Pastor as "cool"

So I noted this, and then moved on:

The New York Times reported last weekend on a surprising development out of Los Angeles: There is a pastor in that fair city who dresses not like Ward Cleaver, but like a Supreme model. His name is Chad Veach, and he is the founder and head pastor of the fast-growing Zoe Church—pronounced “zo-AY, like, be-yon-SAY,” as Veach likes to say. (Note: That is not, as far as I know, how you pronounce Beyoncé.)

Ruth Graham goes on to note this is a "trend" that dates back to at least 1896, though she skips lightly over the trend until it gets to 2007, where she provides quite a catalog of such announcements.  This leads her to conclude:

Is it news, then, when a pastor wears something other than pleated khakis in 2018? No. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to report on each successive wave of hipster pastors, particularly the successful ones. In between posting Instagram stories, Veach and his peers are attracting many thousands of young people each week to their churches. That’s not just a trend, it’s a movement.

But then I circled back because, well, I guess so:

Hybels led a congregation of 25,000 and the Willow Creek Association, based on his leadership, counts 11,000 churches worldwide as under its influence. He abruptly retired last year.

Hybels emerged as a “cool” youth pastor riding a Harley-Davidson and quickly grew his flock. Unlike many other non-denominational megachurches, Willow Creek elevated women to senior positions—but that allowed the former pastor to prey on ambitious young women, according to Nancy Beach, who came out of Willow Creek and is now a prominent evangelical thought leader.

“I feel so conflicted about the whole situation because I’m so protective of the reputation of the church, not just here but globally,” she told the Tribune. “But I have confidence that the truth matters. Even though he’s 66 years old, there are still young women in his path. I certainly wouldn’t want one of my daughters or anyone else to be in this kind of situation.. He changed my life. I wouldn’t have the opportunities I’ve had… But then there’s this other side.”

Willow Creek is pretty much a denomination unto itself, and Hybels is only a few years older than me, which means he was "cool" in about the '70's (I'm too lazy to do the accurate historical research). And now it turns out his "cool," like that of Jimmy Swaggart and many an "evangelist" gone by, was also a cover for, shall we say, sexual improprieties?

As I recall, the guy who started Mars Hill church was cool, too, until his sexual appetites became public fodder.  I also recall Mars Hill pretty much lost its luster after that.  Am I damning Christianity, or non-denominational pastors, or pastors who can't keep their pants zipped outside the marital home?  No, not broadly.  I'm just wondering when a trend truly becomes a movement, and what value that movement has in the long run.  The institutional church, represented by denominations, takes its licks, but it can't be said to be supplanted by "movements" which depend so much on individuals to keep them moving; especially when it becomes clear those individuals have been moving in the wrong direction for much of their pastoral careers.  What movement will members of Willow Creek associated churches follow now?  Because, I dunno:  it's either all lies, or it's gonna get mighty ugly:

“This has been a calculated and continual attack on our elders and on me for four long years,” [Hybels] told the Tribune. “I have a wife and kids and grandkids. My family has had enough and they want the record clear. And they feel strongly supportive of me saying what I have to say to protect my family and clear my family’s name as well.”

The fuller story is here.  I'm less interested in the details and the allegations, than in the nature of "cool" pastors who eventually return to earth to be human beings. That, and the nature of church "movements," which seem to depend so much on individuals, and yet seem to be endlessly appealing to modern Americans.

Something about being "cool," I guess.  It might even have something to do with evangelicals supporting Donald Trump, or even the poisonous cult of personality in general that allows us to see "our guy" as "one of the good ones," no matter what (the women who accused Hybels never felt the process that exonerated him was fair or just; since it was run by people selected by Hybels, how could it be?).

Something about being "cool," I guess; or ultimately, about being "yourself."  Funny thing is, people can tell you that you're doing it wrong.  It happens all the time.  Often, they're right.

The "Bottom Line"

It is well known in ecclesial circles that mega-churches survive on advertising. The rule of thumb is that they lose almost as many members through the "back door" as they gain through the "front door," so, like the myth of the shark, they have to keep "moving forward," or they die.

Which is why Lakewood, according to the Houston Chronicle article, is in the "business" of "marketing salvation," although Joel Osteen prefers to say he's reaching out to the "unsaved and the unchurched." Advertising plays a big role in this effort, as it does for all "mega-churches." The last billboard campaign Lakewood ran had a simple motto: "We Believe in You!" A curious slogan for a "Christian" church.

Willow Creek Community Church is another "mega church that has been much studied by students of ecclesiology. G.A. Pritchard, a Ph.D. candidate sympathetic to the aims of Willow Creek's theology, studied it's "seeker services," which were designed to draw in the "unchurched" and convert them to Christians. The process was supposed to be a four-step model that drew the unchurched into a full communion among the community of believers. (An explanation of the process is available in Bill Hybel's book, Rediscovering Church.) The only problem with it was, it didn't work.*

Pritchard's study concluded that "unchurched" members of Willow Creek were certainly drawn to the "contemporary worship, which was an attractice TV variety show format, with up-tempo songs led by a "praise leader," backed by a rock band, and demanding little more than listening skills from the "congregation." The idea was this "seeker service" would be as familiar as possible (and so it was consciously modeled on a TV talk show, with the "preacher" as the "host"), and by constant exposure to a "moral" message embedded in an entertaining package, the unchurched would deepen their commitment to God by furthering their commitment to the church, and become active and engaged church members. Except few did; most, predictably, took the path of least resistance. They came for the cake and coffee, the candy, so to speak, and left. They never asked for more.

That "plan," by the way, is based more or less on older European models of church, where one becomes an active member of a community. The Baptist "revival" models I am familiar with from my childhood, provide the model for Lakewood: the same basic message repeated endlessly, a message which keeps the individual constantly returning for a renewal (or revival) of their "salvation." Just how tiresome that model can be for preachers became clear to me when I came across an article in one of those magazines for the "business of your ministry" in Seminary, which proclaimed a great new idea for putting zip and spark back into your December preaching, a time of year when you the pastor are just as hassled as anyone else, and running out of ways to sell salvation (non-denominational and congregational Protestant churches tend to live and die on the one message of "salvation." We'll have to talk about that seperately). The discovery? Advent.

Lakewood doesn't observe Advent, and my one experience with it's "mission outreach" was indicative of the mindset that Christianity is "all about salvation" and "all about membership." The UCC here in Houston owns a HUD apartment complex, maintained for low-income families. It is near the original Lakewood building, and for a few years Lakewood provided turkeys to the residents at Thanksgiving. The year that stopped, Lakewood refused to deliver the turkeys, and required the residents to pick them up personally. This, of course, was impossible: most of the residents worked, and few had cars. The intent was clear: you want 'em, you pay for 'em, and "pay" meant: listen to our "sales pitch" for "salvation."

What does a mega church want to do? In my experience, as the Houston Chronicle article says, they want to sell salvation. In a seminary class, we watched a video of a "seeker service" from Community Church of Joy in Glendale, Arizona. This time the sermon was preceded, not by scripture, but by a "sketch." A large, overweight woman in a very loose fitting dress (her appearance was intentionally clownish and boorish), with juice cans for rollers in her hair, and a broad Southern accent, came out and gave a monologue about herself and her children. It was clearly fiction, but she was clearly meant to represent "trailer trash," a "hillbilly." But what I saw, was my extended family; my lower-middle class relatives. What I saw, in a supposedly "church" setting, was a mockery of people I loved. But this was supposedly excused because the "purpose" of the "message" was "salvation." Salvation at the expense of others was apparently a price even my class-mates were willing to pay.

Oddly, when I expressed that in the class, only one person, the African American woman who had felt persecuted in an almost entirely-white, almost entirely Midwestern school, sympathized; and the woman from Kentucky. And the African American woman only understood me when I compared it to an actor appearing in blackface, and mimcking black Americans. Everyone else thought I was being overly-sensitive. But the idea of even a "seeker service" which portrayed the children of God as objects of ridicule and an object lesson in what not to do (the thrust of the "sermon" that followed, based on the monologue) was deeply offensive.

If salvation is to be marketed, and that is an acceptable way of doing it, I want nothing to do with salvation. But this leads us to the question McKibben is getting at: what, then, is church for?




