What I don’t want the future of Christianity to look like

Posted on February 23rd, 2012

Sometimes we first need to identify what we do not want in order to articulate what we do.

-Christopher Butler, “Future Daydream”, Print, February 2012, 66.1

When you think about the future of the church, what is it that you think of? I know it’s a difficult image to conjure, given that we’re in a time of so much upheaval in the life of faith, but surely you’ve thought about it.

Perhaps you can just glimpse some nascent truths you hope flower into something larger. Perhaps you’ve been able to articulate something quite robust in a particular area. However, my guess is that you are like the rest of us and you fall back on a very tried and true notion of many an amateur futurist: You imagine the future to simply be a “better” now.

Periodically, a company will release a video of a design concept they’ve been working on as a way to show what kinds of experiences we might be able to look forward to down the road. Recently, Microsoft released one they’ve called “Productivity Future Vision” and design critics and technologists alike have widely panned the vision presented. This led Christopher Butler to write in the current issue of Print that the hump we need to get over is one of simply assuming that the future will be a pristine version of all the things we like to do now. As he put it, “It would be a shame to be remembered as the generation that tweeted while the world crumbled around us.”

To open up new vistas, Butler suggests that we might want to spend some time talking about what we don’t want to see the future become before we further attempt a positive vision. I think that’s wise advice. The truth is that tomorrow’s problems are going to be caused by today’s solutions.

I don’t want a better tomorrow. I want a different one.

Here are bits and pieces of a Christianity I don’t want to wake up to in 30-50 years years:

Leadership

When I try to glimpse the future of the Christian faith, I don’t want to see old white men in a suit. Don’t get me wrong: I’m gonna be that guy some day and I’d like to be valued for my gifts. However, we’ve traveled this road for long enough. The truth of the matter is that white guys represent the very top percentage of privilege and power in the world. Given that the faith is increasingly moving to southern, not-white regions, I’m not convinced that having me and my pale brothers “in charge” is a very good idea any more. The fact is, we do not understand the world most Christians are or will live in. It’s time to step aside, boys.

Theology

As I have recently written, I want to challenge our understanding of theology as law or science. In an increasingly diverse world, where faithful disciples live in countless different contexts, it is ridiculous to me that if we just try a little bit harder we’ll find that one magic word that brings us all together. Our faith in a unifying theological expression is more of a hurt than a help. We have beat each other up over our doctrines for years and, at the current course and speed, I see no reason why we would stop.

If I wake up in 30 years and all theology has amounted to is a continued argument about whether [insert favorite theologian] was right and whether or not you’re living up to the legacy of [insert favorite theologian], I’m giving up my ordination.

Membership

Modern church membership, as a category, was conceived of by Mainline denominations. By and large, the reason congregations began to keep membership rolls was so that a per captia (“by the head”) apportionment could be assessed in order to pay for the workings of the levels of the denomination beyond the congregation. At the congregational level, there are always concerns over how many members are on the rolls so that the Board can ascertain what the yearly budget might look like based on the number of current “giving units.”

Although we have developed very sophisticated theologies of membership, and although it cannot be denied that church boards genuinely care for the people they serve, on thing is clear: church leaders are concerned about “membership” because they are concerned about cash. I am all for good stewardship, but I do not want to see the Church of the future judging its ministry by asking “How much? How often? How many?”

Mission

“Missional” is still a buzz word for Christians. We try to encourage one another that “missions” is not something we do as the people of God, it is a way of approaching our work as the people of God. It seems as if every variety of the Church wants to conceive of itself as a “Missional Church,” but as I look to the future I hear many predicting I’m afraid that we are still conceiving of missional activity in terms of an institution directing large scale activity. We are still conceiving of the Church largely as a social service agency. I’m no longer convinced that judging the viability of our congregations rests in their ability to design, implement, and sustain large scale social service programming.

So… what would I like to see?

Regarding leadership, I want to see a lot more women, particularly young women of color. As one example, I believe that my friend and colleague Theresa Cho is one of the most gifted and visionary leaders I’ve met in the last ten years. She represents everything I want my own denomination to be, and I bet she’s close to what you want as well.

When I think of the future of theology, I want to see an understanding that allows and accounts for multiple visions of God work in creation. I don’t want us to continue arguing for an understanding of God that seeks to lock down and limit, but one that suggests, sets free, and expands our understanding of God. In my opinion, the only thing that can do that is see theology as an art form.

Frankly, I’d like to do away with the cheap version of membership that we currently have. Rather than hunt people down and then try to sap money from them as they casually engage our community for a while until they slip away leaving us to wonder where they went when it comes time to review the membership roster, I suggest that membership becomes a serious endeavor. Feel free to engage the community in any way you wish, but don’t be a member until you’re ready to dedicate a serious portion of your “time, talent, and treasure” supporting others in the work of ministry. In short, membership becomes willful servitude.

