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.
Showing posts with label Faith journeys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Faith journeys. Show all posts
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Monday, October 13, 2008
Narrativity
I was motivated to investigate what makes affiliates (people connected to the church but not really involved) tick. The deeper into it I've gone, the more I'm amazed and moved by the mysteriousness of people's stories. It's stuff that just doesn't show up in our social science based analyses of church trends.
A young woman has been attending my church for the last year or so. She's a classic affiliate -- active grandparents, sporadically attending mother, Roman Catholic father. She came back for the most conventional of all reasons -- she had her first baby and wanted her baptized. But as I've gotten to know her, I know there's more than that -- so much more going on in her personal story and struggles -- and I know that God's involved in moving her.
I did a funeral several years ago for a little girl who died suddenly and tragically. Parents were also classic affiliates who came to church once in a while. It's a family who has been through unimaginable suffering and I had the privilege of walking with them for quite a while.
I lost almost complete touch and wondered if they were even in town any more. Then, out of the blue, I receive a Facebook message from him. We share messages occasionally. We've been trying to make plans to go out for coffee. Last Sunday, he shows up to church with the little girl they adopted. He was back yesterday.
This stuff just can't be caught in a bottle, measured or predicted. It`s all part of the richness of individual narratives that I`m realizing more and more are at the heart of ministry -- and the heart of the Gospel.
Alan Roxburgh says that pastors should be like poets -- giving people the language to articulate what God`s doing in their lives, taking people`s questions and helping them to expand so that they can hold a reality infinitely bigger than themselves, relating personal narratives to the Great Narrative of God`s saving acts.
One more thought. I`m beginning to wonder if Christian faith is not something that you need to be older to begin to grasp. I know that goes against all of our desires for a rejuvenated church. And I`m not suggesting for a minute that the faith of younger generations is in any way deficient. But I`m telling you, there are things I`m starting to understand now at 54 that I just couldn`t have comprehended when I was 24 or 34. For one thing, I don`t know if you really begin to see the narrative pattern in your life until you`ve got a bunch of years behind you. And I`m seeing in my church the number of people for whom the Gospel is coming alive for the first time who are in their 40s and 50s. Which is also kind of changing my perspective on effective minsitry.
A young woman has been attending my church for the last year or so. She's a classic affiliate -- active grandparents, sporadically attending mother, Roman Catholic father. She came back for the most conventional of all reasons -- she had her first baby and wanted her baptized. But as I've gotten to know her, I know there's more than that -- so much more going on in her personal story and struggles -- and I know that God's involved in moving her.
I did a funeral several years ago for a little girl who died suddenly and tragically. Parents were also classic affiliates who came to church once in a while. It's a family who has been through unimaginable suffering and I had the privilege of walking with them for quite a while.
I lost almost complete touch and wondered if they were even in town any more. Then, out of the blue, I receive a Facebook message from him. We share messages occasionally. We've been trying to make plans to go out for coffee. Last Sunday, he shows up to church with the little girl they adopted. He was back yesterday.
This stuff just can't be caught in a bottle, measured or predicted. It`s all part of the richness of individual narratives that I`m realizing more and more are at the heart of ministry -- and the heart of the Gospel.
Alan Roxburgh says that pastors should be like poets -- giving people the language to articulate what God`s doing in their lives, taking people`s questions and helping them to expand so that they can hold a reality infinitely bigger than themselves, relating personal narratives to the Great Narrative of God`s saving acts.
One more thought. I`m beginning to wonder if Christian faith is not something that you need to be older to begin to grasp. I know that goes against all of our desires for a rejuvenated church. And I`m not suggesting for a minute that the faith of younger generations is in any way deficient. But I`m telling you, there are things I`m starting to understand now at 54 that I just couldn`t have comprehended when I was 24 or 34. For one thing, I don`t know if you really begin to see the narrative pattern in your life until you`ve got a bunch of years behind you. And I`m seeing in my church the number of people for whom the Gospel is coming alive for the first time who are in their 40s and 50s. Which is also kind of changing my perspective on effective minsitry.
Friday, July 25, 2008
A Second Wind
I haven't been keeping up as much with this blog, frankly because I began to wonder about the validity of my approach in dealing with affiliates. Was I just sugar coating what amounts to narcissism and lack of commitment? Is there really anything valid about someone's personal sense of "belonging" -- or is that just wishful thinking to try to gloss over the seriousness of the church's predicament?
