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For 2006: The Church’s Brave New Brain—Part 2

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In the previous segment of this mini-series, we left off with the Church grappling with the transition from the Information Age (and its emphasis on data and logic) to the Conceptual Age (with its emphasis on design and empathy.) The fundamental switch here aligns with the move from left-brained to right-brained thinking.

Where the Church gets steamrolled in this transition is that it's been stuck in the tar of left-brained mode for a couple hundred years. When the Enlightenment made it all about what we thought rather than did, the Western Church bought into living totally out of its left hemisphere. The result has been an entire group of people within society disenfranchised by the one group tasked with disenfranchising no one.

If we were honest with ourselves, we Christians of 2006 should question where all our creative types vanished to. How many Christians do we know who make their entire living as full-time artists, novelists, musicians, and actors? Compare that with how many Christians we know who are middle managers, accountants, engineers, or computer IT gurus.

Two hundred years ago, Christians not only created the art, they supported it. I would dare say that the vast majority of art in Christian households today is not only NOT created by Christians, it's barely passable as art. Our slide to the left brain over the right created a dearth of Christian artists and their lack left us stuck with whatever was most easily mass-marketed. The result? Today's Christians are too often the people responsible for much of the kitschy garbage passed off as "art" that we see today. A gut-check is needed here. Compare what hangs on the wall of your local museum with that of your local Christian bookstore. I don't think I'm stretching when I say the artistic output of today's Evangelicalism might represent the nadir of artistic expression in all of Christian history.

Kinkade keeps on truckin'!

{Click on image to appreciate the full-sized horror of it all (pops)}

If we don't like the art that artists make today, we have our lack of patronage to blame for this, in part. Christian artists found the rising anti-art backlash in the Church meant that they could no longer afford to make a living as artists creating art solely for Christian crowds. As a result, Christian artists were stuck between putting food on the table selling art that appealed to secular crowds or starving to death trying to sell to an increasingly fickle Christian audience. Yes, many of them gave in to the prevailing nonsense that passes itself off as contemporary art today, but in the end we didn't support them and they had to eat. (Not trying to make excuses, just trying to point out reality.)

You know why the artist is different? Simple: he sees the world through a different part of his brain. Where the Church in America absolutely fumbled the Gospel here is that we automatically equated his different way of thinking with error. Not only that, but we painted (ugh!) the artist and all his friends as the very thing that is wrong with the world today. Strangely enough, he was thinking the same thing about us.

Now, as we enter 2006, we have an impasse. We decided we liked our churches stripped of anything that resembles art, good or otherwise. (I don't mean to pick on the Baptists here, but could there be anything more soul-anesthetizing than the architecture and interior decoration of your typical Baptist church of the last thirty years? Honestly, why can't our congregations inspire artists in their midst to create beautiful church art to offer up to God the artistic gifts He bestowed on those folks? It seems every kind of service is appreciated in our churches except the artistic.) The message to the artist was clear: your paintbrush is the devil's instrument.

Think what our churches would be like if we thought that everyone involved in the computer industry was creating the Beast's pathway. What if the engineers were building the antichrist's throneroom? And the accountants were only presiding over the one world money system and that infamous mark? Do you think that any of those left-brainers would hang around our congregations? Yet, in many cases, this is what happened to the right-brainers.

But guess what, left-brained Christians? Artists are the new power class in the Conceptual Age. You know, the bohemian with the soul patch. And guess what again? We drove his kind out of our churches with our total emphasis on left-brained thinking and our complete inability to appreciate what his right hemisphere (and his musical, empathic, theatrical, artist's bent) brought to our congregations.

But now that empathic artist is the one in charge. Left-brained Christians are gnashing their teeth over this. I see it every day. And the gnashing is only going to increase unless left-brained and right-brained Christians bury the hatchet—and not in each other. God created both left-brained and right-brained thinkers; it's about time the Church honored both.

In the next installment of this mini-series, we'll see how the Church needs to adapt to this cultural change and what it means for how we do ministry in 2006 and beyond.

Stay tuned!

