BLOG 5.28.19. THE FORM OF THE CHURCH ALWAYS UNDERGOING CHANGE

I’ve been reading, with fascination, Pete Buttigeig’s best seller: Shortest Way Home, and reflecting on the lessons it has to teach the church about the role of human institutions undergoing cultural shifts, and how difficult yet essential that we not try to reclaim the past glories when a whole new set of inescapable cultural realities are upon us. In his case, it was the traumatic milestone in 1960 when the giant Studebaker industry, which had dominated South Bend, Indiana, went bankrupt and closed, leaving the city devastated. How to deal with such?

His story relates his leadership in restoring the city by looking for whole new patterns created by a totally different economy that was upon us that would make the city a desirable setting for a future that was emerging in places such as Silicon Valley. He had to remind the citizens that the heyday of its past as the home of an automobile production plant would never return, but that the city had assets that could make it a model for a tomorrow—and it worked (and it launched him into national prominence). As mayor, his genius was looking not at restoring South Bend’s past, but conceiving what changes it would take to make it a city for desirable investment for the future.

The church needs to learn and relearn that lesson. The dominant form of the church for so long (or for the Christendom era) was the creation of impressive institutions what with sanctuaries, church hierarchies, denominations, and presuming a privileged status in communities (including tax exemption in many cases). But we no longer live in the Christendom era. After World War II, and with the Baby Boomer generation, the churches engaged in an orgy of church buildings as it tried to reclaim all that had been put ‘hold’ during the war years. But as generations came and went, so did the patterns of Christendom. Every generation brought its own forms, i.e., ‘mega-churches’, etc. Also, church attendance patterns changed, as did Sunday ‘blue laws’.

But so much of church leadership only had eyes for the past, for what had been true in a different day. They kept building and refurbishing old sanctuaries, those institutional bastions of Christendom, … while the emerging generation generally were indifferent to such (so that church membership in such institutions grew older and began to die off.

Healthy new church plants looked at the present, and the emerging culture that looked to a much more relational, and informal culture. They could meet in more casual settings. The dominance of clergy was replaced by the need for a leadership that equipped them for their role as God’s new humanity. Sacred buildings, and clergy, were replaced by utilitarian buildings and leadership that equipped them for their mission. They were into planting new colonies of such in areas in need of such communities of God’s new creation.

Meanwhile, older, expensive-to-maintain church institutions, who clung to their past began to die and elaborate sanctuaries were being demolished on a regular basis. The ‘golden era’ of their past, or their assumption of permanence disintegrated before their eyes. Church history is replete with examples of such change, and of the more pragmatic forms of missional faithfulness. The basic form of the church is given by Jesus: “Wherever two or three of you are together in my name, there am I in the midst of you.” We do need each other. We do need to meet together. We do need to teach and exhort one another. … But the form of such meetings needs to be faithful to the mission of God’s new creation in Christ.

Yesterday will never return. But “tomorrow is as bright as the promises of God.”

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