What Are We Protecting?
I found the following thoughts by Seth Godin provocative:
At the congregation down the street, they’re doing things the way they’ve done them for the last few hundred years. Every week, people come, attracted by familiarity, by the family and friends around them, part of a tribe.
And just past that building is another one, a different tribe, where the tradition is more than a thousand years old.
This is not so different from that big company that used to be an internet startup, but all the original team members have long left the building. Work tomorrow has a lot in common with work yesterday, and the safety of it all is comforting.
Che, Jefferson, Edison, Ford… most of these radicals would not recognize the institutions that have been built over time.
The question each of us has to answer about the institution we care about is: Does this place exist to maintain and perpetuate the status quo, or am I here to do the work that the radical founder had in mind when we started?
I hear a lot of talk about concern for the Lutheran Church. Will it have a future? Can it survive? What do we do with all the declining churches? Can we afford eight seminaries? And so forth.
I understand where these questions are coming from. We love these institutions. They have served us well. We fear for their future.
But are these questions of institutional survival the right questions? Should we instead be asking whether we are still doing what Luther tried to do? Whether we are offering the same message, seeking the same good? Luther, after all, started a reformation, not a church.
More broadly, I hear a lot of concern about the Christian Church, and particularly its decline in North America. But maybe we should instead be asking whether we are following Jesus? Whether Jesus would recognize us as his disciples?
What, after all, are we trying to protect? Our institutional existence? Or the message of grace, love, and liberty that Jesus – and, for that matter, Luther – first announced?
These are interesting thoughts in today’s culture that doesn’t see much use for church…and views it simply as an institution. I don’t believe we’re simply meant to maintain, but instead to reach out to the lost in meaningful ways. However I get tired of people railing on the church. After all, the church is not just an institution – it’s the body of Christ. It’s a place to receive the good gifts of God WITH the people of God. When Christians denigrate the church they are running their own body down and, in my opinion, insulting the work of God…and ultimately God. By all means, seek to reform and get back to the basic message. But also recognize God’s working in His Church despite us.
Thanks, David, for these important thoughts. I think that if we could free ourselves from thinking that our own congregations as institutions must survive, we would see more of the change we hope to see in the church. I am sure that God understands that following God’s call to mission, following Jesus, puts our institutions at risk. And God keeps calling, pushing, prodding, and nudging. This is the right question: What are we protecting? And why?
We can have hope that God recycles institutions that have lived out their mission faithfully (or not) and have outlived their “usefulness”. Here’s an interesting article about a “recycled” congregation in Asheville, NC:
http://www.faithandleadership.com/welcome-church-holy-chaos
A great poem I love is by Jack Gilbert called “Falling and Flying” He shares his thoughts on the end of his marriage and compares it to Icarus. It ends stating “I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but coming to the end of his triumph.” I use this frequently with ministries to talk about how they did not fail, they just came to the end of what they were supposed to do.
Hopefully the analogy is clear and relates here. If we should end, would we call this failure or have we simply come to the end of our triumph? Maybe we need to be plucked from the garden of the Kingdom in order to make room for new fruit? I don’t mind. I never joined the Lutheran Church, I joined Jesus, and don’t depend on the church politic but the corporate body of Christ.
I pray that all Luther’s efforts have born amazing fruit beyond our walls and that this fruit will continue to grow and shape, whether that happens in my own ELCA or wherever I might find this.
I guess our times call for us to be provocative, but I feel a little run down by all the provocative-ness out there presented in the name of ‘reforming’ the church. Must we only see things as either/or? — either we are protecting our church/congregation/’tribe’ or we are following Jesus the way he intended us to follow. It is always a good question to ask: Whom are we serving? and the corollary: With whom are we serving? We may be serving with other tribe members who have been worshiping and serving in a congregation long before they began labeling so many things (generations, worship styles, discipleship styles or methods). We believe in the Incarnation and the Church and congregations exist in the flesh, with imperfections and both/and dimensions -saint and sinner, tribal and missional … This is my introduction as to why I find the original question – What are we protecting? — provocative. While it can be asked and while we have to face the answers, it seems to presume that we are doing something wrong. Maybe, in its imperfect incarnation of Church. the local tribe is trying to protect the proclamation of the Gospel – as old and traditional as that might look.
this describes a line of thinking i’ve had for the past few months. thank you for sharing! just today i drove by a small church and thought, what impact do all these churches really have on the community? what impact does my church have on the community? those who found it were immigrants searching for Christ-centered community and a place of belonging. do we still embody that original identity, vision, and mission? thank you!
How inspirational is THIS! Three posts so providentially intertwined. What Are We Protecting?, Easter 7B, and Faith is Action. So what I hear is this answer: what we are protecting is the tradition of dependence on God’s grace for “our” emerging generation (who probably are Strauss and Howe Builder generation types). So that when they age beyond the confidence, maybe even hubris, of youth they will have a warehouse, the Church, to help them understand (maybe that’s not the right word) that their work, their building, was important but not the source of salvation. Don’t get me wrong, I am not being critical of the Millenial/Builder trajectory. It just is what it is. One generations’ turn on the stage. Still, without the other generations – the reformation minded Boomers (Idealists) and the GenX (Reactives) – ahead of them protecting the foundations of their work when they face the existential crisis of what has all their work come to; they will have nothing upon which to rely. No way of seeing their successes as part of something greater, their failures as Icarus-like attempts (I love the post’s above reimagining of the myth) to be as fully human as they could. Jesus prayed for protection for the disciples from the hatred of the world knowing full well they would be consumed by it – as we know that the Millenial’s attempts to save the world are likewise as noble, glorious and doomed (I’m not a pessimist – just believe that God will be doing the saving). What makes your posts so great this week is that the answer then is the process. We witness to trust in God by our non-anxious acceptance – not my will but yours – of the process of institutional ascendance AND decline. We teach “our” children to live by how we die. We teach them trust in God, by doing so.
Interesting that I should read your post and Benjamin L. Corey’s post (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/formerlyfundie/hitting-the-reset-button/) the same day. Back to the beginning, I think, back to what matters. I remember, too, the theme of Bishop Michael Curry at the Festival of Homiletics a few years ago: Tell the love of Jesus.
As always, thank you David, for your insights.