The Untied Church

Taking a Break

2009-06-03T07:45:00.001-04:00

My wife, Diane, and I are taking a two month sabbatical trip to England and Eastern Europe to experience different forms of the church in those contexts. So I'm not going to be posting on this blog for the time being. Check out our trip blog at www.sabbaticalizers.blogspot.com.

Northumbria Community

2009-04-29T14:59:00.003-04:00

Man, it's been a long time since I blogged here. Anybody out there still reading?

I just spent a week at the Northumbria Community in England. About a dozen people at my church are following the daily prayer pattern from there, so I wanted to go and see what it was like.

I haven't got space to describe this Community, so the best way to get oriented is to go to www.northumbriacommunity.org.

People have been saying, "So, how was it? What did you do? What did you learn?" And to be honest, it's hard to describe. This is a community of people that consists of about 7 or 8 who live full time in a 15th century manor house in the English countryside, and who build their days around four times of prayer -- and 250 or so "companions" scattered throughout the UK, plus a few in the US.

But I grasped a couple of things relevant to this blog about the "untied church." These folks are really untied. They don't travel anywhere to worship. They don't hold "church services" at the house. Sundays are days like every other, structured around morning, midday, evening and nighttime offices.

Which seems to be a growing phenomenon in Britain. My impression is that lots of people are living lives of disciplined Christian spirituality, prayer and service, but are not connected to congregations in traditional ways. I also suspect that they're flying completely under the radar of the statisticians who tell us that Christianity is dying in Britain because only 5% of British bottoms are in British pews on a given Sunday morning.

I also met a young woman who's part of a home-based church plant in Leeds consisting of families who gather on Sunday for a shared meal, and a selection of Scripture reading, prayer, discussion, personal reflection and whatever else comes up.

The point made to me by several people is that the whole weight of the Christian life is not loaded onto a 10:30 a.m. worship service and a busy round of church activities.

There's a definite downside to this. It felt a little bit loosey-goosey to me, and I wondered how much staying power some of these "fresh expressions" are going to have -- whether they will be able to nurture a faith that is more than ephemeral. Like it or not, we have institutions so that we won't have to be continually reinventing the wheel. It remains to be seen whether some post modern expressions of Christianity will be around long enough even to evolve.

But, the Northumbria Community is in its fourth decade and shows no signs of doing anything other than attracting more and more people to its brand of prayer-based spiritual life, focused on the two values of "availability and vulnerability." And, home based Christian communities are the original form of the church.

I'm interested in what's going on in England because I see it as a bit of glimpse into the future for us in Canada -- a couple of generations down the road of church decline and secularism. My wife and I are going back in June as part of a sabbatical to experience more deeply some of the ferment that is happening there, and to add to our reflections about a church that is increasingly "untied" from modern denominationally based structures.

Hidden agendas

2009-03-12T12:48:00.004-04:00

I got a call out of the blue the other week from a young woman who I thought must have left town because none of the church's communications with her received any reply. But, she's had a second baby, and, guess what? wants to have the baby baptized.

It was great to see her again after several years and what impressed me in talking to her was her intuitive grasp of some pretty deep theological concepts like grace and providence. Her approach to parenting and family life would benefit so much from being shaped and deepened through Christian community.

She was very wary of any hints about deeper involvement because of family demands and employment uncertainty. But she had this real openness of spirit, and really wanted to talk about the things that matter to her deeply.

I was fighting with myself to resist the temptation to keep on steering the conversation away from her concerns onto the church's needs. I haven't sorted the how-to stuff out in my mind, but I'm becoming more convinced, though, that we have to resist exactly this temptation -- to bring a preset agenda to our interactions with people. Now, she came to the church asking for the church's ministry. But ministry would seem to be establishing a supportive relationship with her and her family, so that they can begin discovering the presence of God in their lives -- and let that be the motivation for church involvement, not vice versa.

We need to help people discern what God is up to in their lives and build on that, rather than starting with the recruitment pitch.

How others see us

2009-02-26T14:00:00.004-05:00

A young adult friend tagged a Facebook posting to me the other day. This is a young man raised in a church home, with passionately believing grandparents and parents. And for a time he followed in their footsteps, using his gifts of music to give expression to faith. But then something happened. Disappointment and disillusionment with the church, and the anti-religious writings that seem so daring to the young have combined to cause him to turn away, and to critique the "arrogance and hubris" of many Christians. Now, he says, he's interested in "making the world a better place."

I love him dearly, and I know where his passion comes from. I know in his heart he values his upbringing. And I know he really wants to make the world a better place -- don't we all. His heart is so much in the right place.

I wish he could have come with me last weekend to a conference in Hamilton put on by True City, a network of churches committed to working together 'for the good of the city." What blew me away was that these churches are all evangelical, and several have a long history with fundamentalism and separatism. But they were talking about their mission simply being to witness to the love of God in their neighborhoods, regardless of whether people become Christians. They talked about how important it is to love people, but not treat them as "a project." Their biblical texts were Jeremiah 29-- "Pray for the welfare of the city where God has put you" -- and Abraham's pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah.

The church has a pretty dismal history in many ways, and impressions of that history have stuck in the minds of many outside the church. But I think God is doing some pretty amazing and trasnformative things in many churches, and I pray (patiently) that those like my friend will come to see them.

Patience

2009-02-26T13:48:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite writers is Eugene Peterson. He has a chapter in his book The Contemplative Pastor he writes that pastors are called to pray, to be poets (in the sense of awakening imagination through words) and to be patient. If ministry belongs to the whole people of God, then this applies to all those who live the life of faith.

It's the patience part that's really been on my mind lately. Here's why. The church I served amalgamated with another church five years ago. For five years, we've been the proud owners of two massive buildings -- one the building we meet in, the other a beautiful, 150 Gothic structure in the downtown of the city. Several times we have almost had it sold, but then something happened and it all fell through. I was going through my prayer journals today and noting the number of times I had prayed "Lord, please send somebody -- anybody -- to relieve us of the burden of this huge building!" There are long gaps in those prayers -- times when I'd obviously grown tired of praying and wondered if it was doing any good.

Then, completely out of the blue, along came a congregation made up of African and Caribbean immigrants, a charismatic congregation with tons of faith and big plans, who managed to put together the financing and bought it as their new home. It didn't go to some sleazy developer who was going to desecrate it by breaking it up or tearing it down. It went to a vibrant, lively, wonderful congregation of Christians who will bring worship and prayer and service into the heart of the city.

It hit me so powerfully that the reason we had not sold the church, and that all of our prayers seemed to be going unanswered, is that the people whom God intended to have that church had not come along yet. It was a real lesson in spiritual patience -- in "praying and not losing heart" as Jesus put it.

I got a phone call yesterday from a young woman I assumed had moved away from town. I baptized her first child -- also about five years ago -- and all communication had gone unanswered. But, they have had another baby, and she described to me the roller coaster of sickness, crisis and upheaval she and her family have been going through. Then today, reading through my prayer journals, I noted several times where I had prayed for them.

So often we want to play the role of the Messiah -- the can-do guys who "get it done." When God is calling us to engage in the imagining of God's future and to pray, persistently, patiently.

That's such an important aspect of our ministry with and among those whom I have been calling "affiliates."

Subversive Spirituality

2009-02-04T18:10:00.002-05:00

Evan is a boy in my church who celebrated his 9th birthday a couple of weeks ago. Even though his family is far from wealthy, he decided he didn't really need any birthday presents, so he instead he asked his friends to bring money to buy supplies for a school in Nicaragua. Our congregation has been developing a relationship with the Moravian Church in Bluefields, Nicaragua. We had a pastor from there visit with us for two weeks in October.

He expected to collect $150 or so, but word got out to family and he made a little speech at church and within two weeks he had over $1100.

I spend a lot of time and energy fretting because I don't think anybody around here is listening. Obviously, Evan had been listening. And what he heard sank deeply enough into his mind and heart that he did something quite extraordinary for a 9 year old -- forego birthday presents to help others.

I have just been re-reading "The Contemplative Pastor" by Eugene Peterson, and he talks about the "subversive" role of Christian leadership. Peterson describes effective pastoral ministry with these words: "I am undermining the kingdom of the self and establishing the kingdom of God. I am being subversive." This is all done with methods which, in a consumer culture, are widely regarded as pretty ineffective -- listening, talking, pointing to Jesus, worshiping and above all praying. I have often prayed for spiritual renewal in this church, and been disappointed because it didn't sweep through the congregation like wildfire. I was not prepared for that prayer to be answered in the form of a 9 year old boy.

There was a time when Evan's mother was an "affiliate" -- baptized and confirmed, on the membership role, but angry with God and absent from worship for a time. Married in the church, she found her way back. And the fruit of her rediscovery of faith -- well, it has been born in many ways -- but certainly has been born in the commitments of her little boy who simply declined to use his birthday as an occasion to live out a socially conditioned role as a consumer.

In a number of different ways, God has been showing me of late that the most powerful tool in our hands is faithful prayer and a subversive spirit.

Will our children have faith?

2009-01-15T16:08:00.004-05:00

Back after the crazy season.

If you're my age, you might remember that book from the early 80s by Christian education guru John Westerhoff III, Will Our Children Have Faith? I don't remember the book being all that useful, but the question has stuck with me. I guess what's brought it on is having just returned from a week long visit with my 14 month old grandson. His daddy is in seminary, studying for the ministry -- and I really wonder about the future of the church that they will be a part of.

A few other bits of grist for this mill. A while back, I read a short article by Nancy Ammerman in the Canadian version of Touchstone magazine, in which she wondered if Christians (especially the Protestant variety) have not pretty much given up on passing on their story to their children. The Sunday morning worship service with concurrent Sunday School is the norm and that's pretty much all the contact kids have with the church. Jews, Muslims, and other faith communities expect that children will be instructed in their religion outside the main gathering time of the week.

Robert Louis Wilken wrote in the last issue of First Things a perceptive comparison of Christianity and Islam. Islam has always understood itself to be a public religion in the sense that Islamic practice is lived out visibly. In the ideal of the Islamic state, religious practice becomes the cultural and legal norm. Christianity has evolved in a much different way, but, according to Wilken, it now finds itself at a disadvantage in terms of the future because in Europe and North America (excluding parts of the US) it has pretty much disappeared from the public square. Wilken has a particular Roman Catholic slant on things, but he's a wise guy, very learned, and I think he's got a point.

I alternate between days of optimism and days of discouragement and today I'm sliding towards the discouragement end of the scale. Faith is not just assent to a list of beliefs, but the deep imbibing of a narrative, a story, which becomes one's own story only after long exposure. The vast majority of Canadian children have been completely cut off from the Christian story to the point where even the traditional icons of Christmas have little or no meaning to them. And in our churches, we have capitulated to such an extent to aggressively proselytizing Sunday sports and other voracious activities, and have dumbed down our Christian education to accomodate teachers and parents who will make only the briefest commitment of time and effort, and we have abandoned age-old practices like family devotions -- so I really wonder what's going to become of the story in which faith has always taken root and grown.

Anybody out there want to try to cheer me up -- or just commiserate?

What's missing?

2008-11-25T13:58:00.003-05:00

(If you're maybe just tuning into this blog for the first time, it started as a follow-up to a research project I did in 2007 on church "affiliates" -- people who remain connected to the church, even if they're not all that active. )

On my survey, I asked people about two different kinds of reasons that they didn't go to church more often. One had to do with the church -- you know, boring, out-of-date, unwelcoming, bad music. And there was no clear-cut, #1 reason, at least not from the group that answered my survey. Nothing that stood out.

The other set of questions had to do with personal lifestyle issues -- and the results here were clearer. People are working on Sunday, or they go like crazy all week and Sunday morning is their "Sabbath" -- their break -- which includes break from going to church.

But I wonder to what extent people are really turned off by what goes on in your typical church -- or at least not turned on. I wonder how much people's perceptions of churches are closed, judgmental, or irrelevant is the main disincentive to being there. People who answered my survey weren't hostile to the church. They had pretty good feelings about the church.

