It was the afternoon of Thursday, October 15th when our squad was able to leave campus for the first time in a month and a half to go to ministry! “Where was this ministry?” you may be wondering. I can assure you, it’s not something you ever would’ve guessed — we’re serving at a zoo! Between a variety of manual labor and caretaking projects, our squad has been able to call the North Georgia zoo our mission field for the last couple of weeks.
As a few of the zookeepers showed us around on that first afternoon, I just couldn’t rattle this feeling of restlessness and discomfort as I was reminded of something I’d read in Francis Chan’s Letters to the Church a few weeks prior:
“So many churches feel like zoos. We take these powerful animals out of the jungle and put them on display in cages… I wonder whether you’ve ever felt like the zebra [from the movie Madagascar]. You’ve been a faithful member of your church, but you keep feeling like you were made for something more. Maybe you’ve even experienced what it’s like to live in the wild. It may have been on an overseas mission trip or while boldly reaching out in your own neighborhood. You’ve known the joy of seeing your instincts kick in and allow you to thrive. But now you’re stuck in the zoo, where everything is comfortable, everything is controlled. And you just want to get back to living in the wild.”
If this arises in you a feeling of uneasiness, I’m honestly not sure what will. The fault of the American Church has caused us to become comfortable with complacent. We’ve become content with living in our cages— free from responsibility and the passion to take action, really. We’ve learned to expect a weekly feeding from our pastor Sunday morning and wait for our next meal to be delivered the following week.
We were created to be incredible animals. Voracious tigers. Intellectual sparrows. Exotic and mysterious wildlife. Ferocious beasts. Captivating and fierce. Made for the jungle. Made for the desert. Made for the rainforest. Made for the wild.
Our power has been gifted to us through the Resurrection of Jesus. We’re set-apart, chosen, called out. But we’ve sacrificed this freedom by becoming complacent within the cages of the American Church. We’re created to be wild but have been conditioned to conform to a watered-down and mundane life of complacency.
Ephesians 1:19-21 speaks of the “immeasurable greatness of Jesus’ power.” And you — me, us — have access to that power! “Are we willing to consider that the Bible is accurate and that the [American] Church has domesticated us to the point where we doubt our power?” (Chan 155). Are we okay with acknowledging that we’ve been gifted Resurrection power and have chosen to live behind metal bars instead?
“Church, the answer is not to build bigger and nicer cages. Nor is it to renovate the cages so they look more like the wild. It’s time to open the cages, remind the animals of their God-given instincts and capabilities, and release them into the wild” (Chan).
Would wild be a word we use to describe our Sunday morning church services or Wednesday night gatherings? Would wild be an adjective that accurately describes the ways we love each other and pursue relationship with the Father? I don’t know about you, but I just can’t wrap my head around allowing myself to settle for complacency over all that He has for me outside of my cage of safety and security. Because they’re not bubbles anymore— we’ve hardened our walls and allowed them to become cages.
I don’t think it’ll come as a surprise to you now when I say that it’s time for us as the Church to break free of these cages. We’ve been living only a fraction of the full potential of our lives for far too long. It’s time for the Church to live up to the commands the Lord has given us! To be the voice for the voiceless, to advocate for our brothers and sisters living under oppression, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick. To fight for an end to racism, to demonstrate love to even the worst of our enemies. To rescue women and men from modern-day slavery. To defend and protect the widow, the orphan, the vulnerable. And above all, to love. It’s been far too long. It’s time for us to fight for the Gospel in the ways we’ve been commissioned. And that can’t be done inside a cage. It just won’t work.
I hope you don’t get the impression that this is an easy task to undertake. It will take the time and effort of the entirety of the American Church to reverse the culture we’ve created in our own sinfulness. It starts with me. It starts with you.
I’ve been asking myself these two questions over the last week, and want to challenge you to do the same—
- What steps can I take to step out of my cage today?
- How can I get back to living in the wild?
I’d love to hear your answers, and I’m sure others would as well. So if you’re feeling bold or, might I say, wild, I’d love if you’d share them below.
