It Takes A Church...

Which Kind of Community?

In his most recent blog post, Fuller Theological Seminary President, Richard Mouw, offers some perspective on the struggle within many churches today regarding being "seeker sensitive" vs. "traditional".  Both Reformed and informed, Mouw draws upon the work of Robert Bellah for a better description and more insightful question: "Should we attempt to be communities of interest or communities of memory?" 

That is to say, which is more important: restructuring churches to appeal to the outsider who is searching for God and responding to the missional opportunities and challenges present in the culture or insuring that churches remained focused on the liturgical, doctrinal and sacramental elements that keeps the church anchored in it's core beliefs and practices?   

Mouw, drawing on John Calvin no less, answers (with characteristically Mouwian wisdom): We must focus on both. I won't restate what Mouw writes so well here, but I will make another point that I want to spend more time on in the days ahead:

If this is so, (as I believe it is) then once again, the challenge of church leadership is inherent in the complexity of serving a community with (supposedly) unchanging core convictions in an (absolutely) ever-changing world.  In the phrases of some leadership experts, the church must be both "built to last" and "built to change" at the same time.

Personally, these thoughts come out of an experience I am having of moderating a task force in our Presbytery that is working on restructuring the goals, and systems of our Presbytery to fulfill our long stated vision to be a "missional presbytery."  As my colleagues and I talk together about the inherent conflicts when deeply held "competing values" are at the core of a community, we find ourselves searching for ways to articulate and formulate a path for transformation of our Presbytery and our churches to better equipped to face the challenges of our changing culture without losing the "soul" of what makes a church, well, a church. 

Somewhere amidst the "both/and" of our ecclesial identity and the hard choices that we must face in expressing those identity markers for the sake of the world is our mission. 

And in my next post, I'll offer some thoughts that have been milling around in my head since I visited a big group of Maine Methodists last fall.

"Faith Yes, Church Maybe"

An article on the CT online site for Leadership Journal reports the findings after "more than 1,000 self-identified Christians 18 years of age and older were surveyed on their religious beliefs and practices."
The study reveals the wide diversity of self-identity amongst Christians brokenly down into 5 pretty evenly distributed groups which they labeled as "5 Kinds of Christians" (which seemed to me like a nice play on and slight critique of McClaren's idea of "A New Kind of Christian").   

While I would like to, in future posts, offer some responses and reflections about the diversity of Christians in our culture,  I will start with offering up CT's own synopsis of "three critical issues" that emerged:

• The local church is no longer considered the only outlet for spiritual growth.
• Churches must develop relational- and community-oriented outreach.
• Lay people have to be better equipped to be God's ambassadors.

There is no surprise in here for me.  Indeed, I see this as an opportunity for the church.  Even more, I just finished teaching a course for Fuller Theological Seminary called Contemporary Challenges and Evangelism and these issues emerged from our discussions with NON-Christians, too.

In the final segment of the class I posed this question to the future ministers seeking their Master's degrees to be better equipped to lead in churches:  How should we  respond to a world that says: "God is interesting, but the church is  irrelevant"? 

According to the study, the answer of at least 3/5ths of Christians today, is "But, of course. That is the way we Christians feel, too." 

So, what do we make of that? 

But before I offer up my own thoughts, I figured I would let this sit here to see what it stimulates in your own mind.

Tragedy, Perspective and Witness

Doris Stephens, the wife of our church's unofficial "pastor emeritus" came into the prayer room before the second service yesterday to tell me that Malibu Presbyterian Church had burned to the ground in the recent California fires.  Doris' daughter-in-law, Valerie is the sister of Malibu Presbyterian's Pastor, Greg Hughes.  Greg is a friend and colleague going back 15 years. I met his wife, Kay 20 years ago at Forest Home.  And about 12 years ago I was the speaker for Malibu Pres' family camp. When Malibu was looking for a new Senior Pastor some years back, I had the privilege of being a reference for Greg.

