Message from John

"Quitting Church"

2008-09-24T14:17:00.001-04:00

“Quitting Church”

Terry Mattingly is a columnist whose work appears in Scripps-Howard papers. In a column just out he talks about a family friend, Julia Duin, who is a seminary educated who is a reporter on religion for the “Washington Times.” Julia was frustrated at the last church she attended before dropping out because she didn’t feel the service opportunities offered to her as a single woman worked out very well.

There was the altar guild, child-care work, greeting etc. As a journalist and frequent traveler she wanted more flexible commitments. She was a musician, so maybe she could play the harp before services or perhaps fill an occasional teaching role. Those things were not there for her and so after some frustrating years she dropped out.

To make a long story short, she found out she wasn’t alone and out of this came a book entitled “Dropping Out”. She talked not with new believers, but with those Baby Boomers who had been involved in church for twenty years or more. They had been there and done that, and they were tired. Some were sad and some were mad and some were both.

This is not just something that the mainline church is dealing with; not another book about the “seven sisters” of liberal Protestantism(Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church{USA}, the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the American Baptist and the Christian Church{Disciples}.

The membership totals in these churches has declined 20% or more; a trend shaped by falling birthrates, bitter doctrinal fights and an aging population. This new trend, though, encompasses huge evangelical churches like the Southern Baptist Convention which claims 16 million members but which 2007 reports indicate only about 6.1 million at worship on given Sunday.

What in the world is going on? There are clashing trends. Many say they are too busy; some are burned out and others are mourning the loss of the great churches they knew in the past.

At the same time, in recent years, mega churches have dominated the landscape. Here you find media friendly services with chatty sermons in huge auditoriums. Seekers have anonymity. Still in 2007 Willow Creek Community Church found out something interesting. Many older members said they are not spiritually stalled. What is going on?

Here is something crucial, I think, from Mattingly’s column:

“There’s another reality that is hard to put into statistics….Many believers have grown tired of quickie services, power point answers and pop lyrics. Many ‘quitters’ she interviewed were yearning for intimate, down-to-earth churches where pastors and people knew their names. They’d been born again. Now they wanted to know how to face the doubts and pains of daily life. They wanted real spiritual growth.”

Here is something to think about as we wonder what kind of a church we are or wish to become. Everyone wants to grow, but what does that mean? Is growth more than numerical? If churches like First Congregational seek to compete with mega churches we will always lose. Are we in a position to meet the needs of folks like Julia Dunlin? Think about it.

Edifice Complex?

2008-08-06T11:55:00.002-04:00

Edifice Complex?

We all know that churches are more than buildings. We use the phrase “go to church” which means, usually, going to the building in which the congregation is housed, but we know that the building is not the church. The church is the “whole people of God.” The church is the “Body of Christ”.

Still, lets be honest, the building is part of the equation. Apparently people associate certain styles of buildings with churches and other styles as not. Here is something from the July/August issue of Your Church magazine.

“A survey of nearly 1700 unchurched American adults earlier this year asked them to indicate their preferences for designs, based on four different church exteriors. Respondents indicated their preferences by allocating 100 points across the four images, giving more points to those they liked and fewer to those they didn’t. The clear cut winner: The medieval-style cathedral, which averaged 48 points, more than double the next-highest finisher, a white-steeple-and-pillar exterior.”

The other churches were Church A which is described as “typical looking suburban church.” This averaged 18 points. You can see such buildings all around the area. Look at the church at the corner of Five Mile Line Road and Plank Road in Penfield.

Church B is described as “white steeple-and-pillar church.” This church averaged 19 points. Church C is described as “A fresher suburban look”. This has a few more frills but it only averaged 16 points. “The runaway winner: medieval style architecture, averaging 48 points.”

What might all this mean? I suppose you could say that the people who responded didn’t know anything about what the church was all about and incorrectly identified it with a certain style of building. After all, isn’t what goes on inside what is important?

On the other hand, you might look deeper into this and ask the question: is this response really about a feeling which sees a certain kind of architecture as more connected to history and the holy than the more up to date models.
Is the church just about “what’s happening now,” or is its connection to what has gone before something of importance? Do people see in the medieval style a kind of mystery which is missing in the others? Here is an interesting question. Does the preference for the medieval style indicate an openness on the part of the unchurched to a church which is connected to an ongoing tradition and way of life? Interesting questions as the mainline churches seek to reverse a downward trend.

July 7, 2008

2008-07-07T10:19:00.003-04:00

Flag waving

Today is Independence Day and I had the opportunity to ride in the parade with our church float. It was great to see our young people sitting in the trailer pulled by Dave Coon’s truck. They were excited about the work they are going to do in the next week at Reach Work Camp. They shared their enthusiasm with the crowds lining the parade route. It was a wonderful experience.

The two candidates for President have been talking about patriotism over the last week or so. There has been a lot of back and forth between the two political camps about what it means to be patriotic. When you think about the word, what thoughts come to your mind?

As I think about the word I think about who and what we are as a nation; where we have been, where we are and where we might be going. Patriotism is more than flag waving. It is fine to wave the flag or to wear a flag pin, but true patriotism goes much deeper as it seek to understand what it is that holds us together as a people.

Let me suggest that being patriotic means that we cherish the ideals on which the nation was founded; those things spoken of in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We take seriously these things and seek in our individual and corporate life to live up to them

Patriotism is not the personal possession of any one political party or candidate. True patriotism draws people from various ways of thinking together and seeks to have dialogue about who and what we are as a nation and a people.

Christians have a special responsibility to understand that the Sovereign God we worship and adore in Jesus Christ is not a national god. Our Hebrew ancestors tried to make it clear that the God they worshipped was larger than the nation of Israel (although they sometimes backslid on that proposition!) The Sovereign God judges people and nations by his righteous will.

