Community

For One Brief Shining Moment

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These are the tales of several real churches I have known, either because of my own experiences as a member or through the experiences of friends. Each church shares the same peculiar reality.

Church A—A long-established congregation in a just-outside-the-city suburb, it flourished with the confluence of several pastoral streams that yielded a sum much greater than the parts. With vibrant leadership, plenty of wealthy families, a “somehow it just works” blend of worship styles, and a healthy mix of ages within the congregation, this church had it all. Conservative, Spirit-filled, evangelistic, and biblically solid, it was the place to be for about 15 years. Then, for no apparent reason, most of the leadership resigned in fits and starts over a two year period. The most influential laypeople left for a different church. Then came the inevitable church split. The neighborhood around the church changed, and both slid into a decline from which they have not recovered—and probably never will.

Church B—After the chaos subsided at Church A, it seemed many of its refugees ended up at this church, which was already being christened as the new place to be. Visionary leadership coupled with a hip vibe and a “this ain’t your grandpa’s church” feel combined to bless many and give the city something unique.  Soon, this church garnered both local and national attention.  But when its senior pastor fell ill, powerplays within the leadership played out in messy ways. The vision that had driven the church through 15 years of growth and influence waned when the church got caught up in Church Growth Movement shenanigans. A purge cleaned house of some of the powerplayers, and the church is making some inroads toward regaining its past vision. Sadly, it fell far enough that it has a long road ahead, though it is working hard to recover.

Church C—Once the area’s one true megachurch, this congregation was known throughout the city. For about 15 years, anything of importance to the Christian Church in the city had some input from this congregation. Besides the local kudos, the pastor and his staff were highly respected in the national denomination. I saw 2nd Chapter of Acts, Dallas Holm, John Michael Talbot, and others there during this church’s 15-year heyday. But a sex scandal in the children’s ministry tore the church apart. Now, I know no one who attends there.

Church D—This church thrived because of the large number of families with kids. All the youthful energy created a dynamic center of creativity and eagerness for Christ. Though a mainstream Protestant congregation, the pastors preached the Gospel and loved the people in the seats. Illness forced the senior pastor to step down. The kids in the church grew up and moved away, never to return. The congregation greyed and the neighborhood around the church grew poorer and more needy. Still, for about 15 years the church was a source of energy and Zoe-life.

Church E—Located in the city, this church was as diverse as they come. White, black, prostitute, lawyer, rich, poor—somehow they all got together to focus on Christ. The leadership team unswervingly upheld the Scriptures and ministered powerfully. For about 15 years, this church commanded the respect of many, with pastors from Churches B and C both claiming it as an inspiration for their own ministries. But the senior pastor grew older and funding for the church grew harder to come by. Folks who lived in the suburbs but drove to the city to attend dwindled. The top-notch music ministry fell on hard times when the pastor of music was let go due to budgetary constraints. I’m not sure what has happened to this church, but I know that people don’t mention it like they once did.

Anyone notice the one uniting factor of all these churches that have suffered decline and eclipse?

I call this Camelot Syndrome. For one brief shining moment these churches had everything going for them. Folks would walk in and feel the Spirit dwelling. They knew this was the place to be because people encountered God powerfully and had their lives changed.

And in each case, that moment of glory lasted for about 15 years.

Almost all of these church had been around for decades, but something happened in a 15-year span that took them from good to great. Equally, something bad eventually happened that tarnished Camelot. In these cases, the bad took on the following forms:

1. A loss of dynamic, visionary, Gospel-true leadership, either through resignations, age, political maneuvering, illness, compromise, or a combination of those elements

2. Demographic changes in the neighborhood surrounding the church

3. A failure of young people to return to the church after leaving to pursue a college education or better work opportunities outside the church’s geographic reach

4. A scandal or infighting that split the church

5. A failure to stem the loss of mature laypeople who comprised the backbone of the church

What troubles me is that I see few exceptions to Camelot Syndrome. Influential churches have about 15 years of glory before they run into a mass of issues that precipitate decline. The all-too-brief rays of the sun shone down...What’s even more distressing to me is that it’s not just influential churches who suffer; smaller congregations tend to face this same syndrome.

My question: Can this be prevented? (Crazier addendum: And should it be?)

Further, I would like to know if it’s possible to restore a church’s glory once tarnish taints Camelot. I see Church B striving to avoid becoming an also-ran, but the list of churches that have successfully fought against entropy and won seems to me to be vanishingly small.

I wonder also what must be done to avoid pinning too much of a church’s success to dynamic leadership. In almost every case, the influential leader(s) in my church examples handed the ministry to less-effective folks or to those who were unable to find their own footing before the lifeblood of their church had bled away to some other congregation.

