Category Archives: Reflection

A Day For Civil Religion

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After watching the Presidential Inauguration this morning (with the boss’s permission) I was appreciative of the historic nature of the ceremony.  One aspect is that while we have a long and drawn-out, maybe even chaotic, process for selecting our leaders, somehow it still seems to work.  We have now had 43 orderly, even decently and orderly if you will, transitions between different chief executives.  And the fact that the new President is not a white male of northern European descent is also an important historical milestone.  So, President Obama, may God be with you and you are in my prayers.

Just as I appreciate “high church” liturgies, I am a bit of a sucker for the pomp and circumstance of national ritual events, especially Presidential Inaugurations which must be the pinnacle of our national rituals.  Every move that I watched this morning was carefully scripted and sent some sort of signal in its action.  For America, this is the height of “civil religion.”

The Wikipedia page for Civil Religion notes several varied meanings of the word, but notes that the term originated with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and says that “For Rousseau, civil religion was intended simply as a form of social
cement, helping to unify the state by providing it with sacred
authority.”  It is not a religion with a supreme being at its head, it is a religion of the state.  It is the glue that holds us together as a country.

Alternate meanings include the inclusion of God and religion in civil affairs, such as the plethora of prayers, invocations, benedictions, and prayer services that have occurred over the last few days around all the inauguration events.  While this is not acceptable to everyone, it is a part of our cultural fabric at the present time and expected in our high rituals of civil religion (first definition).  And for a beautiful example of the interaction of culture and religion you need look no further than Rev. Lowery’s benediction.  It was a religious prayer delivered at a civil event, but it was a prayer packed full of cultural and religious references from “Lift Every Voice and Sing” to Amos 5:24.

But today, throughout the campaign, and every day, there was and is always a question whether “civil religion” is an oxymoron in an additional possible meaning of “religion acting in a civil (or orderly) manner.” 

One aspect of being civil with religion was the invitations to give prayers at the various events.  Rev. Warren was not approved of by some, Rev. Robinson opposed by others.  And even the content of their prayers were, and will be, parsed for how they did or did not invoke God at public events and how their words may be offending to some.

But the Bible is clear that (1) we can’t put God in a box to do what we want in the way we want it and (2) many times the message of the Bible should offend.  In the Old Testament you need look no further than the prophets that approached the kings of Israel calling them to account for their misdeeds.  The kings may have been the LORD’s anointed for that time, but they still fell short and messengers such as Samuel, Nathan, and Elijah bluntly reminded them of that.  In the New Testament Jesus says “take up your cross and follow me,” a statement that would have sent shivers down the spines of all who heard it in first century Palestine but has list its deathly and criminal image for us modern hearers.  And Paul writes (I Cor. 1:23). “but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”  At times it is hard to see the Gospel as “good news.”  And at times it is hardly civil.

(As a bit of an aside, there have recently been two well publicized cases of the “offense of the cross.”  In the first, a crucifix was removed from a church in England because it was “a horrifying depiction of pain and suffering.”  In the second, a film crew blocked the view of the communion table cross when shooting a TV soap opera episode so as not to offend viewers.)

There is a place for honest, heartfelt prayers for our leaders both in public and especially in our private prayer lives.  Yes, as Christians we have an assurance of salvation.  But let us not lose sight of the fact that our religious participation is not always to just make us feel good, but also to challenge us to a deeper faith and more energetic service to God.  And our political lives are always subordinate to our faith, not tailoring our faith to our political beliefs.

So a new president has taken office and this election cycle is over, just in time for the next round of campaigning to begin.  The Washington Post has an interesting article by Eli Saslow titled Obama’s Path To Faith Was Eclectic.  And there is an interesting comment on the article at GetReligion.  In light of what this article says and what we have seen so far, it will be interesting to see the interaction of the civil and faith realms in the next four years.

And having had enough civil politics for a while, I now return to church issues.

