I am minded to believe that if we really want authenticity, it means certain churches will be authentically extremely messy. They will be very honest, but there will be serious mess. I am equally minded to believe that other churches will appear relatively together because they are. The sins they struggle with will seem like small beer to some or be centred more in their thought life. We also have to accept that authenticity will also be authentically in line with the culture from which we emanate.
One of the moves in the modern evangelical church is towards an increasing sense of authenticity. It is hard to argue with the desire for authenticity. After all, if one isn’t authentic, then one is fake. And who wants to go to church with a bunch of fakers? Isn’t that the very hypocrisy and Pharisaism the church has historically been accused of and from which it desperately wants to unhitch?
The issue is that the authenticity-hunters are often not enamoured with authenticity when it is actually on display. Churches in hard places may seem full of people being authentic, but people often recoil from the authenticity on display because it is, well, too authentic. The sins on display, that with the church’s help may be repented of, are too much for some to wear. How can professing believers do that? There’s not denying we shouldn’t sin, but let’s not pretend that we don’t, and some of us spectacularly so. We only have to look at some of the things professing believers got up to in scripture to see it is so. But for many, that is a level of authenticity too far.
Some, who find these things too much, prefer churches with more middle-class sensibilities. But the problem rears its head in such churches too. Whilst I have no doubt there are inauthentic fakers in middle-class churches, I am prepared to believe that most of them are not that. They are just what they appear. Broadly together people who happen to have relatively comfortable lives whose problems are broadly managed thanks to their financial setup and social status.
