Twenty-five years ago, I thought I knew almost everything.

In the back of my mind I knew that there was still a few things that I would learn, probably through the experiences that lay ahead. But as I stood before the Bishop on the day of my ordination, I was pretty confident that I was well-prepared and well-equipped for what was next. We were about to start our family and I was about to begin what I knew would be a wildly successful and important life and ministry.

Now, 25 years later, I have come to realize that I didn’t then, and still don’t, know anything.

I think this is what we mean when we talk about being wise and old. It’s not that we have learned so much over the years – quite the opposite. Every day I am confronted with how little I know, especially as the sum of knowledge in the world grows exponentially beyond me. The great gift of age and time is not what we come to know. It is instead the willingness to admit, and maybe to face, what we do not know.

And, I believe, that has made me wiser.

I came into my ministry as a Pastor in the time of what we called the “Church Growth” movement. We operated under the assumption that the decline of the church could simply be solved with better programs and activities, more contemporary worship music, small groups, and on and on and on. And it wasn’t that the ideas were bad – we made great advancement in all kinds of ministry. But we didn’t save the church. Because it wasn’t our calling to save the church.

Our calling is to something entirely different.

This is, I am convinced, (and this is 25 years of experienced wisdom speaking now) the real challenge facing us today. To stop trying to save the church and to stop trying to save ourselves and just try, to the best of our ability, to be faithful.

I am truly aware that the first part is really difficult. We are financially and emotionally invested in our churches. We have been programmed to believe that the church is a necessary institution, that it has the purpose and responsibility to save not just people but to save nations, to save the world.

Even as Luther debated the phrase “there is no salvation outside the church” with his Roman Catholic contemporaries, so we find ourselves locked into the same struggle. We think we are the only road to salvation, God’s exclusive franchise. We cannot understand, we cannot stand, the world rejecting us, rejecting our church. Yet like the church of Luther’s day, we discover that we cannot stop the oncoming rush of history. The Roman church fought against the reformation for over a century and nearly destroyed Europe in the process. Shall we do the same today? I pray not. No- we cannot, and consequently we should not, get caught up in some battle to the death to save the church.

Mostly because we have a bigger job to do.

The voices we hear criticizing the church are speaking truth to us. They tell us that church has become corrupt, hungry for worldly political power and wealth, content and fat, so deeply coupled to the world that it has lost its prophetic voice and so is complicit in hatred, misogyny, bigotry and violence. They are not wrong. Now those who identify themselves with labels like #exvangelical and #exitthepews are increasing, calling us to the hard work of honest self-evaluation and repentance.

The church (we!) is not, nor can it ever be, and end in itself. It can only be an instrument of God’s grace for the world. When we stop trying to save the church, then we are free to be simply, and fully, faithful.

What is faithful? That is a much larger, and better, question. It will not be answered easily or quickly.

Faithfulness requires us to not merely study the words of the Bible but to hear the living Word of God that the Scriptures witness. Our shortcomings in teaching and preaching the Word is a major obstacle to this work. Faithfulness requires us to be self-critical and non-judgmental. It requires us to be constantly open to what is ahead of us and not fixated with what is behind. And it requires us to have hope. We must believe that God is active in us and in our world, and that his kingdom is ever-approaching.

Can we do this? Are we wise? If we can faithfully face what we do not know and cannot understand, then perhaps we will be witnesses to the unfolding.