image from Menlo Park Pres homepage
That is quite a striking image and quite a sobering question, huh ?
From my POV, God is not above this meltdown - God is all over it. God is totally in the midst of this meltdown, loving on people who are hurt, animating people speaking truth to power, hoping that people will make choices that do not suck their souls out of their bodies. God is no white-haired big daddy in the sky - God cares and loves and hopes with us and for us.
And that is comforting for me, when I feel really scared by this. And I do get really scared.
But I continue to wonder where the hell is the calvary, where are the faithful masses - where is churchianity in this meltdown ?
image from theamericanr...
Mainly, I suspect that churchianity is in the process of declaring bankruptcy. This sounds like a legal word, bankruptcy, but it is actually a powerful piece of imagery:
from Italian banca rotta, broken counter (from the practice of breaking the counters of bankrupt bankers) : banca, moneychanger's table; see banco + rotta, past participle of rompere, to break
A business or person who declares bankruptcy admits that they are totally lacking in a specified resource or quality.
People in the tangled web that is churchianity may look at this meltdown and ponder if this bankruptcy will come from reduced giving by church members. The annual report, by the Illinois-based group empty tomb, inc., found a general downward trend in church member giving through 2006, which led the authors to propose a "global triage to treat what ails the church." I suspect that this downward trend will quickly speed up, given the shifts in demographics and the scale of the economic mess.
As destructive as I think these trends in giving will likely be to churchianity, my sense is that they are the symptoms, not the core pain. The core pain seems to me to be center of the equation of churchianity, the way in which churchianity attempts to mediate meaning for the people who have flocked to the big boxes of faith. All the pithy program names, all the shiny happy program staff, all the sermon series and the curriculum and the themed t-shirts and business models for bigger boxes and more shiny staff.
I suspect some may find the paragraph above cynical. Don't look to me for a diagnosis - look to Bill Hybels, arguably one of the 3 or 4 most influential Christian leaders of the late 20th century, who said this at a recent conference:
“What is good enough? Seats full enough, offerings big enough, people happy enough?” He said too many of us are unwilling to go after radical change. We may tweak our style, but we don’t seriously reconsider our fundamental approach to ministry. Bill choked up when he described his unwillingness to upset the apple cart at times in order to keep the peace. “I’m not proud of that kind of leadership,” he said.
It is brave work to be a whistleblower, some who who reveals wrongdoing within an organization to the public or to those in positions of authority. One famous whistleblower is Jeffrey Wigand, who exposed the Big Tobacco scandal in the US, revealing that executives of the companies knew that cigarettes were addictive and approved the addition of carcinogenic ingredients to the cigarettes. Wigand's story was the basis for the 1999 movie The Insider.
Even more rare is that the whistleblower is in a position of power themselves. Whatever I think of Willow Creek, their REVEAL effort is a brave reflection on the current state of a huge portion of churchianity, at least as it exists in America. And that bravery is bottom-lined, at least for me, when Hybel said this:
He described people who are exploring, growing, or close to Christ as still fundamentally self-centered. They believe, “God is for me, and my plans, and my agenda in this world.” Those who are truly Christ-centered, however, are fully surrendered. They’ve given up their dreams, desires, and agenda and exchanged them for Christ’s. Hybel’s said, “A big honkin’ thing has to happen for a Christian to move from self-centered to Christ-centered.”
A big honkin’ thing has to happen for a Christian to move from self-centered to Christ-centered.
A big honkin’ thing has to happen for a Christian to move from self-centered to Christ-centered.
A big honkin’ thing has to happen for a Christian to move from self-centered to Christ-centered.
That is as simple a way to break the counters of countless churches in America, places kept by the shop keepers that Eugene Peterson described as the pastors of American churchianity. And the breaking of those counters will not show up in some online dashboard, or in some tidy elder meeting or at some conference where golf shirts are worn. Hybel is linguistically brilliant in the choice of words: a big honkin' thing.
After a bankruptcy, new life usually takes place. While painfull, admitting the loss allows space for help from others, creates a void for others to fill in. Part of the Jesus story that enthralls me is that new life comes from death, not annoyance or pain, but death. And so I continue to yearn for faith communities that declare bankruptcy and reach for what Peterson frames:
The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God.
Amen brother, in starting a church community in central/south Austin there have been many temptations to step off the call of God to die to self and live as unto Christ. I even consider the pragmatism of it, but fortunately God is faithful and he draws me back unto himself.
Posted by: Jacob Vanhorn | Saturday, October 18, 2008 at 01:32 PM