A Look Back at “Judgmental Christians…”

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My final post of 2004 was “‘Judgmental Christians’ and The Way of Christ for 2005,” wherein I wondered if we Christians were more defined by our judging the lost than by our service of others in the name of the Lord. While I believe it is one thing to cling to Truth, it is quite another to cling to Truth AND serve others in love. A helping handWhen we only do the first part well, being labeled “judgmental” is rightly applied; we function as the holder of the lifebuoy, but refuse to throw it to the unworthy.

As they say at other blogs, read the whole thing.

I believe that 2005 saw no improvement to what I blogged about in the post above. We are still highly judgmental. We continue to judge the lost, people who lack the moral compass Christ provides. Frankly, that’s a waste. It’s like working at an orange grove in Florida and wondering why the trees there don’t yield cherries.

Because of this, I believe that the Godblogosphere recognized that judging the lost was a waste of online time. I don’t know if we bloggers took our judging the lost completely offline or not, but I noticed that online the rants diminished. I still see plenty of non-blogged Christian handwringing over what the heathens are doing. Lots of press releases from Christian organizations talking about the next new perversity to rise in the ranks of the perverted, but still no real service in love to those same people—at least none of the kind that Jesus exhibited in His earthly ministry to prostitutes, cheats, liars, crooks, and sinners of all flavors. We talk about Jesus Our Model, but we still don’t really serve or love like He did.

What happened in the Godblogosphere this year, however, was a reconcentrating of our judgmental ire on each other, not only on other Christians in general, but other Christian bloggers specifically. While I’m amused at the timing of many of the wars that broke out after I stepped out of my blogging shoes for a few days (only to return to chaos in the Godblogosphere), I was consistently disheartened by the level of attacks and the sheer unwillingness of opponents to listen and seriously ponder what each side was saying. Sometimes, we don’t even hear the acid in our own words even as we’re running a litmus test on what the other side just uttered.

More than anything else, it seems that 2005 was characterized by witch hunts and finger pointing. I can’t believe how many times I blogged on this issue, but a few posts come to mind:

I hate to sound like a Christian version of Rodney King, but “can’t we all just get along?” And if the rift is so wide that getting along isn’t possible, can’t we at least treat each other humanely? Let the secular bloggers resort to vitriol. Our default mode is supposed to be love, not acid-throwing. It is possible to disagree without beating each other over the heads with a baseball bat. The teams in an NHL battle may check someone into the boards with enough fury to crack Plexiglases, but the two teams still shake hands at the end.

For 2006, it is my wish that all of us Godbloggers consent to the following when dealing with those whose views differ from ours: Love, lisitle=

Hidden Messages of American Christianity: The Outstretched Hand

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This is the seventh (and last) 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.

Though today's post addresses what is a hidden message, I don't have any answers for it. I'm throwing it out there because I hear it all the time. I'm hoping that you readers have more insights than I do. (I'm also going to ask readers to bear with me because I sense this post is going to ramble excessively.)

It's one of the most prevalent excuses I encounter in my area of the country for people not attending church. Men who avoid church like the plague cite it more than any other issue for their lack of attendance, Offering platefrom what I've personally heard. The older the commenter gets, the more likely this issue sticks in his craw.

It's money.

No, I'm not talking about folks who are ticked off that the church is preaching budgeting instead of preaching Christ, it's their complaining about the church asking for money. It's as if no other message can get through once the offering plate is passed. The "There they go again shilling for money!" lament is raised and the sermon message is now permitted to go in one ear and out the other.

"Always with the money thing! Why do they need so much money, Martha? The pastor makes twice what I do and I caught a whiff of Chanel No. 5 on his wife when I walked past. How much does that stuff cost? A thousand dollars an ounce? And he's asking for money? How low can you get?"

Now I'm not naive enough to think that the majority of these grumblers aren't using money as an excuse to sleep in on Sunday or to justify their rejection of Christ. But why do I hear this complaint so often if it didn't carry some actual weight?

