CHRISTIANITY 101: THE ABCs OF THE CHURCH
Several weeks ago, I was at one of the banks in town and got to talking to the bank manager. She knows I’m a minister and – as often happens with ministers – the subject of church became the focus of our conversation. She asked me if we were getting a lot of young people at our worship services on Sunday mornings. I said that society has changed, that we worship out of a traditional format, and that young people simply don’t attend church that much anymore. We’ve got a number of devout, young families in our church…but we’re certainly not seeing an abundance of them.
Then she told me about the church her son and his wife attend. Apparently, that church is booming, and it’s packed to the gills with new, young families every week. As you might suspect, the music in that church is what we call contemporary…but then she went on to tell me about the minister. She said, “We just hate having to listen to him! He is so incredibly boring!”
I’ve got to tell you…that crushed me. It shattered an image I have long tried to foster about the preached word. You see, to me, a sermon is a work of art…and I try to paint a masterpiece every week. Okay, maybe I don’t paint a masterpiece every week, but that does not mean that I don’t try. My philosophy has always been: Give people something they can sink their teeth into – something they can take home with them – and they’ll be back the next week. Yet as the aforementioned story seems to indicate, that philosophy may not be right.
In my devastation – and I do mean devastation – I turned to God in contemplative prayer. In the process, I received a message that could only have come from up above. The message was this: If you plant the seed deeply, it takes a little longer to grow. Again, if you plant the seed deeply, it takes a little longer to grow. Perhaps the question now is, “How do we plant the seed deeply?” Keep that thought in mind as we move on.
Several months ago, we postulated that our spiritual lives are shaped by three basic things: our narratives, our practices, and our communities. Our narratives frame our understanding of God and of ourselves. Our practices are the things we do on a regular basis that help to form who and what we are. Our communities are the places we go where we are surrounded by – and influenced by – other people…for better or for worse.
Then we worked very hard to establish a few new narratives about God. Looking at God through the lens of Jesus Christ, we determined that God is good, God is trustworthy, God is generous, God is love, God is holy, God is self-sacrificing, and God transforms. Then we wrestled in turn with overcoming anger, lust, lying and the law of reciprocity. We took a stab at defeating vainglory, avarice, worry and judgmentalism.
The theory behind such an endeavor is that abiding in the kingdom of God is different than abiding in the kingdom of this world. Those who abide in this world ask, “How can I get more?” Those who abide in the kingdom ask, “How can I give more?” Those who abide in this world ask, “How can I find myself?” Those who abide in the kingdom ask, “How can I lose myself?” Those who abide in this world ask, “How can I win friends and influence people?” Those who abide in the kingdom ask, “How can I truly serve God?” Ladies and gentlemen, there is a profound difference between abiding in the kingdom of this world….and abiding in the kingdom
of God.
Today we continue the process of considering the communities that are meant to influence us from a spiritual standpoint. Obviously, the community we’re talking about here is the church. The issue we will essentially be dealing with today is substance. More specifically, how do we plant the seed deeply?
Jesus addresses just such a thing in the passage we read from the gospel according to Matthew. He says, “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Some seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly. Yet having no depth of soil, when the sun rose, they were scorched. Some seeds fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Some seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain…some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”
The disciples failed to understand the point of Jesus’ story, so he explained it to them this way. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in the heart. This is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. Yet such a person has no root, and when trouble or persecution arises, they quickly fall away. As for what was sown among the thorns, this is the one who hears God’s word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word…and it yields no fruit. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit and yields – in one case – a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.
That’s fairly self-explanatory, I suspect. The question now is: How do we get there? How do we ensure that we – and by “we” I mean the church – are planted in good soil? How do we ensure that the seed is planted deeply? But then again, do we even want to plant the seed deeply? I mean, if you look at what the results are when one aims to be significant these days, planting the seed deeply just might be the last thing a preacher would want to do.
For example, let’s consider what many people call the ABCs of the church. The ABCs of the church are how one typically measures success in the church. The ABCs of the church is an acronym that stands for: Attendance, Buildings, and Cash. We tend to measure the success of a church – or the lack thereof – based upon the number of people who are in attendance on Sunday mornings, the condition the building is in, and the amount of cash coming in on a weekly basis. There you have it: The ABCs of the church. Yet do prolific ABCs truly represent a successful church?
Loren Mead takes issue with that in a book entitled, More Than Numbers: The Way Churches Grow. In it, as you might suspect, he addresses the question: What does it really mean for a church to grow? He then outlines four specific categories of church growth. They are: Numerical growth, Maturational growth, Organic growth, and Incarnational growth.