Is the loss of the cream of the laypeople crop inevitable? How can churches keep their top laypeople during transitions, thus avoiding decline?

Lastly, how does a church keep its young people and retain its relevance in light of changing demographics within its surrounding neighborhood?

Your thoughts are welcome. Please leave a comment.

The Great Unconfession

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The wiser you are, the more worries you have; the more you know, the more it hurts.
—Ecclesiastes 1:18

Winter holds sway here in southwestern Ohio, defined by cheek-stinging cold and relentless gray skies that suck all the color out of creation’s palette. January and February lurk.

This time of year in the Midwest is my least favorite by far. It takes a great deal of energy to refrain from going into the garage (doors down, of course), climbing into the family car, rolling down the windows, twisting the key in the ignition, and letting a CD of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” loop repeatedly on the car stereo while the CO billows over you.

Yeah, that bleak.

It’s that set of weeks when people start thinking too much because there’s time to think;  the Christmas madness is over and there’s little else to do when a foot of snow traps you in the house. Everyone goes a bit more inward than they do in mid-June. They start thinking about their lacks. Christians do this more than anyone, I think.

We Evangelicals hear a lot about unconfessed sin. You can blame all manner of ills on that beast. Unconfessed sin is the spiritual antithesis of duct tape:  Everything falls apart when wrapped in it.

Somehow in the English language, a tongue in which I am supposedly familiar, we can have something that is unconfessed but not an unconfession. I find that odd.

But I do not find it odd that, whether the word exists or not, Christians make unconfessions. When I think about what may constitute an unconfession, I consider those confessions that no one would ever declare before an assembled body of believers, even if all are mature and have walked with God for years.

We can probably all imagine what might remain an unconfession: a heinous sexual sin, some awful thing done to a child, possibly even a murder.

In some ways, those are easy.

I think there’s an unconfession even more devastating. It’s the kind of inner disquiet that I’ve never heard spoken out loud in polite Christian company. It’s by no means salacious or repugnant, but it makes so many people uneasy that it goes unconfessed from generation to generation.

What follows, I believe, is the great unconfession of many sincere, earnest Christians in America today:

I gave my life to Jesus, believe in Him with all my heart, serve Him with everything I have, yet life still seems meaningless.

In many churches in this country, if someone respected in the congregation stood up on Sunday and spoke those words, people would be appalled. Yet I believe that a whole host of Christians struggle with that unconfessed angst—and its killing them slowly.

Daily they trudge to a cubicle in a stark glass edifice, punch some characters into a computer keyboard, fight gridlock on the way home, barely stay awake as they wolf down a warmed-over meal, spend some half-hearted moments with their spouse and kids, stare down the list of things they have to do but can never find time to resolve, punch a few more characters into a computer keyboard, trudge to a dark bedroom, sleep six hours, get up, toss off a quick prayer or two asking for yet another unmet need, read a half-baked devotional reading for the day…lather, rinse, repeat until death lays claim to them in an unguarded moment. And they are told by their spiritual elders on Sundays that this is the abundant life.

If they are ultra-spiritual, they may go into the ministry, each day confronting a set of problems in the lives of others, problems that may, in fact, relent, only to be replaced by others, just as the people are themselves replaced by someone else who is hurting.  The great circle of pain. And the meaninglessness increases when all that work comes to naught some day because of one misunderstanding or another, and they move on to whatever the next ministry assignment is. And on Sundays they tell people that this is the abundant life. But there’s a catch in their heart that they hope doesn’t show in their voice—because the meaning of all this still escapes them.

I’ve had people write many times and tell me the reason they read Cerulean Sanctum is that I write from the heart. Truth is, much of what I write here is to myself. I need to hear what I write more than anyone else does.

And so I write this post because I struggle with meaninglessness, too, especially this time of year. I may be alone on this, projecting my own struggle onto the lives of other believers, but I don’t think so. I think many Christians bottle up this unconfession concerning their own battles against meaninglessness in life. To confess that one struggles with meaning post-conversion is about as close as one gets to apostasy in some Christian circles.

It gets worse for many people who struggle with meaninglessness because the truth is that Christ is our sufficiency. If we struggle with meaninglessness, it’s because we are not connected to Christ the way they should be. And that’s not Christ’s fault; it’s ours.

Doesn’t make the struggle any easier, does it?

