Counterculture

What the American Church Is Doing Right, Part 1

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Thumbs Up!The last couple weeks here have seen some heavy posts discussing problems in the American Church. Cerulean Sanctum exists to discuss these issues and find thoughtful solutions. Because of the founding idea behind the blog, the tendency is toward a non-stop stream of what the Church here is doing wrong. And though my hope is to find practical ways to improve on problems or to raise issues that perpetually fly under everyone’s radar so they can receive attention, my intention is not to be a critic for criticism’s sake. I am, first of all, a Christian. My hope is that we can always do better.

At the start of this week, I’d like to take a couple posts to highlight what the Church in North America is doing right. As always, readers, feel free to comment because I would like to know what you think about this, too.

Today, I start with my first three:

1. Rediscovering the sacred

Earlier this year, I blogged on Unshackling the American Church, and one of the posts in that series featured a call to re-explore sacramental living. I firmly believe that many voices in the Church are beginning to understand that Consumerism has replaced Christianity as the national religion of the United States. The poverty of Consumerism is its devaluing of all things sacred in an attempt to displace the sacramental with temporal pleasures.

But God did not make Man to always be wanting more of the material, but more of Him and what He values. If anything positive comes out of postmodernism, it’s an awareness that  we’ve gone too far in our pursuit of the perishable. Modernism, especially as it intersected industrialization, set us up for an abolishing of the transcendent. Science explains it all, industrialization can manufacture it all, and technology becomes the acolyte that descends from those twin towers with the answer to our every problem—now on sale at WalMart for only $299.95.

Man is not so simpleminded, nor so spiritually bankrupt. I believe that many Christians, who through their own  ignorance bought the lie, are coming back around to the greater truth: Consumerism cannot answer the deeper cravings of the heart. Structures within American Christianity that in the past catered to consumerist tendencies will find it harder to maintain their grasp on people who are fed up with trendiness, trinkets, and milk. Already, I see a backlash against megachurchianity as more Christians realize there is no “there” there.

I witnessed this implosion firsthand at the church I attended for many years. Interestingly, if the list of 50 Most Influential Churches is to be believed, the numerical freefall of that church in the list in just one year says most of what one needs to know. And I predict that any of the churches in that list are fair game. As more people wake up to the shallow messages preached in many of those churches, realizing that they’ve strayed away from the sacred and into tawdry dog and pony shows, we’ll see change.

One of the changes I’ve seen already is an explosion of burned-out Evangelicals who are leaving megachurches and non-denominational churches for more traditional churches better rooted in a history of appreciation for the sacred. Everywhere I turn in the last year, I’m seeing signs that the Orthodox Church is gathering in these disaffected believers. Why? Because they never gave the boot to the otherness of God and the wholesomeness of simple living. For those not going the Orthodox route, new monastic communities that are wholly Protestant are springing up everywhere, attracting the children of Baby Boomers, kids raised in consumerist church environments who longed for what those churches could not provide: a sense of the sacramental nature of life serving a transcendent God who values the lasting.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have a built-in suspicion of reactive movements. The pendulum that is the Church in this country flirts with one extreme or the other as it seeks truth in the middle. I don’t believe that monasticism or a flight to Orthodoxy are the answers, but they’re the evidence of a need to go back to that sacred middle.

I think it’s good that more people are questioning the lack of sacredness in American Church life. Baby Boomers embraced a consumerist vision for church and their children are rejecting it. Sometimes the children ARE smarter than their parents.

2. Catching the green wave

A greater appreciation for the Creation signals another healthy trend in American Christianity. For too long a “it’s all gonna burn” mentality dominated Evangelical thought, in dire opposition to God’s original call to steward what He gave us. But the backlash has begun.

This is a good thing in every way. Readers here know that I fully support more responsible use of natural resources and a return to agrarian ideals. The expediency of thinking we’re going to be raptured out of here any day, so who cares if we ransack the world God gave us, is a devilish product that caters to greed more than proper stewardship.

Christians should be the ones leading the environmental cause. But even the recent past has given us scares from some Christian sources who insist that a green mentality is at odds with Christianity and will result in us spending more time planning for Arbor Day than Easter Sunday.

