10 Cultural Realities That Affect Sunday Morning Church Attendance

1. Rapidly changing technology - We have shifted from perhaps one major innovation per generation to major technological innovations every few years. People are in a perpetual state of adaptation to something new. We have developed an expectation of novelty, and get bored easily,with the “same old, same old.” Churches tend to be much more static in worship practices than people are accustomed to, anddo not value variety and novelty as an attractive feature. Perhaps we should.

2. Communication has diversified and shortened our attention spans - Most of us were raised on four predominant modes of communication (“snail mail”, telephone, radio and TV) - all based on attention spans ranging from a few minutes to an hour or more. Today, we have added email, texting, websites, and various forms of social media to the mix - all of which require a much shorter attention span. Yet in worship, most churches use one or two communication forms and still require a 15-20 minute attention span for its message to be received. And we wonder why people say worship is boring and stay away.

3. Growing virtual reality - People are spending more time in virtual space, staring at screens, and less time focused on the physical world around them. Many churches worship in a way that demands full attention in physical space. Even ones that do offer screens as part of the experience often frown on individual use of devices durin a service. This question exposes a significant generational gap that we need to take seriously if we want to make worship vital for younger generations. Or should it be a rare time away the virtual world?

4. Increasing mobility - People move frequently and fewer spent most of their lives in one area. 
Many are in a state of permanent transience, adjusting to a new hometown every year or two. Moves are the
2. Distance from family - loss of unconditional support
3. Spiritual homelessness - "Who are my people?", "Where do I belong?"

C. Economic uncertainty

1. Loss of company loyalty/ long-term security - see "B"
2. Difficulties for recent grads, younger generations in general - see "G"
3. General economic anxiety in politics, media, culture
4. Tendency to not go to church if can't contribute financially

D. Busyness/Loss of Sabbath - "Sunday is the new Saturday"

1. More who work on Sundays
2. Competition with sports and recreation
3. Only day for sleep/relaxation/chores

E. Consumerism and debt

1. Elevated expectations for standard of living
2. False security in possessions, purchasing
3. All driven by the idolatry of commercial consumerism - Hours of advertising vs
hours in church. What do we really live for?

F.  Pluralism, lack of moral center

1. Church is no longer the "go to" moral authority - one voice among many
2. Rejection of institutions - replaced by commercial consumerism, "cult of the self."
3. Consumerism offers no moral authority. Vacuum that is filled by "whatever is
right in our own eyes" - a splintering effect. No longer sees value in
spiritual community.

G. Failure/distrust of institutions

1. Church, other institutions viewed with suspicion or outright contempt
2. What we experience as stability and welcoming sanctuary is often seen as repressive, exclusive fortress
3. Vacuum of larger narratives to unite - splintering, isolating

H. Changing family structures/ gender roles

1. Two parents working outside the home
2. Cumulative effects of higher divorce, single parenting
3. Loosening of gender roles - including spiritual leadership of family

I.  Earlier exposure for children to adult life

1. Physical changes earlier
2. Exposure to violence, sex in the media - especially Internet issues
3. Harsher social realities at younger ages
4. Faith brought into question by more, at earlier ages

J. National climate of anxiety and partisan conflict - carries over into church

What I'm Learning From Sunday Soccer - Part I

It was a warm Sunday morning in late spring. Instead of my usual place leading worship at the local Presbyterian church, I found myself on a soccer field, coaching my younger son's team. It was the big end-of-the-year tournament, and for the first time in league history, they had scheduled games that directly conflicted with traditional church time. I had already scheduled this particular week off as part of my family's annual beach trip, so we decided to come home two days early and participate in the soccer games.

As I stood on the sideline that Sunday morning and looked around the complex, I realized how many more families in my town had made the choice to do soccer than church. By my rough estimate, about six times as many. Some of those families, I understood, were simply not churchgoers. They had left church participation behind long ago, if they had ever attended, and the decision of whether to play soccer or go to worship was not a decision at all.

But for many families, including a few from my own congregation, the Sunday morning soccer games did present a conflict of priorities. In the vast majority of those conflicts, church was the loser, and I knew that this choice was not unusual.

Whether it is sports, family gatherings, other recreational activities, or simply sleeping late and relaxing at home - Christian families and church members in general are increasingly viewing Sunday morning attendance as optional. Many still value the concept of Sunday mornings at church, and wish to see it continue and thrive in their congregations. Yet more and more, they are choosing other priorities on an individual, week-to-week basis.

Pastors and other church leaders are well-acquainted with this reality, especially in parts of the country where the shift to post-Christian culture is much further down the road than it is in places like my small Southern town. But even in the Bible Belt, the fact that church attendance is losing out to pretty much everything else is becoming apparent.

Congregations tend to respond to this shifting cultural reality in one of three ways. The first is a call to arms, a conviction to fight back against the culture that is perceived to be stealing our people away. Whether it was 10, 20, 40 or more years ago, church members tend to remember a time when the pews were full and there were bunches of kids coming down for the children's sermon.

They want to recapture that time by bringing back all those people who now choose recreation or sleep on Sunday morning. In addition, they see new people and new families who have moved into their community but don't go to church, and they want to draw them in. Either way, the belief is that the faithful response in this situation is for the church to up its game, and to somehow entice people to change their minds and start choosing church over all the other Sunday options.

This mentality was reflected to me in a recent conversation held at my church's annual retreat. One evening, the talk at the dinner table turned to the declining number of families who come to worship. I told the story about being at the soccer field on Sunday morning, and how there are conflicts of priorities for this generation that previous generations never faced.

The consensus of the group was that the solution to this challenge is to change our traditional worship style. Some thought we should go to a contemporary service with a rock band. Others suggested we move to the Fellowship Hall for a less formal setting. Still others lobbied for a blended type of service with a combination of all those elements. They argued for a while about which of these formats would attract the young people.

None of them were happy when I said that it wouldn't matter what we did with worship, because none of those options will bring people back like they want. Like so many in the broader church, they believe that declining participation is the result of the church doing something wrong, or at least not doing the best thing; and they are convinced that the solution is to be found is changing that thing, and attracting people like we did in the past.

Whether it's how to do worship, or fellowship events, or the youth program; whether it's hiring the right kind of pastor or putting together a snappy marketing campaign; or whether it's simply being more open and friendly with visitors - congregations often shift into this battle mode, into this determination to fight back against post-Christian culture and draw people back in by out-competing all those other options that now exist on Sundays.

It is a natural and understandable approach to the situation, but it completely misses the nature of the challenge. The reality is not that the church needs to fix whatever it is we are doing or not doing, and in the process fix the culture. The reality is that culture has changed, that we can't do anything about it, and that we are called to adapt and move into this new situation.

In other words, we are not called to compel people to choose us over their other priorities so we can fill our pews on Sunday mornings again. The challenge, as I learned a few months later the next time we had a Sunday morning soccer tournament, is much different.