Christmas is now over, what next? — Reflecting on the Twelve Days of Christmas

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Christmas Day is past.  All of my preparations, reflection, travel, hosting, worrying, church-hopping, family time, and a multitude of other things, focused on that one day out of the year, have met their deadline, ready or not.  Now what?

We are now in the “Twelve days of Christmas,”  the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany.  Usual notation seems to have Christmas as the first day, although I have seen cases where Epiphany is the twelfth day.

In the simplest sense, the Twelve Days of Christmas are just a part of the liturgical calendar — The days of Christmastide after Christmas and before we enter the season of Epiphany.

And yes, it has its own song (with a wild rendition on YouTube by the a capella group Straight No Chaser, although in my opinion a now removed version recorded about a decade ago was better done).  And Dave Walker has his vision of it over at CartoonChurch.com. 

I’m not suggesting that the materialistic chaos of the Christmas Day gift-giving and celebration be repeated another eleven days.  (Although there could be some wonderful ways of “sharing the Christmas season” with others that could happen during this time.)

But as a liturgical and devotional vehicle the days of Christmastide provide us a chance “clutch the baby Jesus” a few more days, as the preacher I heard the morning put it, and remind ourselves not to move on too quickly from this miraculous event where we celebrate God incarnate as a human being.  We need time for it to sink in that it is Emmanuel, “God with us.”

But this year the twelve days of Christmas seem more important to me than in the past.  It is probably the way in which the realities of this broken world have really intruded into my holiday season. 

Within my own family my father-in-law was hospitalized with pneumonia the second day after Christmas.  And while he is still in the hospital and making progress against this setback, this is only a piece in a larger set of health challenges that have permanently affected his lifestyle.

But it is also interesting how this year I am more aware of other peoples’ health challenges out there in the “Church Virtual,” the collection of brothers and sisters in Christ that I know mostly, if not entirely, in the on-line community.  I would especially lift up for prayer the Rev. David Wayne, AKA JollyBlogger, who was diagnosed with cancer just before Christmas and spent Christmas Eve day in the OR.  While I only know David as a faithful medium-term reader of his blog, this is the power of the on-line world that we do become Christian Community with each other through this Web 2.0 stuff.  Praying for you David and rejoicing that you came home today.

And speaking of Web 2.0, I am becoming a fan of Facebook status updates as a way of building and maintaining Christian Community.  (Twitter is a similar vehicle.)  Through this conduit I was aware of various challenges and obstacles that my friends encountered through the holiday season, and it quickly filled up my prayer list.  Again, even 134 character updates are a tool in the development and maintenance of covenant community.

So, I pray that you also may not pass over Christmas too quickly but continue to find ways of  “hanging onto” the season in these twelve days.

Passings — Avery Dulles S.J.

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Yesterday Avery Dulles, Catholic Priest and theologian at Fordham University, passed to his eternal rest at the age of 90.  There have been numerous articles about him, but for a lot of information about his life I recommend the New York Times article.  There is also a press release from Fordham.

Father Dulles’ family heritage was in public service and Presbyterianism.  His father was John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State in the Eisenhower administration.  His grandfather was the Rev. Dr. Allen Macy Dulles, a Presbyterian minister and theologian and professor at Auburn Theological Seminary.   (Allen Macy Dulles’ book The True Church — A Study, published in 1907, is still listed by booksellers.  It is interesting that the work by Avery Dulles that is cited as his “best know work” , Models of the Church, seems to have a similar theme.)  But by the time Avery entered college at Harvard he had left organized religion and was agnostic.  In college he rediscovered religion, or God found him, depending on how you look at it.  In his rebirth of spirituality he joined the Roman church, eventually joining the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and being ordained as a priest.  His professional life was dominated by academic work and he became the first American theologian, rather than a bishop or archbishop, to be elevated to the status of cardinal.  (It was late in life in 2001 at the age of 82 that Dulles became a cardinal, a bit of an “honorary status” since the cutoff for participation in the College of Cardinals for pontifical voting is 80.)

