What Role Does the Church Play in Our Lives?
Here’s the simple but just a little troubling question I’ve been wrestling with since participating in Luther Seminary’s recent Rethinking Faith Formation conference: Given how many other groups and movements legitimately lay claim to our allegiance today, can the Church ever expect to exert the level of influence in our lives that it once did?
Let me explain: in medieval times the Church was everything and everywhere – involved in politics, in control of the banks, the arbiter of salvation (or damnation), the final authority on all matters of domestic and public life.
The omnipresence of the Church has been declining for several centuries, but even in my grandparents’ day, it remained the center of both their civic and private lives. And as a kid, I still participated in annual Christmas pageants and programs in our public school.
Living in a pluralistic society, that is simply no longer the case. Nor should it be. I can’t imagine the God we know through the vulnerability of manger and cross wanting us to force-feed our faith to everyone who happens to want a public education. Moreover, many, many other groups – civic groups, sporting clubs, political parties, advocacy groups, and all kinds of leagues, clubs, and associations – have some good things to offer and become part of our lives. And most of these aren’t connected with the church. (Remember when softball and volleyball and bowling and more were often composed of church leagues? No longer.)
All of which means we have multiple allegiances and are associated with lots of different groups that lend us part of our identity.
What, then, do we expect of the church? Do we expect it to be “first among equals,” taking priority over every other affiliation (even when we often devote more time, energy, and money to other groups)? Do we expect it to help bring our other activities into focus, that we might see these different enterprises in light of our faith? Do we treat it as one of several groups that is important to us?
I lean toward the middle option, hoping that my participation in congregational life deepens me in the faith so that the Christian story provides a lens through which I look at and make sense of the rest of my life.
But if that’s true, then it seems to me that church needs to change and that includes – actually, that especially includes – worship. Because it’s not just that church is no longer at the center of our culture, it’s that the culture no longer has a vested interest in helping us learn our faith. Politicians from Benjamin Franklin to Dwight D. Eisenhower affirmed church participation because it helped make people good citizens. (The quote attributed to Eisenhower is telling: “I don’t care what church they go to, as long as they go to church!”)
Because that’s no longer the case, we can’t rely on people coming to church already formed in the faith and ready and eager to witness a public performance of the faith by the pastor. Rather, we need to organize church – especially including worship – with the goal of actually forming Christian faith in our people. Which mean the good church isn’t the one with the best preacher or organist or music program. The good church is the one where people slowly but surely learn the Christian story and, more importantly, learn how to use the story to make sense of their lives and share their faith with others.
But, again, with all the groups that seek to contribute genuinely and sincerely to our lives, how much are willing to give over to allow church to do that? This is a real question for me, and I’d be eager to hear what you think.
What marvelous words, David, and very helpful. “The good church is one where people slowly but surely learn the Christian story and, more importantly, learn how to use the story to make sense of their lives…” When I visited Europe in 2005 with a group of pastors, I was struck by all the carvings and stained glass and paintings in the sanctuaries and cathedrals. When you walked in to sit down in worship you were surrounded by the stories of faith. Contrast that, at the time, with a Sunday I preached on the David and Bathsheba story – specifically Nathan’s parable, when an ‘old-timer’ in the congregation came up to me after worship and said, “I have never heard that story before.” I am working in my current church on learning the stories and embodying them in worship so that they can make connections between them and their lives – both in worship and in the world. Your words came as encouragement in that regard today.
Shalom,
Owen
A few decades back Robt. Farrar Capon wrote a book in which he predicted the end of Christendom. At the end of the book he pictured a small remnant of Christians sitting at a wake for the church. Suddenly, someone says, “What do we do now?” Capon writes, “And that will be the beginning of the new Church.”
Combining my memory of this book with things I’ve read in recent years about the paradigm shift that is taking place globally and its effect on the Church, I’ve thought how our denominations need to be studying this shift and then planning for how we can create a new concept of church that will provide ministry to people who are too busy to be involved in a church or are just not interested. At the same time, we need to provide for people who have been part of a church all their lives and will be confused and upset by the changes that will have to be made for the ministry of Christ to continue even if we can no longer afford to support the church (including denominational institutions) as we have.
If we could do this kind of study and planning we might very well be able to look with hope and even excitement at the Church of the future, instead of just sitting around at the Church’s wake saying, “Woe are us. Our church just isn’t what it used to be.”
I’ve been thinking lately that our worship must lead participants to deeper and stronger commitment to the way of the cross. As a preacher I have become increasingly dismayed at the apparent lack of change in those who hear the proclamation each week, including me. I pray for the movement that only the Holy Spirit can bring that will breathe new life into the dry bones that make up so much of our church.
Lately, I have been looking for those opportunities in the lectionary to preach about how the story changed the lives of those who lived it and how we too may see our lives changed when we enter the story, all the while believing that when we ourselves enter the story we cannot help but invite others into it as well.
I wonder whether I will live to see what God is making of our church in this new era. If I can participate in this new creation then I will be truly blessed.
To Owen’s comment about the stained glass. Here’s what I wonder? The stained glass was originally put there not just to be pretty, which it is, but to help those unfamiliar or illiterate to be able to interact and become familiar with these stories.
As our shift is taking place now and folks do not feel compelled or the need to enter into those doors to even look at the stained glass, what are we called to do?
I see this post as a humble way of asking ourselves and our contexts how we might become stained glass for the world. How might we strip down the lingo, language, jargon, insider speak, or need for someone to come into the walls and windows of the building?
How might our preaching, teaching, and conversations create faithful people who are transparent in their faith, open enough that anyone is willing to engage with, and who have an abiding relationship with God, their faith community, and their surrounding community (the up, in, and out of 3DM), that simply by living their lives, they provide the pictures, the glimpses, and relate the story of faith and God’s relationship of love and grace with the world in an easy, engaging way? (Wow that’s a long question!)
To Craig, I would ask this question: Could it be that you are sensing the Spirit asking you to step away from the lectionary into something new? To move into a territory where you engage where the congregation is in their journey, how they need to be engaged, and create the worship series from that point?
Sometimes, that’s the way the Spirit can offer a breath of fresh air, no? The dissatisfaction of one thing, or rather, the gut reaction of feeling like what is happening isn’t really getting to the felt need of the community? What could it be like to hold a conversation in your context about that and where the Spirit might be moving you all?
Couldn’t that be a shift in the regular in-and-out grind? Could it be scary? God yes. Could it be transformational? Possibly.
Cheers and prayers, ~me
David, I lean with you toward the option of the church as a lens that brings our other activities into focus. This would strengthen the connection between “religion” and life out in the world. A lot of people seem to wish for the “first among equals” option, but that is just that–wishful thinking.
To Craig and Jon: Seems to me the transformation you are talking about will happen best in interactive, safe and trusting conversations — in 1-on-1’s and intentional groups (like 3dm huddles), coffee conversations, committed small groups, etc. — rather than in large group lecture mode. Worship might be a way to seed these ideas, but I think they will take root more deeply in environments where people can interact, share and struggle safely, question and doubt, and process how (if?) faith influences their lives. Now that would take some reorganization of time, people and priorities! Those situations seem to me to be as much worship as a regular Sunday liturgy.
Jon, I like the idea of being stained glass for the world. If people aren’t inclined to come to us and give us authority, then our best option is to look like Jesus to the people around us, and to go out into that world to eat with them, heal them, celebrate with them, and stand up for them. That method seemed to work pretty well for the Lord, as I recall.