But I keep running up against genuine hungers that people have, and which the church ought to be really good at addressing -- hungers for community, forgiveness, meaning and purpose, etc.

So, what's missing?

Oh, the mystery of it all

2008-11-13T10:21:00.003-05:00

I led an event yesterday based on my affiliates study. There were about 30 clergy and lay leaders in attendance -- which brought home to me how concerned people are to find new ways of connecting with people.

In preparing for the day, I was struck once again by the deep mystery of faith. Over and over again this mystery is expressed in Scripture. Jesus' parables of growth in Mark 4 -- the parable of the Sower (or more accurately, the soils), the parable of the Seed Growing Secretly -- they tell us that the growth of the kingdom is pretty much out of our hands.

The Book of Acts describes this mystery too. The early missionaries go to a city, preach the Gospel, some scoff, many are indifferent, but some believe. And Luke doesn't seem to feel it necessary to account for the differences between them. He certainly doesn't attribute it to the clever strategies of the apostles. "Silver and gold have I none," Peter says to the crippled beggar in Acts 3, "but I'll give you what I do have" -- the name and power of Jesus Christ to make whole.

I'm sitting here looking down a list we made up a couple of years ago of younger folks who were kind of bobbing around the edges of our congregation -- showing up here and there, but not consistently. A handful are back. Quite a few are still bobbing. But a whole bunch have drifted even farther away. It's so easy to get discouraged. What could we be doing differently?

But then I think of the people who have arrived. And the people who have come alive. And there just doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, except that the Holy Spirit is at work.

Where we are perhaps failing as a church is not in producing the harvest, but in sowing the seed. I sense that we need a quantum shift in priorities, expectations and relationships, so that the bulk of our time and attention is turned to sharing Jesus. Not doing the demographics and the long-range planning as a prelude (or substitute) for sharing Jesus, but doing that first and the other stuff after. It sounds so simple, yet so much outside the familiar ministry boxes that I know I've been in.

Switching metaphors, Tom Bandy in his book The Roadrunner talks about the church's "fishing" mandate. Traditional churches, he says, would rather sit on the dock cutting bait, or set up "fish processing plants" where fish can be frozen or dried, or raise money to pay somebody else to fish -- anything except what Jesus commanded his disciples to do -- get out into the deep water, let down their nets, and fish!

Sabbath longing

2008-10-29T15:05:00.003-04:00

I was meeting with one of my spiritual disciplines groups today. One of the women in the group talked about a friend of hers who says her goal is "to get back to church." But that goal is being frustrated by the shape and texture of her life. She works all week, runs on Saturday, has her in-laws for dinner every Sunday -- which leaves Sunday morning for "family time." She says that if she does manage to wrestle her kids into their Sunday clothes and get to church in one piece, they go off to Sunday School and she sits in worship by herself.

A very common refrain. And I've found that lectures about "getting your priorities straight" are singularly unhelpful for someone in this predicament. (Although, like all of us, I think she needs to do some work on getting her priorities straight!)

This woman is longing for a "sabbath" -- a time away from work and obligation to be refreshed and to enjoy the company of her family. She's "open" to returning to a worshiping community, but can't get beyond seeing church as one more participant in the conspiracy to withhold this refreshment. What do we tell her?

saint benedict’s table

2008-10-16T11:21:00.001-04:00

Check out this VERY interesting Anglican community in Winnipeg.

saint benedict’s table

Community and Connectedness

2008-10-15T13:32:00.002-04:00

I just had coffee with a friend whom I have mentioned before. She came to my church for a while with her family, but really reacted negatively against what she saw as "Christian exclusivism." But the more I talk to her, the more I realize that we have a lot fundamentally in common.

She asked me what I thought the role of churches was in today's culture. I replied with my well-practiced line about people no longer needing the church as a place to meet friends or to socialize. The church doesn't function as a meeting place at the centre of the community any longer, I said. It has to do with offering a Big Narrative from which people can perceive the meaning of their own stories.

The conversation went in a different direction, and after a while she said, "You said people don't look to the church for community and friendship any more, yet that's exactly what I think they're hungry for. Everyone is so isolated and just crying out for contact with others." That led us to talk about the reasons for this and what we can do about it. She told me about a couple of instances where she has spontaneously struck up conversations, invited people to her home and taken the initiative to create friendships.

I left thinking that I really might have something to learn from this spiritually searching yet institutionally alienated person. And thinking how important these conversations over coffee can really be.

Transparency

2008-10-14T14:01:00.003-04:00

Rabbi Andy Bachman has posted a recent sermon on the "transparent synagogue" on his blog, www.andybachman.com. The post was on October 8. You'll see the link to the left.

I think he and Dan are onto something here. Whether a building acts as a wall or a window depends, not on its architecture, but on the transparency of the community inside. The problem, of course, is not the buildings, and it will not be corrected by constructing big glass foyers. The problem is that the communities inside the buildings have allowed themselves to become opaque.

I plan to do some serious reflecting on this quality of transparency, what it means and how it is to be lived. Any thoughts out there?

Buildings and Visibility Part II

2008-10-14T13:51:00.002-04:00

Back in May I shared some of my thoughts about church buildings and how they might actually serve to make the church invisible in today's culture. There are days when I wish we didn't have to struggle with the upkeep of not one but two buildings (we still haven't succeeded in selling the First United Church building four years after an amalgamation.) About 10 years ago a mischievous kid set fire to an outdoor shed, destroyed our lawnmower and scorched the roof of our gym. The problem was he did it at 7:30 p.m. when all the seniors next door were looking out their windows. More than once we've joked that we should find him, pay him $50 and ask him to come back and finish what he started!

But, as with almost everything, buildings are neither pro- nor anti-Gospel in and of themselves. Here's a much needed and balancing perspective from my good friend Dan Meeter of Old First Reformed Church in Brooklyn, NY.

[A church planting colleague] suggested that my congregation might grow much better if we sold our church building and started renting space in a local public school. Well, he's not [entirely] wrong…..But I think my colleague is wrong in the narrowness of his judgments. Our church building is part of our identity. Not just in the sociological sense that "we shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us," as Churchill said. But theologically our building is part of us, because we believe it is part of the Holy Spirit's work with us and our mission, and for better or worse, our building is the concrete expression of our tradition…. We take our general mission to be a "community of Jesus" for God and for our neighbors. But consciously choosing to be stewards of our historic Reformed church, including our building, is one of the particular missions we have committed to, including such other things as education, music, fellowship, sanctuary, and hospitality. We recognize that our building is a very visible and concrete expression of the institution and tradition to which we voluntarily commit.
…to sell our building strikes me as a repudiation of the work of the Holy Spirit among real people in real time. For, at least according the Apostles Creed, the first work of the Holy Spirit is the holy catholic Church. Under "catholic" I include the realities of the church in time, and by "forgiveness of sins" I include learning to love even our difficult building, and by "communion of the saints" I include the concrete (literally) witness of former generations of our congregation, and by "resurrection of the body" I include the physicality of the world.

Narrativity

2008-10-13T11:47:00.002-04:00

I was motivated to investigate what makes affiliates (people connected to the church but not really involved) tick. The deeper into it I've gone, the more I'm amazed and moved by the mysteriousness of people's stories. It's stuff that just doesn't show up in our social science based analyses of church trends.

A young woman has been attending my church for the last year or so. She's a classic affiliate -- active grandparents, sporadically attending mother, Roman Catholic father. She came back for the most conventional of all reasons -- she had her first baby and wanted her baptized. But as I've gotten to know her, I know there's more than that -- so much more going on in her personal story and struggles -- and I know that God's involved in moving her.

I did a funeral several years ago for a little girl who died suddenly and tragically. Parents were also classic affiliates who came to church once in a while. It's a family who has been through unimaginable suffering and I had the privilege of walking with them for quite a while.

I lost almost complete touch and wondered if they were even in town any more. Then, out of the blue, I receive a Facebook message from him. We share messages occasionally. We've been trying to make plans to go out for coffee. Last Sunday, he shows up to church with the little girl they adopted. He was back yesterday.

This stuff just can't be caught in a bottle, measured or predicted. It`s all part of the richness of individual narratives that I`m realizing more and more are at the heart of ministry -- and the heart of the Gospel.

Alan Roxburgh says that pastors should be like poets -- giving people the language to articulate what God`s doing in their lives, taking people`s questions and helping them to expand so that they can hold a reality infinitely bigger than themselves, relating personal narratives to the Great Narrative of God`s saving acts.

One more thought. I`m beginning to wonder if Christian faith is not something that you need to be older to begin to grasp. I know that goes against all of our desires for a rejuvenated church. And I`m not suggesting for a minute that the faith of younger generations is in any way deficient. But I`m telling you, there are things I`m starting to understand now at 54 that I just couldn`t have comprehended when I was 24 or 34. For one thing, I don`t know if you really begin to see the narrative pattern in your life until you`ve got a bunch of years behind you. And I`m seeing in my church the number of people for whom the Gospel is coming alive for the first time who are in their 40s and 50s. Which is also kind of changing my perspective on effective minsitry.

Stories

2008-10-09T15:12:00.003-04:00

"I can only answer the question 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what stories am I a part?'" Alasdair McIntyre, After Virtue.

That sentence describes something essential about ministry. It's the task of helping people understand their own narrative so that they can bring it into contact with the larger narrative of God.

Tears for the church

2008-10-09T14:46:00.002-04:00

I know why Jesus wept over Jerusalem.

There's a very persistent and very vocal group of people in the United Church who have been trying to organize a clergy union. They've aligned themselves with the Canadian Auto Workers. Most people thought it was a joke when they started three or four years ago, but there's nothing funny about it.

I'm looking at the latest newsletter sent out by the union organizers. It's filled with old labour union jargon like "Clergy Unite" and "Solidarity forever!" They claim that there is a groundswell of support among clergy that makes a certification vote in the near future a certainty.

What's really sad is the reality that has motivated this drive. The church seems to have lost its ability to order its life and care for its members and leaders. We're hearing more and more stories about churches where the relationship between pastor and congregation (or members within the congregation) has completely broken down. There are charges of bullying, harrassment, abuse and even death threats against clergy and their families.

But some of the rhetoric of the organizers is really, if you think about it for a minute, quite shocking.

"Uniting together [with the CAW] will give us the confidence and collective empowerment to live out our ministries as we feel called to do." What?? "You will never know security and protection until you sign your union card." Excvse me?

I know there are heart-rending stories of clergy whose ministries have been derailed and destroyed by the sky-rocketing anxiety levels of churches in decline. I know the church attracts and enables some pretty nasty people. And that's cause for weeping.

But the naivete of clergy who think that unionizing is going to solve their problems and give them "true security" is simply breath taking.

It's enough to reduce you to tears.

Finding Hope

2008-10-07T11:20:00.003-04:00

I've been having an ongoing conversation with a woman who attended my church for a while. But she found that she couldn't stomach what she called the "Christian exclusivism." She's from a Roman Catholic background but has "big issues" with the church's claims.

We meet from time to time at Starbuck's to talk about this and that. One day I said I had to go because I was getting ready for a funeral. "That must be really hard to have to deal with all that grief and loss," she said. I explained that actually I find funerals one of the most rewarding parts of my job because people tend to be a lot more authentic and honest when they are struggling with that kind of pain. I told her that I get tremendous satisfaction from being able to bring a message of hope at those times.

"I know what you mean," she said. "It's the same with my work." She works with survivors of incest, many of whom are deeply traumatized. "Without hope, they can't make it," she said. "It's part of my job to give them some hope."

And so here we were, suddenly discovering a comman vocabulary and a common experience, even though standing (apparently) on very different ground.

"We've got to meet again and talk some more about hope," I said. And we agreed we would.

This is the kind gateway, the kind of open space where contemporary ministry has to take place.

Ministry as Waiting

2008-10-07T11:05:00.002-04:00

OK, I'm back. I've been told that blogging etiquette requires regular posting, but I've had some extra responsibilities land on my desk -- including keeping our children's program going after the departure of our (fantastic) Children's Ministry Director, Sherry. I'm quickly discovering just how much work she did keeping connected with families with children.