But before I describe that experience, it is necessary to go back to the second type of response that churches can have to our changing cultural situation. Instead of trying to compete with culture, some faith communities simply withdraw from culture.

In the neighboring county to where I live, there is a significant Amish community.  They operate a bakery in the town, but they maintain their own completely separate living space out in the country side. The only interaction they have with the larger culture is through the operation of their business.

Their children are raised and educated completely within their community. They do not participate in any recreational or social events beyond themselves. Their religious practice is completely separate from any of the other Christian churches in the area, and they do not engage in any sort of evangelism that I have seen.

One afternoon I stopped by the bakery to buy some doughnuts, and I was struck by watching two boys - about the same age as my two sons - helping out and playing behind the counter. "Their parents certainly don't face the conflict of having to choose between a soccer game and attending worship," I thought to myself.

The response of almost complete withdrawal from the dominant culture, which the Amish and other groups have practiced for centuries, has succeeded in eliminating the culture vs. faith conflict. It may seem like an extreme measure to many - especially to those who feel that spreading the faith is a core element of church life - but it is more likely to succeed than fighting culture. In fact, it is a response that is often taken by more mainstream, less sectarian churches as they seek to preserve their worship and Sabbath traditions.

The first church I served as a pastor was a small congregation of less than 100 members, but they were blessed with a generous endowment of nearly half a million dollars. Feeling the challenge of declining membership, they rejected the response of attractionalism - which at the time, was the response I favored.

Instead, they circled the wagons and committed themselves to using the endowment money to keep the status quo going for as long as possible. Despite my encouragements, they showed little interest in making any significant changes designed to draw in new people. One patriarchal figure even told me that he was leery of new members, because they might have designs on spending the endowment money.

This congregation did not explicitly withdraw from culture as the Amish do, but they worked just as hard to shield themselves from it's encroaching influences -  and in some ways, they are to be commended for this. Within their church family, as there is in many small congregations, there is a strong sense of loyalty that supersedes the cultural competition for Sunday mornings. As pastor, I rarely heard "Sorry, but I won't be at church because...", as I so often do in my current church. The circled wagons might keep outsiders away, but they also keep the insiders from straying.

In the long run, neither of the first two responses to this challenge are healthy for the cause of The Gospel. The fatal flaw for both is that they focus on preserving the institution, not on sharing the Good News. Whether we fight culture or withdraw from it, we are making the assumption that we have Jesus contained within our churches, and that if we are getting smaller, then Jesus is getting smaller . But the third response rejects that assumption, and instead assumes that Jesus is out there among the people - especially the people that aren't showing up in our sanctuaries on Sunday morning.

Simply Free: A Working Outline

I'm putting together an outline for a book I may or may not end up writing. Comments are appreciated.

Working Title:  Simply Free

Thesis: Christian freedom is much more than being pardoned from wrongdoing. It is found in the release from all sorts of chains and boxes that bind our understanding and limit the flight of the human soul.

Section 1: Freedom from...

   A. Fear of death and loss

   B. Enslavement to wealth/ fear of poverty 

   C. Power and human systems

   D. Rationality and the illusion of knowledge

Section 2: Freedom to...

   A. Love God with all heart, soul, and mind

   B. Love one another (without condition)

   C. Speak up and act out

   D. Be content

Section 3: Simply free - Life in God's hands

The Line of Obligation

There is a division in our churches. It has nothing to do with race, gender, sexuality, or politics. It is loosely based on age, but specifically has to do with attitudes toward worship. I call it the Line of Obligation.

Above this line, people feel a sense of duty or obligation to go to church on Sunday morning. They might find worship fulfilling, but what gets them out of bed consistently is this feeling of "I ought to be there."

Below this line, the sense of obligation is gone. Church, if it is even considered, is just one of many possibilities for a Sunday morning. Those below the line who do attend regularly do so because of particularly strong faith or to enjoy the feeling of community. "I ought to be there" carries little or no influence.

As time goes by, the Line of Obligation creeps higher, and less people in our communities wake up on Sunday morning feeling the "ought to" feeling. Nonetheless, many churches continue to rely on the sense of obligation to get people there. 

As a result, churches are not only struggling to attract unchurched young people, but are also seeing many of those who do come slipping in their regularity. The answer is not to try to attract them back with consumeristic methods, but instead is to be realistic about what the end of the "ought to" age means. 

It means that we must do a lot more than try to convince young folks that they "ought to" come to church - and perhaps that we should stop considering attendance at worship the scorecard of faith. 

We have to find ways to nurture deep and abiding faith, and tight community to go with it - in ways that might go well beyond what church going meant in the "ought to" era. And when we do this, we will find a whole new way of living the faith opening up below this Line of Obligation.

A Parable for Today's Church

A man lives in a nice house in the country, just outside the city. Everyday, he wakes up at 6:30 and takes a shower and gets dressed. At 7:00 he sits down for breakfast and reads the newspaper. At 7:30, he gets in his car and drives to work, arriving on time at 8:00. This is his routine for 20 years.

Eventually, however, the city begins to grow. The country road the man lives on becomes populated with neighborhoods, apartment complexes, and shopping centers. Traffic becomes congested, and numerous stoplights are installed. The man's drive to work now takes an hour.
The man is not happy, and he complains about the new situation:

"They should not have done so much building on one road."
"They should not have installed so many stop lights."
"They should widen the road, or build a freeway."

And as he complains, the man continues with his routine. He wakes up at 6:30. He eats breakfast at 7:00. He gets in his car at 7:30. And he arrives at work at 8:30. After a while, the man's boss becomes impatient with his constant tardiness, and the man is fired.

The Matrix and Freedom

The Matrix and Freedom

In the movie The Matrix, a young man named Neo learns that what he thought was the real world is actually a computer-generated virtual reality. The real world turns out to be a barren wasteland that has been decimated by an apocalyptic war between human and machines.

Freed from his virtual enslavement, Neo voluntarily re-enters The Matrix and works toward liberating the human race from this "prison of the mind". Back inside, he learns how to deconstruct the virtual reality around him. He becomes aware that many of the rules he once thought to be absolute can be bent or outright broken.

Neo uses this awareness to move through The Matrix in startling ways. He defies gravity, dodges bullets, and eventually learns to manipulate the appearance of the virtual reality from the inside. These feats are made possible by his ability to distinguish what is absolute from what only seems absolute.
   
Christian freedom is not unlike the freedom that Neo experiences. We might not be enslaved in a virtual reality, but we do lead lives that are governed by rules and categories that we have created. These structures and limitations often seem absolute, but many are not.

For Neo, the key to freedom was knowing that the world around him was virtual, created by a computer program. For us, the key is knowing the difference between what God has ordered and what humans have ordered. When we understand this distinction, we can begin to deconstruct all the structures and rules we have created, consciously and unconsciously.

Seeing the world more as it really is, and less as we have constructed it to be, we are freed to pursue the way of Christ. This deconstructed view of the world can allow us to move through and serve the complex matrix of human society in ways that are just as amazing as Neo's reality-bending heroics in The Matrix.