I've been reading "The Search To Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community and Small Groups" by Joseph Myers which has rekindled my interest in affiliates. Myers challenges the belief that intimacy is the goal of all relationships. THis is the assumption that's behind the small group movement -- that ideally 100% of church members ought to be in a small group that shares on an intimate level.
Myers identifies four "spaces" of belonging -- public, social, personal and intimate -- and argues that people can find real connectedness and community on all four levels. It's wrong to try to force people to move to a space that we think is the "right" space to be in. The fact is, that many people's connection to the church will remain at the "public" level -- attending worship (more or less frequently) and taking part in those activities that they find helpful and valuable. We should not assume that unless someone moves through stages to ever deeper commitment and ever greater intimacy that they don't "belong" -- or that the church has "failed."
What the church does is set up two value-laden categories -- "active" and "inactive" -- or, "committed" and "uncommitted," "insider" and "outsider" -- or however you want to label them. We think that the only really valid way of belonging is to be in the inner-most circle. But Myers argues that that does violence to the varied ways in which different people find true community. We try to put everybody in the same box.
This has got me thinking again about Reg Bibby's observation that people we think of as "inactive" or "drop-outs" often have an incredibly resilient and stubborn sense of being part of "their" church -- and if you mess with that, it can blow up in your face.
I think what it comes down to is recognizing that God works in mysterious ways, differently in different people. Who are we to judge that the person who slips into the back pew on a sporadic basis -- or the people who derive great satisfaction out of working at church suppers but avoid prayer groups like the plague -- or the person who watches Robert Schuller on Sunday morning and sends an annual cheque to the church -- who are we to judge that God is not at work in their lives?
That's not to say that we give up on nurturing people or forming them. It's not to say that we don't encourage deeper levels of practice. But, in the words of Alan Roxburgh, the church tends to ask "church questions" rather than "God questions." Our agenda is what will support and perpetuate the church structures familiar to the inner circle, rather than asking "What is God up to in people's lives?" And we ought not to forget that the religious structures of Jesus' day were what actually impeded the work of God in peoples' lives -- and that much of Jesus' ministry was in breaking through those controlling structures.
What I've decided to do is to start rearranging my schedule so I can devote major portions of my time to having coffee with people. Not as an underhanded way of roping them into church activities, but as a way of posing this question -- "Where's God in your life?"
I've been reading "The Search To Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community and Small Groups" by Joseph Myers which has rekindled my interest in affiliates. Myers challenges the belief that intimacy is the goal of all relationships. THis is the assumption that's behind the small group movement -- that ideally 100% of church members ought to be in a small group that shares on an intimate level.
Myers identifies four "spaces" of belonging -- public, social, personal and intimate -- and argues that people can find real connectedness and community on all four levels. It's wrong to try to force people to move to a space that we think is the "right" space to be in. The fact is, that many people's connection to the church will remain at the "public" level -- attending worship (more or less frequently) and taking part in those activities that they find helpful and valuable. We should not assume that unless someone moves through stages to ever deeper commitment and ever greater intimacy that they don't "belong" -- or that the church has "failed."
What the church does is set up two value-laden categories -- "active" and "inactive" -- or, "committed" and "uncommitted," "insider" and "outsider" -- or however you want to label them. We think that the only really valid way of belonging is to be in the inner-most circle. But Myers argues that that does violence to the varied ways in which different people find true community. We try to put everybody in the same box.
This has got me thinking again about Reg Bibby's observation that people we think of as "inactive" or "drop-outs" often have an incredibly resilient and stubborn sense of being part of "their" church -- and if you mess with that, it can blow up in your face.
I think what it comes down to is recognizing that God works in mysterious ways, differently in different people. Who are we to judge that the person who slips into the back pew on a sporadic basis -- or the people who derive great satisfaction out of working at church suppers but avoid prayer groups like the plague -- or the person who watches Robert Schuller on Sunday morning and sends an annual cheque to the church -- who are we to judge that God is not at work in their lives?
That's not to say that we give up on nurturing people or forming them. It's not to say that we don't encourage deeper levels of practice. But, in the words of Alan Roxburgh, the church tends to ask "church questions" rather than "God questions." Our agenda is what will support and perpetuate the church structures familiar to the inner circle, rather than asking "What is God up to in people's lives?" And we ought not to forget that the religious structures of Jesus' day were what actually impeded the work of God in peoples' lives -- and that much of Jesus' ministry was in breaking through those controlling structures.