At one point in my life I attended a well-known Presbyterian church in the toniest suburb in Pittsburgh. The corporate elite of Pittsburgh occupied the pews every Sunday. It had a chauffeur's entrance. The choir (paid) consisted of the leads of the city opera. When industrial meltdowns and financial strife rocked the area in the mid-Eighties, this church was targeted by activists and their Sunday services disrupted for no other reason than wealth. The church I left last year was suburban, middle to upper-class, and rarely asked for money. The pastor had a hard time bringing up the issue. As a result, this huge church was always encountering one cash flow problem after another. My present church is more rural ("penturbian," if you want the exact, trendy word), is lower to middle-class, has a mini-sermon about tithing shared by one of the elders every Sunday, and seems to do a reputable job staying in the black. Not only that, but every time there is a need over and above the regular giving, people always come through with an amount that surprises me.

I'd love to draw some kind of conclusion about these three churches, but there are too many variables. One never asked for money because it was loaded. One rarely asked for money, should have had it in abundance anyway, but didn't. One talks about money every Sunday, doesn't seem to want for it, plus it always has reserves. No matter the case, money plays into every aspect of how each of those three churches operate. That's true with every church, every ministry. But is there a way to downplay the whole issue of money so that those who complain that churches are only out for money have no more ammo for their assault?

It's Christmastime, so we're now under bombardment by Project Angeltree, Chuck Colson's organization. We donated money to them a few years ago to send the kids of prisoners to summer camp. Christian camping being near and dear to my heart, I couldn't say no when my wife suggested it, even though it violated our decision to only give to charities run by people we personally knew. Starting in September, I swear we get letters from Angeltree every week, plus scores of e-mails.

I'm not the type to complain that Christians are always asking for money, but the sheer volume of mail we get from Angeltree makes me uncomfortable. Whatever we gave a few years ago has been more than eaten up from the cost of their mailings to us.

So I can understand how some people have a problem with Christians asking for money. This isn't to say that money is not needed, but the sheer amount of money that some churches and ministries burn through is incredible. To sustain whatever they're doing, more and more money is solicited. But is this hidden message that churches and parachurch organizations are always on the lookout for cash really a message we want to send, even if it is not entirely true in every situation?

Now I can't speak for parachurch organizations, but I wonder if the way we do church today relies too much on money. I think our buildings are too expensive, not only to build, but to maintain. I don't see in Acts that the early Church spent their money on buildings. Nor was there much in the way of expensive programs and church initiatives. Benevolences were turned around and filtered back to the neediest in the community of believers in the early Church, yet the way we collect church monies today often leaves the givers in the dark as to where their money went. And too often, overhead consumes the majority of money rather than benevolences. Shouldn't we be asking if we're handling money for the Kingdom in the best way possible?

Shouldn't that advise the way our churches are structured and operated? What if a church met in homes rather than an expensive church building? What if the pastoral staff went unpaid (or partially compensated), but was large enough so that one person didn't carry the whole ministry load, each staff member living the life of a genuine "tentmaker"? What if we went beyond tithing and set everything we caretake for the Lord on the table so that anything needed was available to anyone at any time for his or her need? What if the Church functioned to unite giver and receiver personally, rather than having our monies go into an ethereal pool of funds? What if our newfound financial reliance on each other allowed us to step out of the rat race? What if churches didn't ask for money at all?

Most of all, what if the Church handled money so uniquely that it took away any objections by those who believe that Christianity is all about the Benjamins?

I know that Americans are funny about money, but I still hold out hope that one day our churches will look different because we've found a better way to handle it. The house churches in China are destitute compared with the Communist-approved state churches, but somehow they keep growing, effectively making disciples in a way we in America long ago forgot. While there are many mitigating factors in that growth in Chinese house churches, I've got to believe that our attitudes toward money in the American Church are partly to blame for our lack of effectiveness. We've built some fancy churches and installed some expensive programming, but what do we have to show for it?

Is it possible that something better could arise in the American Church if all our money disappeared some day? Maybe if it did, the lost might be able to look beyond the our hidden message of money and to the true heart of the Gospel.