This Sovereign God calls us to worship and adore Him above all else. This doesn’t mean that we don’t also love our native land and what it stands for. It does mean that no nation can ever be confused with God and that all people and nations stand under God’s judgment and grace. When we understand this, then we can wave the flag for all its worth.

John

2008-06-20T10:59:00.001-04:00

What Gets Us Through?

The recent sudden death of Tim Russert got me thinking. All the words written about him in the last week have made clear how important his faith was to him. It wasn’t the accolades he won, the money he made, the famous people he interviewed that made him who and what he was, but rather the faith which he espoused.

Commentators reminded us that he was the product of a working class family in South Buffalo and that rather than trying to lose that identity as he moved up in the world of politics and journalism, he treasured it. It made him who and what he was. Tim Russert’s Christian faith, lived out in the Roman Catholic Church gave him the resources for traveling the road of life.

The words of the Bible read each week; the spiritual presence of the body and blood of the Lord in the Eucharist; the catechism memorized, these are what sustained his journey. He was part of a community of faith which was not only local but world wide, which stretched back into time, built upon the foundation of the prophets and the apostles. The history, the story, the words and the actions of this community carry us through the tough times.

I remember hearing about a woman who was in New York City on September 11, 2001. Her hotel overlooked the twin towers and she saw the planes hit and the towers burn. The words of Scripture, the prayers she had learned as a child all came back to her and enabled her to struggle through this terrifying ordeal.

When the times are tough and the going is rough this is what sustains us; not the accolades, not all the activities we are engaged in; not position or prestige; not all the fleeting things of this life, but the words of faith which have been passed down through the ages and the sure and certain knowledge that as the “Heidelberg Catechism” puts it: “not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven.”

2008-06-06T08:54:00.003-04:00

I just returned this past Wednesday from the annual convocation of the Mercersburg Society.This year we met at Princeton Theological Seminary. "What society", did you say? What in the world is the Mercersburg Society?" Good question. The name comes from the little Pennsylvania town of Mercersburg, where in the mid 19th century, the German Reformed Church(one of the four predecessor denominations which later came together to form the United Church of Christ)had their seminary.Mercersburg was not a big city and still isn't. Today on that campus sits Mercersburg Academy,an expensive prep school.
Out of this very rural place in the mid nineteenth century came the Mecersburg theology, a way of thinking about the Christian faith which stressed an organic faith and the importance of the Eucharist and the faith of the un-divided church (pre-Reformation).This opened the way for the modern ecumenical movement and contributed to church union. All this from a tiny little ethnic seminary in rural Pennsylvania.

The society is committed to taking the insights of the Mercersburg theology and putting them into practice in the life of the church today. It is not about some antiquarian interest in a liturgy which came out in 1856, but using the insights of the Mercersburg theologians for the life of the church today. We see the fruits of this thinking especially in the worship life of the church; worship grounded in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and the Lord's Supper as the "innermost sanctuary of the whole Christian worship." The language may be different and the music different, but the ultimate purpose and meaning of worship is the same: to give glory and praise to God and to build up the Church of Jesus Christ. If you want to see what the Mercersburg theology is all about take a look at hymn #225 in our hymnal, "Jesus I Live to Thee." That says it all. Look also at John chapter 15.

So much for Mercersburg.
Princeton is a wonderful university town and it just so happened that when I was there, the university was in the midst of reunions and graduation and so the town was filled with both somewhat moth eaten old Princeton Tigers and bright and fresh new ones. If you want to feel younger, hang around a college town. There is a lot of talk today about how to stay young. Let me suggest that one way is to be around people who are younger than you are. Young people challenge us to think anew. Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong, but they are usually interesting. As the church moves forward the retaining of the young is a priority. Everyone knows this. I have never heard of a church that didn't want to have younger members. Well maybe there might be a few. Let me suggest that the way we do this is to challenge young people to grow in their faith and to move outward in mission and ministry. We do this already in our youth ministry and in a concrete way in our mission trip for youth. We also do it in the more formal Christian education ministry. I really believe that young people today want to be challenged as well as supported in their faith journey. They make us better people and we hopefully do the same for them, and we do it all together in the family of faith, the Church.

Up, Up, and Away

2008-05-07T18:58:00.003-04:00

In the summer of 1967 one one of the popular songs playing on all the radio stations was "Up, Up and Away". It was catchy and light and just right for a warm summer day's listening pleasure. We all know that we don't live in a "three story universe." What really is up anyway? You could get a headache thinking about such things.

The Bible assumes such a universe and so, some folks, dismiss biblical stories based on such thinking. They are short sighted. The story of Jesus' ascension is one such story. The church has, from its beginning, celebrated the ascension of Jesus on the fortieth day after Easter.
This festival celebrates the fact that Jesus is not some kind of tribal god, but lord of heaven and earth. Harvey Cox who has taught for many years at Harvard says: "The early church's belief in the Ascension can be read as its refusal to allow its Lord to be localized or spatially restricted.The Ascension in its simplest terms means that Jesus is mobile. He is not a Baal, but the Lord of all history."

I mentioned in the sermon yesterday(May 4) a quote. It came from the great theologian Karl Barth at the beginning of the second world war. He said: "When the lights are going out, its good to know who is in charge." Indeed it is! We Christians believe that in the midst of a world which often seems at loose ends and upside down, there is one who is in charge and that one is the Lord of all history, Jesus Christ the incarnate Son of God.

So, don't worry about the physics of what is up and what is down,or how Jesus ascended up to heaven when we don't know what up is. The truth of the ascension is so much more than this. Its good to know who is in charge.

John