IT’S TIME FOR A RUMMAGE SALE
I don’t think anyone can argue with the observation that churches in America are changing. A recent poll called the American Religious Identification Survey indicates that in 1962, the number of people who called themselves “secular Americans” represented a mere 2% of the population. By 1990 that number had increased to 8%. In the year 2008, the number of Americans who referred to themselves as secular had increased to 15% of the population.
Worship attendance is on the decline as well. In 1990, 20.4% of the population in our country claimed to be in worship on any given Sunday. By the year 2010, that number had decreased to 17.1%. Worship attendance in the year 2050 is projected to decrease to 11.7% of the population.
A number of theories have been postulated as to what is causing this decline. A man named Bradford Wilcox writes a column in The Wall Street Journal. He wrote a recent article entitled, “God Will Provide – Unless the Government Gets There First.” How’s that for a snappy title? Wilcox theorizes in his article that as the American “welfare state” expands, the church recedes as a source of charity and social services. The expansion of the state, in his mind, thus becomes a driving force behind the secularization of society.
That may be, but I have another theory in mind. Consider our own church. Our attendance and membership are on the decline as well. Here’s what I think is happening. I have conducted 84 funerals since my arrival in Meadville almost exactly 7 years ago. That doesn’t count the funerals Dave Fugate, Travis Webster and Kate Irish Filer have done. Count those and the number easily surpasses one hundred. Many of those individuals were active and vital members of this church who were here on a weekly basis. Others are retiring and now have the luxury of travel. People who once were here four times a month are now here more like one or two times a month. Kids who grew up in this church go away to college and many of them do not return. Then there are soccer games and hockey practice and jobs that take place on Sunday mornings, not to mention the fact that the mall is open as well. And typically, young families are not joining the First Presbyterian Church in droves. From what I understand, they’re not joining any church in this community in droves. These factors combine to form what we might call the perfect storm. In light of these factors and the decline they produce, we look around our church and ask: “Where will we be in ten years? Where will we be in twenty years?” I suppose the next question then is this: “What can we do about it?”
The church is changing and it is changing in dramatic fashion. Phyllis Tickle, author of the book The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why, offers some real insight. Early in the book, she quotes an Anglican bishop by the name of Mark Dyer. He said, in essence, “The only way to understand what is currently happening to us as twenty-first century Christians in North America…is first to understand that about every five hundred years, the Church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale.”
What does he mean when he says, “…about every five hundred years, the Church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale?” What he means is that about every five hundred years the Christian Church undergoes a seismic, earth-shattering change that shakes it to its very core. Think about it. What happened five hundred years ago? Five hundred years ago the Church encountered what we call the Great Reformation. Many say that the Reformation began when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg on October 31st, 1517. Of course, the rumblings of reform had actually begun many years before that. The year 1517 was just when the issue really came to a head.
What happened five hundred years before the Great Reformation? In the year 1054 the Church encountered what we call the Great Schism. There was division between the east and the west over issues pertaining to the Holy Spirit, among other things. They were issues that we might define as splitting theological hairs, but they were issues of vital importance to them. In the end, the Church split into the Eastern Orthodox Church, centered in Constantinople, and the Roman Catholic Church, centered – of course – in Rome. Again, the rumblings actually started many years before, but in 1054 the issue really came to a head.
Five hundred years ago the Great Reformation occurred. Five hundred years before that, the Great Schism occurred. What happened 500 years before that? We come to the sixth century, often referred to as “The Fall of the Roman Empire” or “The Coming of the Dark Ages.” The Church had done some major fighting over the nature of Jesus Christ. One of the documents that arose from that time that might be familiar to all of us is the Nicene Creed. Gregory the Great was Pope in the latter part of the sixth century. He came to be referred to as great not because of what he did to lead a revolution, rather, he came to be referred to as great because of what he did to clean one up.
The world had become illiterate in worship and there was lawlessness in the streets. After all, the order established by Rome was no longer around. Chaos abounded. Gregory the Great was able to save five centuries of Christian relics, artifacts and writings in Europe’s convents and monasteries. Perhaps we could go so far as to say that Gregory the Great saved Christianity from extinction.
What happened five hundred years before Gregory the Great? Five hundred years before Gregory the Great, God took the form of a human being in the person of Jesus Christ. One could convincingly argue that Jesus Christ brought a bit of upheaval to the Jewish faith at the time, as well.
Every five hundred years the Church holds a giant rummage sale. Five hundred years ago, it was the Great Reformation. Five hundred years before that, it was the Great Schism. Five hundred years before that, it was Gregory the Great. And five hundred years before that, it was none other than Jesus Christ himself.
It has been five hundred years since the Great Reformation. Perhaps it’s time for a rummage sale. The present change in the church today is now being called The Great Emergence. What does The Great Emergence look like and what might it mean to us? Let me try to explain.
Let us begin by saying that The Great Emergence, like all the great changes in the Church, hinges first and foremost on authority issues. For example, what was the authority issue in the Great Reformation? Martin Luther felt that the Roman Catholic Church had overstepped its bounds. He called the Church back to the Bible. Sola scriptura, scriptura sola was the clarion call. It meant, “Only Scripture and Scripture only.” The Great Reformation brought the Church back to the Bible many thought it had abandoned – or had at least neglected.
We have authority issues in the Church today as well. What is the source from which we draw our inspiration and guidance? We may want to say the Bible, but society has challenged the authority of the Bible. Some say the erosion began during the Civil War. Thousands and thousands of godly, devout Christians in the South fought for the practice of slavery as being biblically permitted and accepted. Thousands and thousands of others to the north took the opposite stance. Let us not be naïve enough to presume that the Civil War did not have economic factors involved as well, but for our purposes here, consider how this issue rattled the cage of authority. The Bible could not be counted on as the arbiter of justice in this particular circumstance. After all, both sides felt like the Bible was on their side.