I think this plague of meaninglessness has been a problem with mankind since the fall. Ecclesiastes captures this better than any book in the Bible. A sampling:

These are the words of the Philosopher, David’s son, who was king in Jerusalem. It is useless, useless, said the Philosopher. Life is useless, all useless. You spend your life working, laboring, and what do you have to show for it? Generations come and generations go, but the world stays just the same. The sun still rises, and it still goes down, going wearily back to where it must start all over again. The wind blows south, the wind blows north—round and round and back again. Every river flows into the sea, but the sea is not yet full. The water returns to where the rivers began, and starts all over again. Everything leads to weariness—a weariness too great for words. Our eyes can never see enough to be satisfied; our ears can never hear enough. What has happened before will happen again. What has been done before will be done again. There is nothing new in the whole world. “Look,” they say, “here is something new!” But no, it has all happened before, long before we were born. No one remembers what has happened in the past, and no one in days to come will remember what happens between now and then.
—Ecclesiastes 1:1-11

Despite the fact that there is nothing new under the sun, I think we humans of 2009 struggle with meaning more than our ancestors did. Under a charcoal sky...Most of our communities have shattered. We roam far from our birthplaces in search of what does not ultimately satisfy, fracturing family and robbing us of connection. We have little time for each other, for that once-tribe that helped root in meaning those who preceded us. Even the imprisoned apostle Paul had his faithful companions who cheered him with their presence. Without them, would the writings of that great apostle have taken an even more somber tone? There’s a reason why God intended the Church to be a communion: He himself is a communion.

But we have lost the idea of communion/community. For this reason, I believe we have magnified our struggle against meaninglessness.

Meaning also goes wanting when a society’s end goals cheapen, when beauty is replaced with cynicism, accomplishment comes down to material accumulation, and youth trumps age and its community-building wisdom. All of this detracts from our sole source of meaning, God.

We are all caught up in this race to the bottomless pit of meaninglessness. Some handle it better than others. I know that I do not handle it well at all.

Maybe that’s because I believe life can be better than it is. Maybe we don’t have to settle for less. Maybe in the midst of all that meaninglessness something better arises: hope.

Or maybe I’m just fooling myself. Ask me again come March.

The Rules of Attraction (Spiritual Edition), Part 2

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'Mendi' by innocent tauruscianIn my previous post on this topic of being spiritually attractive, I noted that, too often, the contemporary Church in America resembles the slightly annoying, loud, “two bagger” friend of the naturally beautiful girl, and that’s the reverse of what it should be.

We are the Bride of Christ, not the also-ran. We caught the bouquet at the wedding long ago and we’re the ones getting married. We’re the ones at the altar. It’s our day. There is no time today for being the hopeful, though-probably-doomed-to-spinsterhood bridesmaid.

Everyone noticed the early Church. Thousands rushed into the Kingdom. In the first 300 years of existence, the Church grew from a handful of souls to what historians peg at 20-25 million. The world noticed the Church’s beauty.

But there’s a world of difference between “Wow! Check her out!” and “Eww, check her out!” Too often , the American Church resembles the latter. We’re attractional in the wrong way. There’s a big difference between catching a second look because we’re a stunning beauty and catching the look because our ample gut is spilling over our low-rider jeans.

Here’s how the Church can be beautiful to the lost people of the world:

1. Listen more; talk less.

Dale Carnegie, of How to Win Friends and Influence People fame, long ago noticed that we human beings enjoy people who are willing to listen to us. Studies have borne out this truth. When all other influences are factored out, we find that the person who listens is deemed the more attractive person.

The meteoric rise of social networking sites on the Web and microblogging tools like Twitter have captured the public fancy because, deep down inside, people are dying for someone, anyone, to notice them. Our society is an increasingly detached and cold one. We’ve spurned the types of communities that for all of human history provided a sense of connection and inclusion.

Listening is the ultimate reconnection, the big notice.

Christians need to reconsider how we apportion our listening and our speaking. Ten theologically astute sermons may, in fact, not balance out one  serious listening session on our part when we offer a damaged person our ear (free of advice). We may listen for ten hours, but at the end of that ten, our simple statement, “I hear you. And Jesus is the answer,” may be the extent of the sermon we have to give to help usher someone into the Kingdom of God.

Some people have never had anyone hear their story. As a Christian, what more attractional gift can we offer than to be the one willing to listen.

2. Be the other person.

Paul said it best:

To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
—1 Corinthians 9:20-23

Our failure to live this way may be the most profound reason why unbelievers don’t want to have much to do with us. Not only does a lack of empathy on our part separate us from other people, but so does our holier-than-thou attitude that we often lord over those who are not like us.

Too harsh?

Consider that Paul became weak to win the weak. He didn’t lounge in his position of strength and say to others, “See how strong I am, while you are weak. Don’t you want to be like me?” In other words, he didn’t act like a pitchman on some self-help infomercial—as we all know, those guys are just universally loved by all, aren’t they? Envy makes a lousy entryway into the Kingdom.

