How others see us

A young adult friend tagged a Facebook posting to me the other day. This is a young man raised in a church home, with passionately believing grandparents and parents. And for a time he followed in their footsteps, using his gifts of music to give expression to faith. But then something happened. Disappointment and disillusionment with the church, and the anti-religious writings that seem so daring to the young have combined to cause him to turn away, and to critique the "arrogance and hubris" of many Christians. Now, he says, he's interested in "making the world a better place."

I love him dearly, and I know where his passion comes from. I know in his heart he values his upbringing. And I know he really wants to make the world a better place -- don't we all. His heart is so much in the right place.

I wish he could have come with me last weekend to a conference in Hamilton put on by True City, a network of churches committed to working together 'for the good of the city." What blew me away was that these churches are all evangelical, and several have a long history with fundamentalism and separatism. But they were talking about their mission simply being to witness to the love of God in their neighborhoods, regardless of whether people become Christians. They talked about how important it is to love people, but not treat them as "a project." Their biblical texts were Jeremiah 29-- "Pray for the welfare of the city where God has put you" -- and Abraham's pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah.

The church has a pretty dismal history in many ways, and impressions of that history have stuck in the minds of many outside the church. But I think God is doing some pretty amazing and trasnformative things in many churches, and I pray (patiently) that those like my friend will come to see them.

Clarity

OK, here's an example of what I was talking about in the last posting.

Consider this great sentence from Walter Brueggemann about 1 and 2 Chronicles:
"in the context of Persia as a dependent colony of the empire, Judaism's only chance for freedom of thought, faith and action is through the maintenance of a liturgical practice and sensibility.... [Chronicles] shows Israel as a choir that sings its way through historical crisis." (Introduction to the Old Testament, 375, 376.)

Contemporary Protestants tend to sneer at Chronicles because its lack of prophetic passion and concern for justice. It's all about Levites and singers. Brueggemann is arguing that it was the Jewish ability to maintain a clear focus in the midst of adverse circumstances (colonization, marginalization) that ensured their survival and thriving.

The anxiety of discontinuous change has caused many churches to react by trying to assimilate (or be assimilated by) the surrounding culture in the hopes that it will create a kind of marketable relevance. In so doing, churches will tend to neglect the very things that give them their identity and staying power -- including worship. Worship is exploited to serve ulterior ends, like attracting the disaffected back to the pews (itself fraught with ulterior motives, like, "And then they can help pay the bills"!)

In the much maligned Books of Chronicles, maybe there's a bit of a template for how to deal with a hostile and indifferent culture. Sing! Worship! Be the church!

In Exile

Twice a year I spend three days at a lake with about seven other clergy -- all guys, all 50-something. We drink single malt, some of them smoke cigars, and we talk. Talk and talk. The conversation with this group of friends is one of the most restorative things I do all year.
The insight that I took away from our gathering last week is that the church is in a situation very much like the Exile of the Jews in the 6th century before Christ. The secure institutional infrastructure of our piety has been shaken and in some cases destroyed. We are in mourning for a lost way of life. We are unsure of where God is anymore.
But like the exilic community, we have an opportunity to discover that God is not confined to the buildings and boxes we once thought, but is freely moving into new places, even into the place of our exile.
"We need to realize that the Kingdom of God is not something we make or create, but something we can only receive as a gift."
My work with many people on the margins of "organized religion" is making me more attentive to the gracious and uncontrollable nature of God's work.