I did not know a lot about Fr. Dulles before his death, but in reading through the articles two aspects of his life resonate with me as having a Presbyterian or Reformed nature, even though he left the Presbyterian branch.  The first was his dedication to vocation.  In his life and work he exhibited his dedication to the academic calling and was never elevated above the ordinary priesthood because that was not his calling.  This calling was recognized by Pope Benedict XVI this past spring in his visit to New York when in a special private audience requested by the pope, Benedict addressed Dulles as “Herr Professor” rather than “Your Eminence” (or the Latin equivalence of that).  Fr. Dulles knew his calling and lived into it.

The other part of his life that struck me was his role as an interpreter of tradition in a new age.  The official Vatican News Service article was headlined “Creativity in Fidelity.”  The New York Times article talks about this work:

His task as a theologian, the Cardinal often said, was to honor
diversity and dissent but ultimately to articulate the traditions of
the church and to preserve Catholic unity.

and

His tenure coincided with broad shifts in theological ideas as well
as sweeping changes brought on by the Second Vatican Council in the
1960s. These provided new understandings of how the church, after
centuries of isolation from modern thought and even hostility to it,
should relate to other faiths and to religious liberty in an age when
the church was gaining millions of new followers in diverse cultures.

Cardinal Dulles devoted much of his scholarship to interpretations of
the Vatican Council’s changes, which he said had been mistaken by some
theologians as a license to push in democratic directions. The church,
he counseled, should guard its sacred teachings against secularism and
modernization.

“Christianity,” he said in a 1994 speech, “would
dissolve itself if it allowed its revealed content, handed down in
tradition, to be replaced by contemporary theories.”

It struck me that he exhibited a “freedom of conscience” while promoting the “peace, unity, and purity” of the church.

I leave you with Cardinal Dulles’ closing lines (quoted here) from his Farewell Lecture this past summer, composed by him but read for him:

Suffering and diminishment are not the greatest of evils but are normal
ingredients in life, especially in old age. They are to be accepted as
elements of a full human existence. Well into my ninetieth year I have
been able to work productively. As I become increasingly paralyzed and
unable to speak, I can identify with the many paralytics and mute
persons in the Gospels, grateful for the loving and skillful care I
receive and for the hope of everlasting life in Christ. If the Lord now
calls me to a period of weakness, I know well that his power can be
made perfect in infirmity. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Technology has made the last minute even later

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My posts to this blog have been a bit further apart this fall since I have been putting extra time into teaching.  And being a typical college professor, I’m not immune from waiting until the last minute on things.  Yesterday was the final exam for my class.  Exam was at 11:30 a.m.  I did a review of the test when I got into the office, started sending the one color figure to the color printer, and caught up on a bit of reading knowing that I had plenty of time to copy off the bulk of the exam.  What I did not count on was one of the department’s copiers being out of service.  When I started coping and discovered this at least I had just enough time to get it copied, assembled, and over to the exam room.  Barely.  Because of my taking technology for granted I was a bit rushed at the end, to say the least.

The effect of depending on technology and waiting until the last minute was even more pronounced today.  Next week is the biggest professional meeting of the year in my field.  I’m not going but part of my job is to help others get ready by helping them print out their poster presentations on a large format printer.  This used to be done as individual 8 1/2 x 11 pages with your text and figures tacked up on a bulletin board.  Now with large format printers you put it all on one 4′ x 6′  poster.  It makes setup and take down a lot easier at the meeting.

Well, because of the high percentage of the faculty and students in the department that go to the meeting we set up a schedule to use the printer.  When the schedule gets posted the latest times on Friday afternoon are the first ones to get claimed.  But there is now an alternative that allows you to put off the work even longer…  There is now a printing service at the meeting so if you have the cash you can wait even longer and get your poster printed just minutes before your session begins.  Not much more last minute than that.  I have had two other faculty members tell me today that they are not ready yet and someone else can have their printer times because they will print it at the meeting.

Coming in the middle of the Advent season I have thought of at least a dozen ways this could be a parable for our spiritual lives.  I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure some of these out for themselves.