Or imagine the reception Paul would have received at Mars Hill should he have stepped to the dais and said, “Listen up, you godless philosophers, repent or die in your sins.” Instead, he took the time to consider the discussion of the philosophers and their ideas and used their same ideas and language to point to Christ.

When we talk to others about Christ, do we do so as one of them, yet filled with the Spirit of God?

3. Never let our own cherished opinions serve as an impediment to others.

The Enemy of our souls is far more cunning than we give him credit for. Our own nonessential belief systems are one of his greatest tools to make the Church ugly.

I’m old enough to remember the first run of All in the Family. I remember the stir that Norman Lear caused by making Archie Bunker the mouthpiece for contemporary America. We laughed at Archie’s bigoted opinions about Jews, blacks, “homos,” and “commie pinkos.” But we did so nervously.

Archie painted himself as a  Christian, though he was more of a believer in the American civil religion than anything. Still, which of us would want him to join us on a door-to-door evangelistic outreach? Anyone?

Yet too often, each of us is not too far removed from Archie. Our opinions may not be as comically outrageous to us, but to others they might be.

Last night, I listened to a group of representative Evangelical believers talk. Here are some excerpts of that discussion:

“Ann Coulter said….”

“I heard that you can tell the quality of a history book by how it portrays Ronald Reagan.”

“The public schools are indoctrinating children. That’s why we must homeschool.”

“Angry homosexuals picketed Rick Warren’s church….”

In the end, not a single one of those statements advances the Gospel. In fact, each may serve as an impediment to someone else coming to the Lord. They are political statements, statements about lightning rod individuals or culture war issues, but not a single one points to Jesus. Instead, they serve as roadblocks to the Kingdom of God for people who don’t like Ann Coulter, had a career in air traffic control derailed, send their kids to public school, or who happen to be an angry homosexual because they were homosexually molested for years by an uncle and only now realize how messed up their lives are because of it.

When I read the New Testament, I don’t see Jesus or the early Church dropping political or social roadblocks in the way of dying people who are longing for the Good News. Neither should we. I’m sure folks back then had some cherished opinions about those “scumbag Samaritans,” but didn’t Jesus defuse those?

We tend to forget that “and such were some of you.” We don’t remember where we came from. We accumulate our cherished opinions over time and think that everyone must think just as we do or else they are scumbag Samaritans. Our opinions and rhetoric can make us ugly.

Only the Gospel is important. Everything else is filler—and often misguided filler at that. It’s time we spent less energy reinforcing our beliefs on filler and spend more time allowing Jesus center stage by reflecting His heart on what really matters, the salvation of the lost and their discipleship in the core essentials of the Faith.

4. Live the truth rather than deliver well-intentioned speeches about it.

Talk has never been cheaper. As I have said many times here at Cerulean Sanctum, the entire Western world has heard the name of Jesus from the mouths of Christians. Now it is simply waiting to see if this talk of Jesus is true by the way His followers live out their rhetoric.

We Americans love people of action. The person who built rescue shelters for battered women gets our attention. The person who only talks about doing so does not.

Every Sunday, Christians attend some 300,000+ recognized Christian churches in America. they hear 300,000+ sermons. Yet only a handful of those attendees go out and put what they hear into practice.

What does it mean to love your neighbors, perhaps those people who lives next door, when neither you nor I have once served them or even taken the opportunity to know their names?

The one thing that may speak louder than a million sermons to the lesbian who lives next door may be that you show up at her doorstep with food and a listening ear when her partner is killed in a car wreck.

All the rhetoric in the world can be undone by one simple act of love and mercy. A million roadblocks to heaven can be blasted away by an act of kindness in the name of Jesus.

You may be the only one who sends a birthday card to the drug-dealing kid in your neighborhood.

You may be the only one who shows up at the book signing when the communist at work finally gets his manifesto published.

You may be the only representative of Jesus Christ who ever manages to surrender a few minutes out of a busy life to care enough to be there for someone else in their time of need.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about one of the least-known of Jesus’ parables. That story tells of two brothers, one who talked a good one but did nothing and one who actually lived out the good. One of those brothers was attractive. The other was reduced to telling himself that he was when he wasn’t. The difference was in what each brother did.

Which brother are we going to be?

5. Nurture beauty at home.

Hinduism is not beautiful and never will be. Why? Because the Hindus will never be one. Some are in and some are out. They hold up some of their own for acclaim while despising the lowest of their members.

