Reforming North American Christianity, part 7

Well, this is my last post in this series on “Reforming North American Christianity.” This series has prompted some interested conversations, both on the blog, and off the blog. The sociological landscape of North America has shifted, and I believe this requires we make some adjustments to our Christian way of life. I’ve talked about the need for more quiet, more silence, a greater comfort level with being different, and most recently, to thinking of ourselves as missionaries in a post-Christian society.

In particular, I believe a renewed emphasis on lay spirituality will be required if any sort of reformation is to take place. No doubt ordained members of the Body of Christ have been used by God in important ways over the centuries, but at the heart of the Christian faith is the ordinary man or woman of God. Across Christian denominations there are different perspectives on the roles of clergy and laity (and whether in fact there should be such distinctions at all), but surprisingly, in the last sixty years there has been a remarkable agreement by most of the major Christian traditions that the laity are the primary ministers of the Church.

I love the priesthood and being a priest, so I am not calling for an abolishment of the clergy or seeking to invite clergy bashing here. Yet, if reformation is to happen, we must return the focus of the Christian faith from the majesty of the sanctuary to the lowliness of the sidewalk – to the addresses of our daily lives. This means we must not view worship as an isolated event from the rest of our week, but instead, view worship as a launching pad for our week and for our lives. In some liturgical churches the final hymn of the service is called a processional (yes, just like the first hymn, no typo here), meaning that as the worship “service” ends, the real work of serving God begins as we process out into our everyday lives with their challenges, joys, chaotic interludes, and predictable routines.

Besides all this, a reformation of the laity will require:

1.      An acknowledgment that every Christian is called to be a theologian, meaning that every Christian is called to understand their faith and do some serious thinking about it.  

2.      A stronger equipping role by local congregations, helping lay people think through, often at sophisticated levels, what it means to be a Christian in the world. What is particularly needed here is helping Christians sort out what it specifically means to be Christian in a particular vocation or season of life.

3.      Regular dialogue between those serving within the gathered church and the vast majority of Christians (the scattered church) living for Christ out in the world (at home, school, work, in the midst of family life, friendships, etc.).

What am I missing here?

Reforming North American Christianity, part 6

It’s time to get out. I mean out of our churches and out into our communities. It’s time to get out of the holy-huddle business and time to get into the holy-giving away business. It’s time we moved the bulls-eyes of the Christian life from the Sunday morning service to our service of Christ in the faces of the people we interact with each day. If Christianity is going to be reformed and revived in North America we must start living and thinking like missionaries and stop thinking and living like museum curators and docents. For those of us raised in the Church this will be, in most cases, an extremely painful transition. We will have to be willing to part with many customs and activities that we have come to treasure in order to embrace new ways of being the Church (for example, see the Fresh Expressions movement).

Would we rather preserve the furniture on the deck of the Titanic or let the furniture be washed away and preserve the ship itself? At a recent gathering of faithful folk I vocalized my belief that many of us in the Church today must be willing to labor and break-ground for a revived Church that we will not live to see fully blossom, but will blossom never-the-less for our children’s or perhaps grandchildren’s generations.  But how do we do it? How do we begin turning staid, conservative (sociologically) congregations into mission outposts for the Kingdom of God? Into churches that are not so much places where people go once a week, but places where people are continually coming and going on Gospel business? (see the Abbey model for an interesting proposal in this direction).

Here are some first steps I think we as individuals and congregations can begin with:

1.      Ask ourselves and our sessions/deacons/Vestries/parish councils, etc. “Would our community miss us if we closed tomorrow? Why or Why not?”

2.      Stop hosting all of the churches meeting at the church building. Meet in a local café, park, bar (gasp!), coffee shop, etc. Get out of the Christian ghetto!

3.      Stop pretending we live in a Christian nation. Embrace the fact we live in a post-Christian nation and learn to live like a missionary.

4.      If your building is killing your congregation, get rid of it.

5.      Stop treating Sunday worship as the pinnacle of Christian life and practice. Doing this is like saying that the pinnacle of family life is sitting down to eat a big meal together once a week. Surely such sit-downs are important to a family, but they are not the sole arbiter of a family’s health or bonds of affection, are they? (if family members are not showing up at the big sit-down dinner does this mean something is wrong with the meal or something else? Hmmm…)

6.      Don’t bother with a mission statement or a long winded planning process. Instead read Matthew 5-7 and obey. Hard medicine, I know.

7.      Laugh together, have a good time, throw a party (invite your neighbors).

 Some starters, what would you suggest?

