news from the underground

The Church’s Demise and Other Good News

Posted by revd4 on Friday, January 27th, 2012 in Church, Culture, Identity, Incarnation, Mission | Comments (1)

Ten years ago I served a church in the very religious state of Texas. It was here I cut my teeth on the challenge and grace of congregational ministry. And it was here that I was exposed to the unstoppable decline of what I had been taught and understood the church to be.

“The True Parable of First Church”

First Church (of a Mainline denomination) is an impressive-looking church. When I would hear about church growth in my denomination, this church is the image that had been put in my mind. In the late 50’s and early 60’s over 2000 people attended that church. It was the church that the “who’s who” of the city belonged to. They had a legendary, highly gifted preacher for their long-term Pastor. Their ministries impacted the city, its people, its leaders, its culture. They built a grand church structure covering an entire block. First Church could have been the model of a successful church. This church was thriving.

Today, First Church is a model of a church in decline. The decline is certainly seen in its membership loss as well as budgetary and property issues. Yet the decline goes beyond the measurable statistics of pledge income and worship attendance.

First Church was recently in the news. Publicity is generally a good thing for a church, but this time, it was bad. The church has been embroiled in a conflict with the neighborhood. The source of the conflict stems from the fact that the church’s bells ring throughout the day in the church tower. While they might not be technically breaking a noise ordinance, they are certainly pissing off their neighbors.

This conflict continued to boil and became quite nasty. As an example, there was a letter written to the local paper from a someone in the neighborhood that was so mean spirited that it called the church “First Unchristian Church.” The situation was pretty bad.

In response the church went through a year long process involving committees, task forces, board hearings, and town halls to decide how to handle the bell issue. This culminated in a congregational meeting where the members voted… wait for it… to keep the bells ringing.

From the outside this seemed like an obvious sign of disconnect, yet it was rationalized within the internal logic of the congregational membership.

The decline of First Church is occurring in membership numbers, despite the friendliness of the church, which I have experienced for myself. The decline is occurring in terms of heightened conflict between members, in particular over the connection to the future and the past. Most significantly, and this is the important part, the decline has occurred in a loss of the church’s social location.

30 to 40 years ago, First Church was the model of a thriving church. They had a strong and vital presence in the neighborhood and the city. I imagine that 40 years ago having the church bells ringing would have been considered a “feature” of living in that neighborhood. I wonder if anyone at that time could have ever imagined the severity and the rapidity of the decline. I wonder if the legendary pastor of that time could have ever thought that one day, the neighbors would be publicly saying such mean-spirited things about his church. I doubt it.

I believe the story of First Church is an archetype for the modern church traveling into the 21^st Century. First Church, like most of our churches, is operating out of a paradigm that would create a thriving Church in the 50’s. In the 21^st century, that same way of doing church is pissing off the neighbor’s by ringing its bells. It is a way of doing church that is unable to relate to the culture around it.

A parable like this is fun because we get to look at someone else and see how obvious it is that they need to change. Yet the importance of parables lies in the fact that they always end up being about ourselves. The point isn’t about the bells that First Church is ringing. The point is whether you can recognize the bells that your church is ringing. The point isn’t that First Church has moved from being powerfully at the center of culture to being disconnected and unable to relate to it. The point is how has your church’s social location become disconnected from the contemporary culture.

Welcome to what it means to be a church in an un-churched world.

The un-churched worldview which began to emerge in the 70′s is a view in which the church is the anti-E.F. Hutton, in other words, when the church speaks, nobody listens and nobody cares. Or worse, when the church speaks its like loud ringing bells that piss off the neighbors. It is a worldview in which the church is not at the center of culture, but rather is at the side of culture with a whole lot of other competing institutions.

First Church will either have to go through the painful process of transforming itself for the 21^st century, or it will simply cease to be relevant to the world. (When I was there some 10 years ago they had over 700 members, and as I write this article they have under 300). This is not just the challenge of first church, but of the majority of mainline churches and their denominations.