Of course, there is nothing new about this notion of Christian freedom. Throughout history, followers of Christ have sought release from the boundedness of human structures and rules. The Matrix analogy merely renews this tradition of faithful deconstruction for a new digital generation.

The Human Predicament: Sickness or Boundedness

The Human Predicament: Sickness or Boundedness?


Imagine that you wake up one morning in your bed, and you are sick. You have a headache, and you are lightheaded. You have a scorching fever, your stomach is violently upset, and you feel like you might vomit. You are so weak and in so much pain that all you can manage is to roll off the bed and crawl toward the bathroom. You realize that even accomplishing the most basic of tasks today will be beyond your capabilities.

The next day, imagine that your illness is gone, but now you wake up physically bound in multiple ways. Your hands, your wrists, your elbows, your knees, your ankles, and your feet are all tied together - not in a painful way, but it almost completely prevents you from moving. All you can manage is to wiggle yourself off the bed and along the floor. Just like the previous day, you realize that accomplishing even the most basic of tasks will be impossible.

Two days. Two different ways of being incapacitated. Two different ways of being rendered less than a fully functioning human being. Sickness, or boundedness. Which one of these is the better way to think about the human predicament?

The Christian faith, like virtually every belief system, is built on the notion of the human predicament. It assumes that there is some problem, some deficiency, something about our lives and our world that is not what it should be.

Christians explain this problem through the story of Adam and Eve. What was originally an idyllic, innocent existence is spoiled when the first humans ignore God's command and eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Since then, humans have faced the predicament of being born into this "sinful" condition, and we have struggled mightily to know how we might be delivered from it.

Which brings us back to those two days I asked you to imagine. By and large, Christians have viewed this predicament like the first day. We are born into a world where we and everyone around us are sick with sin. We have inherited the disease that first entered the world with Adam and Eve, and we continue the problem through our own disobedience.

Many of our classic hymns reflect this notion of sin as sickness, such as "There Is A Balm in Gilead" - where the saving work of Christ is repeatedly referred to as a healing ointment for the sin-sick soul. This perspective assumes that there is not only a predicament to the human situation, but that there is dysfunction - that we are doing something wrong and must be cured of our waywardness.

When we see our problem as sickness to be healed, it causes us to look for where the sickness resides - which leads us into negative attitudes of judgment and condemnation. Both with ourselves and toward others, we frame individual behaviors in terms of healthy and unhealthy, right and wrong, or even good and evil. And we see larger systems and the world as a whole in term of brokenness.

But let's look at our human predicament like that second day - when we didn't wake up sick, but rather bound up and tied together. What if, instead of being born with a congenital disease called "sin," we are born with chains that limit us - that do not need healing, but that need to be untied and unbound? How does this shift change the way we look at ourselves, at one another, and at this human predicament that we share? Does it lessen our negative tendencies toward judgment and condemnation, and instead increase our positive tendencies toward growth and freedom? In a world full of people destroying one another over notions of right and wrong and good and evil, is an orientation toward freedom instead of healing the more peaceful and compassionate path?




 

Knowledge, Truth, and How To Avoid A Snake

As I see it, there are five modes people use to discern knowledge and truth. They roughly correspond to different different movements in human history.

1) Pre-awareness (Pre-history) Knowledge that does not require cognitive process or education. Like fear of snakes.

2) Reliance on authority (Pre-modern) We believe something because it is affirmed by a trusted authority figure or institution. "This is true because _______ says it is true."

3) Rationality (Modern) We believe something because we have considered all the facts available and made a logical and objective evaluation. "This truth should be apparent to anyone who thinks clearly about it."

4) Contextuality (Postmodern) We arrive at our beliefs as best we can based on our own experiences, but concede that others might arrive at different truths from their own perspectives. Truth emerges from the conversation between different perspectives. "My understanding of truth is no more or no less valid than yours."

5) Deconstruction (Post-history) Truth and knowledge are seen as illusory, as human constructs that have little to do with what is really real. All cognitive understanding is suspect and categories that were once assumed to absolute are challenged and rejected.

In many ways, the fifth mode comes full circle to the first mode - only with an awareness of the other modes and their illusory nature. In the fifth mode, the other modes can be used as tools when useful, and set aside when not useful.

Many folks might consider the fifth mode as part of postmodernity, but I think it's important to delineate them. To see truth as contextual,and to completely deconstruct the concept of knowledge and categories, are vastly different experiences.

In fact, we would likely consider someone in the fifth mode to be mentally ill - which  would certainly be consistent with modes of knowledge that medical practices tend to use. The diagnostic manuals that psychiatrists use are based on a combination of logical experimentation (mode 3) and the passing along of knowledge through schools and publications that have been vested with authority (mode 2).

And that's a good thing. We need for our doctors to be getting their information from tested and reliable sources, just as we need them to make evaluations using the most objective thought processes possible. I would be inclined not to go back to a doctor who was operating in the fourth mode, as if my opinion on how to treat a disease was just as qualified as hers.  And I certainly wouldn't see a fifth mode physician who told me that they had deconstructed and rejected most of what they learned in medical school.

The key to this system of modes is that all of them are useful tools, but none of them are absolutes. Take the fear of snakes, for example. That is purely a first mode type of knowledge. If I'm walking across my backyard and happen upon a copperhead, I'm heading the other direction before I have time to think about it - it's a process that happens away from the cognitive center of the brain, and which has allowed humans to avoid deadly predators since prehistoric times.

Imagine if I happened to be born without this instinctive fear, as some people are. When I see that snake, I would have to rely on another mode of knowledge to tell me to back away. I could remember how my mother had warned me about snakes when I was a child - a second mode authority-based response.

Or, I could rationally process what I know about snakes.  They tend to strike when surprised, and this one looks like it's poisonous because of the marks on its back - a third mode logic-based response.

Or, I could think back on previous experiences I've had with snakes, like how much it hurt when I was a teenager and got bit by a non-poisonous snake. And I could remember others' experiences - like that kid at camp who got bit by a water moccasin and had to go to the emergency room, or that snake-handling preacher in West Virginia who recently died from a rattlesnake bite - a fourth mode contextually-based response.

Or, I could totally deconstruct the situation. I could think about the fact that my eyes are processing light and sending signals to my brain, and that my brain is processing those signals and determining that it was a copperhead. And I couldn't question whether my brain was getting it right - whether that really was a poisonous snake.

And in the process, I could question the whole reality that I'm perceiving. Am I really standing in my backyard, or am I just lying on an operating table somewhere with a scientist manipulating my brain - a classic science fiction concept and a fifth mode response.

With any of modes 2 to 5, by the time the knowledge that this is a dangerous snake found its way to the part of my brain that responds by thinking "Run!", I likely will have been bit. But thanks to my automatic first mode, non-cognitive response, I'm able to retreat to safety.