Christians are now seeing through that false dichotomy. Many understand that dropping out of Consumerism, favoring simpler lifestyles less dependent on things (and the waste they generate), and carefully tending the world God gave us proves the Gospel rather than detracts from it

3. Courageously facing the truth about the itself

Just in the last six months I’ve witnessed some real soul-searching by Christian leaders. More legitimate voices are questioning some of the entrapments of modernism that have crept into the Church. Godbloggers are writing more posts saying that perhaps the Gospel really is about loving God and loving our neighbor. More Christians are willing to say they were wrong in the past about some issues.

I believe this soul-searching by the American Church is a good start. I’m not a proponent of Emergent, but the flaws in our system that Emergent pointed out are getting some attention, instead of the usual arrogant brush-off. Churches are starting to wise-up to past sins. They’re questioning if some programming is more culturally-rooted than Christ-rooted. They’re pondering deep issues:

  • Maybe we aren’t as outward-focused as we say we are.
  • Maybe our community life isn’t all that fulfilling.
  • Maybe we have become self-centered.
  • Maybe we have acted like Americans first and followers of Christ second.
  • Maybe the megachurch model is deeply flawed.
  • Maybe we really are just shuffling around our congregants.
  • Maybe our discipleship programs are trite.
  • Maybe we have made Christianity too rational and need to recover an emotional connection to God.
  • Maybe the American Church is the new Laodicea and the Third World Churches are right.

All these are steps in the right direction. By acknowledging our own concessions to something less than the full Gospel, we’re willing to jettison the cultural entrapments we’ve falsely held up as Christian. I believe more people are dissatisfied with what we’ve built into the institution of the Church that never should have been incorporated.

Those are the first three. I’ll have three more things the American Church is doing right in my next post.

Spiritainment???

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The man whose soul is “growing” takes more interest in spiritual things every year…. The ways, and fashions, and amusements, and recreations of the world have a continually decreasing place in his heart. He does not condemn them as downright sinful, nor say that those who have anything to do with them are going to hell. He only feels that they have a constantly diminishing hold on his own affections and gradually seem smaller and more trifling in his eyes.
—J.C. Ryle

When amusement is necessary to get people to listen to the gospel there will be failure.  This is not the method of Christ.  To form an organization and provide all kinds of entertainment for young people, in order that they may come to the Bible classes, is to be foredoomed to failure.
—G. Campbell Morgan

One can only conclude that God’s professed children are bored with Him, for they must be wooed to meeting with a stick of striped candy in the form of religious movies, games and refreshments.
—A.W. Tozer

I’m writing two positive posts this week on what the American Church is doing right. In fact, I was going to start those posts today, but before the story got cold, I felt I had to tie in last Friday’s post “The Church of ‘Tomorrow? What Tomorrow’” with a press release from George Barna.

Barna’s announced that he’s now heading up a new Christian media company that promises to deliver even MORE entertainment to Christians everywhere. (Barna labels this “spiritainment.”) The argument here is that Christians NEED quality entertainment that looks and believes just like them. (Read the press release. I’ll wait right here….)

Beyond the obviously insulting, syncretistic name that combines the precious Holy Spirit with entertainment, Cover illustration from Postman's 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' I’ve just got  to ask the obvious: Do we Christians need to be any more entertained?

I struggle with this immensely as a Christian seeking to write novels. Does the world need another novel right now, Christian or otherwise? To lift a book title from the late media critic Neil Postman, aren’t we already amusing ourselves to death ?

This plays into my last post on the expediency plaguing the American Church. Too much of our thinking is short-term. Our dependency on short-term fixes is due in part to our inability to break out of a media-induced five minute attention span. Because we’re so focused on entertaining ourselves, long-term goals are out because they don’t meet our craving for instant feedback gained through our perpetual need for entertainment. The result? We’ve made boredom the ultimate spiritual enemy.

