BEING ‘THE CHURCH’ IN A CULTURE THAT COULDN’T CARE LESS
In my quest (with the readers of these Blogs) to come up with an alternative narrative for the church as it finds itself now in an increasingly post-Christian and post-modern culture (lots of church folk fail to come to grips with this reality) we really need to make pre-suppositional the reality that, increasingly, the church, as church, doesn’t even register on the screen of a huge segment of this human scene. Folk are increasingly indifferent to it, or can ignore it, or are offended by it, or even hostile to it … or even if they are marginally aware of it, don’t take it at all seriously as any significant piece of the society in which they live.
This interesting cultural shift hasn’t remotely dawned on traditional church folk, who still regularly “go to church,” participate in its activities, give money to support it, but remain either ignorant or passive about the whole purpose of Christ calling out a people to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. It rather reminds me of a few lines from a ballad: The Skeptics:
“They do it every Sunday,
They’ll be all right on Monday;
It’s just a little habit they’ve acquired.”
Having said all of those uncomfortable things (which have been increasingly corroborated by multiple books and articles in recent time), I find that one of the telling causes for such indifference is that folk have never seen demonstrations of the Christian faith that are compelling, i.e., people or Christian colonies that actually demonstrate the life and teachings of Jesus. I also find that there is a whole lot of spiritual hungering among these (what one poet described as: “decent, godless men”).
And yet … it was to just such ordinary—maybe agnostic, or spiritually and ethically confused, or captive to the immediate—folk that Jesus came “to seek and to save.” But if passive church folk have no sense of Christ’s calling, or no significant contact with just spiritually confused god-seekers … and if the church gatherings do not sensitize them to such, or equip them to be those contagious children of the light amidst these realities, then the church is, actually, a questionable presence. And if the church’s leadership is not equipping the followers of Christ to be agents of his mission to reconcile the world to God—then it reinforces and underlines the critical need for an alternative narrative for tomorrow’s church.
It’s interesting, by the way, that who has gotten the attention of large numbers of persons in recent days is Pope Francis, who seems to get the message quite well. But behind his colorful presence is the fact that the Society of Jesus, of which Roman Catholic Order he is a member, is a very highly disciplined order. And the progression within such orders from: 1) inquirer, to 2) novice, to 3) brother/full member of the order, involves a thorough knowledge of: a) the life and teachings of Jesus, b) one’s own personal conviction of the truth of that life and those teachings, which produces a commitment of repentance toward God and costly faith in Jesus Christ, c) equipping for a life in the mission of heralding that faith in difficult contexts, and d) acceptance of the communal disciplines of the order.
In forthcoming Blogs, I want to propose the alternative narrative that somewhat parallels such disciplines, but to do so the colonies of the God’s New Creation in Christ are going to have to divest themselves of the traditional, and without Biblical foundation, concepts of passive church membership, and of ‘clergy.’ We will be looking for a church that equips every member to joyfully and fruitfully invade the darkness, and demonstrates in flesh and blood that New Creation.
