It is not we who build. Christ builds the church. No man builds the church but Christ alone. Whoever is minded to build the church is surely well on the way to destroying it; for he will build a temple to idols without wishing or knowing it. We must confess — he builds. We must proclaim — he builds. We must pray to him — that he may build.
We do not know his plan. We cannot see whether he is building or pulling down. It may be that the times which by human standards are times of collapse are for him the great times of construction. It may be that the times which from a human point of view are great times for the church are times when it is pulled down.
It is a great comfort which Christ gives to his church: you confess, preach, bear witness to me and I alone will build where it pleases me. Do not meddle in what is my province. Do what is given to you to do well and you have done enough. But do it well. Pay not heed to views and opinions. Don't ask for judgments. Don't always be calculating what will happen. Don't always be on the lookout for another refuge! Church, stay a church! But church: confess, confess, confess! Christ alone is your Lord; from his grace alone can you live as you are. Christ builds (Bonhoeffer, quoted in TDP, p. 841).
Me in an email to Larry: The problem here is that people think the church is "dying" and needs to be "saved" (didn't Someone already take care of that?). We like to be in control. We like to plan. We want to know that everything will be OK because it looks like it won't. Therefore, instead of turning to God our Highest Good in prayer and hearing His Word, we chase after all this stuff and listen to prophets who aren't prophets and who don't know the future in a futile attempt to get hold of the reigns. The constant refrain of such thinking is "If we could only just...then..." "Balderdash. Let God be true and every man a liar" (Rom. 3:4). All of this instead of doing what we should be, repenting of our need to be a Self-God in control of ourselves and the church and instead sitting at Jesus' feet to hear Him preach what He is doing, not what we think He should be doing and how He should be going about it. How many times did this article mention God or Jesus? Hardly ever, and when it did, God was not the subject of the verb, doing the action. One wonders if we believe that God is doing anything. This article is a shining example of the "real absence" theology of radical reformation churches. I often think that if we were honest we'd recognize that the real thinking behind all this stuff is basically: "God, You are failing. You let too many people go to hell. You need to shape up." Repent.
Our fight is not with flesh and blood, boomers and millennials. To quote someone I read recently, "we must preach under the presupposition of bondage. We are not preaching to free subjects that can, in their rationality and autonomy, take or leave our proclamation. Rather, our word is the Word of God which kills and makes alive. It creates and destroys. We suffer such a word passively and therefore the only thing the occupant of the preaching office [or any Christian] can do is proclaim the Word and allow the chips to fall where they may."