In the same way, each of the modes has specific times they are useful. Telling a young child not to step into the street requires second mode knowledge to be transferred. Figuring out why you computer crashed is a third mode activity. An Interfaith dialogue on peace needs fourth mode communication to be fruitful. And writing a groundbreaking piece of music that establishes a whole new genre is pure fifth mode.

No one mode is superior to another, and we don't go through life trying to move through them in a neat progression. But as we mature, we do successively acquire the ability use higher and higher modes.

Some fields, such as medicine and architecture, demand a certain level of absoluteness that is offered by reliance on authority and rationality - with

Keeping Up With The Yadevs (How American Materialism Compares With the World's)

(Another repost from 2007 from my old blog "Discipline for Justice")

The Yadevs are a middle-class family of six from Ahraura, India. The book Affluenza shows a picture of the Yadevs in front of their home with everything they own:

1 small house (probably about 500-600 square feet), 3 beds, 4 blankets, 3 paintings with frames, 3 duffel bags (full of clothing), 1 chair, 4 large gourds, 5 small gourds, 1 ladder, 1 bicycle, 2 large baskets, 4 frying pans, 5 cooking pots, 6 small cups, and the clothes on their backs and shoes on their feet.

 

My family (The Mosses) are a middle-class family of four from South Carolina, USA. This is a list not of everything we own, but of everything we got rid of in a recent spring cleaning:

3 small baskets, 3 dish drying racks, 1 water filter w/ pitcher, 1 teapot, 1 water bottle, 1 medium canister, 4 storage jars, 1 wooden spoon, 2 storage racks, 1 cheese slicer, 1 small bucket, 2 tea pitchers, 1 Etch-a-Sketch pen, 1 colander, 10 small storage bowls, 3 coffee mugs, 6 cooking bowls, 4 dinner plates, 12 baskets, 5 tote bags, 5 pillows, 6 pairs of shoes, 2 pairs of slippers, 1 baking tray, 15 children's books, 3 pairs of baby shorts, 6 pairs of baby shoes, 3 baby hats, 3 onesies, 1 bib, 1 wine rack, 2 jigsaw puzzles, 2 purses, 1 cup, 3 sponges, 3 paintbrushes, 3 pictures with frames, 2 cookbooks, 1 vase, 1 flashlight, 3 bottle openers, 34 baby toys, 1 computer mouse, 4 stuffed animals, 2 computer games, 1 telephone, 2 TV trays, 2 blankets, 2 lamps, 1 spatula, 13 compact discs, 16 VHS movies, 1 infant pillow, 1 video baby monitor, 1 backpack, 1 stool, 1 suit, 5 dress shirts, 1 pair of shorts, 1 world map, 3 books, 4 t-shirts, 1 pair of jeans, I pair of pants, 2 bras, 1 headband, 1 pair of gloves, 2 baseball caps, 3 neckties, 3 pairs of socks, and 7 coat hangers.


Yadev total possessions:  70   
Moss total possessions thrown out:  244 
 
(Even after our spring cleaning, our stuff still filled up a house 3 times the size of the Yadevs'.)

Update: This photo essay published by Peter Menzel in 2013 shows the possessions of families from around the world. It reinforces what I learned about American materialism from doing this post.

Then he told them a parable: The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, "What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?" Then he said, "I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry."

But God said to him, "You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

- Luke 12: 16-21

Shopper's Paradise or Consumerist Hell?

(Republished from my old blog, Discipline for Justice - July 2007)

It was an ordinary Tuesday afternoon when the epiphany struck. I was driving on Broad Street in Richmond, Virginia. What had once seemed like a shopper's paradise revealed itself as a consumerist hell.

Miles on end of strip malls, home improvement warehouses, and chain restaurants, with no coherence or strategic planning. Nightmarish traffic on the street and in the parking lots. Space for pedestrians and bicycles nonexistent. Worst of all, endless signs and billboards, each one trying to get noticed by being larger and louder.

Most disturbing, however, was what I did not see. Virtually nothing was appealing to the eyes. Nothing incorporated the natural beauty of our creation or reflected the amazing potential human beings have for creativity and design.

Instead, in service to the relentless pursuit of profits and consumption, we have produced this sprawling, soulless, utterly unappealing mess. And not just on Broad Street, but on nearly every street in every city and town in the country. As I hurried back to the refuge of my seminary campus, I muttered to myself, "We can do so much better than this."

Aesthetic catastrophes like Broad Street are just one symptom of a culture that is squandering its abundance. Despite amazing technological advances, we are missing out on the creative and ethical possibilities that lay before us.

Do we really want to be remembered for our strip malls, our bloated highways, and our endless patches of concrete and asphalt? For our decaying urban centers, our exclusive gated communities, and our 3000 square-foot homes on 1/2 acre lots? For our love affair with fossil fuels and plastic, and for our literal mountains made out of garbage?

Since the economic boom that followed World War II, we have launched ourselves into a materialistic feeding frenzy. Signs now indicate that the frenzy is becoming a death spiral. Our habits of gross over-consumption, which all but the oldest generation take for granted, cannot and will not last.

In addition to the ugliness of our commercial sprawl, we face a growing gap between rich and poor; the uncertain future of our financial systems; and the shameful injustices of our health care and educational systems - not to mention the psychological and spiritual chasm that overly commercialized children and adults are being pushed into. But despite the many warning signs, most Americans seem unaware and unconcerned about how far out of balance our lifestyles have become.

Economist Juliet B. Schor reveals the depth of our collective denial:

"Consumerism as a way of life is so ingrained, it's hard to recognize within us and around us. it is, in the now-famous words of George Orwell, 'the air we breathe.' Like air, it's everywhere, we're dependent on it, and perhaps most importantly, until it's really dirty, it cannot be seen. We experience consumer society as something natural. But it's not."

Now more than ever, people of faith and social concern are called on to be a voice of sanity and reason within this culture of frenzied consumption; to lead modest and disciplined lives that foster humility and sustainability; and to seek alternatives to the commercial monstrosity that we find on Broad Street and so many other streets.

Five Resolutions for the New Year

1. I resolve to develop a new habit that takes me out of my familiar work pattern.

It's too easy for ministry to fall into predictable patterns, only to be occasionally interrupted by an unexpected crisis. My resolution seeks to find more positive surprises in ministry by shaking up the established routine. I might make pastoral visits in the morning, not the afternoon; or take Mondays off instead of Fridays; or make a point of sitting on the steps in front of the church for at least two hours a week to interact with whoever walks by. Anything that opens space
for the Spirit to move in new and unexpected ways.

2. I resolve to find a new way to be a sheep, and not a shepherd.

In ministry, we become accustomed to leading. It is our job, after all. Almost any time we're involved in a church activity, people are looking to us to be in charge. Which sometimes means that we forget how to follow. We forget what it means to be the sheep we are expecting others to be. My resolution, therefore, is to find one activity where I am just a face in the crowd. Perhaps I'll volunteer to be an assistant Little League coach, or will join an online Bible study. Anything where I can just show up and follow along.