The first challenge of leading the church in an un-churched world is that the church has become a time capsule for the very last remnants of the churched culture. In a self-perpetuating fashion, it attracts a unique demographic of those who still feel the psychic, emotional, aesthetic, and social ties to a churched worldview. These are folks who think the church is important. They feel that by going to church they are doing something good. They believe that traditional church choir music is good music. They support and maintain the church out of a sense of duty and commitment to the institution. They care about the church and their denominations. These are good people, they are faithful people, and they are the people that have kept the church alive through thick and thin. They are the leaders and decision makers in most churches, and they like their bells.

They are also part of a unique demographic that is shrinking, aging, and dying.

While this might appear to be bad news for the church, let tell you why it is also good news.

Without the church having a central social location, the church has lost its crutch. Think about it, the cultural pressure to go to church has dropped off to almost nothing. With the churched worldview shrinking, there will less and less people willing to do all of the work of keeping the churches going. Ultimately the unique demographic niche of people who the traditional church is set up to serve is almost totally fictional within the contemporary culture we live in. In fact the whole reason for the church’s existence is questionable.

Does this sound like good news yet?

It is, and here’s why.

It is good news because it means the church must rediscover its mission to the world. What this means is that for the church to be successful it must provide spiritual leadership that is effective and relevant to people’s real lives. To do this churches will need to be intentional about how they contend for the faith without capitulating to culture. In the process the church will have to rediscover its theological story, its spiritual commitments, and its gospel message with greater clarity than ever before. In other words, for the church and their denominations to thrive in any real way will require a revival of what it means to be the covenanted people through whom God’s grace reaches and redeems a broken world. That’s good news.

So that’s why I say the church’s demise is good news, because even though we may have to lose the bells, what comes out of the ashes is so much greater.

peace and grace,

-Dave

The Theological Purity Game

Posted by revd4 on Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 in Culture, Theology | Comments (5)

I am always intrigued how people end up standing on their side of the great liberal conservative theological divide. I like discussions into what motivations, experiences, and ideas propel someone into highly conservative doctrinal orthodoxy, and what draws another into a broadly inclusive, evolving, and liberal theological interpretation?

What is it that draws us spiritually to where we are?

My first impulse is to answer that we are defined by what we love. It seems to make perfect sense. Not only that but it fits nicely within my own Universalist paradigm that connects God so strongly with love. (score one point for my ego)

The problem with this answer is that actual people, including myself, don’t seem to work that way.

In conversation after conversation I’ve come to the conclusion that we are more often aware of what we want to avoid, what we fear, or what we see as problematic. In spiritual terms, liberal versus conservative religion more often defines what we view the theological problem to be. In other words, such labels may say little about our faith other than what we feel distorts and perverts “good” faith.

There is a reason that conservative theology finds that the right beliefs, the right doctrines, the correct interpretation of orthodoxy is of utmost importance. The reason is not because of some love for reading church dogma.

Rather what I hear again and again from conservative folk is a real strong spiritual fear of heresy. Heresy, which comes from the Greek meaning choice, opens the doors to all sorts of false beliefs that will lead people away from God. This fear of Heresy explains the need for strict adherence to well defined traditional doctrine, without which people will start wondering off the theological cliff. At this point “good” faith goes bad by not being loyal enough to the tradition.

Its also a partial explanation why conservatives can carry so much anxiety over liberal theological doctrine which does not spend nearly as much energy with the idea of heresy and therefore tends to exhibit a greater diversity.

Does that mean liberal theology is rooted solely in love?

Hardly.

In conversations on this side of the liberal-conservative divide I hear a real strong spiritual fear of idolatry. The idol is the seductive power of a false god, usually a human created god. Instead of having faith in God your faith is placed in something smaller and unreliable. It is seductive because our minds can’t grasp the reality of God, so something else, for example like a nation, a cause, a person, a sacred text, a political party, or a religious institution takes the place of God. If the idolatrous exchange of faith is centered around placing ultimate faith in the literal words of a sacred text or other writings its called religious fundamentalism.