*Willow Creek Seeker Services: Evaluating a New Way of Doing Church, by G.A. Pritchard. Funny, when you go to that page, you're likely to get a list of books that reads like this:
This Little Church Went to Market : The Church in the Age of Modern Entertainment by Gary Gilley
Dining With the Devil: The Megachurch Movement Flirts With Modernity (Hourglass Books) by Os Guinness
Ashamed of the Gospel: When the Church Becomes Like the World by John F. MacArthur
Deceived on Purpose : The New Age Implications of the Purpose-Driven Church by Warren Smith
Rediscovering Church by Bill Hybels
Who's Driving the Purpose Driven Church? by James Sundquist

Still hung up on this....

Mad Priest picked up on the cross controversy I mentioned earlier, and the comments there are so good I decided to steal some of that conversation, because I had further thoughts on the subject anyway.

First, MP tells me:

St John's, Broadbridge Heath, is an "evangelical and charismatic" church (at least, the vicar, his wife and the Parish Council want it to be called that).

Which is a bit of "insider information" to keep in mind while reviewing this topic again. That leads me to KJ's comment on the ecclesiological question, i.e., what if "seekers" were put off by this sculpture:

If passers by are offended and put off by a symbol, regardless of what that symbol is, then I'm not convinced they have any real interest, or leading, at least at that time, to investigate what the church should be on about. My point above is Jesus is a bigger stumbling block than the cross as symbol. Should we jettison him?

In the early 90s at the church in Evangelical Land I attended, and at which I was in a leadership position, a new pastor came in and decided we needed to be "seeker sensitive." Buh bye, long prayers -- You'll put "seekers" to sleep. Buh bye, Advent wreath -- No one knows what "Advent" is -- You'll just confuse the pretty little heads of seekers. Wow! Those hymns are long and boring; they need to go away. We need simple music that "seekers" can understand and remember. Oh, so buh bye fabulous organ (Throne of KJ), because we don't need you in order to be able to sing ditties. And yes, buy bye cross, symbol of death. Ick! Communion seems awkward during a church service, and what a downer with that talk of blood and broken body. Let's schedule it for times when the least amount of people would be offended.

Soon it was clear we were to be about as little as possible so we would be as palatable as possible to the greatest amount of hypothetical "seekers" as possible who would, in my view, have little understanding of the faith into which they were tricked.

We're not selling soap or gym memberships, and I trust we're not relying on branded symbols to fill pews. If our focus is how to fill seats, then I hope we die as a faith. If our focus is being the body of Christ on earth, which is a great deal more about those who have no likelihood of ever taking a seat, and what is that to us, then the pews will take care of themselves.

There's also the simple fact that, while this kind of "evangelism" is appealing to churches who think growth is the reason for their existence, it's been established this kind of evangelism doesn't really "grow" anything except people who fill the pews.

Willow Creek Community Church is another "mega church that has been much studied by students of ecclesiology. G.A. Pritchard, a Ph.D. candidate sympathetic to the aims of Willow Creek's theology, studied it's "seeker services," which were designed to draw in the "unchurched" and convert them to Christians. The process was supposed to be a four-step model that drew the unchurched into a full communion among the community of believers. (An explanation of the process is available in Bill Hybel's book, Rediscovering Church.) The only problem with it was, it didn't work.*

Pritchard's study concluded that "unchurched" members of Willow Creek were certainly drawn to the "contemporary worship, which was an attractice TV variety show format, with up-tempo songs led by a "praise leader," backed by a rock band, and demanding little more than listening skills from the "congregation." The idea was this "seeker service" would be as familiar as possible (and so it was consciously modeled on a TV talk show, with the "preacher" as the "host"), and by constant exposure to a "moral" message embedded in an entertaining package, the unchurched would deepen their commitment to God by furthering their commitment to the church, and become active and engaged church members. Except few did; most, predictably, took the path of least resistance. They came for the cake and coffee, the candy, so to speak, and left. They never asked for more.

(Yes, I have no shame; I quote myself.) So if evangelism is your goal, the first question to be asked is: what's the content of your message, not: what's the success rate of your effort, as measured by filled pews.

Interestingly, the church in question is now trying to defend its position, which may well have been misrepresented by the quotes in the news articles:

Press reports have been very misleading, suggesting that we are somehow dumbing down the message of the cross and undermining the symbol of the cross in an age of political correctness. The reality is, in fact, the complete opposite. It is precisely because we believe passionately in the significance of the crucifixion of Christ that we felt led to have this particular version of the crucifix removed. What will not be clear to readers or radio listeners who have not seen the crucifix in person is the fact that the artist chose to portray Christ's facial expression as one which indicates despair and hopelessness. While this makes it an interesting piece of art, it also means that this artistic choice made by the sculptor makes this particular crucifix a misleading version of the symbol of the cross, failing to communicate the significance of the crucifixion of Christ as an event which brings eternal and undying hope to this world. Christ did not approach the crucifixion with any sense of despair or hopelessness; he did not suffer on the cross in an attitude of hopelessness; and he did not die in an attitude of hopelessness. Quite the contrary: Christ approached the cross with steadfast courage and determination; he suffered in an attitude of knowing what he was achieving through his death; and he finally faced death with certainty about the significance of his death - the steadfast hope of bringing about the redemption of humankind from the power of sin; the hope of demonstrating the full extent of God's gracious love and forgiveness; and hope that looked forward to the promise of the Resurrection on Easter morning, when the power of death, sin and evil would be broken.

The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus must be held together in tension; it is vital that we know that God in Christ experienced and identified with the very worst suffering of this world - past, present and future - and it is vital that we know that God brought about a resounding victory over that suffering and torment two days later on that first Easter Sunday.

In the light of this message of hopefulness, having a crucifix mounted on the outside of our church that declared a message of perpetual despair and hopelessness would not be faithful to the New Testament account of the significance of the crucifixion. As a church, we want to bring a message of hope and welcome to our local community, and not one of despair, hopelessness and rejection.

Fair enough, and not such bad reasoning, all in all. I don't think anyone put words in the Vicar's mouth; but the church is deserving of the benefit of the doubt, and another bite at the apple, having failed so badly to explain themselves the first time around. And I was going to say, on reconsideration, that this situation presents interesting challenges.

I know many of the older cathedrals in Europe include elaborate displays of Biblical narratives, including such frightful and despairing depictions as the Last Judgment. Hardly a cheering or inviting subject but, given the cultural locus of the buildings, not exactly off-putting. I don't know of any church that makes a prominent display of a crucifix, however. So there is an argument to be made that this is a rare situation, and one that doesn't necessarily underline the "message of hope" they taught me in homiletics I should always include in my sermons.

On the other hand: was this sculpture really about "despair and hopelessness?" Again, an aesthetic question. I find it moving and challenging, especially as the figure on the cross, far from looking defeated or even limp (the kind of crucifix I'm more familiar with), actually has its head upright, and seems to be looking at something on its left, and directing our attention there. So perhaps this references the conversation between Jesus and the two criminals, as recorded in Luke? Which would mean this sculpture could be an opening point for discussion, especially about what Jesus said?

"I swear to you, today you'll be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:43b, SV)

One of the hardest lessons I learned in seminary, but one of the most important, was the need to include the entire Biblical story in my understanding of God, of humanity, of ecclesiology (the purpose and mission of the church). The more you pick and choose from scripture, the more you shape something that resembles you, and not God. All those prickly passages and challenging demands and downright offensive or irreconcilable bits of Scripture, from Genesis 2 through Deutero Paul and especially the Letter to the Hebrews (well, for me, anyway), have to be included in my preaching and pastoring, or it isn't God's word I proclaim, but my own.

I find it to be the only way to overcome despair and hopelessness. As Genesis (the rock group, not the book of Moses) sang it: "You've gotta get in to get out." And getting in sometimes means you've got to get in despite not being especially drawn to the place. I mean, if that criminal was going to be with Jesus in paradise that day, he wasn't going to escape the cross to do it.

Curious form of evangelism, isn't it?

"What are we doing here?"

Compare this, about hashtag activism such as "#bringbackourgirls:

Defenders of campaigns like these often say that they can be gateways toward greater understanding of complex global issues. Viewers first get hooked on the moral outrage, then learn more about the underlying conditions that produced the crisis, becoming better-informed global citizens.

