Church Issues

For One Brief Shining Moment

Standard

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

Standard

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 1

Standard

All the young dudes hunkered in a pack at the back of the Taco Bell, the mecca of cheap food for young dudes everywhere. Like most 19-year-olds, they took big bites and talked a little too loud for a small restaurant.

Enter two young women.

They were the classic pair one finds in many romantic comedies today. The one was a natural beauty, raven-haired and fresh-faced, like something out of Ivory Soap ad but with a green sensibility, just add Timberlands. The kind of girl one can take home to mom and on a camping expedition. One of those girls who may actually be prettier without makeup.

Where the natural beauty was curvy, her friend was all sharp angles. The friend did all the talking, and showed a great deal of smarts, as seems to be the case in this stereotype. The friend also chatted up the guy behind register and was generally pleasant. She dressed in a kind of geek chic that tried just a bit too hard.

As for the young dudes, they stymied their conversation and just stared. And, obviously, not at the friend. Nor in the volatile language that erupted shortly after they gathered their composure  did the young dudes have anything to say amongst themselves about the friend. In fact, one could argue that a scientific breakthrough of enormous importance occurred in that Taco Bell, because, for a moment, a human being became absolutely invisible.

Now, in a burst of illustrative metaphor, I ask the simple question: Which of the two young women best exemplifies what Christianity should be in the eyes of the world?

As I see it, if you picked the friend, you’d be dead wrong.

That’s not what most people think, is it?

But I believe that the way the Church of Jesus Christ should appear to the world is as a winsome beauty. The Bride of Christ is meant to be beautiful. The Bride of Christ is supposed to be attractive. People should look at the Church and think, Wow!

Yet somewhere along the way, we Christians, especially in America, developed a kind of self-inflicted persecution complex where we aspired to stop being the natural beauty we were meant to be,Mirror? instead cultivating the attitude and lifestyle of the plain Jane friend. We tried—badly—to be a fashion plate, made every makeup mistake known to Man, and developed an attitude. In short, we grew to epitomize the friend character perfected in films by Rosie O’Donnell.

Should we be surprised then that no one wants to take us to the prom?

The early Church, in stark contrast, exhibited natural beauty through their love, community, and witness. That beauty attracted thousands. Whenever people saw the Church, they craned their necks to look because the beauty snatched their breath away.

So it should be with today’s Church. Instead, we’re whiny, loud, divisive, and sitting in the bleachers complaining how no one wants to dance with us.

The error that too many Christians commit is to equate the world’s lack of interest with the nature of Christianity. But neither Christianity nor Christ Himself are ugly.

We must realize that the reason none of the young dudes in Taco Bell left with the natural beauty is that she demands more. So while neither she nor her friend walk out of that restaurant on someone’s arm, it’s for a different reason than appearance in the beauty’s case.  Pursuing the beauty isn’t going to be easy. None of the dudes even tries. They look, but ultimately, they can’t follow through.

The way of Christ is beautiful, but it demands everything. Thousands flocked around Jesus, but only a few could handle true discipleship. As the Scriptures say:

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.
—John 6:53-66

It wasn’t because Jesus wasn’t attractive in a figurative sense. The hungry, the hustlers, and hookers longed to be near Him. Even kings and regional rulers desired to meet Him.  No, it was the message, the demand, that turned people off in the end. The natural beauty has high standards.

We must be beautiful in all the ways that make the Church attractive to lost people and those in a world of hurt. We must also keep the message of the cross central. It’s that message that proves impossible to many a young dude. It should never be purposeful attempt to look like a frump. We must let the cross be the deciding factor in whether some follow and some do not, never by compromising our attractiveness.

For 2009, I think the word that the Church needs to hear concerns regaining our natural beauty, especially in America. We’ve tramped around like plain Jane, thinking this is our lot and the way to attract people to Jesus. If anything, we’ve made that belief an impediment to others coming to Christ. Instead, we must shine and make no apologies for being naturally beautiful.

For more on how we Christians can cultivate our natural attraction to the lost, read Part 2.