Church Voices

rab·ble n.
1. A tumultuous crowd; a mob.
2. The lowest or coarsest class of people. Often used with the.
3. A group of persons regarded with contempt.

Everywhere in every society an effort is made to keep the rabble out. Cover charges at clubs and bars are designed to do exactly that, union membership is about restricting the work force to a select few in order to raise wages, things like the bar exam and medical boards are intended to restrict their respective fields to qualified individuals. Recently, there’s been tension between mere bloggers and official press. It begins with the debate about whether bloggers are covered by press protections passed into law, and continues on now in the NBA with the Dallas Mavericks banning and then unbanning bloggers from the locker room. At first, reporters and other full fledged members of the media resisted bloggers as anything more than pathetic hobbyists, now as bloggers have flexed their influence and audiences the question isn’t whether or not bloggers are proper members of the press, the question has shifted to which bloggers are legit.

In all of these cases there’s a clear monetary and/or prestige benefit to keeping the rabble out. Doctors, lawyers, the press, union members and bartenders all can charge more, and be seen as more important than otherwise by drawing a bright blue line between themselves and everyone else.

Now let me make what should be an entirely uncontroversial statement. A statement that you’ll probably agree with and amen. And that is that the church should never keep the rabble out. There should be no cover charges or bar exams to keep people from the gospel. I imagine everyone probably agrees with that statement. But let me share a couple of stories with you.

The first happened to one of our occasional writers here, Ben Walker. He invited a friend of his to church and after awhile the friend came. Now this guy had a shaved head (back before aging Gen-Xers figured out that a shaved head was better than a balding one), and his clothes would certainly never have been described as “church clothes”. He walked into the building, took a look around and said, “I can’t do this” and walked out. Without a single met gaze, smile, or conversation the guy figured out that he was rabble.

The second is happening at a church I’m familiar with. They have a Saturday night service that is constantly in flux. People begin coming to the Saturday service and then at some point shift to a Sunday morning service. When the Senior Minister began asking people who had made the switch he found the same story over and over again. These were people who had gone through divorces, bankruptcies, and other socially frowned upon situations and so felt as if they didn’t belong in a church. However, the Saturday service was just far enough away from a traditional church service they would go to that. And as they learned about the tidal wave sized vastness of God’s grace they moved to the Sunday services.

No one told the people in these stories that they were rabble. No one was charging a cover charge, or handing out requirements for church attendance, but somehow they either figured it out, or got the wrong idea (depending on how charitable you want to be).

Now this is where contextualization comes into play. Despite the few people who continue to cling to the idea that its possible to not contextualize, the hard, cold reality is that everything you do is contextualized in some way. How you dress, talk, walk, breathe, and socialize are all contextualized to your culture. And if you don’t want to keep the rabble out you need to contextualize well, rather than poorly.

I believe that in many ways when Christians operate ministries intended to operate beyond their local community it creates more problems than we realize, and may be a distraction from the way the church is intended to operate. Consider the following:

Communities Vary Dramatically
There’s an article every student in Anthropology 101 used to have to read entitled “Shakespeare in the Bush“. This anecdote is written by an anthropologist who tells the story of Hamlet to a remote African village. The villagers are confused by basic details in the story, such as why Hamlet would be angry that Hamlet’s uncle married his mother after the death of his father, after all, in their culture an honorable man marries his brother’s widow. The re-interpretation of the story continues until the story is nearly unrecognizable, it starts with Hamlet as the villain and ends with him being pardoned due to mental disease or defect. I moved about six hours north to start ministering at Owosso Church of Christ, and despite the fact that I moved across only one state line, was still in Big-10 country, and stayed within the same non-denominational denomination the mindset, and culture of Owosso is very different from where I was living. While I was hardly in Shakespeare in the Bush style culture shock, Owosso even when compared with the town I grew up (which was of a similar size, and relative location to larger cities) its a world of difference.

In other words, the needs individual communities have and the ways that they relate and communicate will vary drastically, even in places that are demographically similar. Not to put too fine a point on it, but exactly how and what each church does to live and teach the gospel will vary so significantly that anyone offering advise or condemnation from outside of a community is unlikely to have any idea what they’re talking about.