Yesterday in two of our three services we announced the loss of the church and prayed for them.  After the service, I sent an email to Greg with my prayers and support.  Greg's leadership in this tragedy is unmistakable.  As he told the LA Times, “We didn’t lose any members. We only lost a building. We’re going to regroup. We believe God will make something beautiful out of ashes.”

Indeed God will.  What some may not know is that  Malibu Presbyterian Church has often been in years past the center of relief efforts when fires and floods have hit Malibu.  This church is known for being a true Christian community that cares for it's larger community and no doubt they will do far more than simply look after themselves.  The Mayor of Los Angeles has already commended Greg and Kay and the church for being the center of support for others.

I commend you also to the blog by the Children's director at Malibu Presbyterian (where I got the picture above), another honest and faithful voice of witness in the middle of tragedy.

Greg, Kay and all of the Malibu Presbyterian Congregation, may the peace of Christ that passes all understanding be with you.

UPDATE:  Greg Hughes on Fox News last night when asked what his church is going to do: Well, you know, we're an Easter Faith people, so you know on Friday, it looked like things were bleak for Jesus, but we saw that Jesus rose again. And our church is a resurrection church. We'll gather again. We're going to regroup again...and we believe we'll be stronger as a result of this.

2nd Update.  Here is a video link to Greg speaking on CNN, including some pictures of what the church looked like before the fire.

Giving Up on Worship Evangelism

Sally Morgenthaler, author of the book Worship Evangelism, has given up on the notion.  In this article she despairs that her thoughtful book became an excuse for churches to develop an "if you build it they will come approach" to evangelism that has both failed in developing proper worship and truly effective authentic evangelism. Today, instead, she challenges leaders to separate worship from evangelism so that we can honor God in the first and live with and love our neighbors as the means to the second.

This article must have been heart-wrenching for her to write. As is evidenced in this quote about her own changing speaking ministry:

I began challenging leaders to give up their mythologies about how they were reaching the unchurched on Sunday morning. Yes, worship openly and unapologetically. Yes, worship well and deeply. (Which means singing songs that may include anger, sadness, and despair. Have we forgotten that David did this? Have we discarded the psalms?) But let our deepened, honest worship be the overflow of what God does through us beyond our walls.

Conference organizers were confused. They wondered what had happened to me. Where was the worship evangelism warrior? Where was the formula? Where was the pep talk for all those people who were convinced that trading in their traditional service for a contemporary upgrade would be the answer? I don't have to tell you this. The 100-year-old congregation that's down to 43 members and having a hard time paying the light bill doesn't want to be told that the "answer" is living life with the people in their neighborhoods. Relationships take time, and they need an attendance infusion now.

I understood their dilemma, and secretly, I wished I had a magic bullet. But I didn't. And I wasn't going to give them false hope. Some newfangled worship service wasn't going to save their church, and it wasn't going to build God's kingdom. It wasn't going to attract the strange neighbors who had moved into their communities or the generations they had managed\ to ignore for the last 39 years.

Why the Church?

I am off tomorrow afternoon to Denver Seminary to teach a Doctor of Ministry class in Interpersonal and Corporate Spiritual Formation.  I am looking forward to spending a week with pastors talking about forming the kinds of Christian Communities that form true Christians.  While my students will be writing reflections on several books and incorporating our discussions into case study projects, I want to reflect on my time with the pastors here publicly.  I'll prime the pump with a few quotes from various writings and excerpts of my own work that stimulated my interest in the church as a "transforming communion."   This has and remains the center of my life's calling and it is a joy to spend some time with some kindred souls caught up in this most important discussion. I'll begin with two  excerpts.  A pithy one from Bill Hybels, that is far more disputed today than ever, and then an excerpt from my book that certainly puts my cards on the table.