This paper suggests that unfortunately the opposite is true. Viewers get interested when they hear about evil monsters like the LRA or Boko Haram that just need to be stopped. When they learn more about the issue and find out that, lo and behold, the world is a very complicated place, that killing the monster won’t be so easy and that there are larger issues in play beyond the monster itself, they lose interest. 

With this:

Willow Creek Community Church is another "mega church that has been much studied by students of ecclesiology. G.A. Pritchard, a Ph.D. candidate sympathetic to the aims of Willow Creek's theology, studied it's "seeker services," which were designed to draw in the "unchurched" and convert them to Christians. The process was supposed to be a four-step model that drew the unchurched into a full communion among the community of believers. (An explanation of the process is available in Bill Hybel's book, Rediscovering Church.) The only problem with it was, it didn't work.

Pritchard's study concluded that "unchurched" members of Willow Creek were certainly drawn to the "contemporary worship, which was an attractice TV variety show format, with up-tempo songs led by a "praise leader," backed by a rock band, and demanding little more than listening skills from the "congregation." The idea was this "seeker service" would be as familiar as possible (and so it was consciously modeled on a TV talk show, with the "preacher" as the "host"), and by constant exposure to a "moral" message embedded in an entertaining package, the unchurched would deepen their commitment to God by furthering their commitment to the church, and become active and engaged church members. Except few did; most, predictably, took the path of least resistance. They came for the cake and coffee, the candy, so to speak, and left. They never asked for more.

And tell me if I'm wrong in seeing a whole lot of similarity there.

The Church of Sacrifice for Meaning and Belonging is still the church nobody really wants to join.

Knock, knock, knockin' at the deep heart's core

Courtesy of Expat in UK comes this "Hmmm...."

The "modern evangelical machine" is a product of the 1970s and '80s, when a new generation of business-savvy pastors developed strategies to reach unbelievers turned off by traditional worship and evangelization. Their approach was "seeker sensitive": upon learning that many people didn't go in for stained glass and steeples, these pastors made their churches look like shopping malls. Complex theology intimidated the curious, and talk of damnation alienated potential converts — so they played down doctrine in favor of upbeat, practical teachings on the Christian life.

These megachurches, like Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston and Bill Hybels's Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, have come to symbolize American evangelicalism. By any quantitative measure they are wildly successful, and their values and methods have diffused into the evangelical bloodstream. Yet some megachurches have begun to admit what critics maintained all along: numbers are not everything. In the fall of 2007, leaders of Willow Creek sent shockwaves through the evangelical world when they announced the results of a study in which churchgoers reported feeling stagnant in their faith and frustrated with slick, program-driven pastors. "As an evangelical, I would say this tells us something," Stetzer says. "The center is not holding."

First, let me say: "Why am I not surprised?" Second, let me say there is, indeed, nothing new under the sun. Third, let me say: Huh?

But what is new about Driscoll is that he has resurrected a particular strain of fire and brimstone, one that most Americans assume died out with the Puritans: Calvinism, a theology that makes Pat Robertson seem warm and fuzzy.

Dude, come to East Texas sometime, where the Presbyterians (who invented Calvinism, or think they did) vie with the Southern Baptists to see how many more they can find to condemn. Growing up in the PCUS of my youth, the only difference between us and the Baptists was, they were more emotional. Reformed theology is dead? Yeah, right; replaced by what? Lutheranism?

But the issue before us is this new kind of mega-church at Mars Hill:

Mars Hill has not entirely dispensed with megachurch marketing tactics. Its success in one of the most liberal and least-churched cities in America depends on being sensitive to the body-pierced and latte-drinking seekers of Seattle. Ultimately, however, Driscoll's theology means that his congregants' salvation is not in his hands. It's not in their own hands, either — this is the heart of Calvinism. Ultimately, however, Driscoll's theology means that his congregants' salvation is not in his hands. It's not in their own hands, either — this is the heart of Calvinism.

Human beings are totally corrupted by original sin and predestined for heaven or hell, no matter their earthly conduct. We all deserve eternal damnation, but God, in his inscrutable mercy, has granted the grace of salvation to an elect few. While John Calvin's 16th-century doctrines have deep roots in Christian tradition, they strike many modern evangelicals as nonsensical and even un-Christian. If predestination is true, they argue, then there is no point in missions to the unsaved or in leading a godly life. And some babies who die in infancy — if God placed them among the reprobate — go straight to hell with the rest of the damned, to "glorify his name by their own destruction," as Calvin wrote. Since the early 19th century, most evangelicals have preferred a theology that stresses the believer's free decision to accept God's grace. To be born again is a choice God wants you to make; if you so choose, Jesus will be your personal friend.

The article goes on to link this to Puritanism, which is pretty much what this sounds like. Puritanism redux, in fact. But set aside the caricatures of Puritanism a moment, because the appeal of this theology is actually quite interesting:

Traditional evangelical theology falls apart in the face of real tragedy, says the 20-year-old Brett Harris, who runs an evangelical teen blog with his twin brother, Alex. Reducing God to a projection of our own wishes trivializes divine sovereignty and fails to explain how both good and evil have a place in the divine plan. "There are plenty of comfortable people who can say, 'God's on my side,' " Harris says. "But they couldn't turn around and say, 'God gave me cancer.' "

Or, as a pastor friend of mine put it once, when a church member told him the member preferred to stay home and watch Roert Schuller on TV: "Yeah, call him when you need someone to do a funeral." When simplistic feel-good theology runs into reality, the only response I've ever encountered is: "God will not give you more than you can handle." But I've never heard the grieving family member say that, or the dying cancer patient.

Every pastor who actually pastors a church, rather than administers a mega-church, has had to face the tough issues. In my first year of ministry, still in seminary, I dealt with a member with severe trauma from childhood; a dying husband confined to his bed; the deaths of two teenagers in a car wreck. In my first year out of seminary, I conducted a funeral for an infant who died in her crib, for a mother who was only tangentially connected to the church; and had to answer the guestion of a wife who's husband had been rushed to the hospital on life support, and just told it should be removed: "What should I do?" These are not questions that have anything to do with "seeker services" or "business-savvy strategies." And people don't cope with them because you've told them repeatedly God wants them to be rich, or simply be middle-class Americans.

Which is not to say, however, the only alternative is a throwback to the cruder forms of Calvinism.

I'm not even sure how Calvinistic this "theology" is, if only because Calvin warned against assuming you were among the elect. The central thesis of his teaching was humility, was that "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," and since no one could know who was among the elect, you must live as if your salvation depended on your actions. Indeed, Calvin is as subtle a theologian and compassionate a believer as ever Luther was; but his works, like most of Luther's, are "classics" in Mark Twain's definition of the word: widely praised, but no one reads them. So if this is Calvinism, it's the Calvinism of the Gutres in Jorge Luis Borges' "The Gospel According To Mark:" one that is in the blood, and little resembles the teachings and theology that now bears its name. This is Calvinism Marc Driscoll and his followers have inherited, in other words, not discovered. Everything old is new again. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun.

There is, for example, something to this:

Marianne Esterly, a women's counselor at Mars Hill, says she tries to help women resist the desperation that can come with forgetting that man's chief end is to glorify God, not to obsess over earthly problems. "They worship the trauma, or the anorexia, and that's not what they're designed to worship," she says. "Christian self-help doesn't work. We can't do anything. It's all the work of Christ."

But then again, the "work of Christ" they advocate is simply what they believe people should do. Do that, and you are letting Christ work through you. Fail to do that, and you are relying on yourself. It's wonderfully simplistic, and horribly misguided. I mean, after all, Driscoll's critique of other evangelicals is that they have "feminized" Christ, and they promote a culture of "chicks and some chickified dudes with limp wrists."

Yeah, that's what Christ taught: how not to be "feminine." Precisely why he had so many women in his entourage, told his disciples to "turn the other cheek," rebuked Peter for taking up the sword when the Romans came to arrest him, and asked the Pharisee "Do you see this woman?".

To be fair, Driscoll's version of Christ is an old one. My first thought on reading this article was of "The Dream of the Rood," an Old English poem.

