Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginalized avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think (Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God, Dutton (2008), pp. 15-16).

I have no desire to speak ill of the dead, and particularly not of a much-loved brother in Christ like Timothy Keller. And yet when I read this passage today it seemed — and seems — like a tendentious missing of the point, a false representation by someone who should have, and did, know better. Perhaps I am the one missing the point and not Keller; perhaps I am the elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son. I would not comment on this passage at all but for the fact that it contains some false and, I think, damaging representations of the church.

Keller’s indictments of the church are (1) that churches do not attract outsiders — the licentious and liberated or the broken and marginalized, (2) that this can only mean that we must not be declaring the message that Jesus did, and (3) that we must be full of elder brothers — conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. I think (1) is mostly true and wholly irrelevant, (2) is mostly false, and (3) understates the truth. I will look at each of these in turn.

If churches do not attract outsiders, might it be because church isn’t designed for outsiders, and that intentionally so? Might it be that a church service is more akin to a family dinner than to a fast food restaurant? Any member of the family is welcomed to invite a guest to the family table and the guest will be truly welcomed; the more the merrier. But, the family does not “cater” to guests, nor is the meal designed for guests. The menu is not planned around guests and the family likely would not be equipped to handle the guest’s food or pet allergies. Much of the conversation would be meaningless to a guest: stories about crazy uncle Bob or the disaster of the family vacation three years ago or Janice’s miraculous recovery. The guest wouldn’t understand the significance of the Fiesta dinnerware. He might think some of the foods strange, and so on. Is any of this cause to critique the institution of the family dinner? Hardly.

How does this apply to church? Church is built around the family’s worship. It is not primarily intended or designed to be an evangelistic event meant to entice and make the licentious and liberated comfortable. Church is designed for the worship of God; for the formation of Christians, which sometimes involves the uncomfortable movement of conviction, repentance, and confession; for the blessing and sending out of God’s people on mission in the world. A licentious and liberated younger brother will feel out of place precisely because he is out of place; he is no longer in the world he knows, but he is on the threshold of the world to come. And that is a good thing. If he doesn’t leave feeling, “That was strange!” then I question whether he has been to an assembly of the saints at all. Now, let’s get this straight. The licentious and liberated guest will be welcomed and loved, but his licentiousness and liberation will not be catered to nor will he be made to feel at home. He is not at home: not yet. But, he has put himself in the crosshairs of the grace of God, and those “elder brothers” might just pursue him like the hounds of heaven down the byways to coffee shops, or restaurants, or family dinners, or Bible studies — to all those places where evangelism should and does take place. He may one day become part of the family. I live in Knoxville, Tennessee, a city whose motto is “Keep Knoxville Scruffy.” I want to live in a church whose motto is “Keep Church Weird.”

Do we declare the message that Jesus did? Well, yes and no. Jesus’ message was directed almost exclusively to Second Temple Jews, a declaration that in and through his life, death, and resurrection God was at last fulfilling the covenants with Israel; at last defeating the unholy trinity of death, sin, and the dominion of the powers; at last becoming King and inaugurating his Kingdom. Jesus spoke this message, e.g., in the Sermon on the Mount, in a host of parables, and in the strange discourses in St. John’s Gospel. He also enacted the message in healings and exorcisms and resurrections and nature miracles. He also claimed, in no uncertain terms, to be God; to have seen him was to have seen the Father with whom he was/is one. Jesus’ message was that he was doing all these things. Our message is that he has done all these things and that the great renewal of all things is yet to happen when he comes again. The “tenses” of his message and our message differ: present (for Jesus) versus past, present, and future for the Church. But, the essence is the same. There is another real difference though. Just as Jesus promised that his disciples would do greater things than he had done, our messages is more expansive than his. He preached to Jews; we preach to the world. He taught a small group of followers; we teach a universal body of the faithful. Jesus rarely addressed a “church” at all, but our teaching and preaching takes place in the context of the Church that his disciples shepherded and served. So, we preach Jesus to the world even as we deal with the messiness of the Church. Jesus tended the root; we manage the vines. But, it is one and the same good news.

I will deal with the charge that the church is full of conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people in short order. The church is much worse than that. The church is a spiritual hospital full of sin-sick patients all of whom are terminally ill but for the miraculous intervention of the Great Physician. The church is a whitewashed sepulcher full of dead men’s bones. The church is the refuge of sinners and hypocrites, all of whom are the beloved of Christ and my dear brothers and sisters. And that is why I am there as the chief of sinners. If you come, I do not think you will change the demographics.

The quote from Keller’s book is just a snippet; reading the whole might change my impression of his impression of the Church. He certainly served the Lord and the Church faithfully, certainly more so than I have done and likely will do, and I have no doubt that he has already heard the words I long one day to hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” But such indictments of the Church, even in snippet form, make me uncomfortable. After all, the Church is the bride of Christ. No one likes to be told that his bride is ugly.