"The local church is the hope of the world."  (Bill Hybels)

For most Christians, the local church is usually regarded as nothing more than a personally helpful but basically benign reality.  Oh, sure, we honor the Church the way we honor our Mother’s on Mother’s Day or Veteran’s on Veteran’s day—because we have some genuine affection and mostly because we think it is the right thing to do.  The more traditional of us, may even use exalted language in declaring it a "means of grace."  But most often we think of the Church as nothing more than an optional "strategy" or a "system" for local evangelistic efforts, social change, or a dispenser of resources to help the individual on his or her Christian journey.  Churches are offered like different shops are offered at a mall. Indeed, the largest churches offer themselves as a kind of spiritual mall in itself, bidding the seeker: Come here and choose from our wide array of Christian classes, teachings, activities, that which you need to live out your individual Christian life. 

In this model the church is a repository of spiritual goods that assist the individual Christian. It is a vendor of religious services.  It is The Home Depot for the spiritual do-it-yourselfer who wants to build a Christian home. 

But that is not the Church of the first century.  The Church of the first century is “a people.”  And the transformed and transforming quality of “the people” serving as the flesh and blood witness to a life-transforming God is the point. As 1 Peter 2:9-10 says:

"You are a chosen people. You are a kingdom of priests, God's holy nation, his very own possession. This is so you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful life. 

        Once you were not a people;
        now you are the people of God.
        Once you received none of God's mercy;
        now you have received mercy."  (NLT)

This is what the Bible teaches: The Church is God's incarnation today.  The Church is Jesus' body on earth.  The Church is the temple of the Spirit. The Church is not a helpful thing for my individual spiritual journey.  The Church is the journey.  The Church is not a collection of “soul-winners” all seeking to tell unbelievers “the Way” to God.  The Church is the Way.  To be part of the Church is to be part of God—to be part of God’s Communion and to be part of God’s ministry.  To belong to the people of God is to enjoy relationship with God and live out the purposes of God.   This is why the Church is the only true means to be transformed into the likeness of God.  (From, It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian)

The local church as "hope of the world"?
The church as the "only true means of being transformed into the likeness of God"?

What do you think?

The Word in Community

Today, at our church, a vigil will come to an end.  It is part of our "For Love of God and Neighbor Campaign".  It has been meant to be a week of spiritual discipline for anchoring our church's mission in the words of Scripture. It is the first time that we have done something like this, but I sense it won’t be the last. 

Last Sunday at the end of our last service of the morning, a elder in our church stood before the congregation and read aloud from Genesis 1:1-5, we then dismissed the service and a small group of junior high students and their young adult leaders sat in a circle and took up where the elder left off.  For the next five days, from early in the morning until late into the night, there has been someone reading, aloud, from the Chronological New Living Translation of the Bible as we as a church community work our way through the entire Bible.

Tonight, at 7 PM a group of leaders in our church will gather together to read the last chapter of Bible, Revelation 22.  We have asked four readers to lead us, with a child reading the penultimate verse and then in call and response fashion the leaders of our church will read the last verse together.

Five days, 1441 pages, 76 hours of reading and an amazing experience.

I was signed up to read with my wife early in the experience.  I assumed that I would only read once. My son, who had already read with the Junior Highers tagged along because he wanted to do it again. I listened as my wife read about Passover and the slaughter of the first born Egyptians because of Pharaoh’s stubbornness (with my own first born son listening on). Then I read the passage where because of Israel's own stubbornness (how quick we forget!) God had to punish them in the wilderness.

Throughout the day, I remembered that while I went about leading the church staff in meetings, preparing for events, meeting with people, there was someone reading the word of God aloud in our sanctuary.  It was like being in a musical, but the music was the voice of God through the voice of his people.  Tuesday afternoon, I snuck in the back of the sanctuary for a few minutes and listened as our church receptionist read all by herself, her friendly voice that greets people when they call the church, filling the sanctuary with the word of God.

Tuesday night after a Sanctuary Remodel Committee meeting,  I joined a group of young adults and a homeless women who were gathered reading about Solomon's building the temple. A long passage about so many details, it made me grateful for the committee that is paying attention to our sanctuary details, so that in the words of 1 Kings 8:60, "Then people all over the earth will know that the Lord is God and there is no other."

