And how do we re-learn the proper use of our gear?
I love the Matthew 23 paraphrase….
I think your thoughts can be summorized by this paragraph: "What’s really interesting to me about this is that there’s nothing inherently wrong with gear or tools when used properly. Serious runners tend to wear good running shoes; good actors on a stage dress up well; the best workers use time management tools that actually work for them; and real ninjas do wear black (right?). All of these are good. The problem is when we try to pass off a falsehood as the real thing."
Simply put, too often we focus more on the shadow versus the substance…..