But this “willful servitude” is undertaken to a particular end: ensuring that others can live a life of mission. Rather than mission being a program that is directed by the congregation, which people do in their spare time, I would like (instead) to see congregations providing nurture, support, and education for people as they dedicate their lives to endeavors which seek to bring freedom to all.

Categories: Church, Leadership, Spirituality, Theology

You know that great idea you have for a church? It’s probably not so great…

Posted on February 22nd, 2012

…but it’s okay. There’s a way around that.

Last fall, I read a great book on startups called The Lean Startup by Eric Reis. I know, I know – you have problems with the mash up of business talk and church talk. I do, too. The great thing is that this book hates “business talk” as well.

Everything Reis writes is based on the idea that traditional business practices are good for traditional businesses, but that start ups are completely different beasts. Much of what he offers is golden, but here is the most golden thing:

The #1 job of a startup is to learn.

Here’s what Reis has to say on theleanstartup.com:

Too many startups begin with an idea for a product that they think people want. They then spend months, sometimes years, perfecting that product without ever showing the product, even in a very rudimentary form, to the prospective customer. When they fail to reach broad uptake from customers, it is often because they never spoke to prospective customers and determined whether or not the product was interesting. When customers ultimately communicate, through their indifference, that they don’t care about the idea, the startup fails.

I think this has HUGE implications for starting new churches because it is the difference between emphasizing the product and the people.

About a year and a half into my ministry at the church I was serving, I tried to reframe the way our congregation did missions work. Influenced by my time at Covenant Community Church in Louisville and the work of The Church of the Savior in Washington, DC, I was convinced that the best way to help persons engage in service to the world was to help them arrange themselves in to smaller “intentional communities.”

To that end, I embarked on a months long planning and implementation process to help persons discern their gifts and the needs of the world, to train them to lead communities, etc. When all was said and done no one took advantage of the training I had given them by starting a community.

The hard lesson I learned was that the people I was serving wanted to serve God’s world, but they didn’t want to do it through these intentional communities.

The Lean Startup method suggests that every entrepreneur begin with a “minimum viable product” (MVP). The MVP is a bare bones, rudimentary version of the product that allows that startup to learn whether they have a sustainable model on their hands. By placing the MVP into the hands of a continuous series of customers, they will learn what does and does not work or whether they are even in the right market sector at all.

As I wrote in Open Source Church, I happen to think that the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the point of the church is to actualize freedom. Given this, what is the church version of the MVP?

Categories: Church

Tagged: church of the savior, covenant community church, intentional communities, start ups

Religio Reductio: What Liberal Christians are Giving Up for Lent 2012

Posted on February 21st, 2012

Categories: Religio Reductio

Giving up chocolate and beer for Lent is not what Jesus had in mind

Posted on February 19th, 2012

In three days, it will be Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Naturally, folks are all abuzz about how to best observe. As I read through Facebook comments, tweets, and blog posts, I find that I have had all of the typical responses.

“I’m gonna give up chocolate or alcohol.”
“Giving things up is ridiculous. God wants us to live fully live. This whole practice is just stupid.”
“Instead of giving something up, I’m taking something on this year.”

Like I said: I’ve said and done each of these things. I’ve given up something that was that important, I’ve wholly rejected the practice as a part of my rejection of conformist religion, and I’ve tried to reframe “self-denial” into “self-giving.”

But each of these responses makes a mistake, in my opinion. Notice that all of them are about me. They have very little to do with what God might be doing, but about something that I’m doing. Each of these responses betray a belief that I am the one in control, that I am the one, ultimately, who matters. As Richard Rohr says,

Resurrection takes care of itself. It’s getting people into tombs that’s hard. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, most contemporary people, both liberals and conservatives, abhor boundaries.

This realization was a hard truth for me, and so I have returned to the classic Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. I encourage you to do the same.

Prayer

Prayer is not about asking God for things. It is about establishing, maintaining, or strengthening your connection to God in Christ. We do this so that we can begin to see the world as Christ sees it.

This is the first, most foundational Lenten practice. If you do nothing else during Lent, commit to the practice of daily prayer (preferably silent and contemplative, like Centering Prayer or praying with beads). Lent is the perfect time to reignite your prayer life. It is the time of the year when we intentionally focus on dying in order to rising.

Fasting

Fasting (what we typically mean when we talking of “giving something up”) is not about doing without “something you LOVE,” but doing without something you need. We should be limiting our chocolate and alcohol intake anyway. What do you say we not use Lent as an excuse to go on a diet?

The point of fasting is to recognize our dependence on God’s provision. Typically, fasting is done once or twice a week. Try John Wesley‘s practice of sundown to sundown on Mondays to Tuesdays and Thursdays to Fridays.

Almsgiving

If you are submitting to Christ through prayer and fasting, you will begin to see Christ in “the least of these.” When you do, offer yourself to the Christ you find in them. It’s really very simple, and it can be planned or spontaneous. Either way, it will be countercultural.