Reforming North American Christianity, part 5

In my last post I discussed the necessity of reclaiming our  unique character as followers of Jesus Christ, which requires, among other things, a certain comfort with being social misfits. This is a difficult comfort level to achieve, as those who relish being social misfits may have a hard time conforming themselves to the teachings of the Gospel and those who find security in social conformity will have hard time acting differently because of the teachings of the Gospel.

The fact is, that as Christians, we are called to be set apart from the world and we are called to be in the world. This is a dynamic tension that like many other Gospel tensions (e.g. justice and mercy), should be maintained rather than resolved. The dangers of resolving these tensions are fairly obvious, choose the separatist way and you have a Church that is irrelevant to the struggles of the world, choose the cultural way and you have a Church that looks no different (maybe more miserable?) than the culture around it.

While we must become increasingly comfortable with being different, we should not embrace strangeness or oddity with abandon, in a sort of who cares what other people think attitude. Such an attitude is liberating and has its merits, but as Christians we do need to be concerned with how we are perceived by those who do not (or as often in the case in North America, no longer) share our faith (for a very sobering view of what unchurched think about us read the book “UnChristian" ). If we are scaring people off from Christ merely because we choose to be culturally ignorant, or old fashion, or dressed up or whatever, we need to reconsider the packaging we are presenting Jesus in – and despite popular opinion packaging influences the punch, that is the messenger shapes the message.

Sorting out the right packaging for the message of the Gospel is a complex job. It is really an awful business of heavy discernment that is not easy to do (just look at all the debates about contemporary vs. traditional, vestments no vestments, dress up or dress down, topical vs. expository, missional vs. doctrinal etc. that rage in the church), but is part of the task that the Church in North America must take up prayerfully if a Godly reformation is to take place.

What challenges do you see for us as we sort out the tension of living in the world, but not being of the world? 

Reforming North American Christianity, part 4

Besides a return to the wells of spirituality in prayer, contemplation, and silence we have some additional work to do as North American Christians. This work does not involve programs, gurus (whatever their current iteration, e.g. trendy in grunge, or casual in collar and jeans), or the latest pronouncements from ecclesiastical central avenue. Rather, this work is dreadfully mundane, painfully difficult, and without a hint of sexy at all. I’m talking about the work of re-forming our essential Christian character, both as individuals, and as local congregations. As North America Christians we must become increasingly comfortable with being different, often radically different from those around us.

We can expect the culture to continue to move away from the Church and the fading glories and atrocities of Christendom, leaving us behind as a sub-culture, dangerously out of tune with the times. This comfort with strangeness will not be of the exciting sort (often enjoyed by the outcasts along the edge of every culture), but a hard strangeness that will cost us more than dirty looks and derogatory comments. If all that was necessary for this was the wearing of cassocks or clever t-shirts our reformation would almost be complete. Rather, our strangeness must be our difference in character, our difference in moral values, our difference in how and who we spend our time with.

We get a peek at this sort of difference when we look at our brother and sister Christians who are being persecuted around the world. How increasingly post-Christian and post-modern societies will serve up their persecution remains to be seen (though I continue to argue that its worst and most insidious method is and will continue to  be indifference), but we can be certain that what is presently considered unfashionable may soon be understood as indefensibly quaint.

In other words, if you’ve been struggling to grasp my subtly, we must allow the Holy Spirit to shape our characters to be more and more like Christ (what we sometimes use to call holiness). We cannot lift a finger in evangelism, in witness, if our individual lives as Christians continue to be largely no different than the lives of non-believers. If the only difference between Christians and non-Christians is that some of us go to Church on Sunday and some of us do not, why bother with the whole enterprise at all? The great apologetic of the North American reformation of Christianity will be holy examples, not found in a few saints, but found in struggling little communities of faith, hope, and love. May you and I be part of such communities, whether in founding them, joining them, or sticking with them despite all the temptations to join trendier or more respectable crowds.

Reforming North American Christianity, part 3

In my last post, I made a plea for a return to contemplation and silence on the part of North American Christians. This intentional commitment to making space for the Spirit of God to work in our hearts is not so that we might be irrelevant as Christians (saying nothing as the world struggles), but that we might be both relevant and reverent (relevancy without reverence usually leads to compromise).

Over ten years ago, I found myself sitting along the shore of the sea of Galilee (which a couple of days earlier I had attempted to walk across…please don’t ask how it went!). There, in the twilight of the day, I resolved to be a Dominican for the rest of my life. This resolution was whispered in my heart and no human being knew of my decision until later. The long hours of contemplation and silence had finally born fruit in my life, setting its direction.

While there has been a resurgence of interest in vintage Christianity and the practice of silence and contemplation (see for example the centering prayer movement), I fear such persons are usually viewed as “the spiritual junkies” of our parishes, families, and communities. In other words, commitment to contemplative prayer is not seen as normative for Christians in general, or local churches in particular.

