WHO’S THE GUY BEHIND THIS ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE?

In these recent decades there have been so many gifted voices speaking to the ineffectiveness of so much of the church that I know I am in danger of being redundant, except that most of them are attempts to accomplish some kind of renewal on the church as we have had it for the past millennium and a half (including some of my own books), and I want to risk an attempt to project an alternative possibility for you to work on, and feed back to me. But you need to know who I am, first of all.

I am now a full-blown octogenarian, and with a whole life lived in the context of acceptable Christendom church institutions. I have recently completed my memoirs for my family and close friends, so all of this is fresh in my mind. I am a kid who grew up in Sunday school, wiggled my way through church services, went to youth group and youth conferences, and by high school days was beginning to sense a desire to see something more into the whole Christian faith thing than I was experiencing. I went to a church related college with a commitment to pursue Christian ministry (though I did not have a clue what that was, except that “full-time Christian service” was dangled in front of us in those days as a commendable way to serve the Lord).

I had some superb fellow-travelers at college, on the same quest as I. So, on through theological school, most of which I found to be of dubious value when I actually got into ‘the trenches’ of pastoral ministry, then into 60+ years that I could not have imagined at the beginning. I have read widely in Christian classics: Catholic and Protestant. I cut my teeth as a missioner to university students (who can ask brutal questions). I was to pastor to a dismal and dying industrial church and watched God bring it dramatically to life and then to engage in a ministry to the university community nearby. Those were the years of the civil rights movement, the Viet Nam war, and social turmoil, all in ferment on the steps of our church community. I had to deal with reality. I learned how intense disciplemaking can be when one is seeking to mentor others into some Christian maturity in the midst of such.

Then, to an urban church in New Orleans (a culture unto itself), and the turmoil of the restless youth culture of the late 1960s and 1970s. I watched a very old and traditional church rise to the occasion. That got me involved in a denominational council trying to come to grips with the whole subject of evangelism, which, in turn got me recruited to be the Presbyterian Church’s director of Evangelistic Ministries. These were also the years when I was part of an ecumenical pilgrimage of evangelical Protestants to the Vatican, in which 28 of us were guests of the Curia for two weeks to discuss the ministry of the laity in the workplace. I have been part of ecumenical discussions around the subject of missiology in many venues. I have taught scores of congregational retreats, officer-training sessions, conferences, and on and on. I have taught in 6-8 seminaries here and abroad. I am not a detached observer.

Now to the point: more and more as I have been in dialogue with those for whom I have been a mentor, I hear their lament over their struggle to be faithful church members in church communities that they are finding irrelevant to their other six days of work-a-day ministry … how the church has not been much help in equipping them to deal with the challenges, the stimuli and potential of a whole new culture, with the difficulties, with real persons who can be hostile or agnostic … and with the often alien culture as they seek to be sons and daughters of the light, i.e., how to be “the sweet aroma of Christ” in the midst of such realities.

So I am somewhat passionate about being willing to let  the church, as we have known it, move to the margins (many such churches will cease to exist in the next 20-30 years), and look for an alternative narrative with an understanding and form of the church that will be fruitful and encouraging in equipping God’s people in the next generation. I may be crazy, but I want to give it a shot! I am an optimist: Christ is building his church!

Stay tuned …