3. I resolve to dialogue more with those of a different political perspective than mine.

These days, it seems that the left and right sides of the political spectrum live in completely different worlds. It's quite possible for us to never talk with anyone outside of our own partisan bubble, or to only do so by hurling anger and insults. In the past couple of years, I have developed a few relationships on Facebook where I can have civil conversations across the political divide. It can get passionate, but we strive to keep it respectful. And most importantly, we seek not just to "win" the argument, but to find some sort of common ground that can move the conversation forward. My resolution is to intentionally develop several more of these relationships, as I believe they are the key to our nation overcoming this partisan warfare that is having so many detrimental effects.

4. Instead of helping people in need, I resolve to connect people that help people in need.

In every community, there are plenty of people who are working in various ways to do compassionate ministries. Usually, the challenge is not getting people motivated to help, but in coordinating those who are already trying to do something. This is an urgent need in my town, so I am resolving to spend my outreach efforts in 2014 on working with the Ministerial Association and other civic groups to come up with some sort of directory of services. I hope this coordinating effort will point out some of the holes in our area's safety net - which can then be addressed.

5. I resolve to revive an old area of interest that represents my youthful ideals.

 It is inevitable that as we grow older, some of our strongly held beliefs about life are tempered by the realities of actually living life. But sometimes in our path toward wisdom and maturity, we can get sidetracked into jaded cynicism. Which is why, as we move throughout our adult lives, it is important to occasionally resurrect some of those forgotten passions.

Soon after I was ordained, I developed a strong interest in writing about consumerism and the needs for Christians to live disciplined lifestyles that promote economic and environmental justice. It was the culmination of an ethic that I had been developing throughout my time in college and seminary. I published a blog and even a short series of magazines on the subject - but it seemed it was not the right time for the church to hear the message.

2014, however, might find a more receptive faith culture. So, as my final and most exciting resolution, I am going to revive my work in a new and updated format. My first step will be to republish some of my old work on this blog - and then to evaluate what has and has not changed in the last decade. It should be fun!


Have a Happy New Year, y'all!

Unhelpful Myth #1: The Church Is Dying

(No one disputes the fact that Christianity in America is declining numerically. Enough has been written about this already, and I don't have anything to add to the conversation except to point out some unhelpful myths that this shrinking reality is producing. These myths are causing undue anxiety and are preventing us from embracing the wonderful new things God is bringing out of this situation.) 

Myth #1: The Church is Dying.

All we have to do is take a look at national trends in membership, or how young people occupy our pews so sparsely compared to gray hairs, or how few baptisms we're performing compared to funerals - and it seems logical to predict that the once-great Protestant church in America will be no more in 50 years or so.

But if we broaden our historical view and reject the impulse to compare today's church to the "glory days" of 1960. And if we take an approach that is more Biblical than business-like in how it defines success, then we will see that despite the steadily declining numbers, the church is far from dying.

From it's very beginning, the story of God's people is about growing and contracting. It's a steady pattern of great numerical strength in one era, followed by a difficult time of winnowing and transition, followed by startling new growth in the next era. Surely we are not the first people in that long history to feel the burden of being called to faithfulness in a time when God is shrinking us. Surely we are not the first to feel the grief of something great coming to an end, and then to transfer that grief to think that God's people and perhaps even God himself are dying.

But we can take great comfort and hope that this is not the first time we have faced decline, and that The Holy Spirit will surely bring us back in a way that is both surprising and glorious. Just ask the great prophets of the Old Testament who lived through the loneliness and isolation of exile, but somehow mustered the hope to write the beautiful words that pointed toward the coming of Christ. Surely, their faith and hope can convince us that our difficult period is not about the church dying, but rather about it getting smaller and then reemerging as something new.

But if we are convinced we are dying, and if we succumb to the anxiousness that precedes anticipated death, then we will not be receptive to new things. Our eyes will be dimmed, and our hearts will focus only on what we are losing, not on what can now be gained.

It's just as Isaiah 43:18-19 proclaims:

"Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing: now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."

Moving Beyond "Us vs. Them"

 

In the 1980’s, a catchy ad campaign emerged from a beer company. The premise was simple. Two groups of people would shout back and forth the two features of the beer the company wanted us to remember:

“Tastes great!”

 “Less filling!” 

“Tastes great!”

“Less filling!”

As the campaign gained steam, the debate began to spontaneously emerge at sporting events. A couple of people would start the shouting, and it would spread like wildfire until it was half of the stadium versus the other half:

“Tastes great!”

“Less filling!”

“Tastes great!”

Less filling!”

The willingness of so many people to jump into the debate was a brilliant source of free advertising, and also a good lesson in crowd psychology. Many of the folks who were shouting never drank that brand of beer and had no actual opinion on the two choices set before them. It was just something fun to do at the ballgame. The debate could have been Mickey Mouse vs. Donald Duck, and people would have joined in just as gleefully.

The point is this: People are drawn to a clear “us vs. them” argument, and will readily conform to the two choices that are presented  – even when those choices are not very relevant or useful. It happens all the time in our national politics.

Conservative vs. liberal. Democrat vs. Republican. Socialism vs. free market. Gun control vs. gun rights. Pro-life vs. pro-choice.  Pro-Israel vs. Pro-Palestine. And so on and so forth. Every election, every issue, and every movement is forced into an oversimplified “us vs. them” duality where people can make their choice as easily as they decided whether to shout “Tastes great!” or “Less filling!” It’s a process which engages and inflames the American people against one another, but which does no justice to the amazingly complicated political and cultural landscape we find ourselves inhabiting.

As a result, we end up shouting at one another about which party is to blame for a manufactured government shutdown; or over a proposed gun control law that will do nothing to address our real problems with violence;  or over a new health care law that leaves untouched the fundamental structures of a broken system. And we eagerly jump into these largely irrelevant debates using the simple categories that are presented to us:

“Tastes great!”

“Less filling!”

“Tastes great!”

“Less filling!”

Unfortunately, it’s not much different in the church. As Christians move into a 21^st-century reality that is complicated, uncertain, and somewhat frightening, we find ourselves falling into the same types of “us vs. them” struggles.

Many of these struggles revolve around the “liberal vs. conservative” division that has defined the last few centuries of Protestant history. Most recently, this conflict has erupted around the issue of LGBT ordination, and its reality is a complicated mix of theological, cultural, political, and historical forces.

There are a lot more than two ways to think about the issue, depending on one’s context and personal experience. A conversation that is helpful and moves the issue forward will be sensitive to the multiplicity of perspectives and will not devolve an “us vs. them” shouting match.

Too easily, however, the conversation is about “those who love gays vs. those who hate gays,” or “those who believe in the Bible vs. those who don’t.” It’s a reductionism that inhibits the discovery of creative solutions, and it is reflected in the way church governing bodies tend to discuss issues - with a “for” microphone on one side and an “against” microphone on the other.