Just reading novelist Anne Rice's spiritual autobiography, "Called Out of Darkness" -- confirming that you just never know about people. Anne Rice, famous for all those novels about vampires, relates how she grew up completely soaked in pre-Vatican II Catholicism in New Orleans, and how deeply it shaped her view of the world. She lost her faith in college (where else?) and went through a 38 year period of estrangement from the Church and what she calls "atheism." Then, at 57, she came back.

Interestingly, she says she "lost faith in atheism." She had to struggle to hold onto her rejection of God, just as many struggle to hold onto their faith.

My work with affiliates has impressed on me the truly rich diversity of spiritual narratives that are found in our churches. We're often blinded to those narratives by a predetermined template of what we think a genuine religious pilgrimage will look like. For many Protestants, the underlying narrative is one of "growing up and leaving behind Sunday School thinking" -- highly rationalistic, highly modern. You figure out that Jesus' miracles didn't really happen and then you're free to take a "grown up" view of faith.

That has always struck me as such an impoverished account when it's applied across the board. People simply don't do what we expect them to do. And, if you approach things from a perspective of faith, God doesn't do what we expect God to do.

Pastoral ministry used to be largely about guiding people through the various stages of development in their faith and religious expression. Today, I think so much of ministry has to do with waiting. Waiting for those people who suddenly "get it," who, often without visible warning signs, find themselves back in the world of faith. And there's really no predicting.

Clarity

2008-09-04T15:46:00.003-04:00

OK, here's an example of what I was talking about in the last posting.

Consider this great sentence from Walter Brueggemann about 1 and 2 Chronicles:
"in the context of Persia as a dependent colony of the empire, Judaism's only chance for freedom of thought, faith and action is through the maintenance of a liturgical practice and sensibility.... [Chronicles] shows Israel as a choir that sings its way through historical crisis." (Introduction to the Old Testament, 375, 376.)

Contemporary Protestants tend to sneer at Chronicles because its lack of prophetic passion and concern for justice. It's all about Levites and singers. Brueggemann is arguing that it was the Jewish ability to maintain a clear focus in the midst of adverse circumstances (colonization, marginalization) that ensured their survival and thriving.

The anxiety of discontinuous change has caused many churches to react by trying to assimilate (or be assimilated by) the surrounding culture in the hopes that it will create a kind of marketable relevance. In so doing, churches will tend to neglect the very things that give them their identity and staying power -- including worship. Worship is exploited to serve ulterior ends, like attracting the disaffected back to the pews (itself fraught with ulterior motives, like, "And then they can help pay the bills"!)

In the much maligned Books of Chronicles, maybe there's a bit of a template for how to deal with a hostile and indifferent culture. Sing! Worship! Be the church!

Too Much Data?

2008-09-04T12:48:00.003-04:00

Back again, after an extended summer break. My wife and I went to Boston and while there I picked up a copy of Edwin Friedman's book A Failure of Nerve which he was completing when he died in 1996.

Ed Friedman is one of those people I wish I had met. The rabbi and therapist, famous for applying family systems theory to institutions like churches and synagogues, is one of the most provocative and interesting thinkers of our times. In A Failure of Nerve, he argues that we live in an emotionally regressive culture that systematically undermines self-differentiated leadership and values safety over adventure. He develops his ideas about human communities being interdependent systems that have predictable ways of reacting to anxiety and change. Leaders are most effective when they refuse to become enmeshed in the anxious emotional processes of the system and learn to be self-differentiated.

But the part of the book that caught my eye, and that relates to what I've been trying to do with affiliates, is chapter 3, "Data Junkyards and Data Junkies: The Fallacy of Expertise." One of our culture's ways of dealing (or refusing to deal) with anxiety-provoking change is by multiplying the amount of data at our disposal. But it has gotten to the point where the sheer volume of information has become overwhelming. Data is now a form of "substance abuse" among those who use it as a substitute for wisdom and decisiveness. The multiplication of data in the information age reinforces many "learned superstitions."

I remember when I embarked on my project to understand affiliates better, clearly thinking, "Well, if I knew more about what they were thinking and feeling, I could respond more effectively." Hence, my survey. But I've found that simply gathering and assembling the data doesn't really produce anything. Simply knowing the reasons why affiliates don't attend church more often doesn't lead to change.

Those who have been following this blog know that I'm a terrible second-guesser, and my instinct is to discount the data. But I don't think that's what Friedman is saying. He's not advocating being ill-informed. He's just making the common sense observation that piling up data becomes counter-productive and inhibits action. The quest for more complete data simply postpones effective response indefinitely and actually serves to increase anxiety. Friedman argues that clarity about goals and decisiveness is actually a more important quality for leaders than being fully informed.

(I'm not doing justice to his ideas in these few sentences. You need to read the book!)

But here's what I think I'm learning. It's more important for churches and their leaders to be clear about who they are and what they need to be doing than to endlessly strive to figure out what people are thinking. I learned some helpful things about people who belong but don't attend through my survey. But that's only a preliminary, prepartory step to ministry. We need to be careful that we don't slip into thinking of our mission as mainly a marketing problem.

The data I've collected on affiliates have been really helpful to me in two ways. First, it reminds me that things in the church look different from the outside than they do from the inside. And second, it's shown me that there's no quick fix (another desire of an anxious system, according to Friedman.) There really is no single answer to the question "Why aren't those people coming to church and what can we do to change it?" I did ask those questions explicitly: "What are the main reasons that keep you away from church?" and "What, if anything, would motivate you to attend more often?" And the responses to those questions were among the least clear of the whole survey.

But after reading Friedman's book, I see that that's probably the most important lesson from the whole exercise. And that churches will be far more effective in ministering to their affiliates if they stop worrying about how to attract them and achieve greater clarity about who they are.

A Second Wind

2008-07-25T09:18:00.002-04:00

I haven't been keeping up as much with this blog, frankly because I began to wonder about the validity of my approach in dealing with affiliates. Was I just sugar coating what amounts to narcissism and lack of commitment? Is there really anything valid about someone's personal sense of "belonging" -- or is that just wishful thinking to try to gloss over the seriousness of the church's predicament?

I've been reading "The Search To Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community and Small Groups" by Joseph Myers which has rekindled my interest in affiliates. Myers challenges the belief that intimacy is the goal of all relationships. THis is the assumption that's behind the small group movement -- that ideally 100% of church members ought to be in a small group that shares on an intimate level.

Myers identifies four "spaces" of belonging -- public, social, personal and intimate -- and argues that people can find real connectedness and community on all four levels. It's wrong to try to force people to move to a space that we think is the "right" space to be in. The fact is, that many people's connection to the church will remain at the "public" level -- attending worship (more or less frequently) and taking part in those activities that they find helpful and valuable. We should not assume that unless someone moves through stages to ever deeper commitment and ever greater intimacy that they don't "belong" -- or that the church has "failed."

What the church does is set up two value-laden categories -- "active" and "inactive" -- or, "committed" and "uncommitted," "insider" and "outsider" -- or however you want to label them. We think that the only really valid way of belonging is to be in the inner-most circle. But Myers argues that that does violence to the varied ways in which different people find true community. We try to put everybody in the same box.

This has got me thinking again about Reg Bibby's observation that people we think of as "inactive" or "drop-outs" often have an incredibly resilient and stubborn sense of being part of "their" church -- and if you mess with that, it can blow up in your face.

I think what it comes down to is recognizing that God works in mysterious ways, differently in different people. Who are we to judge that the person who slips into the back pew on a sporadic basis -- or the people who derive great satisfaction out of working at church suppers but avoid prayer groups like the plague -- or the person who watches Robert Schuller on Sunday morning and sends an annual cheque to the church -- who are we to judge that God is not at work in their lives?

That's not to say that we give up on nurturing people or forming them. It's not to say that we don't encourage deeper levels of practice. But, in the words of Alan Roxburgh, the church tends to ask "church questions" rather than "God questions." Our agenda is what will support and perpetuate the church structures familiar to the inner circle, rather than asking "What is God up to in people's lives?" And we ought not to forget that the religious structures of Jesus' day were what actually impeded the work of God in peoples' lives -- and that much of Jesus' ministry was in breaking through those controlling structures.

What I've decided to do is to start rearranging my schedule so I can devote major portions of my time to having coffee with people. Not as an underhanded way of roping them into church activities, but as a way of posing this question -- "Where's God in your life?"

Real Diversity

2008-07-02T11:26:00.003-04:00

Two vignettes:
Sunday morning, I preached at a large church in downtown St. Catharines that will be amalgamating with two other large downtown churches. It's becoming a familiar pattern. There were about 120 people in attendance, most of them seniors, and many of them very, very sad. The service was a celebration of this congregation that has been in existence for over 180 years and the marking of a new stage in their life. But the emotions were very, very mixed. There is a sense that the church that once was, the church that most of us once knew, is passing away.

On Monday night, I went with my 28 year old son and my wife to Toronto to hear Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw and the "Jesus for President" tour. Claiborne and Haw are young and very cool evangelicals who are also radical social activists. They read the biblical narrative as an powerful, anti-imperial proclamation of God's freedom and justice. I was really impressed by the sophistication of their analysis, and their idealism. The Church of the Redeemer was packed with a crowd that was mostly under 30. They were unabashedly evangelical, unabashedly Christ-centred, but very counter-cultural and politcally radical.

What I'm realizing is that the living reality of Christianity is so complex that there's just no way to pin it down to one trend or phenomenon. CNN.com had this really interesting story about how these young evangelicals may change US politics. In previous elections they were solidly Republican, but disaffection with Bush and especially the Iraq war is changing that.

One of the things I found in my survey of affiliates is that you really can't pigeon-hole people. And this was confirmed for me. Most of us have such a narrow experience of "church" and "Christianity" that we assume that everyone looks at things the way we do.

And the biblical story says pretty clearly that God's hand is mysteriously at work in the midst of all this diversity. Which gives me a lot of hope. As traditional mainline Protestantism does seem to be sliding towards oblivion, we need to be reminded that the Holy Spirit isn't contained within those vessels. There's stuff happening that we can't even imagine.

How are things going?

2008-06-12T19:06:00.004-04:00

It's coming up to a year since I wrote my study on church affiliates. It gave me some valuable insights into how people who claim some religious connection but aren't active in church think.

But I'd have to say that there are no major breakthroughs in terms of reactivating many of these people. I acknowledged that in my study. I concluded that there is no magic button you can press that will bring people back to church. The cause-and-effect relationship between church programming and church involvement has broken down.

I have realized how I am what Alan Roxburgh calls a "leader lost in transition" -- someone highly trained to read "maps" that no longer describe the terrain we are trying to traverse. Roxburgh urges that we become aware of the unspoken assumptions behind those maps. And I guess for most of us the assumption is that what we really want to do is to attract (or re-attract) people to our churches. Is that the Gospel imperative, though?

Roxburgh has some interesting things to say about the strategic planning process that many churches still employ to try to generate desired outcomes. It's rooted in modernity's quest to analyze and control

"Strategic planning models are based on an assumption that all reality, including human beings in their social communities, is based upon a simple, or complex, nexus of cause and effect. They assume leaders can predict then control factors in such a way as to achieve intended outcomes."

This model is not completely moribund, but it is less and less effective. What do we put in its place? Not sure yet. But, for me, the key right now is just to keep a) praying and b) talking to people.

Back to the Neighborhood.

2008-05-29T13:55:00.002-04:00

I had coffee this morning with a young church planter in Hamilton named Pernell Goodyear. He leads "The Freeway," a downtown community of the Salvation Army. The Freeway I think represents the future of the church. It is highly non-traditional, going against the grain of a denomination (SA) that sounds every bit as tradition bound as the United Church of Canada.

Their home is a former bank building at the corner of King and Wellington in downtown Hamilton. They house a fair trade coffee shop, which Pernell told me generates income to pay for the operation of the building. On Sundays at 6 p.m. there is a worshiping community that gathers.