Individual Churches Vary Dramatically
I won’t spend much time on this because its very similar to the first point (but looking inward, rather than outward). The make up of a church in terms of talent and resources (not to mention how a church’s internal infrastructure allows for the deployment of those talent and resource) are so different that, again, advice or condemnation coming from anyone who hasn’t spent a significant amount of time in that specific church is probably clueless.

Individual Leaders Vary Dramatically
Are you seeing a pattern yet? Anyway, as Mark Driscoll has gained some national visibility his fanboys have tried to imitate his preaching style. The problem is that Mark Driscoll is a one in a billion talent. I’ve yet to hear anyone else who can pull off an hour and a half sermon the way that he can. Instead all of his fanboys that try to emulate him fall flat, and end up worse preachers than they were before, in fact, often it comes off, not just as terrible preaching, but as insincere, and insincerity is far worse than incompetence.

Love can’t be communicated nationally
Biblically defined, love is what you do for others. Especially when it comes to pointing out shortcomings, or leveling criticisms those words aren’t coming from love if you haven’t actually done anything for that person. This is true whether Christians are attacking each other, or are busy condemning political opponents. We are charged to speak the truth with love, not excoriate with prejudice.

Homogenization isn’t healthy
A friend of mine hosted a German foreign exchange student, when they broke out a map of the US and measured from the north west corner of Washington to the south east corner of Florida he was literally speechless. He was used to being able to drive through three or four countries in a single day, the idea that it would take several days of straight driving to get across a single country absolutely boggled his mind. We live in a huge country with huge variations in culture, and population, and the end result of national conferences, books, systems for doing church, etc. is to create a homogeneous culture of church in a country that is heterogeneous.

National sin becomes local sin
Whether its a fall to grace like Ted Haggard, ridiculous money grubbing TV preachers, or some big-mouthed fool like Pat Robertson the dirt sticks to all of us. What’s worse, because these things don’t happen on the local level there’s no way to repair the damage through the personal relationships the church has built.

Look, I’m not making the case that books, conferences, or other national level ministries shouldn’t exist, or are sinful. Rather, my point is that the local church is the place where the gospel’s heavy lifting is done. Its where the gospel is spoken and lived, and where love exists between the saints and for the community where our God-given charge of servanthood is carried out. In other words, the little things are the big thing, and when our most talented, motivated and energetic saints focus the main part of their time and energy on websites, books, radio shows, and other national level ministries we miss the forest for the trees.

I am watching Clifford with my 3 year old and it struck me how relevant the lesson being taught in the show was to church work.  I suppose that many problems we have in the church could be fixed if we were humble and mature enough to admit our immaturity and relearn our Kindergarten lessons.

This particular episode had Emily Elizabeth (Clifford’s owner) and some friends putting on a play for their neighborhood.  One of the friends was the director and began to tell everybody (including the dog stage hands) how to do it “right.”  One of the children was offended and gave up his role in the play because the director seemed to think she could do it better.  Eventually the director took over every job because she could do it better.  She proceeded to practice through the play (enjoying it I might add) until she crashed (literally).  She realized how she hurt her friends and asked them back promising not to interfere.

I’m a perfectionist.  Sort of.  If there is something that I think should be done a particular way (i.e. the right way) then I am inclined to say something and/or take over.  This is not healthy and is not conducive to good friendships.  I’ve had to learn the hard way to not intrude on the work and service of others in the church.  Granted, there are times when something needs to be said or done (not everybody is gifted or skilled in every way).  But for me, it’s usually not being done the way I would do it, and so that would be why I speak up.  I have found that more gets accomplished for the Kingdom of God when I don’t interfere and micromanage the ministries of my brothers and sisters.

Maybe you’ll find God teaching you something valuable in strange places. 

Recently, here in Owosso, a small church with a highly visible sign posted several verses condemning homosexual activity during the Xmas season. This caused quite a stir of controversy with various articles being written and letters to the editor being furiously pounded out. The battle lines were drawn along the usual lines, each side hurling their various invectives and preparing their defenses. The problem being that as I looked around both sides appeared to be wrong.