I saw then the Saviour of
mankind
hasten with great zeal, as if he wanted to climb up on me.
There I did not dare, against the word of the Lord,
bow or break, when I saw the
corners of the earth tremble. I might have
felled all the enemies; even so, I stood fast.
He stripped himself then, young hero - that was God almighty -
strong and resolute; he ascended on the high gallows,
brave in the sight of many, when he wanted to ransom
mankind.
I trembled when the warrior embraced me; even then I did not
dare to bow to earth,
fall to the corners of the earth, but I had to stand fast.
I was reared a cross. I raised up the powerful King,
the Lord of heaven; I did not dare to bend.
They pierced me with dark nails; on me are the wounds visible,
the open wounds of malice; I did not dare to injure any of them.
They mocked us both together. I was all drenched with blood
poured out from that man's side after he had sent forth his spirit.
I have experienced on that hillside many
cruelties of fate. I saw the God of hosts
violently stretched out. Darkness had
covered with clouds the Ruler's corpse,
the gleaming light. Shadows went forth
dark under the clouds. All creation wept,
lamented the King's fall. Christ was on the cross.
Yet there eager ones came from afar
to that noble one; I beheld all that.
I was all drenched with sorrow; nevertheless I bowed down to the hands of the men,
humble, with great eagerness. There they took almighty God,
lifted him from that oppressive torment. The warriors forsook me then
standing covered with moisture; I was all wounded with arrows.
They laid the weary-limbed one down there, they stood at the head of his body,
they beheld the Lord of heaven there, and he himself rested there a while,
weary after the great battle.

It's a death worthy of Beowulf, and no surprise coming from a warrior culture. Certainly not a very "feminine" Christ there. And, to be fair, Harvey Cox revolted against the "bourgeois," orderly, "feminized" (it was pre-feminist days for Harvey) Christ of my childhood, in the 1970's. (The picture above, for example; hardly the features of a Semite, much less a peasant; and that ethereal robe, those doe-like eyes. Precisely the imago Dei Cox was reacting to.) I don't go to the conclusion Driscoll reaches, but I sympathize with how he gets there. What I don't sympathize with is his ecclesiology:

Nowhere is the connection between Driscoll's hypermasculinity and his Calvinist theology clearer than in his refusal to tolerate opposition at Mars Hill. The Reformed tradition's resistance to compromise and emphasis on the purity of the worshipping community has always contained the seeds of authoritarianism: John Calvin had heretics burned at the stake and made a man who casually criticized him at a dinner party march through the streets of Geneva, kneeling at every intersection to beg forgiveness. Mars Hill is not 16th-century Geneva, but Driscoll has little patience for dissent. In 2007, two elders protested a plan to reorganize the church that, according to critics, consolidated power in the hands of Driscoll and his closest aides. Driscoll told the congregation that he asked advice on how to handle stubborn subordinates from a "mixed martial artist and Ultimate Fighter, good guy" who attends Mars Hill. "His answer was brilliant," Driscoll reported. "He said, 'I break their nose.' " When one of the renegade elders refused to repent, the church leadership ordered members to shun him. One member complained on an online message board and instantly found his membership privileges suspended. "They are sinning through questioning," Driscoll preached. John Calvin couldn't have said it better himself.

I consider the appeal to Reformed theology to be a thin veil of justification for actions like this (and my complaint there is with the journalist. Reformed theology is alive and well and not a fossilized relic unchanged since Calvin was running Geneva.) Calvin was more nearly following the culture of his day than establishing a theological principal. He might well have justified his actions by grounding them in theology, but the kingdom of God, where the first will be last, and the last first, pretty well drains that attitude of any justification. Nor do I see any evidence Driscoll is such a careful student of Calvin's biography; it sounds like he's just a bully who likes being in charge. When the church is yours, rather than part of a denomination, you can pretty much get away with that. See, for example, Rick Warren's since removed web-page statement limiting church membership at Saddleback to non-homosexuals, are at least those who "repent" of their sexual orientation.

One more reason I'm not a big fan of non-denominational churches. And, of course, that's of a piece with this:

Driscoll is still the one who gazes down upon Mars Hill's seven congregations most Sundays, his sermons broadcast from the main campus to jumbo-size projection screens around the city. At one suburban campus that I visited, a huge yellow cross dominated center stage — until the projection screen unfurled and Driscoll's face blocked the cross from view. Driscoll's New Calvinism underscores a curious fact: the doctrine of total human depravity has always had a funny way of emboldening, rather than humbling, its adherents.

Aye, there's the rub. When does the founder of the church that Marc built tell his congregation they can do it without him? When does he step aside and point the way, not to Marc, but to Christ?

Never On Sunday

I suppose this makes it official: Christmas is not a day of prayer; even on Sunday.

Either that, or "mega-churches," by their own admission now, aren't really "churches." ("Church--The Eng. 'church'...come[s] ultimately from the Gk. kurion '[thing] belonging to the Lord.'"--Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church)

This Christmas, no prayers will be said in several megachurches around the country. Even though the holiday falls this year on a Sunday, when churches normally host thousands for worship, pastors are canceling services, anticipating low attendance on what they call a family day.

Critics within the evangelical community, more accustomed to doing battle with department stores and public schools over keeping religion in Christmas, are stunned by the shutdown.

It is almost unheard of for a Christian church to cancel services on a Sunday, and opponents of the closures are accusing these congregations of bowing to secular culture.

"This is a consumer mentality at work: `Let's not impose the church on people. Let's not make church in any way inconvenient,'" said David Wells, professor of history and systematic theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a leading evangelical school in Hamilton, Mass. "I think what this does is feed into the individualism that is found throughout American culture, where everyone does their own thing."

The churches closing on Christmas plan multiple services in the days leading up to the holiday, including on Christmas Eve. Most normally do not hold Christmas Day services, preferring instead to mark the holiday in the days and night before. However, Sunday worship has been a Christian practice since ancient times.

And that "where two or three are gathered in my name" stuff? Apparently what Jesus really meant was: "At least two or three thousand."

Cally Parkinson, a spokeswoman for Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., said church leaders decided that organizing services on a Christmas Sunday would not be the most effective use of staff and volunteer resources. The last time Christmas fell on a Sunday was 1994, and only a small number of people showed up to pray, she said.

"If our target and our mission is to reach the unchurched, basically the people who don't go to church, how likely is it that they'll be going to church on Christmas morning?" she said.

Thanks to leap year, of course, this happens only about every 11 years. And it used to be that people went to church on Christmas Day, whatever day of the week it was. What this really indicates is that, as Stephen Nissenbaum points out, sometime after Clement Clark Moore's ubiquitous and iconic poem, Christmas became accepted in America as a family holiday.

A nuclear family holiday, in fact; which is why most people travel on Thanksgiving, but stay home on Christmas. (In the near future I hope to be able to elaborate Nissenbaum's thesis.)

So Christmas has almost nothing to do with "Christ" at all. And the mega-churches, being a perfect product of marketing, understand that.

This isn't all that odd, actually. Most "mega-churches" are in the Reformed tradition, and almost reflexively abhor any liturgical practices, including a liturgical calendar. A few years ago, when I was on the mailing list of various "religious publications," most of them marketing to "mega-church" pastors or wannabe mega-church pastors, I got a notice about a new book promising to remake my December preaching. It was inspired by a discovery by a non-denominational pastor, who grew bored preaching sin and salvation 12 months a year, and needed something more interesting for December. His discovery?

Advent.

Yup. He "discovered" the season of Advent, something that has existed in the Christian church since about the 4th century.

Having grown up in the Presbyterian church (also the "Reformed" tradition), I barely knew Advent, and didn't know Lent at all; much less Epiphany or Pentecost. And church on Christmas Day only occurred when Christmas Day was a Sunday; and even then, turnout was usually light. When I was a student pastor, my Church Council blithely informed me that it was a tradition to hold services on Christmas Day, but that they never came!

Now, I knew these members were the most faithful attendees at worship that I had. If they didn't come, why did they have a service? "For the old people," they told me, the last of whom, I realized, had gone into a nursing home that year. So I took a practice from a church I knew in Tyler, one I had wanted to try since I entered seminary.

I announced a "Love Feast," something I understand is a practice of the Moravian church. I offered hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls on Sunday morning, as a "sort of" eucharist. (I was not ordained then, and my advisors were at great pains to be reassured I would not call this either a "meal" or "Communion," even though I said a communion prayer that morning. This may seem reasonable to someone in an episcopal tradition, such as the RC or the Anglian Communion, but in the loose UCC "traditions," this struck me as almost laughable. It still does.)

