Humility

Hidden Messages of American Christianity: Classism

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This is the first in a series of posts covering the hidden messages that sneak into American churches’ proclamation of the Gospel. For more background, please refer to this post.

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
—John 17:20-23 ESV

Just another class symbolI was talking with friends this weekend about a minor split that occurred in their predominantly upper-middle class church. Several families, unhappy with the idea that the church was looking into broadening their outreach to some less advantaged areas, took their ball and went home. Or should I say that in a more appropriate vernacular: They started another church.

It’s not hard to imagine the reasoning that went on behind that small exodus. That less advantaged area consisted mostly of people who were “not like us.” Heaven forbid if they actually responded to an outreach program and began attending the church. Who really knows how to minister to them? They’re just…different.

Is it so hard to believe that this was not the thinking that led to a new church where reaching out to the different would never be forced on anyone. Ivory towers have a way of staying ivory, don’t they?

Last year my wife and I were looking for a new church. We were also looking for full-time employment. In a fit of overthinking, I latched onto a fast-growing, wealthy church with the hope of not only finding a good church home, but also excellent business prospects who might be willing to hire one of us. The church had a stellar reputation, and was even in the same denomination as a well-known Reformed pastor I admired.

Our hopes sank quickly, though. In nearly every conversation with other people at the church, things went well until we mentioned that we were both looking for a full-time corporate job. When I discussed my current work as a freelance writer, you could almost see the eyes glaze over. After a few weeks, we found ourselves a party of two; the world of the church buzzed on around us, CEOs and corporate players chatting away with gusto, excluding those of us who were less fortunate. Maybe they were put off by my decidedly non-handmade dress shoes. Or perhaps it was the fact we drove a Toyota Corolla and not a Range Rover. No matter the economic impediment, the message was clear: we weren’t on the corporate fast-track and probably never would be. Instead, we became so much furniture to be walked around on the way to the sanctuary.

We don’t like to think of our churches as little demographic ghettoes, yet all too often the hidden message communicated to those who don’t fit the demographic is “You’re not invited to our little shindig.” The classism that results from our unspoken message of conformity overrides Jesus’ prayer that we all be one.

I suspect our friends’ church is in the majority, especially among white, well-off, conservative churches. Similar churches once anchored the respectable parts of town, but time changed their neighborhoods from upper crust to urban (or even suburban) blight. Unable to assimilate into their changed neighborhoods, they either adopted a fortress mentality or fled altogether.

Who’s kidding whom, though? The residents in that altered neighborhood clearly understood that we didn’t want their neighborhood spice sprinkled on our filet mignon. A vague condescension may even have existed in our outreach to them because they knew that we didn’t truly want them to come to our place of worship, especially if it meant our tried and true Sunday program would be modified as a result. Rather, we just wanted to feel good about doing outreach, even if none of them ever walked into our sanctuary.

This isn’t just a problem in megachurches. Sure, they may have a “Pastor of Demographics” whose main job is to ensure bland conformity in the church’s cultural milieu, but the problem goes deeper. For all our talk as American Christians of unity and “being one,” we really don’t want to push that message too hard, lest we be forced to live with the consequences. The tattooed goth who cracked open a Gideon Bible in his hotel room where he’s staying during his vampyre convention—aren’t we all secretly a little glad he’s from out of town and will be visiting our church this weekend only? For all we know, he might even be a Democrat, too.

I’ve been a part of churches that did it right and others that failed miserably. Several years ago, I attended a church where you were likely to see a Mary Kay saleslady sitting behind a hooker wearing a spiked dog collar. And that ultra-clean-cut Mary Kay saleslady was ecstatic that the hooker was there hearing the Gospel rather than out roaming the streets or plying her trade in a dingy hotel room. On the other hand, I’ve known churches that turned men away because they weren’t wearing a suitcoat.

Christian classism isn’t reserved for the people in the seats, either. We might not say it, but don’t we automatically give the ministry esteem to an R.C. Sproul or John Piper over the nameless Holiness pastor who couldn’t afford to go to seminary? And isn’t the luster just a tad brighter on the doctorate degree hanging on the wall of the PCA pastor than the one on the Pentecostal pastor’s?

Today, I’m at a church that spans classes and occupations. This isn’t to say we’re perfect, but somehow it works. (Yes, we’re too white, but rural areas typically skew that way.) Even then, we still have this idea that people who cross the threshold of our church for the first time have to conform to us ASAP or else we don’t know what to do with them. Thinking like a first-time visitor who’s never once darkened a church doorway doesn’t come naturally to us, nor would I say that it does for most American churches. However, this doesn’t excuse us from making them welcome, even if they are not like us.

Jesus keenly chose a Samaritan for His parable. The Lord ate with the wrong kind of people, too. And when His Church was first started, a vision of a sheet full of unclean animals got through the noggin of the hardest-headed disciple.