Here’s the thing, I believe the scriptures condemn homosexual activity. But I also believe that using the scriptures to put a thumb to the eye of people in your community is also condemned by the scriptures.

1Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children 2and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Ephesians5:1-2

God became flesh, had that flesh ripped from his body, and took both the punishment the wrath of God demanded for us. And in this verse we’re commanded to live a life comparable to that. Sorry, but I don’t think posting verses about the sin of others during a time usually set aside to celebrate the beginning of Jesus’ life and the reconciliation of humanity to God has much to do with each other.

There’s a lot going through my mind right now, and there’s a lot going on under the surface of all this. I’m afraid I’m not doing a very good job of communicating it. But, let me just say that right now I’m feeling profoundly disillusioned with the church in the United States. I have friends that used to tell me how the church was filled with unloving, cold people who couldn’t forgive the smallest of sins. I used to think because of my personal experiences with my churches that this was the exception

But now, due to this recent dust up in our small town, and some recent personal experiences with Christians I think that perhaps God has simply blessed me with churches that know how to look like Jesus (on a sidenote, thank you Northern Hills Christian Church, Xenos Fellowship, Owosso Church of Christ, and individually Steve and Judy Walker, and Denny and Joann Risley for showing me what Jesus looks like).

If this is true, with cold hearts and unmerciful Christians being the majority expect to see the Church in the US whither up and blow away.

Want to revitalize a church? Have some advice:

This principle was confirmed in a huge way in our study of Comeback Churches. According to Comeback leaders, the key to making a comeback was this - “renewed belief in Jesus Christ and the mission of the church.” That was the highest-rated single item in the study. How simple and basic is that!?

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called— one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Ephesians 4.4-6

The streets of my community has many churches on them.  Several Baptist churches, two instrumental Churches of Christ, three Lutheran churches, and at least four of the non-denominational variety.  All in all there is probably at least 20 churches in this small town of 15,000 people.  One way to interpret this verse with the reality of the church today would be to conclude that the church has been so badly damaged, so fractured, and is so far from what was intended by God for his bride that there is no possibility of the church looking like, well, the church.  If we accept this interpretation there’s really only some variety of two ways of looking at this.  First, we can conclude the church is a complete and utter failure.  That whatever there was of God in it is gone, and what’s left is as dried up and useless as a branch that failed to graft to the tree it was placed on.  Or you can conclude that out there somewhere is the church that got it right.  That out of all those congregations, denominations and churches there’s one of them that is unified that got it right enough to be called the bride of Christ.  Unfortunately that’s what at least some Christians have concluded.

But, if we take a look at the verses just prior to these there might be another way to frame the issue.

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

Ephesians 4.1-3

I don’t think what Paul is urging here is a lock-step theological unity*.  If that were the case it wouldn’t be couched in terms of a lifestyle of humbleness, gentleness, and patience.  Instead it would be urgings toward studying, holding fast to the faith, and remembering what was of first importance.  But that’s not what’s going on here.

I don’t think Paul is talking primarily about doctrinal unity here.  Rather he’s talking about relational unity.  Whether or not we are obedient to these scriptures has little to do with how many churches we have, or how many strains of doctrine exist within the body.  What these verses have to do with is our relationships with each other, both in terms of the others within our respective churches, and the other found in other churches.  This command given by Paul would not necessarily be fulfilled even if we all got together in some kind of massive, theologically monolithic, Voltron-esque church. 

This command is only fulfilled when we are humble, gentle and patiently bearing in love with those who we disagree with. There is one Lord, one savior, on baptism, and one God and Father over all and through all, and well all need to live a life worthy of our calling, especially towards those we disagree with.

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I was talking to a couple of friends of mine in a couple of different conversations about church, and an observation came up. The average church size is at 70, when was the last time you sat in a room with 70 people and agreed on every major issue? The only way a church, even what we’d consider a smaller church, can stay together is through alienation or love.

Alienation
You can be so relationally separated from your brothers and sisters that these issues don’t come up. You can show up on Sunday mornings, talk about the donuts and coffee, avoid talk about doctrine, lifestyle, confession of sins, needs for prayer, and any other controversial subject.