But the other thing that this got me thinking about is technology in the church and how it has contributed to “instantaneous polity.”  For example, creating a Facebook group for your church — do you just do it, or run it by the session first.  Streaming or podcasting sermons — do you just do it, or is there some type of quality or content review to be sure it is appropriate for a world-wide audience.  Those of us that blog GA — I did the live blogging thing but afterwords I was pondering some questions of “what really did happen there?” because at the time my fingers were trying to keep up with the speaker’s comments and I was not always processing and analyzing as I went along.  And what about committee reports — with e-mail and word processors we are frequently putting the reports off to the last minute and reviewing and submitting them right before the meeting, because we can.

I have not been a big one for the “technology sabbath,” if for no other reason than Sunday afternoons are sometimes one of the few “empty” spots in my calendar, so I fill it up.  But my concern was raised recently when a medical study showed that children that grow up playing video games develop different neural pathways in their brains than those of us who did not grow up with video games.  Sorry, I have not found a link to that study yet, but I will point out that this week another study came out showing that video games help seniors keep their minds sharp.  Positives and negatives to any technology.

Anyway, some musings on the current trends in human response to technology.  I have made a commitment to continue the low level of blogging for the rest of December so that I can get some other reading done, spend time with family and not just in the same room as them, and think a bit about things.  See you next time.

All Saints Day 2008

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For all the saints who from their labors rest,
Who thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy name O Jesus, be forever blest.
Alleluia!  Alleluia!

If you have begun reading my blog in the last year I need to introduce you to one of my spiritual disciplines.  I use a few of the “feast days” in the traditional liturgical calendar as a way of reminding myself of the faithful lives that saints, those officially canonized and others not so formally declared, lived and displayed to the world.  But for me, the most significant is today, the Feast of All Saints, when I remember the saints I have known and that have been an inspiration to me in my spiritual journey, especially those who have joined the Church Triumphant in the past year.

This year I especially remember:

  • Dorothy — who though restricted in movement still attended worship and fellowship events at church with a smile that showed how much she loved the Lord and being part of the covenant community
  • Sonny — a dear friend and a wonderful, cheerful, faithful, and dedicated worker as long as he was able
  • Jean — who for years I saw working for the church doing little acts of hospitality and concern
  • Rose — someone who understood the wider church and cared about it more than most
  • Jack — how do I describe a saint like Jack?  While he would never accord himself the title, he was a “street” theologian who understood Reformed theology as well as anyone around here and would share his insights enthusiastically.  And as much as Jack understood what lay on the other side, he fought mightily to stay with the Church Militant
  • Robert — He demonstrated the essence of what it meant to be a Christian in the public arena
  • Bill — He always had a smile on his face and had good reason to, including a marriage that was in its seventh decade

These and others now praise God around the throne with the Church Triumphant.  Well done good and faithful servants.  And thanks for inspiring me.  May I run the race as well.

O blest communion, fellowship divine
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Reformaion Day 2008

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A little over twenty years ago my wife and I had the wonderful opportunity to travel on a church “study tour” to Germany and Switzerland.  It was great to see several of the architectural landmarks of the Reformation.  But a more important observation was how history is read, or presented, through various lenses.  The examples were numerous, both on my part and on the part of the places we visited and people we talked to.  A couple of examples:

At the time we visited Germany was still a divided country and visiting Erfort and Eisenach required crossing into East Germany, the DDR.  It was very interesting visiting the Wartburg Castle in Eisenach and seeing and hearing the official presentations about the castle under “godless communism.”  If you are not familiar with the Wartburg, it is the castle in which Martin Luther hid out and finished his translation of the Bible into German.  It is an impressive structure with a long history and wonderful architecture.  But when we visited, the information on Dr. Luther was almost devoid of religious significance.  It acknowledged the historical facts and the context of the Reformation, but the official view was that his pastoral and professorial duties were just his occupation.  The great achievement of translating the Bible into German was not getting Holy Scripture into the common tongue for all to read, but rather by translating an important work into German he established a linguistic and grammatical standard for the German language.  Oficially, what was translated was not important in itself, just that there was now a recognized and widely distributed book that would set the standard for the written language.  If you don’t need God, you don’t need God’s Word for its own sake.