In terms of attendance, it was the greatest single success of my ministry. College students coming home for Christmas got out of bed to come to church. 30 people showed up (which was a "good" turnout on a Sunday morning; this was a tiny and lovely church, some of the best people I have ever known). I invited them to stay after the short service to finish off the food, and we had a party. It worked so well that, to this day (and that was nearly a decade ago, now), they still have a service on Christmas Day, and still serve hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls.

So, if Willow Creek Community Church wants to get in touch with me, I'm sure we can work out the product placement arrangements.....

More entries for the commonplace book

Now with more Niebuhr!

And apropos of this post (and to introduce a few entries from another of Niebuhr's books):

We had a great Easter service today....We received our largest class of new members into the church thus far, twenty-one in all.  Most of them had not letters from other churches and yet had been reared in some church. We received them on reaffirmation of faith.

This matter of recruiting a membership for the church is a real problem.  Even the churches which once believed a very definite conversion experience to be the sine qua non of entrance into the fellowship of the church are going in for "decision days" as they lose confidence in the traditional assumption that one can become a Christian only through a crisis experience.  But if one does not insist on that kind of experience it is not easy to set up tests of membership.  Most of these "personal evangelism" campaigns mean little more than ordinary recruiting effort with church membership rather than Christian life as the real objective.  They do not differ greatly from efforts of various clubs as they seek to expand their membership.

Of course we make "acceptance of Jesus as your savior" the real door into fellowship in the church.  But the trouble is that may mean everything or nothing.  I see no way of making the Christian fellowship unique by any series of tests which precede admission.  The only possibility lies in a winnowing process through the instrumentality of the preaching and teaching function of the church. Let them come in without great difficulty, but make it difficult for them to stay in.  The trouble with this plan is that is is always easy to load up membership with very immature Christians who will finally set the standard and make it impossible to preach and teach the gospel in its full implications.

--Reinhold Niebuhr, "1919."  Leaves from the Notebooks of a Tamed Cynic. Louisville, Kentucky:  John Knox/Westminster Press, original publication date 1929.  p. 23.

This is Reinhold Niebuhr, recording contemporaneously his experiences as a new pastor in Detroit at the beginning of the last century.  It is the conclusion that makes the point:  what is church for?  For anyone, including non-believers?  And how many of those can be allowed in before it is "impossible to preach and teach the gospel in its full implication"?  Yet I have pastored churches where that was already impossible, and no one in that congregation would admit to being an atheist.

They were more likely to label me a heretic.

"Make it difficult for them to stay"?  The only person who would find it difficult to stay in that church would be the pastor.

And I've held fast to the idea that church membership today means nothing more than the "efforts of various clubs as they seek to expand their membership."  It makes me sound terribly cynical to out-Herod Herod on this point, but it is my experience nonetheless.  I served two churches that insisted increasing membership was a necessary goal; but all they really meant was to make the club more popular, by enticing more people like them to appear on a more permanent basis.  There is comfort in numbers, but greater comfort in people like us.

But for many churches, there are fewer and fewer such people around.  Interestingly, in 1919 only about 41% of Americans considered themselves affiliated with any kind of religion.  (I use this study constantly because I find context around these issues constantly important).  So Niebuhr is contemplating an America even more different from our own, but not in the way we might imagine.  Like the church today, Niebuhr had to work with, and accept into his church fellowship, the "unchurched."  Believers, but believers who really don't want to be asked to do anything for the sake of their belief.  Should they be winnowed later?  Willow Creek Community Church uses that model, but studies have found it doesn't really lead to any greater commitment than to show up on Sunday morning for the show.  Especially in the "seeker service" that was "a pretty good show for a buck."*

Robert Wuthnow makes much of something that never seems to occur to Niebuhr:  the need for the church to raise the money it takes to continue being a church:  building, programs, employees, etc.  But is that what church is for?  Upon re-reading his book I want to introduce him to Walt Kallestad:

Walt led Community Church of Joy in Phoenix, a megachurch that had been an average congregation of 200 before he took over in the 80s and oversaw it's growth. But in 2002 he suffered a massive heart attack requiring six-way bypass surgery. The heart attack, says Walt, was a "wake up call" for the leaders to develop a succession plan to ensure the megachurch continued to thrive after Walt's tenure.

Kallestad began networking around the country looking for a young pastor he could bring onboard and eventually hand the church over to. One conversation stuck with him.

"It's a pretty good opportunity," Walt said. "We have 187 acres just off a major freeway, multipurpose buildings, and a great staff."

The leader looked him in the eyes and said, "Who'd want it? Who in their right minds would want to run that?"

"That's when it dawned on me," Kallestad reflected. "By the time we service the $12-million debt, pay the staff, and maintain the property, we've spent more than a million before we can spend a dime on our mission. At the time, we had plans for a spectacular worship center with a retractable roof. After that conversation, I scrapped it."

Making those changes, by the way, cost Kallestad 4000 church members.  I've never been even associated with a church with that many members, much less one that could lose that many and still exist as an institution.  And maybe the lesson of the Crystal Cathedral is instructive here:  when Schuller died, the church had to sell the building to the Catholic diocese just to pay its debts.*

So how do we make Christian fellowship unique?

*An old joke I picked up in seminary, about what it "costs" to attend worship on any given Sunday.

**I got carried away with this, but you can have my footnotes.  I couldn't find any numbers on the membership of CCJ, a church I had some encounter with in seminary.  According to Internet Monk, at it's height CCJ had 12,000 members.  In 2009, when it broke with the ELCA over the ordination of gays and lesbians (CCJ was agin it), they reported 6800 members, an attendance of 2500.  Where their membership is now is anybody's guess, but Internet Monk provides more information on how two megachurches decided "seeker services" weren't the alpha and omega of Christian discipleship.  We always come back to the Church of Meaning and Belonging v. the Church of Sacrifice for Meaning and Belonging.  And if I keep repeating all of this it's only because I long for a serious conversation on these topics, and the best I get is people misreading and misunderstanding the latest Pew polls.  No, I don't mean to be haughty; but damn!, the signal to noise ratio on the internet is low!

Ecclesiology 101

I do love Pastor Dan, if only because he gives me material to post about. Like this, for example:

These results coincide with a unique book released this week by Tyndale House Publishers, entitled Jim and Casper Go to Church. That book describes the experience of a former pastor and an avowed atheist who together visited a dozen significant churches across the nation. Jim Henderson, who has been a pastor of small and large churches, interviewed the atheist (Matt Casper) during and after each church service they attended to gain insights into what it’s like for an outsider to attend such churches. Among the congregations visited were well-known ministries such as Willow Creek (pastored by Bill Hybels), Saddleback (led by Rick Warren), Lakeside (featuring Joel Osteen), and The Potter’s House (home of T.D. Jakes).

Many of the insights drawn from the experiences of "Jim and Casper" parallel the findings of Barna Group studies among the unchurched. Some of the critical discoveries were the relative indifference of most churched Christians to unchurched people; the overt emphasis upon a personal rather than communal faith journey; the tendency of congregations to perform rituals and exercise talents rather than invite and experience the presence of God; the absence of a compelling call to action given to those who attend; and the failure to listen to dissident voices and spiritual guidance to dig deeper in one’s faith.

"Unchurched," to begin with, is a tricky term. I've known whole churches full of "unchurched" people, so I don't reserve it just for those who haven't attended in six months (as Pastor Dan points out, a lot of "Christians" show up only at Christmas and Easter). To me "unchurched" means the description in the findings of this report. And that, not coincidentally, put me in mind of these words by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, on Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? l am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators"' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide. and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it vi lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

I still contend we love Martin Luther King because we don't remember a damned thing he said beyond: "I have a dream!" We love dreams. We don't like prophets. Read those words again. Imagine how they apply to the mega-churches mentioned in that study; or to any church at all. The Episcopal Church is agitated today, not because of conditions in Nigeria, but because of a gay bishop in America; not because children are starving in America, but because a woman is the Presiding Bishop. And does such an accusation point at those opposed to Bishop Robinson, at those disturbed by the gender of Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori? Or does it point equally to those who decry the assault on Bishop Robinson, the attempts at schism because of PB Schori? "Every day I meet young people who disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust." Is that disappointmet assuaged because we are fighting among ourselves? How does that fight not reflect: "...the relative indifference of most churched Christians to unchurched people; the overt emphasis upon a personal rather than communal faith journey; the tendency of congregations to perform rituals and exercise talents rather than invite and experience the presence of God; the absence of a compelling call to action given to those who attend; and the failure to listen to dissident voices and spiritual guidance to dig deeper in one’s faith." You can't do those things by proclaiming yourself superior to those you disagree with. You can't do those things by defending your position against all who disagree with you, by arguing over the arcana of polity and procedure and who's in charge.