Love
Or you can love each other with a love strong enough to overcome doctrinal differences, sin against each other, intentional and unintentional offense, personality clashes, and every other issue that can come between sinful and fallen people.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3.17-19

After talking to Brant Hansen on this podcast I’ve been doing some thinking about the state of the church in America, and though there may be big churches the death of the megachurch will occur.  Or at least the typical structure of them as exemplified by the typical baby boomer megachurch (in this case I’m not defining megachurch simply as greater than 1,000 members).  Essentially these churches are a top-down model heavily influenced by the structure of corporations.  That means there’s a lot of passiveness on the part of members and lots of leading on the part of paid staff.  Paid staff set up programs that are attended by members.  Members sit down and are taught at.  The shape and structure of the church is wholly decided and enacted from the top.

To give you an idea of this type of thinking, I was discussing the possibility of a church website being a wiki (a wiki is just a website that anyone, or at least lots of people, can add to it, and change) with a guy who is familiar with the inner workings of a megachurch. The idea would be that many, most, or all members of a church could add to and modify the website on a continuous basis. He told me it would never happen, that the church leadership would never be willing to give up that kind of control over such a public instrument.  We shouldn’t view this as a single incident, but indicative of the philosophy of boomer megachurches. 

There’s two problems with this philosophy.  The first is that our society is moving away from a centralized, top down model in everything.  People aren’t content to be told what to do by the powers that be. A recent study by Newsweek found that 65% of people aged 14-21 are interested in starting their own business.  Or consider, for a moment, the various internet darlings like myspace, facebook, and even ebay which have de-centralized networking and garage sales respectively.  Their success has come by allowing their communities to shape their sites.  People are more interested than ever in actively shaping their world (whether its electronic, or otherwise).  Businesses, communities, clubs, and other groups that successfully allow the rank and file to take part in shaping what they do are becoming more common, because they’ve started to become wildly successful.  Boomer style megachurches can’t do that.

The second problem is that the top-down style of megachurches let a lot of resources go to waste.  Essentially, unless your skills, interests, abilities and passions mirror the direction the church leadership has decided to go your gifts go to waste.  This leaves you passively following, or back to church hunting.  Churches that manage to create a community that shapes and forms what the church is going to look like will be more successful than churches that don’t.  And by success, I mean any measurement you want to use.  But, not only are they putting all of their resources to work (or at least more of their resources) they also create a church full of pastors.  Instead of having a church with a few pastors and everyone else cheering them on and supporting them, the entire church will be filled with pastors looking for opportunities to minister. 

I could be wrong, I have been in the past (heck, just a month ago I managed to predict every major fight on a UFC show wrongly) but this is more than just a guess on my part, this is the way society is going, contrasted with the way a specific type of church is.  While terms like "the death of megachurches" is dramatic, I doubt that death will mean they simply stop existing, I believe in many cases, as the leadership changes the boomer style megachurch will shift to become different, more closely mirroring the de-centralized communities I’ve described here.

Michael Spencer gives us a little peek behind the curtain. 

Our employees sacrifice to serve here, making less than six thousand dollars in salary and taking on a community life surrounded by other staff and our students 24/7/365. We spend less than $20,000 a year on promotion of any kind. Many of our staff are full time volunteers. We eat food that is primarily donated or raised on our farm. Volunteers come to our campus by the hundreds in order to do construction, donate medical care, renovate buildings and just encourage us in ministry.

We do not turn away any student for financial need. Half of our students are on significant scholarships. We are the third least expensive school of our type in America. Many of our students pay nothing. Churches all over Kentucky and even some elsewhere support us with gifts large and small. Our endowment was almost non-existent for many years. We have never had a fund raiser. Never made a cold call. Never asked a corporation for a donation., Once a year we send a Christmas letter to our friends. Four times a year, we send out a newsletter telling the stories of our successful students.

There’s something of heaven in that.  Sometimes (or most the time) I wonder if we have a severe disconnect from the experience of the church described in the scriptures because our wealth (and yes, chances are if you’re reading this you have an embarrassment of riches) has made us tiny Castros of our own personal Cubas.  There’s no dependence on our brothers and sisters to get by, there’s no shared hardship to bring us together, and there’s too many opportunities for even more independence via wealth as time goes on. 