On the other end of the spectrum was visiting with local pastors from both East and West Germany.  In West Germany, the Evangelish (Lutheran) Church was effectively a national church and we saw school children, as part of their classes, coming to church.  A parish did not need to directly support their pastor since support came through their taxes.  The church was a pivotal point in the community.  In the East, we were told it was a rare exception to be the pastor of a single church.  The general trend was to minister to three congregations: “To serve less would be an offense to the people and to serve more would be an offense to God.”  But you could tell that the pastor we spent the evening talking to was dedicated to his work serving God and he loved the people.

A friend of mine had a similar experience when he visited the communist bloc with a church youth group a few years before our visit.  At one stop a local came up to him and quietly introduced himself as another Christian.  My friend expressed concern for the man because it must be hard to be a Christian in that country.  The man reversed the comment to my friend, expressing his concern for the Americans because being a Christian was too easy, before slipping away into the crowd.

A lot is being said right now about how we have entered a Post-Christendom era (for example the recent  Trinity University Consultation on Post-Christendom Spiritualities) and people are concerned about the decline of the U.S.A. as a “Christian nation.”  Elsewhere, the British Parliment is considering the disestablishment of the Anglican Church and the Church of Scotland is discussing if it should be a national church.  And from many sides people are suggesting that we may be in the midst of a “New Reformation.”

I am not convinced that this is a totally negative turn of events.  As products of Christendom how do we live our lives?  Do we remember that one of the earliest names for the Covenant Community was “The People of The Way?”  Our faith is not just an hour and some coffee on Sunday morning but a lifestyle choice.  Are we too embarresed by our churches to invite our friends and neighbors to join us on Sunday morning?  Do we take our faith too lightly?  Do we recognize and give thanks for the freedom we have to practice our religion?  Maybe, like Christians throughout history, including those I met in the communist bloc, some challange, rejection, or even oppression would help to focus our faith on living according to “The Way.”  Is there a cost of discipleship?  In the face of conflict do we need to stand up and announce what we believe?  Sometimes we do need to declare “Here I stand.  I can do no other. May God help me. Amen!”

Happy Reformation Day!

Taking Time To Be A Moderator

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The reality of taking time to be a Moderator of a Presbyterian governing body has been on my mind the last couple of weeks as I struggle to find the time to work on finishing up business items for next week’s Synod meeting and try to figure out how to juggle my professional and family schedule to make these church things happen.  (So if I have so much else to do why am I blogging?  Think of it as a brief diversion to help relax and focus the mind.)

But over the last few years I have been tracking the time and implications of being the moderator of the General Assembly.

With the GA season over and the GA cycle beginning anew this month it is first appropriate to congratulate and offer up our prayers for the Rev. Douglas MacKeddie, pastor of Maryburgh and Killearnan Free Church, who was named the Moderator designate of the Free Church of Scotland earlier this month.  Mr. MacKeddie is a second career minister who has served his current church his whole 26 year pastoral career.  There is a nice article from the Ross-shire Journal about Pastor MacKeddie.

In other news, the selection process for the Moderator designate of the Church of Scotland is now at a list of three nominees: The Reverend John P Chalmers is the Pastoral Adviser and Associate Secretary for Ministries Support and Development for the Church of Scotland. The Reverend William C Hewitt is the pastor of Westburn, Greenock. And finally an elder, an uncommon designate in the Church of Scotland, Professor Herbert A Kerrigan, Q.C., (professional profile, the “QC” is a lawyers’ professional status of “Queen’s Counsel“) who is an Elder and Reader at Greyfriars Tolbooth and Highland Kirk in Edinburgh. ( I would also note that the Rev. Hewitt is a colleague and friend of Liz, the author of one of my favorite blogs journalling. )

As I hint at above, in some Presbyterian branches only ministers are selected as Moderator of a General Assembly under the polity of that branch.  In some branches, like the Church of Scotland, the position is open to either ministers or elders, but a minister is almost always chosen.  In most American branches elders are more frequently selected, and in the Presbyterian Church in America the position explicitly alternates between Teaching Elders (ministers) and Ruling Elders.