What class distinction message are we inadvertently sending out to the lost, to the first-time visitor, and even to our own brothers and sisters in Christ? Do we see ourselves as a Church that can only be sullied by the hordes of “those people” who are dying to get into the Kingdom despite our reticence? Or are we willing to be happy in a church that reflects all races, tongues, and economic classes of people?

What is it going to take to make us one?

That Other Standoff

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Is it almost Thanksgiving? You’d never know it from the various wars erupting all over the Christian blogosphere as one faction yells to the other faction,Standoff “Oh yeah, well what about this!”

Yes, I’ve participated, but I’ve tried to be as civil as possible. I’m not trying to establish a beachhead. I just desire that other people understand the faction I’m tenuously a part of, especially since mine seems to be on the small side as factions go.

The cessationist/charismatic debate on the surface has tended to be civil. I think that the default faction leaders, David and Adrian, have done well. There have been a few gashes, but I’m not seeing any severed limbs lying around.

But there’s another war out there and this one has turned grisly: Emerging Church vs. Traditional Church. The rhetoric on both sides is so dense that it’s approaching depleted uranium stage. This week brought out the mustard gas and biowarfare as Emerging Church proponent Justin Baeder attempted a domain rustling by securing “emergentno.com” in an effort to put the spoofing screws to Traditional Church proponent Carla Rolfe of Emergent No at “emergentno.blogspot.com.”

Two words: Truly Lame.

While the cessationists and charismatics appear to at least be listening to each other so far, the Emerging Church (EC) vs. Traditional Church (TC) battle has degenerated into a hatefest. I’m halfway tempted to pronounce a pox on both their houses. (I’ve previously blogged about this issue here, here, and here.) The sad part is that there are people on both sides of this EC/TC war whom I appreciate, and the truly thoughtful folks on both sides are not as heinous as they are portraying the other side to be. In many ways, both sides there are attacking the same fringe elements that are under assault in the charismatic/cessationist debate.

But assaulting the weirdos is easy. I’m a charismatic and I’m fed up with the fringe within the charismatic movement. (I’m even more fed up that the fringe may be taking over!) When examining the war going on between the EC and TC camps, each side has every right to be hacked at the lack of Christlikeness in the other side, but then we all know what Jesus said to the group ready to stone the woman caught in the midst of adultery.

I’ve got zero diplomatic skills, so if I tick someone off here in either the EC or the TC camps, I apologize in advance.

This is what the Bible says:

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
—Mark 12:28-31 ESV

Earlier this week, Ingrid Schlueter of Slice of Laodicea, one of the TC blogs that is most fiercely battling the EC, had this to say about Traditional Churches:

There is, without doubt, a shortage of biblical love and concern on the part of church members in Bible preaching churches today. There is a reason that emergent churches and mega churches with small groups are attractive. There is no more empty feeling in all the world than having attended a church service as a visitor and leaving without a kind word being spoken. In my husband’s and my search for a church for our family in an area where good churches were in short supply, we found this again and again. At one point, after attending a church for almost a year, I said, “Tom, we could be in an advanced stage of rigor mortis in the back pew and I doubt seriously that anyone would notice.” … After moving to a new state, we visited one church where we needed directions. I went to the church office and said, “Excuse me, we’re just visiting and we need to find out where to put our children for Sunday School.” The woman looked me up and down rather cooly, and gestured vaguely down the hall. “Someone will help you down there.” She said. This, folks, was a small church. But I was new and uninteresting looking and that was that.

I don’t think I can add anything to her disappointment. Far too many Traditional Churches, filled with people who adore God and love the Scriptures, are getting the first part of Jesus’ two greatest commandments right, but are missing the second. Doctrine has no strength unless it’s put into practice. It’s not enough to be able to cut down every heretical anti-lapidarydipsydoodlearian out there with the Truth of the Scriptures. Yes, that has extreme value and must be guarded, but if we do not love the very people that the Lord Jesus died for, all the doctrine in the world will sit idle in our hearts, gone begging for someone, anyone to put it into practice for the disenfranchised of the world.

Ingrid’s lament is even more tragic, since it should be second nature for us to at least love the rest of the Body of Christ, even if we have difficulties with extending the love of Christ to the lost. Yet how can we do the latter, as the Lord Himself showed us, if we can’t even love our brothers and sisters in Christ?

Does the EC do this better than the TC? Probably. That need to be part of a loving community greater than oneself is one of the reasons that the EC is gaining adherents. The people who don’t normally get called to the wedding party are being handed an invitation. The Traditional Church needs to understand this and repent.

Now as open as Ingrid was about failures of the TC, I’ve searched high and low to find someone within EC ranks who was willing to take on the fact that the EC plays fast and loose with a lot of Scripture, muddying just about every doctrine it touches. With Open Theism increasingly discussed within the EC (but not in those exact terms, since the EC doesn’t desire to have exact terms about anything), one wonders if they’re doing the second commandment right, but are unraveling the tapestry that spells out that the first commandment clearly. What the TC does well—speaking to sin, holding up the cross, affirming the inerrancy of Scripture and its authority—the EC outright mangles, with many of the leading lights in the EC giving depositions on doctrine in the same manner that Clinton asked us to rethink what the definition of “is” is.