What better explains the megachurchianity so rampant in this country? We’ve substituted a dog and pony show to keep people entertained, but at the cost of their souls. Who can plan for any thing long-term if the mildly-satiated crowd demands another quick fix to keep the experiential buzz going? If God’s not going to rend the sky and rain manna down on us at our beck and call, then why hold prayer meetings? Why slave for years as a missionary in a foreign land if you only get a few converts? Your Powerpoint won’t be all that interesting when you share in church next Sunday. People might yawn—the evidence needed to show that your act needs some refining.

Revival isn’t going to come through movies, no matter what George Barna thinks. Nor books, though it pains me to say so. The Spirit of God isn’t all that interested in entertainment, Christian or worldly. He’s calling out to you and me to die to self so that others might live for Him.

We North American Christians…

…watch too much TV.

…waste too much time at the movies.

…drop too many dollars on music.

…spend too many hours trying to stave off boredom.

…spend too little time before the Lord living out the Gospel.

In short, we need “spiritainment” like we need an electric dog polisher. All this entertainment is a drug that keeps us numb to what we should truly be doing: serving the Lord Jesus until there is nothing left of us.

I’m not against Christians having fun once in a while. However, I believe that in the United States of 2006 the pursuit of fun has completely overtaken the pursuit of God, even among Christians.

Speaking of the pursuit of God, I’ll let A.W. Tozer speak eloquently here:

No one with common human feeling will object to the simple pleasures of life, nor to such harmless forms of entertainment as may help to relax the nerves and refresh the mind exhausted by toil. Such things, if used with discretion, may be a blessing along the way. That is one thing; however, the all-out devotion to entertainment as a major activity for which and by which men live is definitely something else again.

The abuse of a harmless thing is the essence of sin. The growth of the amusement phase of human life to such fantastic proportions is a portent, a threat to the souls of modern men. It has been built into a multimillion dollar racket with greater power over human minds and human character than any other educational influence on earth.

And the ominous thing is that its power is almost exclusively evil, rotting the inner life, crowding out the long eternal thoughts which would fill the souls of men, if they were but worthy to entertain them. The whole thing has grown into a veritable religion which holds its devotees with a strange fascination; and a religion, incidentally, against which it is now dangerous to speak. For centuries the Church stood solidly against every form of worldly entertainment, recognizing it for what it was—a device for wasting time, a refuge from the disturbing voice of conscience, a scheme to divert attention from moral accountability.

For this she got herself abused roundly by the sons of this world. But of late she has become tired of the abuse and has given over the struggle. She appears to have decided that if she cannot conquer the great god Entertainment she may as well join forces with him and make what use she can of his powers.

So, today we have the astonishing spectacle of millions of dollars being poured into the unholy job of providing earthly entertainment for the so-called sons of heaven. Religious entertainment is in many places rapidly crowding out the serious things of God.

Many churches these days have become little more than poor theaters where fifth-rate “producers” peddle their shoddy wares with the full approval of evangelical leaders who can even quote a holy text in defense of their delinquency. And hardly a man dares raise his voice against it.

I haven’t read too many critical voices of Barna’s call for “spiritainment.” Add mine; I see this as little more than a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Don’t label me a prophet here, but I can’t help but think this “spiritainment” is all going to turn out very badly in the end.

The Church of “Tomorrow? What Tomorrow?”

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In a field one summer’s day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart’s content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.

“Why not come and chat with me,” said the Grasshopper, “instead of toiling and moiling in that way?”

“I am helping to lay up food for the winter,” said the Ant, “and recommend you to do the same.”

“Why bother about winter?” said the Grasshopper; “we have got plenty of food at present.” But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil. When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food, and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. Then the Grasshopper knew:

It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.
—Aesop, “The Ant and the Grasshopper”

I lost my faith in American business years ago. The reason? I started working in American business.

In no time at all, the average worker (like I was) will pull back the curtain and confront the engine that drives American business: expediency. Today, mention long-term planning at a shareholder’s convention and you’ll get hoots from everyone. They’re only thinking about next quarter. Business summons its finest wise guys who know how to massage the numbers to please shareholders, and when another quarter goes by and everyone’s still got a job, they’ve been successful—at least until the next quarter.