I can lob bombs at the mega-churches all day long, agreeing with the one quote from this report. I can produce examples from my own experience, my own reading, my own thinking until the cows come home. And what is the purpose of it? To prove I'm better than they are? More thoughtful, more considerate, wiser? Or is it simply to distinquish myself?

There are unchurched people in this country, and almost as many of them are in church as are outside of it. That's not a condemnation, simply an observation. Dr. King was right, 40 years ago. The Barna Group study is right, too. And the people I refer to are unchurched in precisely the ways that report describes: the solitary conviction that this church is for you!; the conviction that "we have always done it this way!" is reason enough to become ever more exclusive and insular as a way of experiencing the presence of comfort, if not exactly God; the absolute rejection of any call to action that requires doing one thing beyond showing up on time on Sunday morning, and being released within the hour; and the abject rejection of anything like "spiritual guidance" because it is simply to disturbing to our personal status quo. I speak especially harshly because "unchurched" is an especially harsh term. Do I describe every church with these words? No, not at all. But I describe the tendency of every church, of every human institution. Are all equally guilty? No, but all are equally subject to such guilt, and all are equally called on to avoid such error, such sin, if you will. And how do we do that, except by being "churched" instead of "unchurched;" except by listening constantly, not for the comforting word of God, but for the mysterium tremendum that shakes our confidence and shatters our assurances and leaves us:

holding one end of a love, when your father drops, and your mother; when a land is lost, or a time, and your friend blotted out, gone, your brother's body spoiled, and cold, your infant dead, and you dying: you reel out love's long line alone, stripped like a live wire loosing its sparks to a cloud, like a live wire loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting.

And then what? Rail against this existential nightmare, and retreat to our tents, telling Moses to speak to God for us, because the presence of God makes us so afraid? Or quit our tents, as Annie Dillard advised, and pray without ceasing?

As ever, the question is never about who's right: the question is, what are we going to do about it? Maybe look to the lessons of Paul, or the lessons of Christ. Maybe look to lessons of hospitality; if that mention isn't too self-serving. But we have to do something; and complaining about the situation gets nothing done.

Jesus said, "A new commandment I give you..."

I'm going to ramble on a bit, finding my topic as I go (as is my wont). I know this would be more effective if I cut it into pieces, put the "punchiest" stuff into separate posts, but I don't really want to do that. It may dilute some parts of the message to do this all at once, but I think the issue needs to be seen as a whole as much as possible. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, and while I don't agree with everything Pastor Dan says, he makes some good points. I'm not comfortable saying Ted Haggard "got what he had coming to him," but I don't doubt for a minute that the arc of the universe bends toward justice, and it was a very short trip before Ted Haggard met up with that truth. Pastor Dan's analysis of the "alpha-male" in charge of the mega-church is particularly good. They do exist simply as cults of personality, different even from the huge Baptist church here in town, a church which understands it will go on after it's latest pastor retires, a church which will go seeking another leader like him, as they sought him, for purposes that other churches and members of other churches may or may not approve of, but which many, one way or another, try to emulate. Mega-churches are wholly in "the business of ministry." They are a breed apart.

But what intrigues me about the Ted Haggard story is in this Harper's article. Reading through it (and you should before you read on), I think first of the Community Church of Joy in Phoenix, Arizona. I encountered that one in seminary: a very mainstream mainline Protestant seminary which wore its theological "liberalness" proudly. Yet some of the older professors, the most mainstream and Old School, saw places like Community Church as a "new Reformation," the "wave of the future." That was in the 1990's. Heard of it lately?

It was a "mega-church" that started as a Lutheran congregation. The pastor had a vision, though not necessarily a mystical one. As I recall the story, he decided he would take the moribund congregation and make it grow, growth being the only measure of success recognized in American culture. He rallied some congregation members to his side, chased the rest off (I'm going from memory here, and not trying to exaggerate), and started his program of "seeker services," much as Willow Creek had done in Barrington, Illinois. I remember this from a presentation put on in a class my last year in seminary. I also remember what I've mentioned before, from Community Church of Joy: they sold videotapes of their services, the better to advertise themselves and evangelize their idea of mission. The service we watched was a TV show, not a worship service. It was the "seeker service," and rather than a Scripture reading or the recital of a Psalm, a "skit" was performed with an overweight woman clearly dressed and acting like a poor white woman, and telling her "life story" for laughs. The "preacher" then used her story to teach a "life lesson." This was meant, according to the church's own literature, to bring people into a more traditional worship of God, or at least a more spiritual one. There were supposed to be 4 steps in this process, from entry in the seeker service to full-fledged committed discipleship. Problem is, as I've pointed out before, it didn't work. People liked the ease and comfort of the seeker service, and never saw a reason to be more disciplined about church than to attend that. Community Church of Joy is probably still thriving; but it is no longer the "hot new thing."

As the Harper's article indicates, the center of power, of gravity in evangelical circles, just keeps shifting. It was in Wheaton. Then Colorado Springs claimed the mantle. At least in Houston (and, IIRC, Texas Monthly), Joel Osteen was proclaimed "the greatest preacher in the world" for awhile, mostly coincidental with his book being on the best-sellers list at the time. (He was very hot in August, 2005. Guess he needs to release another best-seller.) Ted Haggard lead the NAE, well, until recently. Power always seeks its own ends, and laughs at anyone who thinks it controls power. And lest you doubt it is about power:

In the chapel are several computer terminals, where one can sign on to the World Prayer Team and enter a prayer. Eventually one's words will scroll across the large flat screens, as well as across the screens around the world, which as many as 70,000 other Prayer Team members are watching at any point in time. Prayers range from the mundane (real-estate deals and job situations demand frequent attention) to the urgent, such as this prayer request from “Rachel” of Colorado: Danielle. 15 months old. Temperature just shy of 105 degrees. Lethargic. Won't eat.

Or this one from “Lauralee” of Vermont: If you never pray for anyone else, please choose this one! I'm in such pain I think I'm going to die; pray a healing MIRACLE for me for kidney problems (disease? failure?); I'm so alone; no insurance!

One might be tempted to see an implicit class politics in that last point, but to join the Prayer Team one must promise to refrain from explicitly political prayer. That is reserved for the professionals. The Prayer Team screen, whether viewed at the center or on a monitor at home, is split between “Individual Focus Requests,” such as the above, and “Worldwide Focus” requests, which are composed by the staff of the World Prayer Center. Sometimes these are domestic—USA: Pray for the Arlington Group, pastors working with Whitehouse to renew Marriage Amendm. Pray for appts. of new justices. Pray for Pastor meetings with Amb. of Israel, and President Bush. Lord, let them speak only your words, represent YOU! Bless! But more often they are international— N. KOREA: Pray God will crush demonic stronghold and communist regime of Kim Jung Il.

Prayers for the sick are an ancient part of Christian tradition. Care for the sick is also a part of that tradition. Indeed, the common criticism of the Roman Catholic church by Protestantism is that the "princes of the church" became too worldly, too concerned with their competition with the princes of the world. That which you most oppose, you most come to resemble.

It's also an institutional weakness. Institutions think in terms of instituitonal worries. Nations and government policy and foreign policy are much easier abstractions to deal with than "Lauralee" of Vermont. Which is, again, the sad, the soul-devouring horror, of the contemporary church, especially the "mega-church."

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: if this is tne "New Reformation," I want no part of it.

In fact, that post turns me in the direction I keep trying to go: it is the soul-destroying isolationism of American culture that produces mega-churches and pastors like Ted Haggard. And these institutions arise, not as an antidote to that problem, but as its cruelest symptom. It's also a very heady mixture:

“Behind the piano player, the front range of the Rocky Mountains stretched across a floor-to-ceiling, semicircular window with a 270-degree view. Above him, a globe fifteen feet in diameter rotated on a metal spindle. When he took a break, I sat with him in the front row. His name was Jayson Tice, he was twenty-five, and he worked at Red Lobster. He'd grown up in San Diego and once, he said, he'd been good enough to play Division I college basketball. But he broke his ankle, and because the Marines promised him court time, he joined. There didn't turn out to be much basketball for him in the Marines, just what he described as “making bombs and missiles,” so he didn't recommit, and decided to start over in a new city. His mother had moved to Colorado Springs, so Jayson and his girlfriend did, too; his mother left after three months, but Jayson had already decided that God, not his mother, had called him to the mountains. He discovered that a lot of the people he knew, working as waiters or store clerks or at one of the Air Force bases, felt the same way.