I left at 10:15, but the young adults carried on through the night, moving from the pithy wisdom of Proverbs through the blush-causing Song of Solomon and into the prophets.

On Wednesday morning my ten year old daughter Ali asked me to get her up early so that she could read before school.  We arrived at 6 AM where one of my colleagues was already in sanctuary.  From 4 AM - 6 AM he had walked alone circling the inside of sanctuary and reading the psalms of praise.  Then I listened as my daughter's sweet voice told of the sacrificial love of the Messiah from Isaiah.  She finished by reading Isaiah 59:21: "And this is my covenant with them," says the Lord. "My Spirit will not leave them and neither will these words that I have given you. They will be on your lips and on the lips of your children, and your children's children forever.  I, the Lord, have spoken."

This morning, I returned again.  At 4 AM I joined with a Marine dressed in his uniform who sat in the darkness under a huge picture of the Good Samaritan on our chancel with only the glow of the lights for reading illuminating the scene.  We read from the gospels (after so many hours we were finally in the New Testament!) taking turns for two hours until both daylight and the friendly face of a 70 year widow and elder in our church lit up the morning.  As we gave the scriptures to her, her Texas drawl added depth and warmth to the story.

I prepared to leave the vigil to her strong voice, so that I could see my kids off to school.  As I left the sanctuary I heard her reading the words of Jesus, “I have loved you even as the Father has loved me.  Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.”

I know that my Texan friend turned the Bible over to a retired lawyer who loves the Scriptures.  I smiled to think of his booming, confident voice taking up the task from her quiet confident drawl.  And throughout this day, more will read, more will listen.  A homeless woman has probably heard more of the Bible this past week than any of us.  A family brought their preschool aged boys just to listen and be part of something they really don’t understand.

We have needed the whole body of Christ to take on this task, we needed single adults who had the freedom to read late into the night, stay-at-home moms and retirees who could fill the working hours, children who could bring laughter as they giggled through trying to pronounce Hebrew names and working folk who would begin and end their days “in the world” with a time “in the Word” reminding us what all these writings are really about. 

Reading aloud the scriptures, listening to them they way they were read for centuries, in community, hearing the grand narrative of God’s redeeming love for the world, letting it soak into the life of our community as we seek to live out the “powerful play” that goes on. 

I feel sadness for those who missed out on this experience.  I feel some sadness about times I have missed out on what may have been equally powerful and meaningful because my life schedule didn't permit it.

But for those of us who have been part, and for our church as a whole, I can only imagine what this might do to us.

"When I discovered your words, I devoured them.  They are my joy and my heart's delight, for I bear your name, O Lord God."  (Jeremiah 15:16)

[Update: Sheryl France-Moran a reflection on the Scripture Vigil at her blog, too. ]

City Church of San Francisco

This weekend I am speaking for City Church of San Francisco at their All Church Retreat in the Santa Cruz mountains.  This is a most interesting church: Urban, multi-ethnic, mostly young professionals and a growing number of families.  They are affiliated with the RCA and are deeply interested in being a missional church for the city. 

I have several friends who have been part of the church who speak of it warmly and well.  I will be speaking on some material that I am looking at putting into a book in the months to come called "Heaven Here Now: What your life and your church is meant to be."

Blessed Bark

No...this isn't a post about Scout.  She is still so young that she doesn't bark much.  It's about tree bark.  That crusty, rough, hardened exterior that protects the green flesh and sticky sap that gives a tree life.

Some recent posts by Steve Norris on Eugene Petersons' Eat This Book (another title I have yet to open), had me digging through my blogging archives to resurrect this section from an interview with Eugene Peterson in the March 2005 issue of Christianity Today, (p. 45).

He was asked by the interviewer, "So how should we envision the Christian life?"  A better question, admittedly than my "ideal church" one, but it gets to the same point.  Peterson then describes a "miserable" Norwegian Lutheran church with the words, "it wasn't a very nice service, it just was just not very good worship."  He then describes how this small, mostly elderly population cares for single mothers in their midst.