The next battle to be fought was not over race, but over gender equality. At the beginning of the twentieth century American women were demanding equal rights in American life and politics. Many would have seen this as an upending of biblical mores. While we might argue that the Genesis story does not make woman subject to man, the Apostle Paul certainly seemed to think that way. Equality for women rattled the cage of biblical authority as well. Now lest anyone misunderstand me, I am not saying this was wrong. I am merely stating a fact.
By the middle of the twentieth century the issue of divorce began to rise. Divorce was seen by many as antithetical to biblical values. As divorce became more popular and accepted, the Church seemed to be accepting what it had clearly stood against for centuries. As Phyllis Tickle put it in her book, “…before century’s end, the Church would be accepting divorced clergy as not only professionally able, but also morally uncompromised.” Again, I am not offering a theological commentary, I am merely stating a fact. In any case, call it another blow to biblical authority.
Of course, the great issue today has to do with homosexuality. Making biblical claims about that issue has lost some of the luster in our society it might once have had. The question for us today is: “What is the source of our authority?” It has become the clarion call of The Great Emergence.
The Christian Church in America is sorely divided. We call that division “denominations.” For the sake of simplicity, we have what some call Liturgical Christians in one corner. That might include Catholics, Episcopalians and the like. We have Social Justice Christians in another corner. That might include Presbyterians, Methodists and the like. In another corner we have Renewalist Christians. That would be the Pentecostals. And in another corner we have Conservative Christians. That might include anyone who falls under the category of Fundamentalist.
All these different kinds of Christians encounter one another at work. They talk to each other. They talk to each other over the water cooler. Experts refer to these discussions as water cooler theology. Thus, what people really believe becomes an amalgamation of many different notions of faith. Spinning in the center of all these corners of faith is what we call The Great Emergence. It’s a combination of many different versions of faith. Theological tradition is thereby put aside and authority seems to rest more with the individual than with a book we claim to be inspired by God. I’m not saying this is a good thing, I’m merely telling you what is happening.
A Medieval mystic by the name of Joachim of Fiore would have seen this development as prophetic fulfillment. Many in his day saw history as being divided into bi-millennial units. For them, the time of Abraham to the birth of Christ was 2000 years of primary emphasis on God the Father. The time of Christ to the year 2000 was seen as 2000 years of primary emphasis on God the Son. The year 2000 to the year 4000 was seen as 2000 years of primary emphasis on God the Holy Spirit. To complete the biblical scheme of seven millennia, the era from 4000 to 5000 will be the consummate union of all three parts of the Godhead. The point is, The Great Emergence rests authority in the individual. It equates the movement of the Spirit within us with ultimate authority.
There are churches out there that are a major part of The Great Emergence. The good news for us as Presbyterians is that the Great Reformation did not put an end to Roman Catholicism. It just had to drop back and reconfigure. Each time a Church rummage sale occurs, in other words, whatever held pride of place before simply gets broken down into smaller pieces. Then it picks itself back up and goes through a kind of renewal.
Look at it this way. Suppose you inherit a massive Victorian home in a state of disrepair from your grandparents, and you want to move into it. You can leave it as it is – that is, falling down all around you. Or you can restore it – you know, repair the things that are broken, put on a fresh coat of paint, replace the carpeting. Or you can completely gut it. You can tear everything apart, knock down a few walls and completely remake it. Or you can hold a rummage sale and sell off all your grandparents’ things. Then you can tear the house down and build a new one to replace it.
The church is a lot like that old Victorian home. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a house that’s falling down around me. And I don’t want to gut the thing and destroy its historical integrity. Nor do I want to tear the thing down and start all over again. I want to restore the house. I want to fix what’s broken and live in that rich, old Victorian home.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is exactly what our Church Revitalization Task Force has been attempting to do. We’re trying to engage our own church in a kind of renewal. We began by asking everyone to pray for our church. Then we tried to create a stronger sense of community. That’s why we have our monthly congregational luncheons and we’ve been asking people to wear name tags…with marginal success, I might add. That’s why they asked the session and the deacons and the trustees to call on people we haven’t seen in a while. We’re trying to keep people from falling through the cracks. We’re doing everything we can to become more vital and active and alive. I truly believe we’re doing everything right. At least we are trying to do everything right.
At this point I’ve got to say that what I have presented so far probably sounds a lot more like a seminary lecture than it does a sermon. Let me try to “sermon it up” a bit. The passage I read from the book of Haggai came at a very critical time in Israel’s history. Jerusalem had fallen to the Babylonians and the people had been dispersed across the Babylonian empire. But now the king of Persia had defeated the Babylonians. Jews from all across the land were allowed to return to Jerusalem to reestablish their lives and to rebuild their temple. Yet the people had become more interested in their own building pursuits and agricultural interests than they were in rebuilding the temple.
Enter the prophet Haggai. Speaking on behalf of God, Haggai promises the people that the latter splendor of the temple of Israel will be greater than the former. “I am with you,” God says. “I will help you.” We call these words the oracle of salvation. To those who are faithful, God promises to be with them, and God promises to help them.
The future of the Christian church in America may look bleak at times as well, but if just a remnant remains faithful to God, God will be with them to help them. As someone from this particular church recently said, “We may no longer be a church of 1000 members. But maybe we can be a church of 600 members that truly makes a difference.” That’s the stuff we’re looking for. Maybe we can have our own little rummage sale. Maybe we can get rid of some of the things that no longer work and focus on the things that do. In the process, we will maintain our structural and theological integrity. And with a little help from God, maybe we will find that the future is brighter than we think. Amen.
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