Dwight A. Moody
The church needs to die. Much of it, anyway. Much of the way I have known and loved church for 72 years.
I love the old songs, gospel and otherwise: the piano, the organ, and the choir. Could I ever be happy in a church without a choir?
I love dressing up, putting on a suit, and picking out a tie. I don’t have nearly enough occasions to wear all the ties I own. I tried, a few years ago, to discard a tie every time I bought one, but that didn’t work. I like my ties and am still wearing some I have had for 30 or more years.
I love the preaching, even when the preacher leaves the pulpit and walks up and down the aisles, like the Catholic priest assigned to Georgetown College back in the day. I was dean of the chapel and invited him to preach. I still recall the electrifying effect when he abandoned the pulpit and stage and walked up the center aisle and back down, all the time talking to the students about following Jesus. I remember it.
But there are just as many things about church I dislike, even despise.
I don’t like all the organization, with committees for this and councils for that and more than enough meetings to fill a calendar. I don’t like the judgmental attitude that pervades most churches, with god-fearing people always on the lookout for a break with tradition or a breach with doctrine. I don’t like the dysfunctional people that seem to gravitate to churches. One church I served had an unofficial motto, “An Unction for Every Dysfunction.”
My nephew published a book (which I reviewed last week) calling for the church to be a place for people to be authentic and confessional. I’ve never been in a church like that because the minute you raise a question that hints at independent thought or as soon as you admit your delight in things frowned upon by the church, all hell breaks loose.
Most of all, I don’t like the attention given to survival, organizational survival, I mean. And that has been on the minds of too many church leaders recently. Including mine.
I pastor a church that numbered 25 in the sanctuary last Sunday, and that was with at least a quarter of them just visiting, including my family. They remember times when the sanctuary was full and talk was all about expansion. Every so often, someone will insert into a comment public or private this phrase, “If we survive as a congregation …”
We all know the data: adherence to religion, any religion, is down and falling fast. Church attendance everywhere is declining, and 4,000 churches are closing every year. Those that do attend are old people like me, not young people like my children. When I talk to friends my age, I always ask if their children are in church (by which I mean, are they connected in any way with any form of religion). For the vast majority, the answer is no.
Part of this is the shrinking of all organizations. Part of it is the growing secularity of our culture. Part of it is the pandemic. Part of it is the rapid transformation of our society by technology, immigration, and information.
All of which leaves lots of questions, which among them the chief is this: is there a resurrection in the future of the church?
It seems like we are suffering through our own holy week, with friends leaving, leaders misbehaving, enemies scheming, hopes evaporating, and congregations dying. To summarize the future: it don’t look good.
But God …
God is the unseen, unpredictable, irrepressible Presence in the universe, the One that tends toward life and laughter, meaning and mercy, health and wholeness. God is the mysterious Voice that calls out of our chaos a new creation, one that transforms a death into the springing up, coming out of a new thing.
We need a new thing, don’t we?
We need a new kind of church, a fresh expression of the gospel in the world, a yet unimaginable way of following Jesus. Yes, the church-as-is will fiercely fight to maintain its forms and functions, its orders and institutions, its services and sacraments. But we need something new.
Articles have been written about how micro-church is displacing mega-church. Another research highlights such things as hiking, cooking, and traveling as avenues toward Christian community. Receiving the stranger, especially the refugee, and feeding the hungry, especially the poor, will always be ways into the rule of God. And it is hard to imagine a celebration of both divine and human life without music, and prayer, and a testimony or two.
Resurrections surprise, just as it did that day when two disciples encountered the Risen Lord on their way home to Emmaus. They were caught off guard, to say the least. Which inspires me to say or pray, “Surprise us, O God, in keeping with that old saying that ‘eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor mind imagined. what You have prepared for those who love the Lord.’ Amen”
(April 2022)