The difference between The Freeway and most other churches is that it is deliberately and self-consciously a neighborhood church. It is part of a missional movement to reintegrate churches into neighborhoods, and to build churches around groups of people who engage in Christian practices with one another. Pernell says they have absolutely no interest in becoming a traditional congregation based on church growth principles. Their focus is on the formation of Christian community among people who live in the same area.

For that reason, he says they have actually discouraged what you see happening more and more, which is people driving long distances to find a church that "meets their needs."

He described their worship as "sacramental" (I have to ask him for more details about what he means by that) but I think they are expressing the contemporary suspicion of basing the church on marketing techniques or on rationalistic methods of persuasion. Rather, they seek to embody the church through their common life.

He also told me that they consider their building actually be the community's building. The church pays the bills, but the facility is available to the community.

I want to start exploring ways in which already existing churches (like mine) can reestablish a more deeply rooted community connection.

Buildings and Visibility

2008-05-13T18:46:00.004-04:00

(For the record, that's not my church. It's Eastminster United in Toronto, but it conveys the appropriate image.)

Last week we had a meeting to discuss expanding and repaving part of our parking lot. There was only one estimate -- but it was $75,000! I had this momentary feeling of being overwhelmed by the reality of trying to keep a church building in half decent repair. For many churches with older physical plants, it will soon become unmanageable -- for many, it already has.

Many congregations are crossing a line which is transforming their buildings from assets to liabilities. Which is hard to deal with, because most of us would have trouble even imagining what a church could be apart from the building. The multi-facility church structure is woven into our understanding of the church at a very deep level.

But there's another aspect to this. Time was -- and not very long ago -- that a fine church building translated into visibility. That's why churches sprouted like mushrooms in the post-War era. A church building with a steeple and stained glass windows meant that people could see where the church was.

But that was in the days when the boundaries between church and culture were permeable and the two realms reinforced each other -- culture underwriting and confirming the church's message, church blessing the values of culture.

Today, buildings can actually inhibit visibility. People drive by and they are not drawn in to the comforting and the familiar. Rather, they are more likely to see the bricks and mortar of the church as a wall behind which strange and unfamiliar things go on -- things that they have no reason to believe are of the slightest relevance to them.

What should we do? It's not an easy question. For one thing, we can't just walk away from our buildings, even if nobody else wants them. And for another, our buildings are so much a part of identity, we cannot think of ourselves apart from them.

But what if we're getting to the point where we really can't afford them, both in terms of dollars and cents, and in terms of our missional relationship with a post-Christian culture?

The Hope that is in us

2008-05-01T19:03:00.004-04:00

I'm reminded that why I called this blog "the Untied Church." I'm constantly struck by two things at the same time -- the implosion of the structured institution that I grew up with; and the astonishingly real ways in which God shows up in people's lives. The church is very much alive an kicking -- but it's become "untied" from many of the things we once associated with church.

Sunday was the youth confirmation service at my church. Seven 14 and 15 year olds stood up and promised to turn away from their sins and give their lives to Christ. They're great kids and it moved me deeply to see them making this thoroughly countercultural move. I preached on Peter's admonition to always be prepared to give an account for the hope that is in you -- realizing that to give that account makes you a stranger in the strange land of contemporary culture.

But what really blew me away were our adult mentors. Like many churches, we do most of our confirmation preparation one-on-one with adult mentors. I get told all the time that I'm taking a terrible risk allowing teenagers to meet one on one with an adult -- but you know, I don't give a good you-know-what. We're really careful about who we invite to be mentors and every year I'm more confident that it's worth it.

The mentors stand up and present their teen to the congregation, describing who he or she is a person, his or her interests, talents, gifts.

But it was listening to the mentors speak from the heart about the faith they saw awakening in these young people that moved me almost to tears. It was their faith -- their willingness to give an account of the hope that is in them -- that was so powerful. At least two of our mentors spent years -- decades even -- away from the church. Several of them have had, to say the least, circuitous faith journeys with all kinds of twists and turns. But I saw God powerfully at work in them. Seven adults with amazing spiritual maturity and giftedness. All of them well under the average age of United Church members.

Our congregation is, in many ways, a shadow of its former self -- institutionally speaking. But the power of God is evident in so many lives that I think we haven't lost a thing. It's reminded me that the church belongs to God, and God in God's good time form the church that God requires.

The Slow Work of God

2008-04-15T16:55:00.005-04:00

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit, knew a lot about patience and how long things take. He was a palaeontologist, used to thinking in terms of vast expanses of time. This reminds me that our sense of having been failed by God, or ourselves, is often simple impatience. We don't give things enough time. I'm always trying things for a little while and then chucking them aside because they haven't "worked." But an essential aspect of faith, Teilhard reminds us, is trusting that God is at work even when, from our time-limited perspective, we can't see it.

TRUST IN THE SLOW WORK OF GOD

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything
to reach the end.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown, something new,
and yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stage of instability –
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually –
Let them grow,
let them shape themselves,
without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today
what time (that is to say, grace
and your own good will)
will make them tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety
of feeling yourself in suspense
and incomplete.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Church renewal in Britain

2008-03-27T19:00:00.002-04:00

My friend Connie den Bok, a minister in Toronto, put me onto some things that are happening in Britain through the Church of England and the Methodist Church. As we all know, church decline in Britain is way more advanced than in Canada (although I suspect we're closing the gap quickly) -- but there are some innovative things brewing there that we could learn from.

There's a website -- www.freshexpressions.org.uk -- which tells the stories of many new initiatives that are revitalizing the church among previously marginalized groups -- students, young families, persons with disabilities, children.

I'm going to encourage my own Council and leaders to start chewing on some of these ideas. Some have more merit than others, but they all seem to be organic, contextualized responses to the decline of traditional denominationally based Christianity in a once heavily Christianized culture.

The Real Easter Story

2008-03-25T14:38:00.003-04:00

There's a minister from Toronto named Gretta Vosper who's been getting lots and lots of publicity (carefully sought and cultivated, I'm sure) saying that traditional Christianity is utterly incredible and untenable and that nobody with a brain actually believes any of it any more. So at her church, they sang "Glorious hope is risen today" on Easter morning -- because the resurrection -- well, it's so preposterous why waste time and breath on it?

I say why waste time breath on anything as tired and depressing and embittered as Gretta Vosper's self-aggrandizing hatchet job on the Christian narrative.

Instead, read a REALLY, REALLY good sermon on the resurrection by my good friend Daniel Meeter. Click on his blog to the left. His sermon from Sunday is his most recent posting.

What -- or Who -- is at the Centre?

2008-03-19T16:35:00.009-04:00

A few postings ago, "Old First" wrote about how his church maintains a "strong center" -- "the risen Lord Jesus Christ" -- with few boundaries.

In Berlin, we visited the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedachtniskirche -- the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. The original church, built in the 1890s, was in many ways a celebration of German imperialism. It was destroyed by British bombs in 1943 leaving only the main west tower. After the War, the decision was made not to restore the church to what it had been but to make a different kind of statement.

The tower was left standing, sheered-off spire, pock marks from bomb blasts and all -- and turned into a memorial to the cost of war.

A new octagonal church was built, incorporating 15,000 panes of blue stained glass. The interior effect is quite remarkable -- dark and quiet, yet constantly illuminated.

Most striking of all is the massive hammered metal figure of Christ which absolutely dominates the space. Given the history of Germany, Berlin and this church, is more than just an aesthetic adornment. One of the descriptive signs says that the figure of Christ "reminds us who is at the center of each worship service." This congregation had experienced first hand what happens when another ideology is allowed to displace Christ. In the aftermath of the Nazi nightmare, the centrality of Christ must have taken on a whole new meaning and urgency.

We hear a great deal today about how the "exclusiveness" of Christ is a barrier to authentic spirituality. But I wonder how true that can possibly be. It seems to me that Christ at the centre of the church's life is the only thing that keeps the church from being co-opted by the culture -- because Christ stands in judgment on all human systems and ideologies. "Christ at the centre" is not at all the same thing as "the superiority of the Christian religion" because Christ judges Christianity whenever Christians depart from the redemptive self-giving love that Jesus came to demonstrate and to unleash on the world.

Is this a message that can still speak in today's world? Personally, I think we need to hear it more than ever.

Counting Heads

2008-03-04T17:09:00.003-05:00

One of my conclusions in my study "Untied Church" is that old ways of measuring church size and vitality aren't necessarily useful today. For example, counting "average weekly attendance" is a recipe for depression in many congregations because the numbers only head in one direction -- down. And that downward trend is cause for legitimate worry.

But our church has tracked attendance over three months -- May, October and February -- and found a surprising fact. In every one of those months, about 400 different individuals attended church at least once. And, the biggest month was February -- 429. Who'd a thunk it?

In the early 1980s, my church had a weekly average of about 400. Now, it's about 200. But I have a feeling that about the same number of people are coming, just not as often. I've commented on this before. And I really want to avoid glossing over the reality of the losses, but I also think that we have to start working with what we've got.

Church Here and There

2008-03-04T16:58:00.002-05:00

I've been away from this blog for a while because my wife and I spent two weeks in Germany visiting our daughter who's working as an au pair for a year. She has a great circle of young adult friends but none of them have church backgrounds. One of her friends in a moment of abandon said "I went to a couple of services but the problem was, it was just so #@&%ing boring!!" (Dropping an F-bomb isn't such a big deal in Germany as it is here.) The main churches in Europe are still state supported. People elect to pay a church tax which pays pastors' salaries and helps maintain their 800 year old buildings. In return, they get access to the church for surprisingly resilient Christian services like baptisms, confirmations and weddings -- but don't think it's important to actually go to church on Sunday.

It made me realize how much of our time and energy is spent trying to attract people, to "market our product" so to speak. And if our services are (Bleep Bleep) boring, we end up in big trouble.

What a fine line it is, though, between connecting and pandering. That's the tension I have been experiencing ever since I undertook my affiliates project. (In case you're new to this blog or have forgotten, check out the first postings in the archive.) People say their spiritual need is to find inner peace -- but should the church then play to that expressed need? It's oh so tempting -- and oh so easy to get sidetracked, chasing down every possible means of perhaps attracting a few new folks.

I think what's required in the church today is, above all, the patience that comes with faith. We gotta trust that by faithfully proclaiming and embodying the gospel, and by caring for folks with the heart of Christ, that God's will for the church will (mysteriously) be done. We can find new ways to package it -- but have to be really vigilant that the packaging doesn't start to take over. And that feels like walking along the edge of a cliff with the ground giving way under your feet, but it's what we're called to do.

Facebook

2008-02-17T05:27:00.002-05:00

Bruxy Cavey is the pastor of The Meeting Place, a cutting edge network of congregations that gather in movie theatres and are making serious inroads into the younger demographic. I read somewhere that Cavey has become a Facebook fan. He uses the social networking website to stay in touch with hundreds of people.

My kids got me on Facebook a while back. I don't use it a lot, but every week one or two new people appear on my computer asking if they can be my "Facebook friends" -- including some of my kids' young adult friends who think my wife and I are really cool. (I'm not kidding.)

And, to my surprise a name popped up on my Facebook wall of an affiliate from my church who has been long gone for several years. I've tried to contact the family several times by old-fashioned methods -- mailed notes, phone messages and e-mails (how outdated!) -- and suddenly, here he is on my Facebook. He's going through some life transitions and apparently wants me to know abou it. There's a pastoral opportunity that I don't think could have come about any other way.

Most congregations still do most of their communicating with photocopied newletters full of all kinds of in house information -- the church version of customer advertising. I wonder whether the cost in time, money and trees is really worth it. Maybe it is for a certain generation.

How come we're not really getting into tools like Facebook. If you want to know where to find young people and how to stay in touch with lots of them quickly, this is it.

Emerging Spirit

2008-02-17T05:06:00.004-05:00

The United Church of Canada made a splash two years ago with a series of quirky magazine ads designed to connect with socially progressive 25-45 year olds. They followed up with a website called wondercafe which was supposed to attract spiritual seekers who weren't necessarily into church. And, training events to show congregations how to welcome all the new folks who were going to arrive as a result of our efforts. The budget for the whole "Emerging Spirit" program will be $10 million.