Hinduism isn’t the only religion that draws distinctions among its own. Most religions do.

Genuine Christianity does not. The weakest of our own are to be given the most protection and love. When the Romans tossed their sick and elderly onto the burn piles to die, the Christians swooped in and made them their own. Most historians will note this is one reason why the Church grew fantastically in Rome. The believers loved the weak, even when those weak were their own brothers and sisters in Christ.

The world is watching how we treat our own, the people we say are our brothers and sisters in Christ. In an age of advertising, the worldly can spot lies and hypocrisy a mile away. Must we add to their cynicism by saying we love everyone yet we can’t abide our own?

How we live out the Gospel within the household of Faith will determine the beauty of the face we show the rest of the world. If we walk out of our assemblies grumbling about Sister Sandra, unbelievers will see and make a mental note, a note that may very well bar them from heaven when all is said and done.

Imagine being a widow in Palestine circa 50 AD. No means of support. No one to love and care for you. Little hope for life. Then you hear about the Christians. Then you see how the Christians treat their own widows and those outsider widows who become a part of their fellowship. Wouldn’t that be attractive to you? Wouldn’t you want to know what it is about these people that they love the unloved? They give honor to those who are rejected by the rest of society. There must be something different about them. Wouldn’t you want to know what accounts for that difference?

If we put on Christ at home in our assemblies and walk out into a waiting world, our natural beauty will shine through, and the people who are desperate will want what we have. If people are not clamoring to have a part of what we have, then perhaps we need a gut check on how we appear to a dying world.

6. Foster beauty in all its expressions.

The Christian is the arbiter of beauty. When we consider the greatest works of beauty in this world, many, if not most, where crafted by Christians. The finest symphonies, the most glorious paintings,  soul-stirring literature—Christians who reflect the creative beauty of their Lord made those things.

Yet something happened to the Church about a hundred years ago. We forgot what it meant to cultivate beauty. Instead, our creative works became derivative, weak imitations of worldly “masterpieces” that were lacking in all taste and talent. Today, what passes for beautiful art, music, and literature in the Church all too often exemplifies the worst excesses of consumerism, modernism, and lowest common denominator thinking. It is attractive only to those who have no concept of genuine beauty.

So when the world isn’t all that thrilled by our artists, musicians, and authors, should we be surprised? In fact, we should be ashamed that we continue to tolerate kitsch in the name of Christ.

Christian MUST recapture the arts. And to do so, we must recapture the most talented artists. Fact is, because artists of all kinds ARE a different sort of person, we Christians need to realign our thinking on the arts and the artists who make them. God loves skilled artisans. We Christians should, too. They are the ones who help us understand beauty. If we continue to drive them away, then we will be driving beauty away with them, and ultimately all those lost people who are looking for the Church to define beauty and ugliness.

If we do not know what is beautiful, how can we show beauty to the world?

7. Because some aspects of beauty are solely cultural constructs, embrace a broader definition of what is attractive.

Peter Paul Rubens. You know, the guy who painted all those zaftig Renaissance dames. Well, they were real lookers, those plus-sized models, at least in Rubens’ day (though not so much our own). Tough to see what Rubens and his peers saw in those BBWs.

Each of us in the Church is blind in one spot or another to what is genuinely beautiful. Much of the Earth is populated by creatures that seem to defy beauty, yet God called each one He created good. I know I don’t exactly find opossums to be the supermodels of the animal kingdom, but God differs.

What are we calling ugly in the midst of the Body of Christ that is, in reality, beautiful from God’s perspective? This is important to note, because if we are to be attractive to the lost, we must reflect beauty in all its forms, even those forms that are alien to us.

I’ve known churches where the theologian is reviled while the social worker is deemed lovely. I’ve known churches where the financially successful are exalted while those who do good, yet have little in the bank, are held in contempt. For too long we have clung to what we believe is beautiful and rejected beauty in other guises.

If we are to be attractive to the world, we need an overhaul of our limits on beauty. We need to ask the Lord what is beautiful and not trust our definitions alone. If we can call the cross a symbol of beauty despite the scandal and ugliness of what happened upon it, then we can learn to find beauty in places we never looked before.

And when we do, we will attract even more of the lost.

In the end, the Church is called to be lovely, winsome, and charming. This does not mean that we surrender the cross, though. Not everyone who will be attracted to our beauty will persist through the death of self at the cross. But the cross alone should be the impediment and nothing else. And that cross doesn’t need us to add to its nature.

Our job is to be beautiful because we reflect Jesus, and He is beautiful above all.

I’ve laid out seven ideals on attractiveness. Many more exist. What is your input? Or should I say, “What are your beauty tips?”