What I've decided to do is to start rearranging my schedule so I can devote major portions of my time to having coffee with people. Not as an underhanded way of roping them into church activities, but as a way of posing this question -- "Where's God in your life?"
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
The Slow Work of God
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit, knew a lot about patience and how long things take. He was a palaeontologist, used to thinking in terms of vast expanses of time. This reminds me that our sense of having been failed by God, or ourselves, is often simple impatience. We don't give things enough time. I'm always trying things for a little while and then chucking them aside because they haven't "worked." But an essential aspect of faith, Teilhard reminds us, is trusting that God is at work even when, from our time-limited perspective, we can't see it.
TRUST IN THE SLOW WORK OF GOD
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything
to reach the end.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown, something new,
and yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stage of instability –
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually –
Let them grow,
let them shape themselves,
without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today
what time (that is to say, grace
and your own good will)
will make them tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety
of feeling yourself in suspense
and incomplete.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
TRUST IN THE SLOW WORK OF GOD
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything
to reach the end.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown, something new,
and yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stage of instability –
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually –
Let them grow,
let them shape themselves,
without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today
what time (that is to say, grace
and your own good will)
will make them tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety
of feeling yourself in suspense
and incomplete.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Church renewal in Britain
My friend Connie den Bok, a minister in Toronto, put me onto some things that are happening in Britain through the Church of England and the Methodist Church. As we all know, church decline in Britain is way more advanced than in Canada (although I suspect we're closing the gap quickly) -- but there are some innovative things brewing there that we could learn from.
There's a website -- www.freshexpressions.org.uk -- which tells the stories of many new initiatives that are revitalizing the church among previously marginalized groups -- students, young families, persons with disabilities, children.
I'm going to encourage my own Council and leaders to start chewing on some of these ideas. Some have more merit than others, but they all seem to be organic, contextualized responses to the decline of traditional denominationally based Christianity in a once heavily Christianized culture.
There's a website -- www.freshexpressions.org.uk -- which tells the stories of many new initiatives that are revitalizing the church among previously marginalized groups -- students, young families, persons with disabilities, children.
I'm going to encourage my own Council and leaders to start chewing on some of these ideas. Some have more merit than others, but they all seem to be organic, contextualized responses to the decline of traditional denominationally based Christianity in a once heavily Christianized culture.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Being there when we're needed
We're at a stage in our life when we have contact with a lot of young adults. They're our kids' friends. And, even though our own kids sometimes think we're a little square, their friends think my wife and I are pretty cool.
One of their friends recently asked if she could talk to me. Some things have happened in her life that have made her open to the possibility that God might be trying to get her attention. She wants to come to church.
I know this happens frequently. Young adults have moments of spiritual crisis or awareness and they need someone to help them shape and direct those experiences. But it's not always easy to know where to tell them they should go. If a young person in another city asks me what's a good church to attend, often I don't know.
I'm glad I have enough confidence in my church and its ministry to encourage this young woman to come here. But it's something I think we need to worry a lot more about than we do. We say we want young adults to come back to church, but we're ill-prepared to receive them when they do -- or to give them the spiritual support and help they're looking for.
One of the young adults who responded to my survey commented that the church needs to be ready when people his age find their way back. I don't think that means launching a lot of gimmicky market-driven programs. I think it means making sure there's enough depth in our own faith, worship and community life that it doesn't feel like a waste-land or a closed club when they arrive.
One of their friends recently asked if she could talk to me. Some things have happened in her life that have made her open to the possibility that God might be trying to get her attention. She wants to come to church.
I know this happens frequently. Young adults have moments of spiritual crisis or awareness and they need someone to help them shape and direct those experiences. But it's not always easy to know where to tell them they should go. If a young person in another city asks me what's a good church to attend, often I don't know.
I'm glad I have enough confidence in my church and its ministry to encourage this young woman to come here. But it's something I think we need to worry a lot more about than we do. We say we want young adults to come back to church, but we're ill-prepared to receive them when they do -- or to give them the spiritual support and help they're looking for.
One of the young adults who responded to my survey commented that the church needs to be ready when people his age find their way back. I don't think that means launching a lot of gimmicky market-driven programs. I think it means making sure there's enough depth in our own faith, worship and community life that it doesn't feel like a waste-land or a closed club when they arrive.