But here’s the kicker.  Even if you have the desire to live the kind of life Spencer has taken up, chances are you can’t.  The vast majority of us (and I include myself in this), in order to be qualified to fill the position of educator/administrator/preacher/counselor you end up owing thousands of dollars in student loans. And that’s only if you managed to live a frugal lifestyle and not end up owing on credit cards, and cars. 

Lets not pretend that this difficult road Spencer has chosen (paved only recently, so I’ve heard) is all rainbows and roses:

I don’t always like working for a ministry where I don’t have a secretary, where there’s a building full of other people’s donated clothes as part of my compensation and where I’m making less money than I did in 1979. I’m 51, and I still have to move the pulpit by myself every time I come into the chapel to preach. I’m assistant to the President, and I still get asked to substitute teach in middle school.

We can’t find a church, and the church I go to offers almost nothing that I can appreciate or enthusiastically endorse. Good people, but I can never really be myself there. That is difficult and painful, but it’s part of being here where this ministry is most needed.

But at the same time we need to recognize that the existence and success of Spencer’s school is the result of lifestyle (avoiding debt, both personally and institutionally) and focusing on the mission.

A few years ago, our school lost its President to a sudden illness. A search process began to replace him, and a somewhat well-known minister had his eye on the job, so he asked to meet with the staff. After a brief presentation assuring us that the search process was going well, he made his play for our support by telling us we were long overdue to get raises, more benefits, perks and compensation.

Now he was quite right. There were people in that room who made so little money it was embarrassing. I’m grateful that kind of omission was made right by our next President. But what happened next has always stayed with me.

One of our houseparents, a man who, along with his wife, has spent almost three decades here as a night shift houseparent and locksmith, living in a house trailer and dealing with our students at their worst, that man stood up and said something like this:

“Sir, we appreciate what you’ve said today. But you obviously don’t understand us. None of us came here to make money. No one here feels like they have sacrificed at all. They are privileged to be part of this ministry.”

Uncomfortable silence took over that meeting as two sets of values collided. As much as everyone of us in that room would have loved to see a few more dollars in our paychecks, the truth was that we knew it’s a gift to live anywhere near the way, the values and the Kingdom of Jesus. You can’t put a price tag on the treasure Jesus gives.

That, friends, is as intense as it comes.

Taylor Mali does this sort of slam poetry/stand up comedy schtick that mostly revolves around the deification of teachers.  You can see the text of it here (although, to be fair, without seeing him perform you can’t really get a feel for the power of his communication).  In this particular poem he is asked what he makes.  Here’s part of his response:

You want to know what I make?

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best.

Its really power, heady stuff.  But when I hear it I just laugh cynically.  Mostly because after 12 years of dealing with lots of teachers I know its a bunch of crap.  I know that 70% of teachers are at best average, and stand up there and follow the syllabus, 25% are terrible and/or lazy, and 5% are excellent. 

I had one teacher that kept a running total of how many days he had left until retirement.  Once a week he’d hand out a worksheet, take the class down to the weight room and lift weights while we either joined in or sat on the floor and waited for "class" to be over.  Even when we had class, he spent most of it either talking sports with the jocks in class, or

I had a world geography teacher that, unbelievably, was even worse.  On Monday he’d hand out a list of countries, their capitals, and a map then go sit at his desk at the back of the class room and read a variety of newspapers, magazines, and books.  The rest of the week he’d tell us to study the list and go back and read.  Then on Friday he’d pass out the test and go and read. 

Don’t get me wrong I’m not knocking what Taylor Mali does.  He’s probably in the top 1% of communicators in the entire world.  The problem is what he says, and what I’ve experienced are completely at odds, and so when he deifies teachers it has no persuasive effect on me because no matter how good, entertaining or fantastic a communicator he is he cannot overcome what I’ve actually experienced. 

So here’s the lesson.  If you want people to believe that the church should be a place where God’s people love each other, forgive each other, and actually live the gospel then you better make sure that when people experience Christians they experience people who love, forgive, and live the gospel.  Because otherwise there’s no one who can discuss, teach or preach persuasively enough to convince them otherwise.