It's becoming clear that it hasn't worked. There's been no discernible increase in church attendance. And wondercafe has become a chat room for about 100 regular participants, most of whom are United Church insiders. The word is that once the money runs out, it will be finished.

The intent was good -- but badly misconceived. The church didn't appreciate that there's a huge distance between someone thinking "Gee, that's an interesteing ad" and actually visiting their local United Church -- or even checking out the new website. The ads weren't really selling anything -- except a kind of vague impression of the United Church.

ANd they didn't appreciate that even if you get someone to visit their local United Church, that's a long, long way from getting them to form any kind of meaningful relationship. I have found how hard it is to keep connected with people who are already supposed to be a part of the congregation. There are just so many things these days to interrupt that connection.

The first rule of advertising is that you have to keep it up. Running one newspaper ad is a waste of money. And, in terms of a long-term strategy, even running six months of ads in a selection of magazines is a waste of money because once those ads have stopped, whatever they were about goes off people's radar screen immediately.

Recently I read an article that said that advertising isn't working the way it used to. People have learned to tune out and ignore ads. They have become cynical about their claims. What counts now is that there is something about the product that basically sells itself. The i-Pod is a good example. Apple has advertised it, but that's not why everybody has one. It's because people tell their friends about it and the product is appealing enough that they go out and buy one too.

Here's the basic flaw in the Emerging Spirit approach. It's old thinking. It's promoting something without paying attention to whether the product is any good. In other words, what's going on in our congregations is the problem, not just the fact that we haven't advertised it.

And that goes back to real basics. How many churches have honestly asked themselves why someone who isn't already committed would want to haul their butts out of bed on Sunday and join them, instead of doing something else. The only reason I can see is if people sense that there's something life-transforming that the church has to offer that they can't find anywhere else. And that pretty much lets out "community" or "friendliness" as motivating factors, because people can get that in lots ofother places.

So what is it? Maybe we need to worry less about being friendly and welcoming and more about the content of what we're offering. And then the "product" might start to "sell " itself.

Vision

2008-02-06T14:36:00.001-05:00

Last night I showed a DVD at my church called "Celebrating What's Right with the World." It's by Dewitt Jones, an award-winning photographer who has done a lot of work for National Geographic. It was made for corporate training sessions, but really has a lot of parallels to the church.

Because what he's talking about is vision and how we see things. He starts off saying that he used to think he had to see something to believe it, but now he knows that he has to believe before he can see it.

And I think that's one of the problems we've got in the church today. We've lost our vision and our imagination. All we see is decline and irrelevance. Ironically, though, being fixated on what's wrong prevents us from creatively addressing it because we lose the vision of what we should be.

"When vision is clear, then the passion and creativity are there as well." I really wonder in my own church and certainly my own denomination if the dearth of passion and creativity is connected to a loss of vision -- vision of what God can and wants to do through the church.

Sometimes it takes a voice from outside to tell us what we need to hear. And I'm well aware that "Celebrating What's Right With The World" is chock full of all kinds of motivational cliches that get thrown around in the business world.

But what he says is true. We have to believe it to see it. And the problem with many churches today is that they don't really believe in themselves -- in who they are, what they have to offer, and what God wants of them.

Secularization?

2008-01-26T16:53:00.000-05:00

(I wrote this for our Presbytery Newsletter)

This past week I read a fascinating article by Peter Berger, the best known sociologist of religion in North America. For many years, Berger believed in something called “the secularization thesis.” This was a theory that religion would inevitably decline in the modern world until it pretty much disappeared. But Berger has had a conversion experience. He no longer believes that modern society is necessarily secular. In fact, he writes, “in much of the world there has been a veritable explosion of religious faith.”

The key mark of modernity is not secularity, Berger argues, but pluralism. “Modernity is characterized by plurality, within the same society, of different beliefs, values, and worldviews.” So we are witnessing both the growth of religion and growth in the diversity of religious expressions.

Much of that growth is taking place outside of Europe and North America, in the so-called “global south” – Africa, Latin America and southern Asia. Much of it is Muslim, but the fastest growing religion in the world is not Islam, but Christianity, especially evangelical Christianity. .

But we shouldn’t assume that the world-wide religious revival is entirely bypassing our supposedly secular Canadian society – not by a long shot. There are plenty of signs that people are hungry for a religious perspective that will give meaning and hope to their lives. And, as people like Diana Butler Bass have argued, that hunger for faith is not only found in so-called evangelical churches. There are plenty of signs of vitality within traditional mainline Christianity.

So, question: Why do we continue to close United Churches? Why are so many of our congregations struggling with aging and shrinking memberships? If the hunger for the consolations of faith is as keen as we are told it is, why is it not having more impact?Another question. If our time is marked by increasing religious diversity, why do so many of our United Churches look so much the same? While we are diverse in some ways, in other ways United Churches are much more homogeneous than they were 25 years ago. The people in our churches tend to look pretty much the same, sound the same and act the same. Much as we hate to admit it, the churches that have done better at including the young, the poor, the disabled and racial minorities are not our kind of church. Sometimes I think that our concern to promote a distinctive “United Church ethos” has actually discouraged the very diversity we say we value.

As we move farther into the 21st century (who can believe that the millennium was almost a decade ago?) these are the questions we have to ask. They’re questions that are part of a much bigger picture than just whether we can pay the bills for a few more years or survive a little longer through amalgamations or downsizing our ministry staffs. They’re questions that cut to the heart of whether the United Church of Canada can continue to play its historic role in providing that framework of faith that people so desperately need.

Many of the ways we have always done things no longer seem to be working. We all know that any solutions are not going to be easy to find. But let’s keep conversations going.

Grandpa and Levi

2008-01-16T18:57:00.000-05:00

A little late -- and a little bit out of date. But here's me and my new grandson (b. Nov. 12) Levi Ridley.

Is "Monthly" the new "Weekly"?

2008-01-15T15:18:00.000-05:00

Our Worship planning team decided we would track the number of individuals who attended church over the course of a month. How did we do this? Easy. We passed a clipboard during the announcements and requested people simply to write their names and those of any family members who were actually physically present on that Sunday. We were motivated by a pretty well-informed hunch that part of the decline in Sunday attendance is that people are just coming to church less often than they used to.

In May, 387 people came to church at least once. In October, 399 people came to church, but this time, our hard-working secretary Rosemary broke these numbers down according to frequency. Here's what we found.

13.7% of that 399 people came to church all four Sundays.
20.6% came three Sundays.
25.2% came two Sundays.
And 41% came one Sunday.

In other words, of the basically 400 people who attended a service during October, two-thirds came once or twice.

I don't know about you, but I think a church with 400 people coming through the doors in a month is a pretty healthy church. Our challenge is to find ways to a) increase that 400 to, say, 500; and, more importantly, b) to change the once-a-monthers to more regular attenders.

And I know, I know, numbers aren't everything. But they aren't nothing either. One element of maintaining congregational health is to nurture regular worship attendance. We're working on how to do that. Comments and suggestions gratefully received.

Being there when we're needed

2008-01-08T13:33:00.000-05:00

We're at a stage in our life when we have contact with a lot of young adults. They're our kids' friends. And, even though our own kids sometimes think we're a little square, their friends think my wife and I are pretty cool.
One of their friends recently asked if she could talk to me. Some things have happened in her life that have made her open to the possibility that God might be trying to get her attention. She wants to come to church.
I know this happens frequently. Young adults have moments of spiritual crisis or awareness and they need someone to help them shape and direct those experiences. But it's not always easy to know where to tell them they should go. If a young person in another city asks me what's a good church to attend, often I don't know.
I'm glad I have enough confidence in my church and its ministry to encourage this young woman to come here. But it's something I think we need to worry a lot more about than we do. We say we want young adults to come back to church, but we're ill-prepared to receive them when they do -- or to give them the spiritual support and help they're looking for.
One of the young adults who responded to my survey commented that the church needs to be ready when people his age find their way back. I don't think that means launching a lot of gimmicky market-driven programs. I think it means making sure there's enough depth in our own faith, worship and community life that it doesn't feel like a waste-land or a closed club when they arrive.

Christmas still works

2008-01-08T13:21:00.000-05:00

I've found myself more than usually curmudgeonly about this Christmas because, as I've indicated in previous postings, I find the commercialization becoming almost overwhelming. But Christmas Eve still brings people out. They are drawn to hear that story. I saw faces on Christmas Eve that I hadn't seen for months. But there is something about the narrative of Bethlehem that grabs them and won't let go. Overall, we've experienced a decline in church attendance. But not on Christmas Eve.

Typically, we take a "glass half empty" attitude to this, grumping about how it would mean a lot more if they'd come out for the rest of the year. But I don't know. In the times in which we live, I think you've got to find hope where you can find it. And take the hopeful signs and build on them. And the worship we had in the weeks leading up to Christmas renewed my hope. It's way too easy for people to stay away these days, not to see significance in those times when they come out.

Early in December, my new baby grandson made his stage debut, starring in the role of Baby Jesus at the annual Christmas pageant at Kingsway Lambton United Church in Toronto where his parents attend. This pageant involves about 80 children and was performed for the seventieth consecutive year. It's a beautiful acting out of the Christmas story and they have to put it on for four nights to accomodate everyone who wants to attend. That says to me that the church's message has not lost its power to engage people at the deep places of their hearts. Sure, there's an element of habit and nostalgia involved, but when isn't that the case.
Sure, we need to be on guard against spiritual phoniness. But I think we can get too cynical as well.

Happy Holidays??

2007-12-11T11:12:00.000-05:00

My wife and I were in WalMart the other day and I was looking over a shelf of Christmas cards -- except I didn't see any that actually said "Christmas." It was all "Season's Greetings" and "Happy Holidays." And certainly none of them had any of the traditional Christmas icons -- manger, shepherds, Baby Jesus, etc. In fact, it's really hard to find a religious Christmas card outside of a Christian book store.
Marketers are responding to a perception that specific religious identification is no longer a Good Thing in our pluralistic society. Underneath is the prejudice that self-identified religious people are intolerant and bigoted, and that religious convictions produce social conflict. Therefore, Christmas will become a generic seasonal holiday, without any specific religious reference.
Two issues with this. First, as the traditional Christmas story becomes more marginalized, the space it leaves is filled by every more conspicuous greed and consumption. The religious meaning of Christmas at least kept it somewhat anchored in the Christian virtues of service, compassion and self-giving. But that is being muscled aside by truly aggressive consumerism. It strikes me as a real irony that in our public education system, no one really questions the promotion of Santa Claus (whose sole reason for existing is to promote Christmas spending) but kids must be protected against the destructive effects of anything resembling Christianity, even though the Christmas story is about the entering into time of divine, self-giving love.
The second issue is that, as Reginald Bibby's research shows, three out of four Canadians still identify themselves as Christians. For them, the Christmas story is THEIR story. And, to put it in terms our culture understands, there must be a pretty robust market for things like traditional Christmas cards.
I don't think the desacralizing of Christmas is entirely a response to a cultural change, I think that to a certain extent it's a deliberate strategy to create that cultural change. The Gospel of peace and divine love embodied in Jesus is being sidelined, because, if people really took it seriously, our culture would be challenged to its roots. And we can't have that.

'Tis the Season

2007-11-27T13:24:00.000-05:00

We're speeding towards that season when many long-lost folks -- affiliates -- begin to find their way back to church.
And yet, my observation in recent years is that it's a whole lot less predictable than it used to be. The year no longer has its stable rhythms of coming and going. To be honest, I have no idea whether church attendance will be up or down during Advent this year. All I can do is watch and wait.
This reflects a general societal change. Time has no meaning any more. In a thoroughly consumerized culture, every hour and every day are the same. All moments are at our economic disposal -- time for making and spending money. Weeks and months no longer have the rhythm of working, resting and playing that once gave a kind of stable structure to time.
I wonder if one of the gifts churches might be able to give to searching affiliates is a chance to experience times and seasons. I sense that many families are becoming discombobulated by what is happening to our sense of time and routine. Could it be that the church is a place where time is honored and, in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, "sanctified"?
Is this an example of religious mumbo-jumbo that contemporary people can no longer even understand? Or is it a gift of authentic Christian community that God is calling us to use in order to bring blessing to a culture that has lost its way?