Friday, October 26, 2007
The Hidden Hand of God
I know when I talk about investing time and effort in affiliates that a lot of people are skeptical. "Anonymous" -- whoever you are -- has posted several comments in which he/she expresses real doubts about whether it's worth it. Maybe all those people who talk about their "spiritual needs" and "openness to transcendence" are just individualistic narcissists. Whatever sense of the divine they have is completely self-centered, and light years away from the costly gospel of Jesus.
I also know how seldom the effort seems to "pay off." I was having coffee with a fellow pastor a couple of weeks ago, and he commented on how much you can invest in people and situations with absolutely no visible results, and how that's maybe the key difference between pastoral ministry and other professions or occupations. We never know, in most cases, whether our labor has had any effect.
Statistics seem to be on the side of the doubters. I have done hundreds of weddings over the years, and the number of people who have made a real commitment of faith as a direct result of being married by me is -- well, let's say I don't need to take off my shoes to count them.
But, you know, there are moments when the hiddenness of God's work shines through with blazing glory.
I've started to meet with small -very small -- groups of people I know have the potential for blossoming in their faith to share the journey, to listen to Scripture and to pray. Yesterday, I was with two people who have wandered, but found their way back. One left the church in anger after the death of a parent. But she found her way back and has discovered a ministry as teen mentor.
The other didn't reject the church but simply drifted away from its perceived irrelevance. Her journey back was more convoluted. It came about through the informal witness of work colleagues. What sealed it was listening to a Christian song that a co-worker was playing on the car CD player. Her heart was "strangely warmed," and she felt drawn back to her faith. Hers is a story as moving as Wesley's Aldersgate or C. S. Lewis on the bus returning from the zoo.
Her rediscovery of faith coincided with the onset of a terrible personal crisis in which all old certainties and predictabilities dissolved and she has found herself simply waiting to see what the next day will bring. Faith, for her, has not brought certainty, but has provided, I think, at least the language to articulate her questions and her wonderings.
What doors are closed when we write people off? When we decide they're not worth the bother? That they're "deadwood"? I wonder how many faith journeys have been cut short because a serendiptious moment of encouragement or presence was ignored.
I know that, like the scattered seed of Jesus' parable, the vast majority of the time the message will land on the rocks, the thorns or the pavement. In my ministry, however, I am finely learning the importance of watching, listening, and waiting. Because you never know what the hidden hand of God is busy doing in places and people we can't see.
That's why I'm interested in all these folks.
I also know how seldom the effort seems to "pay off." I was having coffee with a fellow pastor a couple of weeks ago, and he commented on how much you can invest in people and situations with absolutely no visible results, and how that's maybe the key difference between pastoral ministry and other professions or occupations. We never know, in most cases, whether our labor has had any effect.
Statistics seem to be on the side of the doubters. I have done hundreds of weddings over the years, and the number of people who have made a real commitment of faith as a direct result of being married by me is -- well, let's say I don't need to take off my shoes to count them.
But, you know, there are moments when the hiddenness of God's work shines through with blazing glory.
I've started to meet with small -very small -- groups of people I know have the potential for blossoming in their faith to share the journey, to listen to Scripture and to pray. Yesterday, I was with two people who have wandered, but found their way back. One left the church in anger after the death of a parent. But she found her way back and has discovered a ministry as teen mentor.
The other didn't reject the church but simply drifted away from its perceived irrelevance. Her journey back was more convoluted. It came about through the informal witness of work colleagues. What sealed it was listening to a Christian song that a co-worker was playing on the car CD player. Her heart was "strangely warmed," and she felt drawn back to her faith. Hers is a story as moving as Wesley's Aldersgate or C. S. Lewis on the bus returning from the zoo.
Her rediscovery of faith coincided with the onset of a terrible personal crisis in which all old certainties and predictabilities dissolved and she has found herself simply waiting to see what the next day will bring. Faith, for her, has not brought certainty, but has provided, I think, at least the language to articulate her questions and her wonderings.
What doors are closed when we write people off? When we decide they're not worth the bother? That they're "deadwood"? I wonder how many faith journeys have been cut short because a serendiptious moment of encouragement or presence was ignored.
I know that, like the scattered seed of Jesus' parable, the vast majority of the time the message will land on the rocks, the thorns or the pavement. In my ministry, however, I am finely learning the importance of watching, listening, and waiting. Because you never know what the hidden hand of God is busy doing in places and people we can't see.
That's why I'm interested in all these folks.
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