What is the role of the Moderator?  The first duty is to run the meeting but beyond that the Moderator becomes the representative and public face of that governing body for their term in office.  I have my own extensive discussion of what the Moderator is and for the PC(USA) Bruce Reyes-Chow and Byron Wade (Part 1, Part 2) have posted their own descriptions as well as Byron’s interesting post on what it takes to run the meeting.  Over at the Church of Scotland the Moderator Right Rev. David Lunan blogs his activities and travels and the church has posted his schedule.  And some of the denominations, like the Church of Scotland and the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, have their own descriptions posted.

Being a Moderator, especially the Moderator of the General Assembly, takes time and requires travel. For the PC(USA) and the Church of Scotland the travel can be extensive.  Looking at the travel schedules for Bruce and Byron it is clear that there are significant demands.  For example, Bruce lists seven days of travel in September, eighteen in October, and eleven in November.  That’s about 36 days out of 90 or a bit over 1/3.  Back before he was elected Bruce said that his limit was to travel three out of every eight weeks so he is pretty close to that target, if you average over three months.  (For October alone he will be gone more than half the days.  And I should also say that this is his complete travel schedule and it may include other professional travel aside from the Moderator stuff.)

Now let me ask this question:  Do we demand too much from the PC(USA) Moderator of the GA, or at least too much for typical elders to be able to devote the time?  This came up in the election of the Moderator at this year’s GA when the candidates were asked how their churches will get along without them.  The three ministers all said that their sessions or boards had agreed to them not being around as much while the elder replied that “I don’t have a church” and that being retired he had the time for the position.  The reality of serving as the Moderator pretty much demands that you be involved in a church or ministry where the position is seen as part of your service to the church and you are given the flexibility to serve.  If you are an elder you pretty much need to be retired, self-employed, or involved in church ministry like Rick Ufford-Chase.  Just my presbytery and synod work has taxed my vacation, and the patience of my family and employer.  If Mr. Kerrigan is named the moderator designate of the Church of Scotland I will be interested to see how he balances professional and ecclesiastical demands.

Should we be concerned about elders being able to serve as Moderator of the General Assembly of the PC(USA)?  We claim that it is joint leadership of clergy and elders.  But for the record for the 218th GA there were three clergy and one elder running for Moderator, for the 217th there were four clergy, and for the 216th there was one elder and two clergy.  Back when the term of office was one year it was not really any better, there were three clergy for the 215th and the 214th and an even two clergy and two elders for the 213th.

Right off hand I’m not sure if this is a problem, but as an elder it does strike me as an imbalance in our system.  As I mentioned above, the PCA has a mechanism to enforce balance, but  I’m not sure that is the way to go.  I bring this up as something to think about and to keep in mind as we work within our polity.

Connectedness in the Covenant Community: Part 2 — Ready For Your Close-up?

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In Part 1 of this discussion I asked the question of how a denomination with a large number of members and connectional but institutional structure can not just operate in a connectional manner, but feel connectional as well.  That was the big picture and my friend Karen in her comment pointing out the younger generations don’t care about the church as an institution she anticipated this Part 2 about our connectional nature on the local level.  Now this is not connectional in the polity sense, but connectional in the relational sense within the congregation.

So once again I want to ask an uncomfortable question about our connectedness.  While this one may not be heretical, it is a bit different than much of the “emergent” church discussion I have seen.

Are we not so much losing the younger generation as we are losing the family?

I have started asking myself this question because recently I have been playing back in my mind almost five decades, but I can probably only reliably speak for four, of involvement in the church.  And while this is highly unscientific, I think that I see a couple things in congregational dynamics related to this.