Council Meeting

2007-11-21T14:15:00.001-05:00

Update on our new Council format. I took Chuck Olsen's suggestion and together with my ministerial colleague Jeff Maissan and our Council Chair Dan Plunkett, we structured our last agenda on the same format as Sunday worship. We started off with the Christ candle and prayer, reviewed the past (minutes, correspondence, etc.), did some biblical reflection on Acts 6: 1-7 (the Word) and then used the committee and team reports as the Offering. In my mind, it made a huge difference. Our finance team presented a draft budget with a huge projected shortfall. In the past, the entire meeting would have been taken over with not very productive chattering about what we could do. The presentation was surrounded by prayer and, even though everyone grasped the enormity of it, the usual degree of anxiety was absent, I felt, from the room. Something to build on.

Leadership

2007-11-21T14:02:00.000-05:00

I never got around to reading that famous book "Generation to Generation" by Edwin Friedman until just now. Friedman was the rabbi and therapist who adapted family systems theory to congregational life. He was a real guru from the time the book came out around 1985 to his death in 1994. Churches like families are systems, he argued. You can never deal with one component of them in isolation from the rest of the system. As St. Paul said, what happens to one group or person in the Body affects everybody.

There's way too much in Generation to Generation to deal with in a few sentences. I'm still just starting to get a handle on the ins and outs of systems thinking. But one of Friedman's points is that we can rarely change a system by directly trying to alter the behavior of people directly. What leaders need to do is focus on their own self-differentiation -- their own ability to act within the system without being controlled by it -- to act out of a clear sense of self and not simply react to what's happening. When leaders do this in a nonanxious way, they automatically make the system change. Systems resist change, even when it's unhealthy to stay the way they are. Leadership is about enabling a system to get "unstuck" and move ahead.

It's made me wonder what large numbers of more or less non active affiliates means about a congregational system. One of the things I worry about in talking about affiliates is the impression that everyone's fine where they are, that the fact that a church's membership is two or three times bigger than its Sunday attendance is no big deal. I have never meant to imply that. My hope is that keeping connected to affiliates will open the door to their own rediscovery of the riches of Christ.

I'm doing a lot of soul-searching right now, though, about what it means to be a leader in this context. At this point, I haven't got much more to offer than that question.

Ask Me about My Grandson!

2007-11-13T13:00:00.001-05:00

Sorry, gotta brag. Levi Ridley Miller was born at 12:40 a.m. on November 12 at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. One day early. Mom Kate and Dad Aaron "look like they've been dragged through a knot-hole backwards" as my father would say -- but are relieved, overjoyed and excited. And of course, we're over the moon.
A word about "Ridley." My father's name was Ridley. It was given to him to honour an Anglican priest who had been very kind to his parents (my grandparents.) My name is Paul Ridley. My son's name is John Aaron Ridley. And now we've got a fourth generation with the name.

Spiritual Leaders

2007-11-13T12:55:00.001-05:00

Back from a week-long course on transitional ministry. One of the things I picked up that was most helpful is some ways of turning church boards or councils into communities of spiritual leaders. (That's the title of a book by CHarles M. Olsen, from the Alban Institute.) Churches share some characteristics in common with businesses, but they're fundamentally different and require different leadership models. I know our monthly Council meeting is often a big YAWN -- most of the time spent on rehashing stuff that has already happened, or, if you took two steps back and looked at it, isn't really all that important. Olsen describes a church that patterns their meeting agendas after their Sunday worship -- with time for thanksgiving and confession, story telling and biblical reflection. The "offering" comes when the committees place their reports on the table as an act of offering, and the follow-up is in the form of prayerful reflection. This doesn't have anything to do directly with affiliates, but if congregations were more intentional about leadership formation, I know it would have an impact on the way we appear to those on the outside, or on the margins.

In Exile

2007-11-01T13:29:00.000-04:00

Twice a year I spend three days at a lake with about seven other clergy -- all guys, all 50-something. We drink single malt, some of them smoke cigars, and we talk. Talk and talk. The conversation with this group of friends is one of the most restorative things I do all year.
The insight that I took away from our gathering last week is that the church is in a situation very much like the Exile of the Jews in the 6th century before Christ. The secure institutional infrastructure of our piety has been shaken and in some cases destroyed. We are in mourning for a lost way of life. We are unsure of where God is anymore.
But like the exilic community, we have an opportunity to discover that God is not confined to the buildings and boxes we once thought, but is freely moving into new places, even into the place of our exile.
"We need to realize that the Kingdom of God is not something we make or create, but something we can only receive as a gift."
My work with many people on the margins of "organized religion" is making me more attentive to the gracious and uncontrollable nature of God's work.

The Spirituality of Church "Jobs"

2007-11-01T13:14:00.000-04:00

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to engage more people in spiritual practices. It's a tough row to hoe. As my study confirms, people are pathologically busy. One symptom of that is the withdrawal from involvement. It's getting harder and harder to mobilize enough people to do all the things that a busy congregation is used to doing. But people express a longing for transcendence and for the experience of God.
One of the men in my church grew up Roman Catholic. He used to take responsbility for preparing the elements for the eucharist -- communion. Then, I guess somebody decided he was too busy and helpfully relieved him of that task.
He told me that he really misses it, because the time spent preparing the bread and the wine (juice actually) for communion was an intensely devotional time for him. He reflected on the meaning of Jesus' self offering when he cut the bread and filled the cups.
Maybe we contribute to the problem by the way we ask people to be involved. We either say, "Look, it's really tough to get enough volunteers, will you pretty please do this?" (appealing to guilt), or we say, "It won't take hardly any time" -- in other words, it's not very important.
Maybe what we should be doing is offering people opportunities to draw closer to God -- and teaching them how simple things like preparing or serving communion, working in the nursery or taking up and counting the offering can be windows open to the presence of God.

The Hidden Hand of God

2007-10-26T15:51:00.001-04:00

I know when I talk about investing time and effort in affiliates that a lot of people are skeptical. "Anonymous" -- whoever you are -- has posted several comments in which he/she expresses real doubts about whether it's worth it. Maybe all those people who talk about their "spiritual needs" and "openness to transcendence" are just individualistic narcissists. Whatever sense of the divine they have is completely self-centered, and light years away from the costly gospel of Jesus.

I also know how seldom the effort seems to "pay off." I was having coffee with a fellow pastor a couple of weeks ago, and he commented on how much you can invest in people and situations with absolutely no visible results, and how that's maybe the key difference between pastoral ministry and other professions or occupations. We never know, in most cases, whether our labor has had any effect.

Statistics seem to be on the side of the doubters. I have done hundreds of weddings over the years, and the number of people who have made a real commitment of faith as a direct result of being married by me is -- well, let's say I don't need to take off my shoes to count them.

But, you know, there are moments when the hiddenness of God's work shines through with blazing glory.

I've started to meet with small -very small -- groups of people I know have the potential for blossoming in their faith to share the journey, to listen to Scripture and to pray. Yesterday, I was with two people who have wandered, but found their way back. One left the church in anger after the death of a parent. But she found her way back and has discovered a ministry as teen mentor.

The other didn't reject the church but simply drifted away from its perceived irrelevance. Her journey back was more convoluted. It came about through the informal witness of work colleagues. What sealed it was listening to a Christian song that a co-worker was playing on the car CD player. Her heart was "strangely warmed," and she felt drawn back to her faith. Hers is a story as moving as Wesley's Aldersgate or C. S. Lewis on the bus returning from the zoo.

Her rediscovery of faith coincided with the onset of a terrible personal crisis in which all old certainties and predictabilities dissolved and she has found herself simply waiting to see what the next day will bring. Faith, for her, has not brought certainty, but has provided, I think, at least the language to articulate her questions and her wonderings.

What doors are closed when we write people off? When we decide they're not worth the bother? That they're "deadwood"? I wonder how many faith journeys have been cut short because a serendiptious moment of encouragement or presence was ignored.

I know that, like the scattered seed of Jesus' parable, the vast majority of the time the message will land on the rocks, the thorns or the pavement. In my ministry, however, I am finely learning the importance of watching, listening, and waiting. Because you never know what the hidden hand of God is busy doing in places and people we can't see.

That's why I'm interested in all these folks.

Family Research

2007-10-21T15:58:00.001-04:00

I have found the Vanier Institute of the Family to be a wonderful source of information about changing trends in family life. Check out the link on the left.

Intentional, not Accidental

2007-10-21T15:32:00.000-04:00

My good friend reminded me that it's a violation of blogging etiquette to fail to make a posting at least once every few days. So I'm going to try to mind my manners.

One of the things I've been doing a lot more lately as a result of my research is just talking to people. Which can be a challenge. A couple of weeks ago I made appointments with three people to just meet and reconnect and two of them called to cancel a couple of hours ahead. So, perseverance is a necessary virtue in the new reality.

I went to see someone from my church yesterday -- a wonderful, engaging young mom of two beautiful children -- the kind of person you just love to have in your church -- but who works in the family business with her husband and is just very time stressed. I was making all my best pastoral noises, telling her that I really appreciated the kind of demands they were facing, but how much we missed them. "Is there anything we could be doing to make it easier for you to stay connected?"

She laughed. "Well, guilt works," she said. I laughed too. "No, but I totally understand what you're going through." (Pastoral response.) "Maybe you should be a little less understanding," she replied.

Hmmm. I know she was at least 50% kidding, but not entirely. I think she was saying, "You're making it too easy for us not to go." And I wonder if there's something there. THere's certainly a fine line. Guilt-tripping is generally a pretty ineffective strategy. But I wonder if we're partly to blame for just making the stakes so darn low. I wonder if I haven't been guilty of communicating the message, "It really isn't that big a deal if you come or not."

I love what Hauerwas said in his usual irascible fashion, "The purpose of worship is to be make us feel bad for the right reasons." And I wonder if we don't need to acquire the skill of being able to make people feel constructively bad when they say, "you know we meant to come to church, but I decided to do the laundry instead."

Diana Butler Bass is very de rigeur these days -- but it's a well deserved reputation. Her argument that intentional practices and conscious retraditioning are the best hope for mainline renewal has the ring of truth. Butler Bass contrasts "accidentalchurchgoing" and "intentional church going."

"Accidental churchgoing was the pattern of the mainline Protestant establishment ... marked by its chapel orientation: Church was the place to go where a minister performed certain spiritualtasks for the congregants.... Chapel religion typically blesses the social order, comforts people in times of crisis, and trains children in the customs of faith." It's a matter of personal preference and social conformity, not transformative faith.

"Intentional churchgoing," she argues, " differs from institutionalized [North] American religion in that it is a corporate journey ... Intentional congregations are marked by mobility, choice, reflexivity and reflection." [The rRacticing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church, 78-80.]

I realize that I need to develop a lost set of evangelistic skills, adapted to present day social realities, if I'm to minister effectively to many affiliates. I can be present to them and ease any feelings of guilt they might harbor at putting sports and shopping ahead of God, but that's not the same as bringing their situation into interesection with the demands and blessings of the Gospel. And I realize how counter to my introverted, need-to-be-nice temperament this runs. My personal struggles, though, I think are a microcosm of mainline Christianity which has not dealt well with the loss of its christendom status.

Anybody out there got anything to say that might help me?

Soul Food

2007-10-10T17:57:00.001-04:00

We all know, don't we, that people today make a pretty sharp distinction between "religion" and "spirituality." Religion means "organized religion" -- church, doctrine, do this, don't do that. (Personally, I prefer disorganized religion.) "Spirituality" on the other hand means getting in touch with the deep-down inner things that lead to God.

