by Rev. Terry Bascom, August 15, 2010
Mainline Protestantism is not doing well. Last week I laid out the problem, offering some of the statistical information that shows that all faith traditions in the United States – Christian and non-Christian alike – are benefitting from the religious diversity of America…except mainline Protestantism. We are losing members, losing income, and losing position. If you want to go over those statistics, last week’s sermon is posted on the Church’s Adult Study blog.
Today I want to lay out an approach to a solution. It’s not the answer; there is no ‘magic bullet.’ What I am going to do is tell you what’s missing and point to an approach that other churches have used to find their answers. And I will also post this sermon and some supplemental material this afternoon.
It used to be that everyone who was anyone belonged to one of the mainline Protestant churches; but not anymore. So what happened?
In a word, we got complacent. Because Protestantism was the religious tradition by far most embraced by presidents, senators, governors, town mayors, police chiefs, school teachers, church clergy, and businessmen, the culture of America was for generations Protestant at its essence – and Protestant in the liberal, mainline way. So, the Church in America did not stand in tension with the power establishment – it was a part of the establishment, and its values shaped American culture.
By contrast, African American churches, Catholics, non-mainline versions of Christianity, and non-Christian faith communities had to be intentional about teaching their views and values to their offspring. Non-mainline faith communities paid particular attention to three areas of church life (and this is important): they had to (1) develop worship services that clearly reflected and inculcated a particular view of God and humankind; also, they had to (2) establish programs of religious education that intentionally articulated those worship values; and (3) they had to support fellowship that provided social and cultural reinforcement for the community’s values – especially where their values diverged from those of the dominant society.
Because mainline Protestantism did not have to take a position over-against the culture, it never developed the robust institutional commitments it now needs – now that our culture has moved away from Protestantism; indeed, away from Christianity. In my experience as a church pastor, and as a consultant to a number of Congregational churches, I have met very few mainline Christians who could tell me what they believe about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, sin, and salvation with either certainty or clarity. And almost none who could support those convictions with reference to specific verses of Scripture, or to biblical stories, or even just to biblical themes. As a rule, Mainline Protestants cannot biblically justify their perspectives; in fact, we don’t even like to talk about our faith convictions.
Well, those are not characteristics of a robust faith. Such a faith as we have is not prepared to face the personal and social troubles of our contemporary world, or the conflicts that are founded in religious beliefs in a way that allows us to contribute toward the common good, or to finding common solutions.
By contrast, my sister – who has spent the last 30 years attending a Vineyard church in southern California – can articulate theology on my level; and I am a seminary graduate with a major concentration in theology. She can also quote chapter and verse from the Bible to support her views.
Most importantly, she is not unusual. She is typical of the 10,000 or so members of her church. And before you write it off as brainwashing, keep in mind that all knowledge is brainwashing – and there are worse things to teach people to understand and practice than the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. Not only that, but when we don’t teach our children and our membership the things of the Bible, they fill up their minds with other things.
In my years as a pastor, I found the attitude of church parents most strange. By and large, they objected to teaching their children the things of the Bible, or to teaching the Bible with conviction and purposefulness; they said they wanted their children to be able to make up their own minds about what they believed and valued. That makes no sense to me. How do you decide whether you value something if you are not exposed to it? And if your children’s exposure is weak and uncertain, and is undercut at home by how the you talk about your faith (or don’t talk about it) and by what you do that contradicts biblical teaching – how can you think your children will embrace your faith? To them it’s hollow, hypocritical and powerless; they’ll go looking for something else, something with more bite to it. And who knows where that might lead! (Actually, all you have to do is look around; you can see where it leads.)
Evangelical churches don’t make that mistake. Nor do other non-mainline Christian traditions, or non-Christian faiths. That strange behavior seems to be limited to us; and we are the ones dying out.
As for my sister, I don’t always agree with her interpretation. But that’s okay; there is more than one way to understand the Bible. The point is that she and I can have a real discussion about what it means to be a slave of Christ because she daily and actively wrestles with the Scriptures. I have only on a few rare occasions been able to have the kind of discussion with members of mainline churches that I can have with her.
And I don’t want you to misunderstand. My sister does not go around talking like a theology professor or spouting Scripture at every situation. She can talk like that with me because we both speak that language, but in her daily life she talks like an ordinary person. However, her daily life, her daily activities, and her worldview are all informed by her foremost commitment to walk in Christ’s footsteps as closely as she can, sinner that she is. And to that end, she lives a reflective life; she daily reflects on what God wants from her, as revealed in the Bible through prayer.
And if she crosses paths with someone who is hurting, or lost, or confused, she has ready aid and comfort that is based on her active interaction with her Christian faith. If the conversation should veer into matters of faith, she can say what she believes, and why – both from her personal experiences of God’s activity in her own life, and from Scripture. And the habits she has built up over the years reflect her convictions: people can see that she walks her talk. That gives her authenticity, which is authority and power. She knows her Bible, and she lives her knowledge.
That’s robust faith; that is knowing to whom you belong. Sadly, it is not typical of mainline Protestantism. Mainline Protestantism takes a casual approach to religion that comes from believing that God basically approves of us the way we are; and (to hammer on this point) mainline Protestantism is the only faith group in the United States that is not benefitting from the diversity of the American religious landscape.
The question for Ludlow United Church is: do you want to be a statistic? Or do you want to buck the trend? Some Mainline churches do buck the trend and thrive, but most prefer slow death to the dramatic change that’s needed in order to live.