Numerical growth is exactly what you think it is. It’s growth in the ways we ordinarily describe it: growth in Sunday worship attendance, growth in the size of the budget, growth in activities and programs, and growth in active membership. Maturational growth has to do with growth in the spiritual maturity and stature of church members. Organic growth is the growth of the congregation as a functioning community. Incarnational growth is growth in the ability to take the meanings and values of the faith story…and make them real in the community outside of the congregation. Thus, the ABCs of the church are not just Attendance, Buildings and Cash. Perhaps the real ABCs of the church are: Attention to God and what he is still trying to do in the world; Building the kingdom of God in our little corner of the world; and Caring for the community in which we live. In my mind, those ABCs are better. What remains for us at this point in time is to find a path that will lead us there.
Perhaps the path the church must take is similar to the path that Jesus took. Jesus came to show us how to live and how to love. Yet the path Jesus took was that of a suffering servant. Think about it. Jesus always took the lower place. Jesus always displayed humility. And when it came time to offer himself as a living sacrifice, did he call upon a legion of angels to squash the hated Romans and preserve his own life…or did he willingly go to the cross to die? As Jesus once said, “He who seeks his life will lose it; and he who loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s…will find it.” Perhaps the secret here is not self-preservation, but rather, going so far as to offer up one’s very life for the sake of others.
All too often, the church is primarily concerned with itself. We worry more about Attendance, Buildings, and Cash than we do about Attention to God, Building the kingdom, or Caring for the community in which we live. Perhaps at this point, we should ask ourselves a question. What difference would it make in our community if our church was no longer here? Would our community be greatly diminished, or would life go on pretty much as usual? If the answer is the former, we’re on the right track. Yet if the answer is the latter...we’ve got some serious soul-searching to do.
The way we plant the seed deeply is by proclaiming a message of self-sacrifice. The way we reveal that the seed is planted deeply within us is by living a life of self-sacrifice. The more the church aims at self-preservation, the more likely it is to die off completely…or at least come to be irrelevant. Yet the more the church aims at self-sacrifice – like Jesus did – the more likely it is to encounter the resurrection that Jesus himself encountered.
Now this is not the kind of message that’s going to make us popular in the short run. But maybe in the long run, it will come to bear the fruit we desire. Someone recently sent an article to me that I believe was sent to them by none other than Ted Martin. It was written by a young woman by the name of Andrea Dilley, and it’s entitled: Change Wisely, Dude. She writes:
When I came back to church after a faith crisis in my early twenties, the first one I attended regularly was a place called Praxis. It was the kind of church where the music was contemporary, the message was affirming, and the atmosphere was soothing. In fact, one Sunday morning the young, hip pastor actually lifted an infant in the air and said, “Dude, I baptize you in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Spirit.”
To Andrea Dilley’s credit, she was not impressed. Later she adds:
I’m not the first person ever to go low-church, and Praxis isn’t the first institution to pursue the hard-to-get demographic of young people. Across America today, thousands of clergy and congregations – even entire denominations – are running scared. They are desperately trying to convince their youth that faith and the church are culturally relevant, forward-looking, and alive. And the way they do it is to radically alter the old model. It’s out with the organ, and in with the guitars. It’s out with self-sacrifice, and in with self-fulfillment.
She says she was raised in a small Presbyterian church, but left it in her early twenties. When she came back, she wanted an anti-institutional church that looked less like a church than it did a coffee house. But after a couple of years of that, she says that the coffee began to taste thin. Now she’s back in a more traditional church because she found that she actually missed the hymns, the tradition, the sacraments, and the substance. She closes her article using these words:
So as you change – or as change is imposed upon you – keep your historical identity and your ecclesiastical soul. Fight the urge for perpetual reinvention, and don’t watch the roll books for young adults. We’re sometimes fickle. When we come – if we come – meet us where we are. Be present to our doubts, our fears, and our frustrations. Walk with us in the perplexing challenge of postmodern faith.
Even so, your church – and your denomination – might die. My generation and those following might take it apart…brick by brick, absence by absence. But the next generation just might rebuild it. They might unearth the altar, the chalice, and the vestments and find them not medieval, but enduring. They might uncover the Book of Common Prayer…and find it anything but common.
In other words, in spite of the direction society seems to be going these days, we need to maintain our theological integrity. We need to plant the seed deeply, and give it time to grow. The ABCs of the church are not Attendance, Buildings and Cash. The ABCs of the church are Attention to God and what he is trying to do in the world; Building the kingdom of God in our own little corner of the world; and Caring for the community in which we live. If we can do that, we will be placing our faith in God to resurrect us, rather than placing our faith in ourselves. And truth be told, isn’t that how a resurrection takes place anyway? Amen.
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