2/10/14: TOMORROW’S CHURCH–RELINQUISHING TRADITIONAL FORMS

BLOG 2/10/14: TOMORROW’S CHURCH: RELINQUISHING TRADITIONAL FORMS

One inescapable transition that is already inevitably and ineluctably taking place, as we project our alternative narrative for tomorrow’s church, is that it will have to relinquish its dependence upon venerated traditions such as: 1) large impersonal church institutions, and upon a ‘sacralized’ class of leadership known as clergy. For many of the older generations these will be relinquished with kicking and screaming.

I want to focus for the moment on ‘clergy.’ It is not even a New Testament category, but it has been with us for a very long time unquestioned—probably since the period of the Roman emperor Constantine (and there are so many incredible illustrations of how significant this class has been in the preservation of culture). Those two traditions (church institutions and clergy) came charging through all of the deprivations of the Great Depression, and World War II, and those difficult years produced a very large crop of war veterans who were sobered by the war, and came home to attend theological schools, and enter some kind of a clergy-career that had meaning. The post-war prosperity also produced a boom in the construction of impressive church buildings on a very large scale, and optimism reigned. [Historical note: it was in this 1952 period that IBM produced the first Mainframe Computer, which is now considered by the present generation so primitive as to be unbelievable!]

Yet, culture doesn’t stand still. The generation of ‘Boomers,’ who were produced by ‘the Greatest Generation’ were less influenced by their parents’ Christian culture, but hung in there to a degree, and after some rebellion found their way back into the church institutions and settled into traditional patterns. Then came the ‘Gen X’ers’ who were the first generation to really be formed by a rigorous post-Christian culture. The X’ers were a very bright, but very cynical generation (I’m generalizing, of course) and were more and more unconvinced by what they had experienced by their upbringing in the church, and the exodus began.

At the same time, for all of the huge advances in so many areas of the culture: information technology, bio-engineering, etc. … the basic questions of meaning, of relationships, of the ultimate goal of life, and of life after death, etc. remained. And an entertainment culture became a dominant medium of escape … but it didn’t answer these ultimate questions.

The Gen X’ers were followed by the Millennials (those who came of age around the turn of the 21st century). The Millennials, unlike the X’ers were more optimistic and pragmatic and committed to finding solutions to seemingly unsolvable human problems. They are also the products of the Information Age, of Artificial Intelligence, of everybody being in communication through their iPhones, etc. Now an even more recent generation is emerging—maybe Generation Z. And what you have now is a global population of which over 50% are under 25 years of age.

My point here is that these recent generations have no allegiance to our venerable church institutions, its buildings, or its clergy leadership. But when they turn off their iPhones or laptops—they still are left with their quest for relationships, for meaning, for justice, for some kind of connection with transcendence. Our alternative narrative will require, then, that we not only reconceive the form of the church, but that, most importantly, we reconceive its leadership in terms that will create authentic New Creation communities.

In the New Testament there is a very definite provision for church leadership, and it is dynamic and pragmatic and reproductive. It is anything but institutionally focused and custodial, such as most traditional clergy have been. And, happily, there are already many thrilling examples of those have realized this and have become its practitioners of just such leadership.  And they are passionate about Jesus and the Cross. Stand by …

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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