“Tastes great!”

“Less filling!”

“Tastes great!”

“Less filling!”

But beyond the hot-button political issues such as LGBT rights, the church falls into the “us vs. them” mentality on topics of the general future of the church, topics for which a simplistic duality is the least helpful way to think about things. Here’s an example:

In the last year, an emotional debate has erupted in the Presbyterian Church (USA) about changes being made to the medical and pension plans offered to clergy. The Board of Pensions, in response to rising medical costs and other pressures, announced that it would be ending the practice of fully covering all dependents. Essentially, this meant that younger clergy and smaller churches would be shouldering the burden of the changes. After an intense and focused outcry, the Board modified its change, reducing some of the additional burden, but not all of it.

What was telling about the controversy was not the details of the proposed changes, however.  It was the nature of the debate that ensued. It got quite polarized and quite ugly as insults like “uncaring, out of touch, and whiners” were hurled back and forth. Is was a clear reflection of the larger generational conflict happening in our culture.

And even though I strongly believe the changes are unfair to younger clergy, I am also disappointed that the conversation devolved into an “us vs. them” dynamic. There are many complicating factors to the Presbyterian pension situation, and there are multiple points of view that all have valid contributions to make.

Perhaps if we could set aside the compulsion to divide into warring factions, we would find that the ultimate answer to our pension woes is not found in an “us vs. them” debate about how we tinker with the current system. Perhaps we are being called to set aside the dualities that color our perceptions, and to seek to create together a very different sort of system. But because we are so programmed to line up on opposite sides of the river and throw rocks at one another, it is often difficult to get past the two simplistic categories that first present themselves.

“Tastes great!”

“Less filling!”

“Tastes great!”

“Less filling!”

It’s a lot of fun to do this at a baseball game.  But many of us have long since grown weary of trying to move forward in our nation and in the church in this fashion. There is another way.

             

Bivocational Ministry: Let's Think Twice

I'll admit my bias up front. My father has been a full-time minister all his life, and it looks like I will do the same. Which means that, except for one very difficult year when I tried to be a professional musician, I will never know any reality except financial dependence on the church. In some ways, this explains my uneasiness with all the talk lately about bivocational ministry.

Bivocational ministry is simply when a pastor holds a job outside the church to help pay the bills. It's not a new concept, and in fact it's been the norm for most of Protestant history. But it is a new and scary concept to many in today's mainline churches. We've grown accustomed to career clergy and to paying them well enough to be the sole support for middle class families.

As economic stagnation and the decline of the church in America have become realities, this assumption of professional clergy is changing. Many congregations that once afforded a well-paid full-time minister are now going the bivocational route. Others are joining up with neighboring churches for a "yoked" parish that usually pays the bare minimum to an overworked minister. What this means is that fewer pastors can now afford to support a middle class family.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing. As I have discussed this issue with my friends and colleagues, there have been strong points made both for and against the shift to bivocational ministry. So I will try to set my personal bias aside, and present an even-handed look at the pros and cons.

Pro: Resources once used for salary and benefits for the pastor can now be shifted to ministries. If I went to half my salary and no benefits, it would save my church about $40,000 - no small chunk of change!

Con: At least in the wealthier denominations like my PCUSA, lack of resources is not the issue. Regional and national governing bodies could, if they desired, make sure that all but the smallest churches have full-time clergy. The fact that many small churches are struggling to afford a pastor is more a reflection of our polity and our attitudes than our poverty. One could even make the argument that the church is reflecting society with issues of stratification of wealth.

Pro: Bivocational ministry reduces the gap between clergy and laity. One of the central problem of the 20th-century church is that it became clergy-centric. Ministers gained too much power and influence, while the people in the pews became passive and disinterested. Having a minister who is out there in the world scratching for a living like everyone else puts us on a more level playing field, and it allows for greater investment of lay people in leading the church.

Con: A minister who is not financially dependent on his position will tend to favor the job he depends on. For example, what happens when there needs to be a funeral on a Tuesday, but the minister can't get away from his day job? More to the point, will a minister trying to split her loyalties between family, church, and her other job be able to bring as much energy and passion on a daily basis as one who is fully committed to the church? Will the sermon be an afterthought thrown together on a Saturday afternoon, instead of something wrestled with and refined over a week full of pastoring?

Pro: Not being financially dependent on ministry removes much of the temptation toward careerism. One of the most salient criticisms of pastors is that they care more about "climbing the ladder" and landing a big-steeple church than serving God. A bivocational minister can joyfully serve whatever congregation they are called to without having to balance tough decisions about family financial needs.

Con: Being a pastor who has to balance those financial needs is an important part of spiritual growth. The people in the pews constantly wrestle with questions of faith, financial insecurity, and how to balance the selfish desire for career success with how to live a Christian life. Why should pastors be exempted from the temptation of careerism? As pastors struggle with it, they can better minister to parishioners who struggle with it.

Pro: Congregations have different expectations of full-time pastors. Every full-time minister has felt the pressure to perform in a certain way because the church invests so much in them. Pastors that earn a modest part-time salary enjoy more freedom to speak prophetically and to lead in ways that church members might not desire.

Con: Being financially dependent on the congregation gives the pastor accountability. There are many unpleasant aspects of ministry that can easily be discounted if one doesn't feel that pressure of, "This is my job, I have to do it." Full-time accountability also helps balance the power between clergy and laity, as that financial tether is sometimes the only thing that prevents a pastor from heading in a direction that the church might not be ready for.

There are more pros and cons, but those are the ones I feel are most relevant. We need to carefully consider these points before we go too much further down this road.

My central concern is that bivocational is becoming a trend because of economic reasons, not missional ones, and that we are not carefully considering the consequences. These decisions are being made at the congregational level as churches struggle with the painful reality of budgets that no longer allow for the cost of a full-time pastor. Letting go of this is often more difficult than the decision to close the doors altogether, and we shouldn't take lightly what this shift does to the psychology of a congregation.

I hope we can be more intentional at the higher levels of the church to decide with intention whether bivocational ministry is what is best for the body in the long run.

A More Intentional Online Community

As I emerge from my annual Twitter rant about how skewed our celebration of Labor Day has become, I am struck by the example of the Clapham Circle. Working about 200 years ago in England, they were a close-knit group of social justice activists led by William Wilberforce.

The Clapham Circle lived in close community about six miles outside of London, and they lived and breathed efforts to improve the lives of the poor and oppressed. They achieved the end of the British Slave trade, better conditions for the working class, and even the first animal humane society.

As I consider their amazing accomplishments, I wonder if justice-minded people of faith today need to emulate their commitment to community - to intentional, comprehensive community that goes deeper than sharing a common cause. 

There are countless organizations working for the poor and the working class today, and those that are focused on local issues seem to be quite successful. This is because these groups don't just talk about the issues together. They go to church together. They raise their families together. They are with one another for baptisms, weddings, and funerals. In short, their lives are shared in all dimensions, not just on political and social activism.

