OXBOW CHRISTIANITY

An oxbow lake is a stagnant body of water that used to be part of  the main channel of a dynamic, flowing river. It forms when the river cuts a new channel across the neck of a meander leaving a crescent-shaped lake that is cut off from the river it used to be a part of.

It occurs to me that a lot of churches are like that. We might even call them oxbow churches. This kind of church has a history to celebrate.  There was once a time, maybe even within living memory, when that church was part of the great, powerful current of what God was doing and, and during those years, that church was full of vigor and movement, mission and purpose, and their church life was marked by a sacrificial flowing-out. But now in the place of movement and vigor and mission and purpose there is just existence.

One of the marks of an oxbow church is that the continuing existence of the church- keeping the doors open- becomes the goal, and this goal trumps and ultimately replaces the great Kingdom purposes that caused previous generations to take big risks, sacrifice, and follow God even when what He was calling them to was very challenging.

A church’s goal should never be just to keep the doors open. That is an oxbow mentality. You show me a church that has made that their highest goal and I will show you one that is weak and irrelevant. Satan grins at such a church, because the Spirit of our Lord who poured out His life as a drink offering and who willingly gave His life in sacrifice for others has gone out of a church that sets its sights on self-preservation.

Brothers and sisters, there are fates worse than death for a church.

Our desire should not be to keep our church going, but to make our church fruitful.  If I was told that five or ten years from now my church would be forced to close its doors my response would be, “Well…let’s go down swinging. Let’s make these next five, ten years count! Let’s honor those who have come before us not by maintaining a lifeless monument of brick and mortar but by using what is temporary to accomplish eternal things. In the days between now and then let’s fill this place with full-throated worship! Let’s proclaim how excellent our God is! Let’s share the Gospel with our neighbors! Let’s pray! Let’s spend every penny! And all the while let’s keep in mind the words of 1 Corinthians 15:58, that “…in the Lord our labor is not in vain.” 

Here’s another mark of an oxbow church. Instead of actively flowing out as a river of blessings and life-giving truth to their community and beyond, an Oxbow church just kinda sits there requiring people to come to it.  Jesus, of course, is our example in everything. Jesus didn’t invite us from on high to come join Him in heaven that we might be saved. He left his place in heaven, a place of privilege and exaltedness, to come down to where we are. Christ Came among us in the flesh and we must follow His Example by going to the lost in the same way. An oxbow Christian views their church building primarily as a place for ministry rather than as a base for ministry. Such a church used to be part of a current that flowed all the way out to the great oceans that circle the globe, but now it is just a glorified puddle.  And to be sure, even within a vital, spirit-filled church, there can be individual oxbow Christians, but there is something especially sad about a whole group of believers- a church family- united together in the delusion that their little puddle-church is somehow an authentic expression of Biblical Christianity. Jesus said in John 7:38, “Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” Authentic Christianity is always marked by a flowing out, and a giving of life. It is a fearful thing when a church ceases to flow out for then it stagnates and becomes cut off from the main current of what God is doing.