Many on the liberal side of the spectrum respond by going so far as to reject most of the actual content of faith. Just like the conservatives they can’t handle the ambiguity of holding to a spiritual commitment that lacks certainty. While the conservative will “force” certainty where it is lacking, the liberal starts shedding the spiritual commitments (or reforming the faith) until everything is just a mental philosophical speculation.

Oddly enough, a sense of purity can break out on either side of the liberal-conservative theological divide. It looks different, but a sense of being the “righteous remnant” keeping true to principle even if that principle isn’t actually very well defined is a feature of the puritanical strains of liberal and conservative theology.

So the question is, which extreme freaks you out more?

Does it shape what you’re drawn to exploring, theologically speaking?

In what way is that fear justified and in what ways might it be exaggerated?

In what way does it truly get in the way of living faithfully in the world?

Can that fear be transformed for a higher calling?

Just ask’n…

peace and grace,

David

Theology, Authority, and Zeppelin

Posted by revd4 on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012 in Conversations, Culture, Led Zeppelin, Theology | Comments (0)

I’m probably not the only one who has noticed a rising chorus of voices from within the liberal church asserting the need to reinvigorate our theological formation.

One great challenge of liberal theology is wrapped up in the question of authority. This is problematic given that spirituality itself is ultimately about authority. Liberal theology often gets tripped up in navigating between the authority found through the historical revelation found in scripture on the one hand, and that of our contemporary society with its knowledge of science and emphasis on the individual’s authority on the other.

The theologian Paul Tillich spoke of theology being in dialogue between the revelation of scripture and the present human condition. What makes this possible is that there is a spiritual reality, or God (or the ground of all being) is present and connects the two otherwise very different realities. In other words, there is a common spiritual authority that both cultural worldviews are relating to.

I was further reminded of this when I heard the following version of the Immigrant Song done by Trent Reznor. I have heard covers of this song, some good, some bad, some really bad. But Reznor’s stands out. It’s got the intense Nine Inch Nails vibe. Have a listen.

Good theological interpretation makes relevant the same ancient Biblical life of God experienced before all those Bible words were even thought of as “religious”. It brings forth context, the language, and the feel of how the ancient texts would have been viewed by their own time and culture; while at the same time discovering that although our contemporary culture is radically different, there remain deep similarities between the faithful struggles of a covenanted people both then as now.

Good liberal theology is like Trent Reznor’s re/interpretation of the Immigrant Song. It is not literalistic or fundamentalist. Trent is not trying to reproduce a Led Zeppelin classic like a cover band. It is not reacting against the original either. Good liberal theology cannot rest on the rejection of other interpretations. Reactive theology is usually as bad as the theology its reacting against.

The Achilles heal of liberal theology raises its ugly head when it reacts against past theology so actively that it becomes all reform, and no revelation. In other words, it’s all critique, and the search for truth gets subsumed in the preoccupation of what ‘not to believe’. What’s left is something of a dogmatic agnosticism, which when it is allowed to flourish fosters a religion with little or no content, and no sense of direction.

Contemporary liberal theology cannot simply be a reflection of centers of liberal academic culture. Liberal theological formation must not allow the fear of fundamentalism to uproot it from the ground of revelation. Without the authority of historic revelation, there really is no theology because the only thing left is the authority of individual opinions. Without the roots of revelation there is no spiritual ground to stand on.

I’ll end by observing with Paul Tillich that all good theology, however labeled, serves to point beyond itself, back to the revelation that originated it. In theology the search for truth leads to the redemptive, creative authority found in the original. It points to the spirit that catches us, transforms us, and leads us authentically through the pain, chaos, temptations, addictions, hope, confusion, love, sin, and complexity of this life. It points beyond our individual opinions to the source of real theological authority, the God who loves without limit.

Oh, and check out the redemptive, creative power in this original.

You gotta love those roots! Its where the spirit is found.

Peace and Grace,

David

Grace is where the Magic Happens

Posted by revtony on Thursday, December 29th, 2011 in Church, Culture, Grace, Mission, Universalism | Comments (3)

What happens when your community of faith lacks grace? Rev. Tony shares some great thoughts about grace, the church, and risk. Enjoy:

There’s a drawing making the rounds of Facebook that explains grace. It’s a diagram that shows us staying in our comfort zone is not where life’s magic happens. Life’s magic happen outside our comfort zone when we trust enough to risk adventure.