No better indicator exists that the American Church has been wholly corrupted by business practices than the fact that we’ve lost our eternal focus. We’ve become the Church of “Tomorrow? What Tomorrow?” If we can keep the shareholders—pardon me, “congregants”—happy through Forty Days of Purpose and then another fifty sailing on that high, then we’ve had a successful quarter. The offering plates are full now, the church is growing, the youth group is still bright and shiny, and we’ve got good buzz in the neighborhood.  Everything’s spiffy!

Or is it?

Laser-like, we concentrate on that moment of justification, but aren’t certain how to address the sixty or so years of sanctification and discipleship that come afterwards.

We set people up for experiential spiritual highs, but when we can’t maintain that warm fuzzy feeling forever, we watch them drift off to whatever Church of the Moment thinks it can.

The Ant and the GrasshopperWe throw ourselves into ensuring Our Best Life Now and not our Infinitely Better Life to Come.

We pour all our energy into trying to train up our children to be good Christians, but we’re not sure exactly what the end product should look like anymore because we’re not so sure we’ve got our own faith down pat.

We build multi-million dollar edifices we call “church” that can burn down in an instant, but we don’t seem to be preparing the next generation for any sort of deeper life than to be consumers that build multi-million dollar churches.

We’re increasingly dispensational and premillennial because God knows we’ve got no plan if we’re not Raptured out of here the second things get a tad bit nutty.

The only time we think about the future is when we repeat our pseudo-Christian mantra of “Some day I’ll tell my neighbor about Christ. Some day I’ll go on the mission field. Some day I’ll volunteer at church. Some day I’ll read through the Bible. Some day I’ll stop committing that sin I can’t stop committing. Some day I’ll visit the sick, feed the poor, and clothe the naked. Some day….”

Expediency. As long as we feel fine about ourselves at the end of the quarter, we think we’ve done well. It’s a hard habit to break because many in the Church can find verses substantiating living only for the day. Consider this widely quoted one:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
—James 4:13-15 ESV

But that passage isn’t about living for the moment. Look at the context:

There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”– yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
—James 4:12-17 ESV

That passage argues against haughtiness and judgmentalism by showing the lack of humility in the lives of those who are presumptive. Wise planning is not being presumptive. On the contrary, it’s required of us. If anything, God considers those who fail to plan foolish.

Consider the following parables of Jesus:

The man who built his house on the rock

The five wise and five foolish virgins

The talents

The wedding banquet

The persistent widow

All of these carry with them the idea of preparation for the future, be it the Lord’s return, being ready to face the storms of life, or persevering even when the moment doesn’t look promising. Jesus is not against us thinking about tomorrow. His only correction is that we let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day by not dwelling so much on the future that we ignore the present. Again, like so many things in the Christian walk, balance is needed.

Last weekend, I was in a small group meeting discussing marriage when I brought up one of my pet issues: starting marriage and family classes for children as young as ten in order that they be better prepared to be godly husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. My pastor is a part of that group and he immediately noted that parents would object to the church usurping that responsibility.

And he’s right. Some parents would complain. But by backing off completely, we open ourselves up for the same disappointments that expediency always brings. Kids in the youth group start having sex, a couple girls get pregnant and may even have abortions, and we’re left picking up pieces from shattered lives that may never have been broken had we thought long-term.

We can see the issue of God’s sovereignty creeping into this can’t we? Some would argue that long-term thinking attempts to play God or force His unforceable hand. But I’ve read the Bible and none of the Psalms begins, “Que sera, sera….” We have not because we ask not. Some kinds don’t come out except with prayer and fasting. Slay lambs and spread their blood over the lintels. Noah build an ark. Freely we have received, freely shall we give.

God doesn’t rain down manna from heaven to feed the poor, the orphan, the widow; He asks the Church to do the feeding or else it may very well not get done. Our godly plans and our earthly actions matter. We are the Body of Christ to go out and do, and that going out and doing involves planning, both short-term AND long. It is what God in His sovereignty has asked of us. If the Church had no reason to think beyond tomorrow, then God in His wisdom could have taken each of us up to heaven in a flaming chariot the moment we believed.

Nothing good comes to a church that thinks like Aesop’s grasshopper, yet so many churches have lost a vision for tomorrow’s generations, so lost are they on their own selves.

Winter is coming.