While there are certainly those that have special gifts for prayer, we will have no Spirit driven reformation of North American Christianity without a return to silence, interior prayer, and contemplation by ordinary believers (if belief in the Triune God can ever be deemed “ordinary’). Where should we begin? With ourselves and our own congregations of course:

1.      Add silence to our Sunday services

2.      Then teach people to take advantage of this silence

3.      Add silence to our daily lives

4.      Learn how to take advantage of this silence.

5.      Assume God is speaking and you’re not listening (I know many husbands who intentionally choose this approach with their wives…)

6.      Do not read a variety of blogs, books, and articles about silence and contemplation. First, shut up for a while, then do the reading.

7.      Start to reclaim the practice of Sabbath keeping.

Some simple starters, what would you suggest?

Reforming North American Christianity, part 2

Being quiet may hardly seem like a sure path to reformation, but I would dare to say that being quiet may be quite revolutionary for the future of North American Christianity (I know that it has been, can be, and will be for anyone who dares to try it out. Some, particularly gifted with the gab, will be shocked at the sudden serenity gifted to the world…). Of course, contemplation, in just about any sense, is about more than simply being quiet. In Dominican spirituality the seeker of God must embrace contemplation, silence, and prayerful reflection if she intends to take her faith seriously at all.

The idea that we can run about constantly from one activity to the other (whether from Bible study to the coffee shop, or laundry to Sunday worship) and remain anchored in the all-encompassing, always present, presence of God is illusionary. Yes, we can find God in these things, though I have to tell you, I have never found God while washing the dishes (though I did find a pretty neat looking spider once while drying), so forgive me for not mentioning a predictable reference.

If you would care to object here, I can simply point to Jesus. Whose own manner of life while on earth was marked with frequent periods of silence and contemplation, such as one occasion, as Saint Mark tells us, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed” (1:35).

Of course, we often seemed more concerned with what Jesus would do, rather than how Jesus would be. This in itself is a great obstacle to our spiritual lives and will remain a great obstacle to any reformation by the Church in North America. If we cannot learn to be, we will find it difficult to do, at least as Jesus would do. More insidious to the state of our churches and Christian institutions  is a sense that we are advancing the Gospel by doing the things we are currently doing, totally unaware that we are not being as Jesus would be.

Contemplation, in classical Christian literature, is beyond words, personal reflection or even meditation (though meditation is often misunderstood today). It is simply being in the tangible presence of the Triune God. This, in its higher expressions, is less about emotion (the Episcopalians cheer), and more like a man waking up in the middle of the night to realize that someone else is sitting quietly in his bedroom (Episcopalians freak out).   

Even the first step toward contemplation, active prayer, does not seem particularly relevant -- to most of us -- to the challenges facing our churches today. But if we won’t even pray seriously, how will we ever reach the depths of contemplation? If the guy won’t even talk to the girl at the bar, how will he ever get to know her? (Yes, Biblical reference intended, but perhaps for reasons that allude you…).

Without contemplation, any attempts at reforming North American Christianity strike me as rather dangerous.

Reforming North American Christianity, part 1

Today, I am beginning a series of blog posts dedicated to exploring the notion of reforming or re-imaging Christianity in North America. Of course, the need for reform and the pursuit of reform are not new ideas to me or anyone who has been paying attention to the North American Church in the last two decades. Whether coined missional, emergent, or Fresh Expressions – the need for a new approach, in a post-modern age, to following Jesus, both individually, and collectively, as churches and denominations is an idea shared by many who love Christ (if you aren't convinced of the need for this read this article from Christianity today about 20/30 somethings increasingly leaving the church).

While this re-imaging process is also happening and also very much needed in the rest of the West. My own context and my own responsibility in God’s kingdom is largely centered in North America, hence why my comments will mostly be directed at Christians and institutions in the U.S. and Canada.

I join my voice to this symphony of suggestions (ok, often it doesn’t sound like a symphony but a blended version of Frank Sinatra, MC Hammer, Lady Gaga, and the Dixie Chicks, oh yeah and this guy I know named Randall), because as an Anglican Dominican I have promised to give my life to the work of proclaiming the Gospel. 

I’ll admit, I’ve been hesitant to speak up in such venues, but recently have been led to believe that this reluctance to speak up is a failure on my part to witness to Christ in general and more specifically, to fail in my vows as a priest and a Dominican. In some ways my failure has been the failure of a large majority of North America Christians and churches. We’ve noticed the shifts in our communities and our parishes, we’ve read up on it, but haven’t done a whole lot to reform ourselves or our respective corners of the Lord’s Vineyard.

So it begins…(look for my next post on contemplation soon)