Don’t worry, if you haven’t seen the movie Captain America: Civil War yet, this blog post won’t spoil it for you. This movie is more than just one of the best superhero action films ever made, it contains an important lesson for the church, especially the urban church.
The story arc of Captain America: Civil War is that some of the world’s greatest heroes have been divided into two armies that are battling each other. Instead of the heroes all being unified to fight evil, they are at war against each other. This major conflict is a mix of their mistakes, their relationships to earthly governments, as well as the instigation of one villain seeking revenge. When I reflect more deeply on this film, I can’t help but think of the state of the Christian Church in the United States.
The Church in America is at times divided in public battle against one another. I recently talked with a group of urban pastors who admitted to me that part of the conflict among them is that people over the years have left one of their congregations to join one of the others. When churches are already under-resourced and just trying to survive, losing a member can cause a spiritual civil war. Churches are too busy warring with their spiritual siblings when they ought to be collaborating to take on the common threat that is seeking to destroy urban families and communities.
The Church’s captivity to the structures of this world is playing a role as well. The Church must repent and work to free itself from captivity to extreme political ideology, the social matrix of race, and hyper materialism. If there was ever a time for the Church to be liberated and find greater identity collectively as the bride of Christ, that time is now.
At World Impact we are engaged in this liberating work through facilitating church planting movements, resourcing indigenous urban leaders, and working to network existing urban churches. We are also building collaborative bridges between urban and suburban churches so that we might become a more unified and transformative force for the Kingdom of God. We do this unifying work through training church planting teams that will work collaboratively with other church plants and existing urban churches. This way, rather than just individual, isolated church plants surviving on their own, entire movements are launched.
This happens because we don’t plant churches on our own. We partner with collaboratives like the LA Church Planting Movement and denominations such as the Evangelical Covenant Church. We also work with existing urban churches through Urban Church Associations. This approach to urban ministry calls local churches to regular fellowships and combining resources to engage the city in ways that no one church can accomplish on its own.
It’s time for the Church in America to end its Civil War and strive for collaborative, reconciling, and more fruitful expressions of the Kingdom of God on earth. This will lead to more faithfulness and fruitfulness when it comes to transformed lives and communities. The Gospel comes forth in expressions of truth, justice, human flourishing, and sustained development through a unified church, not a divided one.