There are also countless networks and groups working for justice on the larger issues, as the Clapham Circld did. But in my experience, these groups are more fractured and haphazard. There are conferences to attend, and online conversations to join - but the wholistic closeness of the local group is not there. At times, it can be hard to tell who is really part of a community and who is not, and even how to define the parameters and goals of online groups that form in such undefined ways.

Several times, I have seen plans for ambitious justice movements get hatched in such communities, only to find they never come to fruition because of overriding commitments in our local communities. Certainly this barrier to launching effective campaigns such as the Clapham Circle did has existed throughout history - but it seems the nature of online communication is intensifying the challenge. Perhaps a little more intentionality to organize will help us get over this hump.

Obviously, living in the same geographic space and making forays into the nearby halls of power is no longer the way to organize for justice - or maybe it still is? Who knows? But we are in new territory here, and we need to find ways to foster that wholistic sharing of our lives - not just our social and political convictions.

How that is best done, I cannot say. There are some online groups who are being intentional about taking their fellowship to a more personal level, who are beginning to act more like a church family than a professional organization. My hope is that we can continue to build our relationships beyond where they are today, and that we can think creatively and purposefully about this powerful new tool for connecting that we possess.

Talk With Your Children About Racism, Poverty, and Dr. King

When I was in the third grade, I sat next to an African American girl. I can't remember her name, but I remember very clearly the day she didn't show up for class. We all assumed she was sick, but about three hours into the day she suddenly appeared at the door, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"What's going on?" the teacher asked.

"I missed the bus, and I had to walk to school!" the girl stammered, choking back the sobs.

At this, the teacher quickly called for the office, and an aide came and took the girl away. About an hour later, she returned and took her seat next to me. She was no longer in tears, but obviously still upset. She sat quietly for the rest of the day, and no one in the class - including the teacher - said another word about what had happened.

Only as I grew older did I put the pieces together:

This girl was one of the students bussed from the inner city of Greenville, SC out to the suburbs where I lived. Her walk was about 6-8 miles on busy city streets. Think about that for a second.
And think about why a scared 8-yr old decided to make that journey instead of going home or to a neighbor's house. These days, I can understand the social realities that frame this story, and I can see that deep-seated issues of poverty and racism contributed to the circumstances that led to her dangerous decision.

That incident happened 20 years after The March on Washington and Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, and in some ways it indicates improvement. My elementary school in the Deep South was integrated, after all. But in other ways, it indicates how far we have to go with education and awareness - even today.

Looking back on that day, it strikes me that the white kids had no idea what had happened. We didn't know how far away she lived, and we didn't think to ask why we weren't being bussed into her neighborhood instead. We didn't know that she had been taken to see a social worker, and that she had gone into state custody the minute school was out. Most importantly, we didn't consider that our sheltered suburban upper middle class lives were not the lives that some of the kids in our class were living.

Perhaps this is where we can turn a corner on the racism and the classism that is so persistent in our culture. Perhaps we need to give children the opportunity to understand and process the social realities around them, instead of presenting the world as some fairy tale bubble of abundance and equality to get burst at age 15, or 25, or 45, or never.

I was fortunate that I grew up in a family where social issues were common topics at the dinner table. But even I grew up with a level of naivete and ignorance about the problems being endured by the kid who sat right next to me - a naivete that can translate all to easily into adult attitudes of callousness and denial about poverty and race.

So tonight, I am going to gather my two boys - ages 7 and 8 - and watch the "I Have A Dream" speech with them. The whole speech. And then, I'm going to ask questions and listen, and help them get a better understanding of the reality many of their classmates in our desperately poor rural county in Virginia are facing. I encourage us all to do the same. 

It's Not About Us, Part 3 - Beyond the Institutions

In a recent evangelism meeting at my church, I tried to explain the concept of "third places." Most people have three places in their lives where they spend most of their time - home (first place), work (second place), and whatever their third place is. It can be a bowling alley, a pub, the YMCA - anywhere they spend a significant amount of time and find fellowship and a sense of belonging.

I encouraged each person at the meeting to think about their own third places (other than church) and the opportunities that might exist there for sharing the good news in a non-threatening way. Describing the youth baseball and soccer fields where most of the young families in my community spend time, I mused on the possibilities to reach people who either had lapsed from their faith or had never been part of a church.

The eyes in the room lit up as folks considered the potential. Immediately the comments emerged: "I always thought we had so few kids in worship because we don't have any kids in this town. But they are obviously out there." "That would be great if we could get some of them to come here on Sunday." "Imagine all those kids coming forward for the children's sermon!"

I tried not to sigh audibly. I had just spent 10 minutes describing some of the successful "New Worshiping Communities" of the Presbyterian denomination's new initiative.  It seeks to create non-traditional ministries that don't center around a Sunday service or the church building.

They had been enthused by the stories of a coffee shop that hosts Bible studies and raises funds for mission; a pub ministry that gets skeptical 20-somethings to talk about faith; and a running club that creates Christian fellowship among folks who aren't otherwise coming to church. "Why," I thought to myself, "can't these people think beyond their own institutional survival and see the bigger picture?"

But before I got too exasperated, I remembered that my thinking on this matter has only recently changed. Until about a year ago, I would have responded to such an opportunity with the same focus on boosting our own worship attendance and membership. My involvement on a regional-level committee has allowed me to explore the concept of evangelism in a deeper way. Before then, I too would have seen all these great new ministries out in communities as merely a means to an end - not as legitimate new churches in and of themselves.

So the challenge for traditional churches like mine is this: How do we encourage folks to think more deeply about the changing times and the need for adaptive strategies? How do we help one another move past those reflexive responses that measure 21st century ministries by 20th century standards?

Most importantly, how do we remind one another that the call to share the good news is a call for us to sacrifice ourselves and our preferences for the larger sake of the Gospel; to understand that the preservation of the institutions we love is not the ultimate point; to realize that in so many ways, "it's not about us." 

It's Not About Us, Part 2 - (The Church Yearns for Freedom)

(This is the second article in a series.)

The church is trapped, and the church yearns for freedom. We are trapped by many things:

1) Anxiety over declining membership and shrinking budgets.
2) Grief over closing and/or losing congregations.
3) Fear that our entire denomination is dying a slow, painful death.
4) Concern that the Christian church in general is becoming unpopular and irrelevant.

When confronted with these realities, we tend to turn inward to find explanations and solutions, which only leads to more anxiety. If only, goes the thinking, we had better pastoral leadership, or more relevant worship services, or more dynamic education programs, or stronger evangelism techniques, or hipper seminaries, or sleeker Presbytery structures, or snappier mission statements, or catchier denominational slogans, etc., etc. - then, we could attract back all those precious young people we never see on Sunday mornings. When these solutions don't work, or only partially work, we fall back into the cycle of anxiety and being trapped.