If you’re anything like me, you have to fight making spiritual practice into a self-improvement project. The Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are the best ways to avoid that impulse that I’ve found. As Craig Dykstra wrote in Growing In The Life of Faith, Spiritual practices are actually not ours. They are the practices of the Holy Spirit that we get to inhabit. That these practices are not mine is important, in my opinion. Whereas Lenten disciplines are intended to remind us of our dependence on God, we more often inhabit these practices as if we are the ones responsible for the outcome of our lives and the world.

In the end, whatever you do during Lent is between you and God, but let’s commit to engaging in disciplines that remind us of our dependence on God not ones that prop us up as the saviors of ourselves.

Categories: Spirituality

Tagged: almsgiving, fasting, Lent, prayer, social justice, spiritual discipline

Of Saviors and Superheroes

Posted on February 18th, 2012

My earliest memories were in church. Life began and ended there. My life began there, and, some would say, my “real life” as a child of God began there too.

We went to this remarkably big church for a while in Broken Arrow, OK, which is just outside of Tulsa. It was your typical early to mid-eighties Charismatic church. There was singing and dancing galore – holy rollers to be sure. I have a vivid memory of that church because, apparently, that’s where I “accepted Jesus into my heart.”

“Accepting Jesus into your heart” was a big deal in my family. It seemed like every moment of your life your family would look forward to you “getting saved.” It happened to me when I was five or six. To be honest, it never really was that big of a deal to me (the getting saved part, not the being a Christian part) and apparently it wasn’t that day either.

The band at the church had been pumping for what seemed like an hour (in that church it could have been) and the pastor kept saying that “the Holy Ghost is obviously in this place.” I took as evidence of that the fact that people were running around the freaking huge sanctuary like they were at a track meet, dancing in the aisles, on the seats, banging tambourines, and clapping like Jesus was, literally, on his way back to pick them up. It was a riot.

But to my little boy sensibilities, it was not a riot. I was intrigued at the total abandon that people were able to experience. I was amazed to see grown men and women flailing their bodies about. I was always too embarrassed to do it. To this day, I have a difficult time dancing in front of other people, and I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that dancing for me has always been equated with religious fervor – a fervor I have struggled to understand my entire life.

I’m not sure how it happened but after a while I was up on my feet. I don’t know what was different about that particular Sunday, but I needed to move. Of course I thought it was the Holy Ghost coursing through my veins (and it may have been) but all I knew was that I needed to move my little body.

So I began to run and run and run and run. The music was frenetic and exciting and triumphant and I was like a little Christian Rocky Balboa taking the spiritual steps of Philly.

After a while the music seemed to calm down a bit and I landed on the front steps of the stage. An adult came down to talk to me and, almost without thinking, I told him that I guessed I wanted to be saved.

Now I knew that I was not a perfect little kid, and I never really claimed to be. I’ve gotta say that I wasn’t really scared of hell – hell wasn’t even a thought in my mind. All I knew was that it felt good to be there and to run and dance and sing and if that was what having Jesus in your heart was about then I was all for it.

It wasn’t about Jesus for me. It was about me. I’m not ashamed of it, nor do I think that it’s wrong or unique. In fact I would be willing to bet you that if you asked any group of little kids why it was that they “got saved,” they would most likely tell you one of two things: a) because Mom and Dad told them they should or b) because they wanted Jesus on their side.

It was the second for me. I wanted Jesus on my side. If what the pastor said was true then it seemed to me to be a pretty good option for me to have the kick ass King of Kings in my corner. This Jesus he was talking about is the one that told the Devil to shove it, cast out demons, and walked on water. Oh damn – he walked on water!

To be honest that was the coolest freaking thing about Jesus to me: the guy had superpowers. Now, we were taught to call them “miracles”, but, let’s be honest, these are superpowers were looking at. Raising people from the dead? Healing people of diseases? Lame to walk? Deaf to hear? This is straight outta the comics folks, and I wanted to be a part of every bit of it. But, whereas superheros live in the comics – I’ve got Jesus in my heart. Take that, Stan Lee.

So this guy asks me if I want to have Jesus I my heart, and I say yes. Then he asks me if I’m sorry for all my sins. I have no clue really what I should be sorry for, but I say yes. And he tells me to repeat after him, and I do, and now I’m saved.

Kind of a let down. You’ve got the most powerful entity in the universe, who can kick the shit out of anything, and all I had to do was say “come in”? Fine by me, if there’s nothing more to it.

Later when we were standing outside of the sanctuary with another family my mom told me to “Tell so-and-so your exciting news.” I was puzzled. Exciting news? What the hell was she talking about?

My own mother had to prompt me to retell the story of how I had just gotten myself saved from the fiery pits of hell. All I wanted was to have a superhero for a best friend.

Categories: Testimony

Tagged: church, conversion, holy ghost, holy roller, holy rollers, salvation, worship