For this, the TC has every right to hold the EC’s feet to the fire, but the EC won’t stand for it. I won’t go into all the sites posting doctrinal fallacies attributed to the EC (and they are legion), but suffice it to say, it’s hard to think of the EC in any way other than a reactionary movement that can’t form a coherently Biblical reason for everything it supposedly believes. What other outcome, other than rank heresy, can be expected from the EC if it continues to deconstruct the Scriptural base on which it’s supposedly founded. The oldest lie in the Book is, “Did God really say…?” The Emerging Church needs to understand this and repent.

All this makes me tired.

Why is it incongruous to think that we can have solid doctrine that holds up the full revelation and personhood of the Triune God while ministering Christ to His Chosen and the lost around us? When those two are melded in purpose, isn’t that The True Church? Emphasizing any part of the whole revelation of the Gospel over any other part is a recipe for disaster, yet somehow Traditional Churches and Emerging Churches are doing their best to cook up such a mess.

And we wonder why the Church in the West is failing.

Grieving Answers to Prayer

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Then [Job's] wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die." But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
—Job 2:9-10 ESV

I came back from the men's retreat I was on this weekend, but I did not return as I had hoped. Instead, I came back home weeping on the inside.
Grief
This is not the fault of the good men I grew closer to this weekend, but it has everything to do with the knowledge that even in the midst of good company, people truly do grieve alone. And I'd be lying if I claimed I was not grieving.

How long I've been grieving is a more difficult assessment. Or even what I'm grieving. Grief doesn't always announce itself or its intentions, we just know it's there, brooding. However, having the opportunity to get away and think a little may have jarred loose a few answers to both questions of "How long?" and "What?"

I'm grieving answers to prayer.

I'll say right away that you won't find a doctrine on this anywhere in the Scriptures. If you're the kind of person who detests what you might perceive as extrabiblical conjecture, then reading on will only anger you, so better stop right here and skip to another post. For anyone else, all I ask of you is to listen with the Spirit.

Anyone would think another a fool for grieving those answers to prayer that led to sustained blessings, and he'd be right. What's hard is dealing with answers to prayer that resulted in a firm No. Harder still is the answer that led to blessings that were later taken away before they bore fruit.

The accident that renders the promising athlete a quadriplegic. The new husband who loses his bride to an aneurysm only a month after their wedding. The career dream that was reached, only to be snatched away. The ministry that failed. The stillborn child.

We grieve them, don't we? Olympic glory. A love built for the future. The dream we put our sweat into all these years. The heeded call of God put into action. The child of hope. Once they seemed so beautiful in our thoughts and prayers, but what now? There is only grief.

It's popular in many Christian circles to counsel people that it's perfectly fine to get mad at God. But what of Job's response? He called such advice foolish and did not sin with his lips by giving in to such hellish temptation. Grief, though, was permitted, and so he grieved in the sackcloth of his acquired poverty and the ashes of his dreams.

Job's question is a penetrating one: Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil? As for me, I believe Job is right, but I must also believe that grief is allowed when the prayers of the righteous result in something other than their intentions.

I was once told the story of a teen who was one of those extraordinary few who God revealed the purposes of her life. He gave her an enormous burden for the African people, so much so that her whole heart was given to missions at a young age. Upon graduating from high school, she worked hard to raise support and was richly blessed by the many people who loved her and caught her vision. When she was selected to join a team going to the African interior, the joy was palpable. She boarded the plane, set foot in Africa, and promptly died from a fever within days.

As far as anyone knows, she never got to share the message of Christ with anyone there. Thousands had prayed for her, hoped for her, and supported her. But what of all those prayers?

I used to think there was always a lesson in happenings like this, but I'm not certain I do any longer. Some things just are and perhaps all we can do is grieve those answers to prayer that we do not understand. I know people who have driven their faith into the ground looking for a lesson from some horrid injustice that pierced them, but what if there is no lesson other than the way of suffering? What if grief is its own lesson?

Some things make no sense. I know that I reflexively must understand why something is the way it is. None of us says, "Thy will be done!" easily, particularly when that will seemed to lead to ruin. Why did that bright girl with a heart as big as the world start and end her journey the same week? My only response is grief for a prayer answered in a way I cannot comprehend.

We in our household appear to be receiving an extra portion of these questions whose only answer is grief. The way of the cross? I would like to think so. Maybe this is the ultimate meaning and source for that manner of grief, but like a fog it rolls in and obscure everything else before burning off in a shimmering morning that paints diamonds on the grass.

Let us accept good and endure evil. And may our faces be turned to the Son.