First, I appreciate the current emphasis on young adults, doing church differently, being interactive and relational, all the new technology, terminology and thinking.  I think this is important and critical for church growth.  But as I look at my friends going back several decades I have started asking the question whether those that we are trying to attract to the church are young adults that were involved in the church and have left, or whether they were never involved in the church because it was their parents that left the church.  In running through my list, unscientifically, it seem to be as much if not more the latter than the former.  Many of the “unchurched” peers that my children interact with are not unchurched because of a direct choice they made, but they have never attended church because their parents, who are my age, made the choice.  (You could probably extend this argument back even one more generation to when the decline in mainline membership began, but in the white, middle-class suburb I grew up in all of my close friends were in church-going families.)

Now, fast-forward to the present time and ask which churches have the strongest programs for the pre-college age crowd.  Across denomination, and non-denomination, boundaries in my corner of Los Angeles it is not churches that have good youth programs per se, but good family programs including all ages.  I am not aware of a local church that has success with their youth group while not bringing in the parents as well for more than Sunday morning.

A few qualifiers:  One is that my second comment does not necessarily pertain to the college age/young adult ministry.  They are on their own, may have rejected the church, and have no direct parental structure to add value to church participation.  Here is where the “emergent” church work probably applies most strongly.  A second condition is that for the present youth groups I can not make any claim or denial of retention into college or young adulthood.  There is probably a scientific study out there that does answer this, but I lose contact with many of my kids peers at this point so my unscientific observations break down here.

From these observations I see a couple of implications:
One is that if you want church growth going forward the focus of the church today should be on the family.  We need to think bigger than just the youth group.  And Carrol Howard Merritt’s “Quick Fix” post about there being no quick fix but the need to develop relationships applies here as well.

The other, and this I have seen discussed elsewhere, is that bringing young adults back to church can be different for those that have left and those that never attended.  While the relationship angle is important, the two groups can come with very different questions, fears, and expectations or lack there-of.

Finally, as I kept saying these are not scientific observations but what I see around me and my family and in my life history.  Seeing as how so much in church growth has been studied I am probably not breaking new ground here.  But for what it is worth these are trends and implications I have noticed and I welcome corresponding or conflicting observations from others.  But it seems to me that in the end connectionalism in the smallest sense depends on the place of the family in Covenant Community.

Connectedness in the Covenant Community: Part 1 — The Big Picture

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This is a two-parter where I will ask and reflect on a couple of uncomfortable questions related to the Covenant Community of the church.  (And with a little luck I’ll get both parts written in the next 36 hours.)

In this part I want to ask a question that might just get me labeled a heretic; there is a bit of that going around at the moment.

Part of what got me thinking about this is that “PresbyFest,” as Michael Kruse has labeled it, is going on in Snowbird, Utah, with back-to-back-to-back-to-back meetings of the “PC(USA) Establishment” including the annual polity conference, Association of Executive Presbyters Meeting, joint Middle Governing Body and General Assembly Council meeting, and GAC alone.  That is a lot of meetings for relatively few people for a denomination of about 2.2 million people.

This in part got me wondering…

Is the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) too big?

Let me ask this question another way: How can we be effectively connected in a denomination this large?

The “Presbyterian” answer of course is that

the congregation’s connected to the session,
the session’s connected to the presbytery,
the presbytery’s connected to the synod,
the synod’s connected to the General Assembly…

But how does this play out in reality?  In the past I have commented on what I saw as the disconnect between the “people in the pews” and “the folks in Louisville.”  And this past General Assembly has raised a lot of questions and uncertainty based on what I hear when I talk with churches and groups about what the General Assembly did, or did not do.  Is the PC(USA) too big to be a truly connectional church?

And when I use the term “big,” I do mean our size both in terms of total numbers and in terms of the institution and its many branches, offices, and agencies.  Most of the people in the pews have never heard of ACSWP or MRTI, to say nothing of being able to tell you where the scope of one group’s work ends and the other’s begins.