The interviewer asks: "But many Christians wood look at this church and say it's dead, merely an institutional expression of the faith."

Peterson responds: "What other church is there besides institutional? There's nobody who doesn't have problems with the church because there is sin the church.  But there is no other place to be a Christian except the church... I really don't understand this naive criticism of the institution.  I really don't get it. 

Frederick Von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree.  There's no life in the bark. It's dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within.  And the tree grows and grows and grows.  If you take the bark off, it's prone to disease, dehydration, death.

So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive.  And when you try to have a church without bark, it doesn't last long.  It disappears, gets sick, and it's prone to all kinds of disease, heresy and narcissism."

What's (W)right with the Church

I know that many of you have been following the latest headlines from the Presbyterian Church USA General Assembly with some confusion and consternation.  For many of us, the political machinations of such denominational entities is exactly what is most "wrong" with the church.  Indeed, I often feel the same way. 

(And for those who'd like to hear more about what I think about the future of the PCUSA, I will yield my time to Mark D. Roberts who has once again captured it so well that I needn't spend any time on the subject at the moment.  Note: Mark and I are old friends, in the same covenant group and partner pastors in the same presbytery.  He is the person with whom I most often speak about these things and I genuinely share much of the perspective that he raises in these posts.)

But, you may ask, what is right with the PCUSA and denominational structures and the kinds of larger partnerships that many think will soon pass into oblivion?  Let me offer one example of what is "(W)right with the church" (pun absolutely intended, without apology...) and this time I don't mean the respected Bishop and theologian who is my literary sabbatical mentor, but another friend and the pastor of a new church plant in a neighboring community, Steve Wright.

I spent Father's Day at Village Presbyterian Church in Ladera Ranch, the church where Steve is the organizing pastor. Since it was Father's Day, I was allowed to plan the whole day to my liking and I chose to attend this church that meets in an elementary school.  It was wonderful.  Not only did I get to hear my friend preach a fine sermon from Nehemiah on being faithful to the scriptures even if they call us to uncomfortable and "temporary" places, but I got to be part of the mission of God going simply, humbly and joyfully into a new area of the world.  There was enthusiastic worship, a pile of kids sitting on a rug for children's message, warm greetings from the church members, heck, I even bought some "fair-trade coffee" to take home.

SCPC is one of the supporting churches for Village Presbyterian Church, and I was part of a group of pastors that was called together by our Presbytery to help this church get planted.  I was the chair of the Pastor search team that called Steve and I am part of the small band of folks who are praying and supporting this church in whatever way we can. (At the moment that is mostly trying to figure out how to raise enough money to help Steve and his family get a house in the neighborhood!)

I was never more proud of being a Presbyterian than I was on that Father's Day in the middle of that worship service.  This is what being "connectional" is all about.  Not big gatherings for hammering out politically minded decisions, but covenantal relationships that lead to the expansion of the gospel and the presence of the Christian Community into every neighborhood and nation in the world. 

Sure there is plenty wrong with denominational structures, but pulling together to do what one person, one pastor or even one church could never accomplish, is certainly what we do right.

Confirmation Weekend

I spent the weekend on Catalina Island with the Junior Highers going through our Confirmation Class.  Over and over again, the same themes emerged:  To discover and know God we need Creation, the Word and the Community--all three. All three point us ultimately to our need for Christ and the call to be part of the body of Christ for the sake of the whole world and all of creation.  The teenagers were fun-loving, inquisitive and eager to experience everything we threw at them.  They did team building exercises, wrote statements of faith, asked the nagging questions they needed answered and danced around a fire ring until my sides hurt from laughing.

They are as interested in how the world was made and the wonders of it as they are in how they are made and the wonders of love and sex. They delight in both dolphins and dodge ball with equal vigor.  They laughed hard and talked a lot, but fell silent at seeing a sunrise with a pod of dolphins swimming by.  They are a joy and it is a privilege to be their pastor.

I'll be adding more pictures to my photo albums.   But for more on the weekend, see Bernie Wohlfarth's blog.