Now, just as an interesting aside, I did my Ph. D. dissertation on a theologian who lived in the early 20th century, and back then, "religion" was the good word. It meant personal experience as opposed to "dogma" or "theology," which was all the head stuff. So, it's interesting how things change.

In my survey I wanted to probe some of the respondents' views about spirituality.

Which of the following things help you to be more in touch with your spirituality?

And there were 12 options:

Coming to Church on Sunday
My relationships with family and friends.
Sharing my experiences with someone who understands.
Prayer and meditation.
Observing important occasions or familiar rituals.
Music.
The arts (film, visual arts, poetry)
Being out in nature.
Exercising or working out.
Science fiction or fantasy.
Reading.
Other.

And the top 6 choices were:

Being out in nature (55%)
Relationships with family and friends (55%)
Observing important occasions and familiar rituals (47%)
Music. (47%)
Prayer and meditation (39%)
Coming to Church on Sunday. (39%)

What are the implications of these findings for the way we do church? Part of the problem I am wrestling with is that the church can't with integrity simply say, "OK, that's what these people say they want, so we'll do it" and start planning Sunday morning nature walks instead of worship services. The yearning for nature, just to take an example, is right in line with a biblical view of what it means to be human, but it can never be allowed to become a kind of nature worship or nature mysticism. So how do our churches help people to connect their spiritual experience of nature with the Christian message?

A couple of things that surprised me was the large number of those who responded to "Observing important occasions or familiar rituals." Now that's something we ought to be able to sink our teeth into. I think churches should be able to help people use ritual and celebration to deepen their spiritual lives. That in turn resonates well with the Church's long tradition of using repeated, meaningful events to draw people into the life of God.

I'm also gratified that, even though it finished tied for 5th place, 4 out of 10 people still think that coming to church on Sunday is an important element of their spirituality. Remember, these are people, the majority of whom by their own admission show up in church anywhere from sporadically to never. So, that's an encouraging sign.

But one of our great challenges is to develop ways of tapping into the much ballyhooed "spiritual hunger" of postmodern people in such a way that they gain access to the riches of Christian tradition and experience.

I know people are reading this blog because they tell me. If you're reading, why not post a comment? I'd love to get some feedback, especially on this topic.

Getting There from Here

2007-10-04T18:38:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday evening I invited people from my congregation to come and hear the results of my survey of church "affiliates" -- people connected to our church who aren't fully involved. About 25 people turned out.

People were really interested to hear some of the findings, for example, that 77% of the people who returned the survey went to church "most Sundays" when they were kids, even though three-quarters of them go to church "a few times a year" or less now. 68% of them went to the United Church, confirming Reg Bibby's contention that people don't stray far from home when it comes to their religious affiliations.

They were also intrigued by the finding that 71% indicated that "Finding inner peace" was their number one spiritual need. To me, anyway, that indicates a real deep longing in people's souls for some sense of groundedness and respite from the uncertainty and pace of life. The high number of people who want the church to "Help me deal with experiences of pain or loss" and "Teach me to be a better person" also generated quite a bit of discussion.

But the question we kept bumping up against over and over again was -- "HOW??" I have this vision of the church sitting in a building filled with good food and a lot of hungry people outside -- but they don't have any idea of where to find what they're looking for, and we don't have any idea how to make contact with them.

I think the church has a rich banquet of resources to connect with the very things people seem to be desiring -- but the enormous challenge today is to bring "demand" and "supply" together. Now, this is ironic, isn't it, in today's culture of instant communication. But the church isn't very good at using the means available to us, especially if they cost a lot of money. For example, even getting an up to date list of e-mail addresses from people who are rarely if ever at church can be a time-consuming and daunting task.

I know at my church, this is one thing we're going to be working on. In a way, it involves a revisiting of that long-lost "E" word -- evangelism. In order to share good news with somebody, you have to have ways of making contact with them. And you have to know what to say when you do.

Science and Religion

2007-10-02T16:46:00.000-04:00

Something I've started at my church recently is a science and religion discussion group. We've only met a couple of times, so it's a bit early to make predictions, but this seems to be a way of connecting with some of our affiliates. Lots of faithful church people were there, but there were some interesting faces in the crowd.

Last week, we looked at Owen Gingerich's great little book, God's Universe, concentrating on chapter 2, "Dare a Scientist Believe in Design." Gingerich is an astronomer and a Christian, but he's got big time misgivings about the Intelligent Design movement. He's a voice of faith and reason, and a beautiful writer.

We're meeting again in October, so I'll keep you posted.

And, by the way, this seems to be something that MEN don't mind going to.

Experiencing God

2007-10-02T16:25:00.000-04:00

It's pretty clear, I think, that Christian faith needs to be tied to experience if it's going to have any staying power in people's lives. The main way that ordinary people counteract the contemporary scientist argument that it's irrational to believe in God because there is no evidence for God's existence is by saying, "Oh yes there is. My experience is all the evidence I really need." And while scientific elitists like Dawkins and Dennett "believe" they have rendered such convictions superfluous, untold millions would beg to differ.

So it was interesting the response I got when I asked my 200 survey respondents about experiencing God.

This was one of the few questions in my survey where there were significant gender differences. While 42% of women "definitely" or "probably" have had a God-experience, the same is true for only 30% of men; while 29% of men said "definitely not" and only 15% of women. Hmmm.

"Would you say that you have had a personal spiritual experience that you would call 'an experience of God'?"

I was surprised that only 15% said, "Yes, definitely." A further 24% said, "Yes, I think so." So that's about four in ten who are pretty sure God has paid a personal visit.

31% said "I've had experiences but not sure if they were experiences of God." 19% said no way: "I've never had an experience of God." And 10% sat on the fence and said, "Not sure."

I'd want to probe this a little more to find out what's going through people's heads when they hear the term "experience of God." Are they thinking of lights and voices and angels? Or are their experiences of God incorporated into their daily lives? Either way, though, I have to say I thought that more people would claim to have experienced God. To me, it says something about the state of mainline spirituality -- or lack thereof.

Now, here's something for those of us who are deeply involved in the church to chew on. The next question was:

How closely would you say these experiences are connected to the church?

A measly 2% said "Very closely. Church is where I experience God the most." A further 35% said "Closely. I experience God both inside and outside the church." But that's still less than 40% who see a close link between God experiences and church.

39% said, "Not very closely. If I experience God, it's more likely outside the church." Ouch. Only 1% said, "Not at all. The church actually interferes with my spirituality." And 19% say they've never had such an experience.

One of Reg Bibby's arguments is that affiliates say they want a fairly clearly defined range of things from the church. They want help with family, they want support for their relationships, and they want the church to guide them in their spirituality. My affiliates are saying that if there's a connection between their experiences of God and the church, it's a pretty tenuous one.

In part, that's because what people mean by "spirituality" or "experience of God" could be light years away from what the church, even in its most liberal forms, would want to endorse. But still, we've clearly got our work cut out for us -- both in terms of guiding people to seek the God who is seeking them, and in helping them make sense out of such encounters.

What do people want from the church?

2007-09-26T16:24:00.000-04:00

I got 200 written surveys from people between 25 and 50 telling me about their attitudes towards church. For the most part, these are people who aren't in church all that often.

In answer to the question "What would you like the church to do for you personally?"

47% said, "Help me deal with experiences of pain and loss."
46% said, "Teach me to be a better person."
45% said, "Provide a sanctuary away from the stress of life."
45% said, "Increase my knowledge of the Bible and Christianity."
And 40% said, "Help me improve my relationships with family and friends."

This is pretty much in line with what sociologist Reg Bibby has been arguing -- that what people are looking for is help with family, spirituality and relationships, and if churches can figure out a way of touching people in those places, then they will reconnect with some of them.

It seems to me that churches ought to be uniquely situated to address all of these needs. The church is still the most accessible place people can turn to when they are trying to cope with pain and loss. Religious communities have long experience with "soul care." Congregations should be exploring ways of making that help more available. Goodness knows, there's plenty of pain and loss out there, and the Christian message is rich in resources to help people find meaning in those difficult times.

I wonder if many churches have concluded that it's not their job to help people become better people. There seems to be an almost pathological fear of appearing to be "judgmental" and not affirming folks where they are. But almost half of my survey respondents want somebody to help them, first of all, define what "being a better person" means and, secondly, give them some practical assistance in getting there. Again, the church has a 2000 year tradition of moral formation which we do not always access as we could.

The sanctuary one surprised me a little bit. Although it shouldn't have. People feel shell shocked by the frenetic pace and overwhelming demands of contemporary life. They want a place where they can go for some respite and healing. For a couple of generations at least, mainline churches have been addicted to activism and critical of any desire to retreat from the world. And yet so many people want a sense of sanctuary and safety. I wonder what we could be doing to address that perceived need?

Four out of ten people just want to understand what it's all about a little better. They want to have a better grasp on what Christianity is. It's interesting that this choice far outstripped another option on the survey, "To learn more about other religions." People want to know who they are and where they've come from. Sounds like a practical task for churches to address.

And people want help with their relationships. Again, that should be right down our alley.

The demand is there. The hard part is figuring out how to effectively deliver the goods. But it might start by churches simply letting it be known, in whatever way works, that they have a lot to offer. And then offering it.

Bibby argues that one reason a lot of people don't look to the church for very much is that they don't they have very high expectations of what the church has to offer. If churches could demonstrate that they have resources that will address they points of need, they'll be able to reconnect with many of their affiliates.

Interestingly, only 5% of respondents said, "I don't want the church to do anything for me."

Mixed Messages

2007-09-19T13:46:00.000-04:00

The research that I did on 200 church "affiliates" contains some interesting mixed messages.
Most people who completed and returned my survey seem to feel pretty positive about the church. They don't have any big honking "issues" with the church. They aren't mad. They haven't gone away in a huff. Nor have they lost their faith.
For example, when asked to respond to the statement "My church would be there for me if I needed it," 30% strongly agreed and 56% agreed. That's 86%.
Only 16% strongly agreed that "Going to church is an enjoyable experience for me." No surprise, since seven out of ten of them attend church "a few times a year" or less. But, 56% agreed -- and only 4% strongly disagreed. They might not be there very often, but these results suggest that when they are, they kind of like it.
However, 11% strongly agreed and 34% agreed that "Church people tend to be more judgmental than other people."
And 11% strongly agreed, while 52% agreed that "A few people run everything in the church."
The congregational challenge here is to turn vague impressions into concrete experience. How can congregations take advantage of the relative good will on the part of affiliates to build more meaningful relationships. How can we expand the opportunities for people to turn to and benefit from the church's ministry?
A second challenge is to find ways to break down the impression (unfortunately, often accurate) of the church as a "closed circle" with fairly high, invisible walls separating the insiders from the outsiders. This is one area in which core members and leaders really need to follow Bibby's advice and "think affiliate." I remember Kennon Callahan, one of the earlier generation of church consultants, saying in his laconic drawl, "Every church thinks it is a friendly church. That's because the people who think it's a friendly church are the ones who are left." And it's so true. We assume that we are communicating a message of welcome and hospitality when the experience of those on the outside might be entirely different. (I discuss this at length on page 36 of my report.)
This is not an easy or straightforward task and any meaningful response will be very congregation-specific. But I wonder if anyone has comments on how this might happen within a mature and well-entrenched congregational system? An awareness of the dynamics of systems would seem to me to be critical here.

"The Untied Church: Affiliation as a Key to Congregational Renewal

2007-09-18T12:43:00.000-04:00

My research report is posted on the First Grantham United Church website. Click on the link to the left and you'll see it clearly marked on the homepage.

Up Close and Personal

2007-09-14T15:18:00.000-04:00

In my survey of 200 25 to 50-year-olds who are connected to United Churches but don't attend regularly, one of the 35 questions presented people with seven statements about the church and asked whether they Strongly Agreed, Agreed, Disagreed or Strongly Disagreed with them. The statements were:
"My church would be there for me if I needed it."
"Churches play a vital role in the community."
"Going to Church is an enjoyable experience for me."
"You can be close to God even if you don't go to church."
"Churches help people to be good, caring individuals."
"Involvement in the Church strengthens family life."
"The community would lose something valuable if the churches weren't there."

