How to Make the Church Younger
- Latimer trust
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
(Sort of)
A man sits alone downstairs late at night, bathed in the glow of his laptop screen. Everyone else is already in bed, and he should be too. What he plans to do is known only to him and the One to whom all hearts are open. He tries not to think about that as he begins to type the name of the website into the search engine. It appears as a suggestion in the drop-down menu.
He hesitates. He remembers again where this path leads: to shame and despair. In a moment of self-control, he closes the laptop and goes to bed. It is a small victory, for which he gives thanks to God.
The call of Christ to live a holy life is a call to spiritual war. Many of its battles will be lost this side of heaven, but there will be victories too, through the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit. Paul describes this conflict so well in Romans 7:18: ‘I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out’. It is easy to see our struggles as mostly personal, and they may indeed be largely private unless we invite accountability from others. Because such battles are private, the cost of surrender can seem small.
The second-century Church understood that small, personal victories against sin make the Church stronger. When a Christian fights against evil, even privately, the Church becomes healthier. This is one of the principal teachings of the mid-second-century text The Shepherd of Hermas.
Modern Christians have plenty of reasons not to read this text, not least its great length and its strange combination of Roman and Jewish apocalyptic imagery. The main character is Hermas, a Christian who is ‘double-minded’: his personal holiness does not match his profession of faith in Christ.
In the first part of the text, known as Visions, Hermas meets an old woman. She struggles to stand and is clearly very weak, resembling the ancient Cumaean Sibyl of Roman legend. However, she is not the Sibyl, but the Church personified. She is weak because individual Christians, like Hermas, do not seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness. She urges Hermas to repent and then departs.
Hermas repents of his sin and begins to become a more godly influence within his family. When he next meets the old woman, she still appears old but shows an inner vitality, like that of an old man who has just heard wonderful news, we are told. She is full of hope because of what Hermas has done.
Hermas continues to grow in holiness, becoming ‘powerful in the faith’. When he meets the woman a third time, she is strong, youthful and radiant, though her grey hair remains (Vis. 3.12). Her grey hair remains because, according to Hermas, she is still old: the Church is more ancient than anything else in creation.
There is something profound here. The holiness of individual Christians is not merely a private matter. Our sins can weaken the Church, while our repentance and growth in holiness can strengthen her. The battle against sin may be fought in the quiet places of our lives, unseen by anyone else, but its consequences are ecclesial.
If you feel that your Church is weak, consider your own holiness—and that of your brothers and sisters in Christ. It is easy to blame a whole host of factors for the weakness of the Church. But a healthy Church is built from Christians who are willing, by the grace of God, to recognise and resist evil day by day.
Perhaps, then, one way to make the Church younger is not to find better programmes, attract more people, or change the Church's image. Perhaps it is simply to become more holy.
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