“Just gonna have to be a different man, time may
change me, but I can’t trace time.” D. Bowie
The Church is changing, as is the Culture around us.
Some are confused by the change while others are in denial. For example, Sunday
School attendance peaked in the late 1960’s and has been in steady decline
since. In the ELCA alone we have seen a drop of 40% in attendance (this mirrors
other denominations as well). This shows how severe this change is and how
threatening it might be. We have all heard, “well, it used to be done this way,”
or “why don’t we do it the same way as we always did it.” But these statements
are more about what was then what is.
In close to 2000 years of the Christian Church’s existence
the only thing that has been consistent is that it changes. In the Acts of the Apostles
we learn story after story about how the Church had to adapt and change, often
at God’s prompting. The choosing of the deacons to assist the Apostles, the
Ethiopian Eunuch, The Gentiles Become Believers, The Change in What God Calls
Clean are all stories of change. Often these changes were hard to accept,
especially what made one a follower of God (circumcision vs. baptism).
Yet, for the modern Church change is seen by many as
a threat even though it would seem it is God’s way.
So what do we do in this new age of the Church? How
do we “do” church? These are important questions that many people in the Church
are attempting to answer. We have a new ministry in our Cascadia Cluster called
Salt House who is in the midst of figuring out what this all might look like.
We have dozens of other missional communities that have begun over the last 10
years attempting stunning ministry opportunities (Church of the Beloved, Church
of the Apostles, Luther’s Table, just to name of few) to see what alternative
communities might be the answer.
But for the brick and mortar congregations the
questions are harder to answer when the setting looks the same even though the
context has changed. Worship is not all that different. Our committees, circles,
task groups still meet. We still have a pastor, a youth and family director, several
musicians and an office manager. It all is still very familiar to what was done
before. Yet, it is a very different context.
As a pastor, I too find this all disconcerting. My
training was directed toward that Post-World War II white American world. I now
have to recognize that I am now in alien territory, a mission field as foreign to
me as a faraway culture.
I have no point to this article. It is just a musing
about where we are at as a culture and as a Church. I just wanted to point out
that we all are feeling a sea change and yet do not know where the current or undertow
may take us.
One thing I am sure about, though, is the immutable,
never-changing, free gift, love of God we have been given, better known as “GRACE.”
In the midst of all of this is still God’s voice calling us to God’s never
failing love. It is that we can cling to in the midst of change.
For
I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything
else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in
Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:38-39)