In his 1994 book, The Body, Charles Colson tells the story of a church, a story that has stuck in my mind for almost 15 years now.  He tells of talking to a pastor who, with some reticence, admitted that he and his board of elders were trying to shrink the church.  This was not for physical or logistical reasons, but they felt God was calling them to reduce their congregational membership to those individuals who were committed to the church’s vision for mission.  The elders faithfully prayed and membership dropped.  But once the core group was left the church started growing again and with their unity of vision the mission of the church was strengthened.  Do we take our Book of Order seriously when we say “The Church is called to undertake this mission even at the risk of losing its own life.”

Another way that our size may get in the way of our connectedness is the small sampling represented at General Assembly.  With about 750 commissioners for 10,000 churches that is less than one commissioner per ten churches.  For medium and small Presbyterian branches every pastor is a commissioner to GA and every church gets to send a ruling elder.  It seems that this would improve the knowledge of GA actions and increase the “buy-in” of congregations in denominational actions.  I am not sure we could fund or organize a 20,000+ person GA, but there may be a lesson in it.  (And yes, I am aware that doing this does not eliminate the doctrinal disagreements, but it does seem to have them handled more smoothly.)

Please do not take this as an argument strictly in favor of the continued decline in the PC(USA) and the realignment of churches with other Presbyterian branches, but  I will admit that an interpretation like that is within what I have said here.

But, what I am mostly thinking about is how the large denomination can “feel” better connected, can feel smaller to the membership.  Sending four commissioners to GA or the Executive to Snowbird is a start, but only represents a small sample of the churches in the denomination.  Lines of communication need to be opened in new ways and the blogging by officials is a start.  But does even Bruce have 10,000 readers, one from each church?  The PC(USA) fan site on Facebook only has around 2,500 fans.

How can we better connect?  Should we consider regional gatherings that each church is required, or highly encouraged, to send representatives to.  It would need to be worthwhile for it to get the audience that would connect each congregation to the wider church and to the other churches in a region larger than a presbytery.  Do we have events that blur presbytery borders, where neighboring churches get together irregardless of the presbyteries they are in?  In a dense area like Southern California could neighboring presbyteries hold joint meetings once a year?  Or are we meetinged out and want to stick with the status quo?

In this case size is not just a membership or institutional measurement but a “people” measurement as well.  We are too big if we lose sight of each other across the table.  We need to find ways and be intentional about our connectionalism so we are truly connected on many different scales.

Next time, connectedness in the congregation: Are we too small?

Listening In The Covenant Community

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A couple of weeks ago the session of my church came to the congregation and basically said that the church is at a “crossroads,” (a good one in this case) and that the session wanted the input of the congregation in deciding which way to turn at this crossroads.  Starting this week they have begun a process of “listening” to the congregation, including taking the time last Sunday morning to meet with the youth of the church during their education hour class.  According to my sons the session members clearly got input from the youth.

This made the piece that Carol Howard Merritt posted today on Tribal Church even more significant for me.  I have to think that most of you are already regular readers of Tribal Church, but if you have not read The quick fix you need to, especially if you are concerned or interested in the direction of the church with the younger generation.  Actually, she really says nothing new but in a profound way reminds us what the Covenant Community is supposed to be about in the first place and how we build that community.

Getting back to my church, I can say that the session took the time to listen, and in doing so established a great deal of good will and relationship with the youth.  (The rest of the church is giving their input as well through the listening process.) The session has also promised to report back quickly.  But as Carol points out, what happens next will be critical to the relationship with the youth.  Based on what the session hears will the concerns the youth expressed be at least acknowledged if not acted upon?  And just as important, will there be continued efforts to listen to them and make them feel valued in the church community?

Fortunately my particular church is not in need of a quick fix.  But we must be conscious of the long-term direction of the church and what we need to do to keep the younger generation engaged.  While my congregation is active and vital today, the comments that session got from the youth indicate that we do not connect as well as we could.  That is something to consider so that we don’t find ourselves in need of the quick fix.