Colorado Springs,” Jayson told me, “this particular city, this one city, is a battleground”—he paused—“between good and evil. This is spiritual Gettysburg.” Why here? I asked. He thought about it and rephrased his answer. “This place is just a watering hole for Christians. For God's people. Something extra powerful's about to pour out of this city. I hope not to stay in Colorado Springs, because I want to spread what's going on here. I'm a warrior, dude. I'm a warrior for God. Colorado Springs is my training ground.”

This mixture gives purpose, meaning, warrant to life. The very thing Romanticism professed to do in the face of the Industrial Revolution. Wordsworth took us back to childhood, redeemed our experiences in the idea it was our youth, not our families or our place of birth or even our choices as adults, which made us what we are. By now we have gleefully chucked the responsibility quotient of adulthood, preferring to present a perpetual adolescence as the normative ideal, one in which everyone is always free from parental restraints, eternally young, perfect in physique, and endlessly fascinating to everyone else. Romanticism taught us to be warriors for our ideals, for our personal integrity. Theology even tried to weld that onto Kierkegaard and make Christianity be all about "self-actualization." But the self-actualization now, is to be a soldier for Christ, a warrior in the battle of good against evil. It's the ultimate struggle, of course, which is what makes it so alluring.

And which leads directly to such catastrophic failures of Ted Haggard has just suffered.

But its the loneliness that is the wellspring. "If you never pray for anyone else, please choose this one! I'm in such pain I think I'm going to die; pray a healing MIRACLE for me for kidney problems (disease? failure?); I'm so alone; no insurance!" That is a plea of desperation, of someone casting out into the dark, hoping for a reply. Jesus told us that whatever we do for the least of these, not for world peace, or foreign policy, or social issues, we did for him. What is the Christianity of "New Life" doing for "Lauralee"?* Or for Jayson Tice, 25 and working at Red Lobster? He can't play professional basketball, he was misled by the Marines, it's safe to assume a divorce in his past, and a rootless existence that made "starting over" seem reasonable. "What life have you if you have not life together?" But what kind of life together can we make in this culture, in this land? Jayson is the true Romantic warrior, the disciple of Byron who imagines his feats will lead to as much glory as the famous poet who loved women and swam the Hellespont. Unless they don't, of course; unless working in Red Lobster is the most the world has to offer Mr. Tice. What else can a mega-church offer him, except a fictional apocalyptic vision in which nothing really, radically, happens, except that somehow, rather like the war in Iraq now, if he says faithful, "we win"?

Did Ted Haggard get what was coming to him? Not quite yet, I don't think. Because his real sin, his fundamental sin, was not hypocrisy. It was simony:

According to Ted, it was this army of Christian capitalists that took to the streets [of Ukraine]. “They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property,” he said. “That's what evangelical stands for.”

In Pastor Ted's book Dog Training, Fly Fishing, & Sharing Christ in the 21st Century, he describes the church he thinks good Christians want. “I want my finances in order, my kids trained, and my wife to love life. I want good friends who are a delight and who provide protection for my family and me should life become difficult someday . . . I don't want surprises, scandals, or secrets . . . I want stability and, at the same time, steady, forward movement. I want the church to help me live life well, not exhaust me with endless ‘worthwhile’ projects.” By “worthwhile projects” Ted means building funds and soup kitchens alike. It's not that he opposes these; it's just that he is sick of hearing about them and believes that other Christians are, too. He knows that for Christianity to prosper in the free market, it needs more than “moral values”—it needs customer value.

It's such an old ecclesial sin, and one so associated, by most Protestants, with the Roman Catholic church, that we don't really think of it anymore. But running the church as a business, is simply selling spiritual offices. It's a concept usually relegated to the Roman Catholics because they alone in Western culture, anyway, have the polity and the hierarchy to claim ownership of those offices, and so to judge those who misuse the Church's authority. The root of Protestantism is the relationship of the individual directly to God, which all but makes simony impossible; or it would seem to. It's a concept worth resurrecting, though, because that is the real sin of Ted Haggard and James Dobson and the NAE: the sin of selling spirituality to people, of peddling the gospel to the highest bidder, and for the best rate of return to the salesman. Let us at least be plain about that. It may not be the old sin of the Church; but it is certainly the new sin of the mega-church.

The Harper's article points out, with some excusable exaggeration, that many mainline churches today are "now evangelical in all but name." I think that is certainly true of the largest denominational churches (Community Church of Joy is still an ELCA church), and I also think many a smaller church would happily be more evangelical, if only because people like to go along to get along. But, in America, is this really new?

In one sense, yes; in another, no. Most Christian churches in America have a fevered beginning which settled into a more complacent institutionalized present: the Methodists, the Cumberland Presbyterians, the Campbellite Movement, even the churches of the First Great Awakening. Apparently, in fact, that's precisely the problem, in a way I'd never imagined:

The idea of applying market economics to religion originated not within evangelicalism, nor even in the petri dishes of the laissez-faire think tanks in D.C., but with a sociologist from the University of Washington named Rodney Stark, whose work has won a broad readership beyond his discipline. Stark (who now teaches at Baylor, a Baptist university in Texas) and various collaborators began interpreting religious-affiliation data through the lens of neoliberal market theory in the 1980s. The very best sort of religious economy, insists Stark, is one unregulated by either the state or large denominations. Left to form, change, and die organically, Stark believes, churches will naturally come to meet the populace's diverse spiritual needs, which he divides into a spectrum of six “niches” akin to a left/right political scheme. He argues that the law of the market spurs new religious movements, which start out small, in “high tension” with the society around them, at the “ultra-conservative” end of the spectrum. As these sects grow, their tension usually decreases—that is, writes Stark, they dilute the “seriousness” of their faith—until they eventually drift to the “ultra-liberal” end. Implicit is that there is a natural and fairly steady demand for religion that needs only to find expression in a properly varied supply.

It isn't, in other words, about the changeless and unchanging word of God in an ephemeral world, but about the ephemeral world and how best to sell the product to it. As Judas asked in "Jesus Christ Superstar":

Now why'd you choose such a backward time
And such a strange land?

If you'd come today
You could have reached the whole nation
Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication

But the product is the Gospel; the product is spirituality; it is acess to the Creator of the Universe. If that isn't simony, what is?

And, of course, the irony is, Stark is describing precisely what happens (Methodism, the Campbellites, even the Southern Baptists), while the mega-churches are planning on containing that historical force (if I can risk being so Hegelian) and channeling it to the purposes of the corporation. Haggard, in other words, as a representative case here, hopes to be this church, in the mainline of Reformed tradition:

Grant that thy Church may be delivered from traditions which have lost their life, from usage which has lost its spirit, from institutions which no longer give life and power to their generation; that the Church may ever shine as a light in the world and be as a city set on a hill.

HEAR OUR PRAYER, O LORD.

But a church aimed not at serving God, but serving an ideology. There's a name for that in Christian tradition, too: idolatry.

And, of course, the irony runs even deeper. The members of New Life are rewarded for their fealty to the ideology of Pastor Haggard. But he gives them something else, too: "...what Pastor Ted has given his flock are lifestyle choices." Remember: that sentence was written 2 years ago. And, interestingly and coincidentally, the article follows that statement with a story about "Commander Tom" and his vision of America. Commander Tom, it seems, is an aficionado of The Lord of the Rings, and uses it for his metaphors. So he sees a vision of America succmbing to darkness, a la the hand of Sauron spreading over Middle Earth, and Pastor Haggard, says Commander Ted, "is Gandalf." And the Balrog?

...the Balrog, he said, is inside Pastor Ted, and inside every Christian. Before the church can condemn the world, it must cleanse itself, thought Tom; he believed that American evangelicals were filthy with pride.

“Pride's dangerous,” he said.

