Unlearn Apathy Toward the Church

Learn to Be a Suffering Servant for the Church

We’re continuing to feature chapters-in-progress on my upcoming book, “The Art of Unlearning.” The next three weeks will feature excerpts from a chapter that is particularly important to me: it is easy and tempting to just want to write the church off. But that’s what I’m convinced we must unlearn—our apathy toward the church and our tendency to focus on our own individual walk—and then learn to walk in the footsteps of Paul and even become a suffering servant for the church.

As always, your comments and constructive criticism are most welcome.

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In May of 1942, Czechoslovak resistance soldiers parachuted into Prague to assassinate German SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the main architect behind the “Final Solution”[1] and the Reich's third in command after Hitler and Himmler. I’m somewhat hesitant to use an assassination as an example in a Christian book, but the evil that Heydrich was unleashing on a daily basis rivals any murderer in world history. Czech resistance fighters wanted the world to know that though their country was occupied, many of its citizens were not silent, passive, or accommodating. They received training and assistance from British forces for what would be the only assassination attempt of a world leader during all of World War II. As the Czech fighters prepared to depart for their mission, each man was given a cyanide tablet with the explanation, “Our assignment is to kill him; it isn’t to get away safely.”

I don’t know that any scene in a movie[2] moved me quite like watching that statement being made. It was so matter of fact. Our assignment isn’t to get away safely. Getting the job done is more important than surviving…