I have become convinced that most of the issues facing the contemporary liberal church can be tied to the fact that liberal religion is risk-adverse. There really isn’t much that’s liberal about liberal religion anymore. It’s become just another status-quo institution more interested in its own institutional survival than it is any liberal theology or liberal cause, or progressive idea. It needs to die to itself in order to live. It needs to risk, to take chances with new forms, new ideas, new approaches before they become tried and true enough to become just more techniques for institutional upkeep. In order to do this, the liberal church needs to reclaim faith. Not faith in a supreme being, but faith. Faith equals trust. The liberal church needs to reclaim a trust in something larger than itself. It needs people who put trust in something larger than their individual intellects and egos. Just because the magic happens outside the comfort zone does not mean letting go of reason in exchange for magical thinking, but it does mean that it is actually reasonable to take leaps of faith when you don’t have all the answers, to put yourself and your community intentionally into liminal places as a way to unearth questions and thus answers that will get you where you need to go. It is reasonable to let go and let grace.

Yesterday I posted to my own blog Sunflower Chalice a short list of reads for Unitarian Universalists who want to engage a missional approach to church. Topping my list was the work “The Faith of Leap” by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. I chose this book because it explores a theology of risk and adventure. Unitarian Universalism, like all mainline Protestant churches, has lost its sense of risk and adventure. Instead, like all mainline churches and most churches in general, Unitarian Universalism spends its energy at the congregational and denominational level on institutional maintenance. Unitarian Universalism has bought into the paradigm that the purpose of church is to become better, faster and stronger at doing the administration of church. Thus the church exists for its members in a constant striving to continually offer a better product to its in-house consumers and hopefully draw in a better market share from those church shopping the religious market place. Efforts to break away from this insiders-first, navel gazing paradigm face many obstacles. The biggest obstacle is an absence of grace. This is stupendously sad on many levels.

In order to develop a theology of risk, which would enable an ecclesiology that embraces adventure and risk taking, a community has to have a theology of grace. A theology of grace is built on the trust in and dependence on something bigger and beyond the individual. I name this God. I trust that a love, an unbounded, uncontainable, constantly available, all-accepting love will hold me up in my life’s adventure. I trust that there is nothing I can do to earn this love and nothing I can do to cause this love to abandon me. It gives me room to fail. It doesn’t make failing easy and it certainly doesn’t eliminate my personal struggles with self-esteem or trusting others, but it does allow me to keep going and see the difference between failing and being a failure. It allows to me to be adventurous and take risks. It allows me to dream big dreams and make big plans and not accept “but that’s the way we’ve always done it” as a valid reason for not loving others, especially when that love calls me outside me comfort zone.

I have learned a hard lesson in the last five years working with Unitarian Universalist congregations, however. The lesson is this: There seems to be little room for this type of love and this type of grace in our congregations. In many places and in many ways grace and love need to be reclaimed. The big sadness is that Universalism is core, historical theological idea behind this denomination. Universalism is, at its core, the idea that God is so big and grace so abundant that no one and nothing is outside of its reach forever. If we can claim that God loves everyone, no exceptions, then we have the primary resource we need to step away from a religion of institutional maintenance and step into an uncertain future of risk and adventure to build a religious community that exists to serve others and bring them this message of grace.

I understand that there are many people in the Unitarian Universalist universe who will first want to discuss what all this means. What do I mean by grace? What do I mean by God? Am I leaving atheists out? I want a religious community that trusts grace enough to skip these questions. I begin with an understanding that everyone is in. However you experience trust and grace or whatever you call it, is good with me. Traditionally, we do this backwards, we argue about our definitions first, instead of working together and experiencing grace first. We insist that we can change our behavior by changing the way we think. The older I get, the more convinced I become that people need to change the way they behave first and let those changes impact their thinking. Arguing over thinking and definitions and theology is all just another way to focus on institutional maintenance at the expense of spreading the message and engaging in mission.