I believe you want to live. If I’m right, there are four things you must do.
First, you have to grasp the difference between technical knowledge and adaptive knowledge. Technical knowledge tells you how to apply information you already have to new problems. For example, if your membership numbers are low, technical knowledge suggests your pastor needs to make more house calls in the neighborhood. Many mainline churches have tried this approach, and failed – because the context within which that approach used to work, back in the 1950s and 1960s, has changed dramatically. Today it’s the wrong solution to the problem.
What’s needed is a new understanding of the situation; one that leads to new behavior. That’s adaptive knowledge. But people generally don’t like pursuing adaptive knowledge because it involves change – and change is hard. Change requires re-conceptualizing your universe, creating new habits, and re-directing the course of your life. Nobody likes that; and mainline Protestant churches in particular don’t like the idea of having to be more intentional and more energetic in developing their worldview and world mission. So they keep trying to solve adaptive problems with technical knowledge, and failing.
Adaptive knowledge involves a quest for a new way of looking at a problem. It calls for experimenting for a specific purpose – to discover what works. If your membership is low, you need to examine the causes. What outside your church has changed in ways that contribute to your low attendance, and what strategies could you try in an effort to address those changes and build your membership? Also, what inside your church is an impediment to the people who do visit? Why do they not return, and what can you change – what must you change – to remove those impediments?
So the first thing you have to do is put on your work clothes. There is no easy way through the problems facing mainline churches; it requires effort, it requires dying to the old version of Ludlow United in order to be reborn in Christ’s image for this time and place.
The second thing you have to do is become People of the Book. That is, you have to return to the Bible in a focused and intentional way, ready to hold Scripture up as a kind of mirror. How do you think and behave in comparison to how God wants you to think and behave? Do you know? How fully do you embrace the values and perspectives of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as put forth in the Bible?
You know, back about 500 years before Christ, the last vestiges of the Kingdom of Israel were destroyed by invading Persians. That took the Jews completely by surprise because, a lot like contemporary mainline Protestants, they thought God approved of them just the way they were. They were the establishment; they were accustomed to thinking of themselves as God’s beloved people, and so they got spiritually lazy. They didn’t see how their beliefs and practices had slowly become corrupted, and how their behavior had become less and less biblical.
After the destruction, while living in a Persian prison camp, the priests and scholars of Israel asked the hard question: how could this have happened to us? To answer that question they went back to the Torah, they returned to Scripture and began to read again, as if for the first time, with new eyes freshly opened by catastrophe, and discovered how far they had drifted. That’s when the office of rabbi was born: the rabbi was responsible to help the people understand and conform to the Book. Our preachers are the Christian equivalent, and we need to again become People of the Book. Non-mainline Christians are pretty good at being People of the Book; we are not, and we are dying.
So the first two things we have to do are: understand when we need adaptive knowledge because we need a new perspective; and, become again People of the Book, devoted to becoming more closely God’s people, defining ourselves by our reflection in the Scriptures. Those two things go together – a viable new perspective can only come by renewed reflection on Scripture.
The third thing you have to do is discover your Christian identity. That’s also tied to studying and reflecting on Scripture. Our Bible and the history of Christianity tell us that every local church is the Body of Jesus Christ for that place and time. We also believe that the Holy Spirit calls to our congregations the people needed, with the skills necessary to fulfill Christ’s intention for that church. Your church has a unique identity in Christ founded on the attributes of the people God has called to worship here. You need to discover your church’s identity and, when you have found it, act upon it. One way to discover your Christian identity is to explore what your congregation already does well. What are your strengths, and how can you build on them in ways that more closely reflect Christ to your neighbors?
Your Christian identity is not some new program or emphasis that you lay on top of your current problems. It’s discovering your congregation as God’s children. You have to see yourselves in the Bible, as God says you are, and fall into the relationship God already has waiting for you in Jesus.
When you know who you are, you will see your vision for ministry. And when you pursue your vision for ministry, you will become a vibrant and vital church, which will attract new people with new gifts to expand the mission God has in mind for your congregation here in Ludlow, and as a participant in our national and international village.
By and large, people of faith take their religion seriously; it guides their daily lives. Mainline Protestants are an exception to that rule. If we are going to have a voice in the way American religious practice develops over the next generation, we have to learn to take our faith much more seriously than we have been doing. We have to stop being complacent. We either wake up – or we die.
So, if you want to survive as a church: (1) embrace adaptive knowledge as a way to new life; (2) return with all your hearts and minds to the Bible, to study it for transformative understanding; and (3) persist in biblical reflection until you discover your Christian identity. Then, (this is number 4) act on what you have learned, experimenting your way to new life and vitality.
And along the way, take a lesson from the non-mainline churches: First, create worship that articulates your vision of who you are; second, develop educational programs that teach that vision; and third, engage in fellowship activities that support your membership in living the vision.
As you do all of that, you will become a force for good, because a force for God in our troubled world. You will become a people with robust faith, certain of what you believe, equipped to live what you believe, and ready at all times to provide an accounting for what you believe. And that will allow you to both help people in trouble and seek common ground with people of other faiths – without compromising the essentials of your own convictions.
Let me close today with Jesus’ parable: “A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. Then he said to the keeper of the vineyard, ‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?’ But [the vineyard keeper] said to him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6-9).
How does that story apply to you – personally, and as a church?
Amen.
