Jun
1
Written by:
Scott Anderson
6/1/2010 4:00 PM
If we still don't think the church is being stretched in a new time and place, Anthony Robinson, a former Seattle pastor and now church consultant may persuade us. Consider this list that he offered at a recent workshop at Newport Presbyterian Church:
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Then
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Now
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Every respectable citizen was expected to be in church on Sunday morning.
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Society at large cares little if someone attends worship or not.
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Stores were closed on Sundays.
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Sunday is the second busiest shopping day.
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When someone moved into a new community, one of the first things they did was join a church.
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If someone decides to join a church, it is only after a long process of deliberation and church shopping.
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The phrase "Under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance and prayers were routinely offered in the public schools.
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Prayer is forbidden at all public school events, including graduation.
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Baptism was by and large baptism of infants. It was "expected" as a family and social ritual. Preparation consisted largely of communicating the logistics of the ceremony.
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Increasingly baptism, also of adults, is consciously chosen and prepared for with a course.
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The focus of church mission efforts was denominationally sponsored foreign missions.
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The focus of church mission outreach is "hands-on" efforts, often in the local community.
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The authority of the pastor of a local church was widely recognized in the community, as well as within the local church.
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The authority of the pastor of a local church is recognized only within the church (and sometimes not even there!)
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The role of the laity was to help ministers do ministry.
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The role of the clergy is to equip laity for their ministry.
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Sermons preached from "important pulpits" were often quoted or reviewed in Monday morning's paper.
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This is even hard to imagine.
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There were no youth sports on Sundays or Sunday mornings.
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Youth soccer, football, hockey and skiing, keep the playfields busy on Sunday mornings.
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The action was on boards and committees.
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The excitement is often around ministry teams.
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We emphasized church membership.
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We emphasize discipleship.
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Church membership and stewardship rested on a sense of obligation.
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Both are driven by a sense of motivation.
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Stewardship, at least for many, was like "paying dues."
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Stewardship means participation in a way of life.
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Phyllis Tickle has a recent book out called The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why in which she also points to the growing consensus that we in the church are in new territory that is uncertain, but not altogther unfamilar. In fact, she sees a pattern of transformation that has occurred in Western religion over the millenia. She traces back with broad brush strokes to a cycle of major transformation that occurs about every 500 years, and notes that, given the Great Reformation occurred around 1500, we are due. Yet she also affirms what we know intuitively—that we are not yet clear what will exactly emerge once we find ourselves in more settled times. We know the then; we know much of the now; but we aren't so sure of the will be.
In fact, this isn't just about the reshaping of the church. It is about a seismic shift in the social, political, economic, intellectual and cultural landscape. Classic economics do not apply so well to a service-based economy as they once did to our production-based one. National borders and loyalties no longer hold as they once did. Now, even a small nation can hold a large one hostage because technology and knowledge of how to use it has leveled the playing field. Sometimes we feel as if we are drowning in information overload, in correspondence and in a "to-do" list that seems to have no end.
Tickle gives us some more examples of the landscape of this Great Emergence:
When, for example, we discover we can no longer do so simple a thing as running sums in our heads, but instead have to turn to our calculators, we are recognizing that we are storing more of our 'selves' outside of ourselves and thereby creating a dependency that is, at the very least, unsettling… We grow ever more alarmed that the so-called footprint of human presence in our tech-driven world is killing the earth, yet we feel powerless to stop her demise. Or we have to accept the relativeness of universal laws and the unpredictabilities of quantum physics and cannot stop those facts from leeching over into our ways of seeing "truth" and "fact" (15-16).
Phew!
So we are in the midst of a monumental unsettling that causes us some anxiety, some consternation, some fear. And times like these produce resistance. A common and unhelpful response to uncertainty is to grasp for certainty, even if it isn't particularly truthful. One of my teachers at Seattle U noted the rise of new forms of fundamentalism as one sign of this grasping:
- economic fundamentalisms blind to the social, ecological, and cultural side effects of our global economy
- geopolitical fundamentalisms blind to the multipolar and multicultural reality of today's global community
- cultural-religious fundamentalisms blind to the beliefs and values of those who are different
Tickle helps me to put it into a bigger perspective. By looking backwards we can see patterns that suggest that this unraveling is really a part of the emergence of something new, a religious something that gets us to a better place, a more settled and abundant and egalitarian and cosmic reality that helps us in our living together, a new and more vital form of Christianity that enables us to find our way.
That's where you come in. We know the unsettledness. Surely we do. But it has become quite apparent to me that you are becoming more and more comfortable with this uncertain swampland we seem to be making our way through on our way to something more. I see the ways you are patient with one another. I see the ways you are listening more intently, recognizing these differences we bring as gift rather than threat. I see the ways that you honor difference rather than forcing uniformity. I see the ways that you give away something for the good of another. I see the ways that you put your money where your mouth is and give your time and energy even when you aren't fully convinced of the way forward.
This is, after all, the only way to find our way through. The thing is no one has the answers right now. They reside within us, together as we move forward faithfully as a faithful community. So thanks to God for you and God's Spirit within you, and here's to another year on this journey together!
Copyright ©2010 Scott Anderson