Engaging grace, and for me this is trusting the unbounded love of God to be enough, I encourage people to step out and organize to meet the needs of the world around them. We have forgotten this, we have left it behind it. It is, little by little, but surely and no subtly any more destroying liberal religion and liberal religion’s ability to have a voice in the larger American religious conversation and the larger American conversation.

We may find that embracing grace will lead us to a place where we end up organizing ourselves into communities that name grace differently in order to carry out soul-enlivening, community-bettering, world-changing, and thus soul saving work. Perhaps it will end up that folks who name grace as the human spirit and define themselves as atheists will gather together in community, perhaps those who name grace as the love of God will gather together, perhaps those who name grace as Buddha nature will gather together, perhaps we will find that putting our trust in something beyond ourselves and working for common cause as the purpose of religious community will be an exercise in grace itself that enables us to put aside the petty theological squabbles that prevent so many liberal religious communities from being outer focused.

We need to go through this crucible, however. We need to get out of our comfort zones and our safe church buildings and into the neighborhoods and into the cities and into deep relationship and partnership with people very unlike ourselves. We need to risk enough to make ourselves at home in places of need and let people tell us how to help. We need to stop trying to figure out how to get people into our churches and risk the adventure of getting all our people out of churches into relationship with the people of our neighborhoods, cities and towns.

Letting grace work its love is like stepping out on gang plank and trusting you won’t hit the water, or if you do, that you’ll be able to swim to shore. Letting grace work its love is like letting go of the trapeze bar and trusting there will be another to catch you, or if not there will be a net. Letting grace work is like daring to love and trusting someone will love you back.

What if we decided to re-orient our religious practices based on grace? We might just get out of comfort zones into where the magic happens. We might find ourselves in that reasonable place where grace reigns.

Christmas Edition

Posted by revd4 on Sunday, December 25th, 2011 in Grace, Humanity, Incarnation, Love Wins | Comments (0)

Christmas, Chanukah, whatever your solstice tradition, it can be a rather enjoyable holiday, or it can be a holy day. The difference is simple.

A holiday becomes a Holy day when it dives into the religious memory and imagination. We mark the day as Holy when the day beckons us to look beyond the day itself and toward a time when God got involved with the world. In other words, the day becomes holy when it connects us to the wonder of incarnation.

Christmas asks us to remember a day when God showed up, a time of incarnation, a time of chilling darkness, and a time of grace all wrapped up in a moment in which a mother gives birth.

Christmas also asks us to imagine. Specifically we are asked to imagine what incarnation was like for a bunch of working poor shepherds, or for Persian wise men, or for two parents looking at their newborn son.

But most importantly, it asks us to imagine what incarnation was like for Jesus. When the word enters the flesh, let us not be so quick to bow down in worship, but rather let us see if we can follow. Or to put it another way:

And Listen, because the incomprehensible Word, the child, speaks to you. Don’t patronize him; don’t reject him; don’t sentimentalize him. Learn the language within which he makes sense.
And come to the table to enjoy the feast which he is himself; the Word made flesh, the Life which is our life, our light, our glory. God’s Word comes as light that breaks into the darkness, like a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces.
And we may discover what God is saying ’yes’ and ‘no’ to today, and humbly strive to find out how to say it with him – adapted from N.T. Wright What is This Word? Dec. ‘06

My prayer is that you let this be a holy day for you. So as you make your way through Christmas, may all of the loudness, the gift giving, the quiet, the joy, the tears, the crowds, and the solitude remind you of the holy truth that incarnation still happens.

I hope you remember to connect to incarnation, to humbly listen to what God is saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to today, and to imagine the beautiful and creative ways that you can follow.

After all, isn’t that what Jesus would do?

Merry Christmas and Happy Sixth day of Chanukah to my Jewish brothers and sisters too,

-D

The Church’s Demise and Other Good News

The Theological Purity Game

Theology, Authority, and Zeppelin

Grace is where the Magic Happens

Christmas Edition

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