But as soon as we can realize that "it's not about us," and that we can be at peace with those realities, then we can move toward the freedom that God wants for us. Imagine how great it would feel to be freed from the following chains:

1) Weekly fretting over how many people come to worship or Sunday school.
2) Angst over the fact that most of the congregation is over the age of 40, or 50, or 60.
3) Constant fear that giving is going to fall short of the budget.
4) Worry about the cost of maintenance for an aging building.
5) Sadness that the Presbytery will need to close a few more congregations this year.
6) Anger at churches that are leaving to find another denomination.
7) Dismay over articles on negative cultural attitudes toward Christianity.

As important as these concerns might seem to us (especially #3), none of them represent the reason God called the church into being. Nowhere in the New Testament are we told that the purpose of the church is to maintain programs, buildings, budgets, congregational charters, and the reputation of our faith in the wider culture.

Instead, we are called to spread the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed. Period. We are called to feed the hungry, comfort the lonely, heal the sick, visit those in prison, and speak out for justice and peace - all the while proclaiming our faith in Christ. Unfortunately, our anxiety and our helplessness over the loss of these other non-essential things have become the chains that keep us from proclaiming Christ. Which is why it is so important for the church and the people in it to make peace with the changing realities.

If our membership declines, even to the point we must find smaller facilities, then so be it!

If we must close some congregations, or even the majority of them, then so be it!

If our denomination becomes much smaller, or merges with others, or even perishes, then so be it!

If the Christian church in America becomes a minority, an outside voice in a secular culture, then so be it!

It's not that we want any of these things to happen, but rather that we can accept them and move forward in faith should they be God's will. The history of God's people is full of many amazing stories of rise and decline, and God has never failed to bring God's people through lean times into a future of great abundance.

The church is currently trapped by our disbelief in God's power over the present realities. Only when we are freed from our crippling anxieties can we be free to follow the Holy Spirit to the place God has prepared.

It's Not About Us (Or Why Declining Church Attendance Is Not Such A Crisis)

One of the best pieces of advice a young pastor can hear is this: "It's not about you. When a church member stops attending, it more often than not has nothing to do with the pastor - so try not to take it personally."

Perhaps the larger church, as we struggle with why our overall participation is waning, could follow the same advice.

Why aren't young people coming like they used to? In all our collective hand-wringing, perhaps the best answer is one we haven't considered: It's simply not about us.

Perhaps it has nothing to do with how relevant we are, what style of worship we use, how hypocritical we might seem, or anything that has to do with us and the way we do things. Perhaps it has everything to do with how the world beyond the church has changed, and not necessarily for the worse.

 

We need to get over our ego-centrism that tells us that the church is still at the center of the culture, and that if someone doesn't go, it means they have rejected us and rejected God. We need to get past the arrogant notion that we are the only place people can find spiritual truth and community. And we need to bury the all too-common belief that people are hopelessly lost without us, that they are miserable until they stumble through our doors - especially since much of the pain and alienation in the world has been caused by us.

Instead, let us be honest about the fact that the church is not for everyone. Some folks are better off the day they walk out our doors and never come back. In today's fast-paced, high-tech, postmodern, and globalized culture, we are merely one among many options that are out there for people to find fellowship and spiritual connection, and it's time we get real about the fact that we no longer hold a monopoly. If we expect to return to 1955 levels of membership, and then look inward for explanations when we don't achieve them, we are destined for disappointment, disillusionment, and defeatism.

Perhaps, then, we shouldn't beat ourselves up because the world has changed and so has our place in it. Perhaps we should just remain true to our faith and our traditions, interpreting them for new generations with new ideas and practices the best we can.

As a young pastor, it took me several difficult years of self-doubt and second guessing before I realized that Sunday attendance was not a function of the quality of work I was doing. It was more a reflection of the changing times. My role was to be adaptive, and to shape the ministry of the church in such a way to nourish those whom we could reach. The same principles apply to the larger church.

So the next time we are tempted to get down about slumping statistics, let us remember that sage advice. "It's not about us." And let us witness to the love and grace of Christ with a little more joy, and a little less despair.

Don't Go To Church - Come to the Party!

At this morning's worship service, the theme was the Parable of the Great Dinner from Luke 14 - that beautiful story where the invited guests are too busy to come to the party, so the host sends his servants out into the streets to bring in the poor, the sick, the lame, and the blind.

Every time I read this parable, I imagine the astounded looks on the faces of the "uninvited" guests who get to enjoy this magnificent feast. I picture the overwhelming joy and gratitude they must have felt to have been given this purely unexpected blessing.

So this morning, when I told this story during the children's sermon, I asked them to describe what the best party ever would be like. Then I asked them to imagine how amazing it would feel to actually get to go to that party. My intention was to get them to understand how great it is that the Kingdom of God invites everyone to an awesome party that is even better than the one that they imagined.

But as I sent the children back to their seats, and then proceeded through the routine of the rest of the service, it hit me square between the eyes that what I had just asked the children to do - to respond to God's grace with overwhelming joy and gratitude - is something that very few of us
adults do, at least in traditional mainline churches.

How many of us - clergy or lay person - come to worship feeling the joy, the awe, and the sheer astonishment at being invited to the Lord's Table? How many of us sing songs of praise, confess our sins, accept our forgiveness, and hear the Word of the Lord with as much enjoyment and as much zest as we would feel at a magnificent banquet?

I have known a few who sincerely feel this much joy in worship, but they are the exceptions rather than the rule. If we are realistic, don't we have to admit that the majority of folks in the pews (and in the pulpit) range somewhere between mild interest and sheer boredom? Don't we have to agree that duty and obligation are much more common motivations than overwhelming joy for people to come to worship?

This is not to say that most people in our churches are not people of sincere faith and commitment. I believe that almost all are. But for churches that still rely on the Sunday morning worship service as their central and defining practice, perhaps it is time for us to ask why our central and defining practice is one that so many people find so un-joyful. Perhaps it is time to ask why, even among our most faithful membership, skipping worship is becoming more and more of a common and acceptable thing to do.

Which brings me back to this morning's service. What I realized in asking the children to think of the Kingdom of God as an awesome party is that we as God's people have forgotten how to party. Or more accurately, we have forgotten how to make worship a party. We are like the invited guests in that parable who were overly occupied with their duties and obligations, and we have forgotten how to lay all that aside and just come to the table with open-hearted exultation.

This, I believe, is one of the chief reasons we have lost a generation and a half of young people. It's not that they don't believe in God, or don't desire the spiritual truth of the Bible, or don't hunger for God's grace. It's that the worship we tend to produce (produce, and not proclaim) does not reflect the overwhelming joy and gratitude that we feel for being called to God's table.

So whether we need to create new worship forms, whether we need to recharge the old forms, or whether we need to bring worship out into the world and into mission will be different in each context. But however we respond to the stifling reality of being "The Frozen Chosen," we need to make our worship a party. Indeed, we need to make everything we do a party. We need to make it the best party the world has ever seen.