Be very careful in calling these people foolish. They may sound like fools, but they have some insight, nonetheless. It would be interesting to talk to Commander Tom now. I suspect he'd say Pastor Haggard had found his Balrog, delving too deep into the mines of Moria. It's worth nothing the Balrog is "Durin's Bane," too; the result of dwarvish pride and digging for jewels and gold in places they were not meant to go, but were not content to leave alone. Pride is dangerous, indeed.

On the other hand, one wonders if Pastor Haggard ever preached on Luke 12:49-53 or 14:26:

James, an aspiring film critic with oval glasses and a red goatee, spoke up from the floor, where he'd been sitting cross-legged. “You know that Bruce Springsteen song on Nebraska, about the highway cop?” he asked. He was referring to a song called “Highway Patrolman,” in which the patrolman's brother has left “a kid lyin' on the floor, lookin' bad” and the patrolman sets out to chase him down. Instead, he pulls over and watches his brother's “taillights disappear,” thinking of “how nothin' feels better than blood on blood.”

“He can't arrest his brother,” James said, and quoted the song: “a man turns his back on family, well, he just ain't no good.”

“I think that's how it is,” James continued. “That's how I feel about Dobson, or Haggard. They're family. We have loyalties, even if we disagree.”

This conclusion in the article is, I think, absolutely right:

The language of the Christian right was, I realized, hardening, collapsing. “Spiritual war,” a metaphor as old as the Gospels, has been invoked for the sake of power before—the Crusades, the conquest of the Americas—but for most of Christian history it has been no more bellicose than “jihad,” a term that once referred primarily to internal struggle. But the imagination of the Christian right has failed, and its language has become all-encompassing, mapped across not just theology but also emotions; across not just the Church but the entire world

Faced with the need to maintain power, the evangelical church is becoming more and more like the Roman Catholic church it once so vigorously opposed (many old-style evangelicals grew up on American anti-papist sentiments as surely as they grew up on the inerrancy of the Bible). But the real ending of the article, appropriately, is here. That revelation comes from a wedding service presided over by Pastor Haggard. This is how that service ended for the happy couple:

The sliding doors of the main entrance whispered open, and Marcus and Sarah walked through. It was a brisk day, blue skies fading to white on the horizon, too cold to be crossing New Life's vast parking lot in a sleeveless wedding gown, but what could they do? Marcus hadn't arrived early enough to get a prime parking spot. It was too cold for me: I watched from inside. Sarah's veil snapped behind her like a white flag. At an SUV—no tin cans, no decorations—about a hundred yards off, Marcus fumbled in his pockets. It seemed like he might have forgotten his keys or, worse, locked them in the car. The pair looked helpless, peering in the SUV's windows; for a moment, I thought I was going to have to call for someone to jimmy the newlyweds' door. But they figured it out. Then they got into their SUV and drove away. As far as I could tell, I was the only one who took any pictures.

It's enough to break your heart, to think about what we are doing to each other, in the name of the one who told us his new commandment, was that we love one another.



*amended on the very wise advice of my blog grandmere.

Never on Sunday Redux

This NYT article digs a bit deeper in to the issue of "megachurches" closing on Sunday, December 25, 2005. This matter raises a whole host of ecclesiological questions.

1) First, what is worship for?

"What we're encouraging people to do is take that DVD and in the comfort of their living room, with friends and family, pop it into the player and hopefully hear a different and more personal and maybe more intimate Christmas message, that God is with us wherever we are," said Cally Parkinson, communications director at Willow Creek, which draws 20,000 people on a typical Sunday.

2) Second, what is church for?

The uproar is not only over closing the churches on Christmas Day, because some evangelical churches large and small have done that in recent years and made Christmas Eve the big draw, without attracting much criticism.

What some consider the deeper affront is in canceling services on a Sunday, which most Christian churches consider the Lord's Day, when communal worship is an obligation. The last time Christmas fell on a Sunday was in 1994. Some of these same megachurches remained open them, they say, but found attendance sparse.

Now, I will be honest: the first time I ever attended a worship service on Christmas Day when that day was not on a Sunday, was the first time I pastored a church. And even then, it was a "country" church (rural Illinois town of 500), and the service was still being held "for the old people." Most churches in the Reformed tradition, in other words, don't hold a Christmas Day service. They simply worship on the Lord's Day, a practice that is as American as the Puritans. But does anyone in a church in the Reformed tradition see worship as an "obligation" anymore? Vanishingly few churches still adhere to that standard, even among "mainline" denominations.

Now here's where it gets interesting:

"This attachment to a particular day on the calendar is just not something that megachurches have been known for," Nancy Ammerman, a sociologist of religion at Boston University, said. "They're known for being flexible and creative, and not for taking these traditions, seasons, dates and symbols really seriously."

Are those "traditional" practices worthless, then, outdated, outmoded? Not necessarily:

In many Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, known for their rich liturgical traditions, Christmas Day attracts far more worshippers than an average Sunday. Grown children return with their parents to the parishes they belonged to when they were young.

I did experience, especially in my country church, a dramatic swing in attendance on Christmas Eve. The first year, the church was full that night (75+ people; it was a small church, indeed). the next year, it seemed almost empty (35+ people). The difference was family travel: families "came home" every other year, a pattern I have observed, more or less dramatically, in every church I have pastored since. Indeed, in Houston, where "native Houstonians" are as rare as hen's teeth, the pattern is usually people leaving to visit their children at Christmas (packages and "Santa Claus" are the primary reason families with young children travel at Thanksgiving, not Christmas). And it has been my experience in the Episcopal church (also known for its "rich liturgical traditions") that many people return there for Christmas Eve. Indeed, my strongest memories from my Presbyterian church childhood (not known for its liturgy) are the few quasi-liturgical moments offered by "special" services such as Christmas Eve.

In fact, I'm not so sure it's the holiday that is exclusively the draw, but the liturgy in combination with it. For liturgical traditions, it is the "tradition" of the liturgy; for non-liturgical traditions, it is the "tradition" of the congregation: Christmas "carols," the church decorations, the familiar words of Luke (one reason "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is still so popular) in a familiar place.

But perhaps the most interesting, and revealing, point in this article is when it shows just how American "megachurches" are, and how American the celebration of Christmas in this country is. Which bring us to:

3) Third, what is the claim of the church on the individual, on the family?

"We're encouraging our members to do a family worship," Bishop Long [Senior Pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, in Lithonia, Ga.] said. "They could wake up and read Scripture and pray and sometimes sing a song, and go over the true meaning of what Christmas is, before opening up their gifts. It keeps them together and not running off to get dressed up to go off to church."

This, of course, hearkens back to the "family chapel" of a place like "Castle Brideshead;" hardly an image of "communal worship." But it ties in perfectly with an "American Christmas," the kind basically invented not by Charles Dickens (Scrooge, after all, awakes to the church bells calling people to service on Christmas Day) but by Clement Clark Moore. Christmas, in other words, as the exclusive province of the family, whether nuclear or extended. But "family" does not mean one's "brothers and sisters in Christ." It means blood and marital relationships.

Of course, "running off to get dressed up to go off to church" hardly sounds like a severe separation of the family unit; especially considering most families gathering soon dissolve into some watching football, some playing with the new toys, some in the kitchen, and some (especially teenagers) wishing they could meet up with their friends and get away from their family! But this just underscores the purpose of "megachurches:" convenience. And convenience works, like utilitarianism, to provide the greatest good to the greatest number:

"I see this in many ways as a capitulation to narcissism, the self-centered, me-first, I'm going to put me and my immediate family first agenda of the larger culture," said Ben Witherington III, professor of New Testament interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky. "If Christianity is an evangelistic religion, then what kind of message is this sending to the larger culture - that worship is an optional extra?"

John D. Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College, asked: "What about the people in society without strong family connections? The elderly, single people a long distance from family, or people who are simply lonely and for whom church and prayers would be a significant part of their day?"

What, in other words, happens to: "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me?"

Christmas, after all, is the day we celebrate the birth of a man who said: "Do you suppose I came here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, on the contrary: conflict. As a result, from now on in any given house there will be five in conflict, three against two and two against three. Father will be pitted against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law." (Luke 12:51-53, SV)

To be sure, that is not a sentiment that needs to be enacted in the celebration of the Prince of Peace. But how ironic, in the name of that celebration,and in the name of that man, to elevate family above all other considerations on this one day of the year.

How ironic; and how sadly American.