There were a bunch of interesting things that came out of this particular question, but I want to highlight one in particular.

54% strongly agreed and 44% agreed that "you can be close to God even if you don't go to church." That's 98% -- virtually everyone -- who agreed with this statement. There was nowhere near this kind of unanimity for any of the others.

What's this all about??

It's hard to tell what was going through people's minds when they responded to this statement. Now, it could be a really hopeful sign. It could mean that people's sense of the presence of God is wide-ranging and not institutionally confined. That would be a good thing.

In a related question, I asked "How closely would you say your experiences of God are connected to the church?"

Only 2% said, "Very closely. Church is where I experience God the most."
A further 35% said, "Closely. I experience God both inside and outside the church."
But 39% said, "Not very closely. If I experience God, it's more likely outside the church."

When I read these results, I thought: What on earth have the churches been doing over the years? I know that the religious habit of church-going can't be made to encompass all of what happens when we encounter the Divine, but my goodness, if 98% of these folks don't see any really compelling connection between the Christian community and their experience of God, then we've got a problem.

I've just completed this research, but already people are saying, "What do you think we need to do about it?" Near the top of the priority list has to be closing that gap between the experience of God and the experienced reality of church. It's clear to me that there are a whole lot of our own people who don't have much confidence that we can guide them towards an encounter with the Beyond. And that's got to change.

Yes, Yes, the Survey results are coming

2007-09-14T12:24:00.001-04:00

A friend e-mailed me and said the blog looks great -- but where's the research you keep talking about? I've just been putting the finishing touches on the report that contains all the findings from the survey and interviews. It should be posted on our church website, www.firstgrantham.org by Monday, September 17 -- barring any technical difficulties. I'll be posting a link here that will take you directly there. You can find the survey, the percentage responses, and my analysis.

Eric Milner-White and Prayer

2007-09-12T13:47:00.001-04:00

Like most Christians, I struggle with prayer. Am I praying enough? For the right things? With the right words? With the right heart? I know I quickly get tired of the sound of my own praying. I find it really important to enrich my own prayer life with the prayers of others.

A book of prayers that has meant so much to me is "My God My Glory" by Eric Milner-White. He was a High Church Anglican, Dean of Yorkminster back in the 50s. And his prayers always seem to me like they have come from another dimension. Here are some prayers about praying.

Let me come into the church of God
to meet the Spirit of God:
not to give religion an hour,
but to live in the eternal;
not to maintain a decorous habit,
but to bow in the holy place before the Holy One;
not to judge the words of a preacher,
but to draw life from the Word and Truth everlasting;
not to be moved or soothed by music,
but to sing from the heart divine praises;
not that mine eyes roam over architecture or congregation,
but that my soul look up to the King in his beauty,
and my heart plead the needs of his children;
not that my thoughts escape out into the world,
but that they be still, and know that thou art God.

Let me go, and go again, into the house of the Lord,
and be gald, and give thanks, and adore,
my King and my God.

When I pray in my chamber,
I build a sanctuary there.
When I cast a prayer out upon the street,
a spire rises suddenly to the skies.
When, without voice, my soul prays in any place,
my whole being becomes a church.
When my faith kindles and flames into praise
the whole created world becomes a Minster.
Yet none of these were temples except God come to it;
and come he will, if so I build.
But how much more shall he not come
to the Altar himself has built?
whither he has invited, nay bidden us to meet him?
where he has set out the feats
and provided his Life for food,
his Passion for drink?
Here is the temple of temples,
the holy of holies,
himself the light, himself the altar,
himself the host, himself the feast.
Here let devotions rise up like incense,
here union and communion be made with God,
be his abiding here with us
and ours in Him.
Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord;
Hosanna in the highest.

This comes from a liturgical and spiritual place that is different from my own, but I think Milner-White's prayers breathe out an authenticity that never fails to feed me.

Maybe they're just lazy?

2007-09-11T18:17:00.000-04:00

"Anonymous" posted a comment on my first posting that really lays the question out. Does affiliation matter? Are we glamorizing what is basically old fashioned garden variety apathy? I guess I've swung back and forth on that one over the years. But having heard from and talked to a whole bunch of people, I think there's more going on than just "Yeah, church is OK but I'm busy with other stuff." At least for many people that's true. Part of it (I hope to write on this soon) is the tragic sense of being trapped on a treadmill of busyness they can't seem to get off of. (Please don't anyone correct my grammar, I know that's a clunker.) But it's also rooted in the failure of the church to deliver the Gospel in a way that resonates with what people are going through. Maybe this is all wishful thinking, but in the interests of my personal sanity I can't simply write people off who retain their church connection but don't come. For one thing, a lot of them are wrestling with God at a much deeper place than many folks who are in the pews every Sunday.

A Distant Mirror?

2007-09-11T17:52:00.000-04:00

I've been going on an intellectual nostalgia kick and rereading some of the books on medieval studies that I used as an undergrad. This includes what I think is still the best all-round introduction to the Middle Ages (in spite of being a bit dated), Medieval History by Norman Cantor. I know, I know, spending your summer vacation reading medieval history qualifies you as a super-geek, but what can I say?

It has also confirmed for me the truth of the old adage, attributed to Oscar Wilde, that education is largely wasted on the young. Because there was no way as a deer-caught-in-the-headlights undergrad that I was in any position to appreciate the correspondences between the 12th and 13th centuries and our own time.

Anyway, here's a bit from Cantor that got my thoughts going:

"The fault of the twelfth-century papacy was not that it permitted monstrous scandals with impunity, but rather that it did not adjust with sufficient rapidity and energy to the consequences of far-reaching social change. The church at the end of the twelfth century was still primarily organized for rural society, and its attempts to satisfy the religious needs of the urbanized areas of Europe were halfhearted at best and perfunctory at worst. This situation left the bourgeois, particularly in the numerous and wealthy cities in northern Italy and southern France, to work out their own resolution of their religious problems. They wanted a faith which could provide an intense emotional experience ... THey had contributed to the building of magnificent municipal cathedrals all over Europe because they wanted a place to worship where they could feel a close assocation with the divine spirit. But a great many of the priests who worked in urban areas could not or would not pursue this intensely personal approach to the Christian faith." (pp. 414-415)

Man, is this like today, or what? Many people argue that mainline churches are in decline because they are morally and spiritually bankrupt. Among these are religious conservatives who think that gay-loving United Church folk have lost Jesus, and hard-headed devotees of scientism who think that any religious faith at all is a sin against the morality of rationality.

But I think it's got a whole lot more to do with being stuck in a rut and not knowing how to get out of it. Everybody knows that social patterns have changed immensely in the last 50 years. There are a few turning points. TV was one. It gave birth to the culture of endless entertainmnet choices available at every hour of the day and night. And wide open Sundays were the other. They came to Ontario in 1995, and no single social change has had such a huge impact on churches.

Oh, I know, there are those who want to trace the decline to the Enlightenment or Darwin, but the fact is that churches were an integral part of social, community and family life as recently as the 1960s, but now are little more than marginal. And I think that's largely because we, as church leaders, act like we know we're living in 2007 for 167 hours a week, but then for the 168th behave like it's still 1957.

There's no question in my mind that people want what the church could be offering. My survey shows that they want help in being better people, some respite from the overwhelming pressures of life, someone to tell them that they're not alone, someone to show them the way to find inner peace, a cause to believe in, help with their troubled relationships. And what do we give them? Lectures on inclusive language or sexual politics. A chance to join the property committee, or help out at the bake sale. As Kennon Callahan said, people come to the church looking for community and we give them committee instead.

I'm so enculturated to the modern form in which the church appeared during the last century, and I'm so dependent on the lingering shadows of that kind of church for my pay cheque, that I'm not even sure what things would look like if we did come to grips with the changes in people's lives around us. In that regard, we're pretty much one with our ecclesiastical brethren (OK, they were all brethren) back in the 1100 and 1200s. The world has changed. People's spiritual hungers have changed. And we're busy trying to run the church as if nothing had changed.

What was it Santayana was supposed to have said: Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it?

My Own Survey

2007-09-06T11:31:00.000-04:00

I don't know, is Reg Bibby right? That's what I wanted to find out. So, I made up a list of about 260 "affiliates" from my own church -- people who attend, but don't attend all the time people who haven't been seen for years; people who grew up in the church but drifted away.

I created a survey that tried to get at three questions:
What do they think about the church?

Why aren't they here more?
Is there anything we could be doing to change that?

Then, I asked the other United Churches in Niagara Presbytery (our local region with about 45 churches) and 12 of them agreed to take part.

In all, I mailed out over 1000 surveys, got 200 back, and did follow-up interviews with about 20 individuals.

I have learned a huge amount about what people are thinking, and what it is in their lives and their hearts that keeps them away from church. So often, we look at folks who we think should be in church but aren't from "the inside" -- from our "in-house", active church member or professional clergy perspective. We don't try to see things from the outside -- from the perspective of the person who might really like to be in church more, but who has to work every weekend. Or the person who would like to be there more, but whose spouse won't come.

This blog is one of my ways of sharing what I learned about some great people who belong to our churches but whom we don't see all the time.

2007-09-05T15:23:00.000-04:00

This is Reg Bibby. Reg is a sociology professor at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta. He's spent the last 30 years studying the attitudes of Canadians about all kinds of different things. What he's really focused on is religion.

Nobody knows more about religious trends in Canada than Reg Bibby.

In his latest books, Restless Gods and Restless Churches, Reg has come up with some startling conclusions. Everybody thinks that people are ditching traditional churches and turning to other spiritualities or to atheism. But, Reg says, that's not true. In fact, 85% of Canadians still identify with a traditional religious grouping.

Even though they don't attend church like they used to, they still affiliate in huge numbers with the churches they went to as children or that their parents still attend.

From the inside, these people look "inactive." Like they've dropped out. Like they don't care. But according to Reg Bibby, that's a BIG mistake for churches to make. Because many of these people still think they belong. They will turn to the church that they know when they need something -- a wedding or a baptism, crisis counselling, programs for their kids, or a way of making sense out of life.

And, here's the most important thing: between 40 and 75% of them are open to becoming more involved if they consider it worthwhile for themselves or their families.

The BIG question for the churches is: What are they going to do about this? How can churches touch the lives of the people Bibby calls "affiliates" in such a way that they establish (or re-establish) a connection?

What do you think? Is Bibby right? Or is he wrong? That's what I'm interested in finding out.

Freudian Typos

2007-08-29T10:15:00.000-04:00

Ever since I learned to type back in high school, I have found myself making the same typos over and over. For example, instead of typing "brother" I type "bother."

And I can't count the number of times that I've wanted to type "United Church" and "Untied Church" has come out on the page or the screen.

Are these just slips of the finger tips? Or is there more to them than that? Some typos are accidental and innocuous -- but is it really an accident that someone who grew up in a big family would exchange "bother" for "brother"?

There are days when I think that "Untied Church" describes far better the religious organization (or disorganization) that I've been involved with my whole life and that has paid my salary for the last 26 years than "United Church." (Actually, quite frequently I've typed "Untied Chruch" -- not sure what that's all about.)

Because while a lot of people have some connection to the church, say nice things about the church, even turn to the church now and again, they aren't really tied to the church the way they used to be. They consider themselves connected to the church -- but it's really an "Untied Church" that they belong to.

I think both sides of this phenomenon are significant and I want to explore what it's all about. It's certainly significant that people aren't tied to the church in the way they used to be. But I don't think it's insignificant that they continue to think of themselves as belonging to the church -- even if the relationship is somewhat tenuous and -- well -- untied.

I've spent this past year delving into the thoughts and attitudes of about 200 people who belong to the United Church of Canada, but who don't attend all the time, who attend less than they used to or who don't attend ever, and yet still think the church has some place in their lives.

This blog is going to be one of the ways I unpack some of the things I think I've learned. I hope some people will throw their two cents worth in, and we can begin to have a conversation.