Church shouldn’t be this hard

As I continue to think of my new vision for millennials (and the church as a whole), I have decided to look at an op-ed from Tom Ehrich that appeared in the Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/commentary-church-shouldnt-be-this-hard/2014/01/07/1d869022-77c0-11e3-a647-a19deaf575b3_story.html

Mr. Ehrich has spent 36 years as an Episcopal priest and more recently as a church consultant. He has a very simple message in this article, that church shouldn’t be this hard.

It is good for me to see that the issues he raises are not the sole problem of evangelical churches, or conservative churches, or liberal churches, or mainline Protestant churches, or Catholic churches, or any specific style or model or anything specific. The hard reality is that church is just too hard.

As he says:

An assembly that exists to help people shouldn’t be so willing to hurt people — by declaring them worthless, unacceptable, undesirable or strangers at the gate. 

An assembly that should relax into the serenity of God’s unconditional love shouldn’t be so filled with hatred and fear. 

An assembly that should do what Jesus did shouldn’t be so inwardly focused, so determined to be right, so eager for comfort, so fearful of failing. 

An assembly that follows an itinerant rabbi shouldn’t be chasing permanence, stability and property. 

An assembly whose call is to oneness and to serving the least shouldn’t be perpetuating hierarchies of power and systems of preference.

This is a good place to start. In the previous articles that I have considered, this seems to be a theme. I will also say that the conversations that I have with people outside the church, some variation of these points are surely what I hear most from people who are attracted to the message and teachings of Jesus, but want nothing to do with the church. The church shouldn’t be this hard.

Too often the church reflects the people inside of it, instead of reflecting Christ. Now this is admittedly a cliché way of looking at it, but by this I mean that too often people go to church with the desire to hold fast to who they are and to have God reflect who they are, with their own baggage, their own problems, their own prejudices, and they are much too hesitant (scared?) to accept the free gift that is waiting for them by giving it all up to the Lord.

This is difficult. Control is mighty tempting, release and freedom is for someone else. Ehrich acknowledges that it is difficult. He focuses on the difficulty of self-sacrifice and renewal, the difficulty in dealing with mammon and speaking truth. These are all indeed quite difficult, and infinitely moreso if we are afraid to let go. Faith should and is hard, but church shouldn’t be this hard.

Ehrich continues:

But the institution whose sole justifiable purpose is to help us deal with those difficulties shouldn’t be making matters worse. 

When we bring our burdens to church, we shouldn’t find ourselves feeling intimidated by the in crowds, caught up in conflicts about who is running things, budget anxieties, jousting over opinion or doctrine, or relentless demonizing of whoever is trying to lead.

Yes, yes and yes. These are surely the problems of any institution, but how much damning are they when they deal with an institution of the soul. Ehrich suggests that it is these issues that are truly driving people from the church. It is not bad doctrine, or shoddy production on Sunday morning, or inconvenient calls to mission, but an escape from the institution and an escape from the battles and discomfort that is faced by those trying to enter.

I suspect that at this point he is a little bit too much in his consultant hat. Good, healthy churches don’t call in consultants to help them out, and I think he is a little bit too specific in the problems that come up. For example, I do think that bad doctrine is a problem. It may not be something that is obvious at first, and bad doctrine, depending on what it is, might actually be quite attractive at first. But bad doctrine is what will bring down the church from the inside, a rot that will be unable to serve as the foundation when other problems inevitably flare up.

That said, I think he is quite right on his other two points. People are not leaving the church because the production is a little shoddy or there is too much of a call for mission in the rest of their lives. People may shop churches because of these reasons, but they are not going to leave the institution. As Ehrich states later – worship isn’t a Broadway show, it is a way to glimpse God. If worship is glimpsing God, that goes much further than worship style, or hymns vs. contemporary, or guitars or whatever seems to divide. There are surely preferences, but people do not leave institutions because of preferences. Church shouldn’t be this hard.

Ehrich concludes with these thoughts:

Church should be a safe place — safe to be oneself, safe to make one’s confession, safe to love whoever one feels called to love, safe to imagine more, safe to fail. Instead, church often is a dangerous place, where people feel guarded, self-protective, hemmed in by tradition and expectation, required to obey rules. 

Church should be different from society. Instead, it plays by the same rules: get mine, be first, be right, punish the weak, exclude the different, reward the wealthy. 

Our society needs healthy faith communities. But neither society nor God has much need for religious institutions grounded in right-opinion, self-serving and systemic danger.

These are interesting critiques. I am not sure I agree with all of them myself, but I would suspect that conversations with people outside the church would point to these problems. The idea that church should be different from society is especially poignant. A church that is no different than society around it doesn’t do much for anyone, especially God. Why would someone be a part of that type of institution, there are several others that can provide all the same functions with much less of the hassles.

The church is called to be different. It should always be based on the foundation o Christ, not the foundation of those that are in the institution. Church shouldn’t be this hard.

Save Our Seminaries!

In my last post I went a little deeper on the idea and importance of having a Biblically based Sunday school/small group as opposed to having book studies.

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-new-vision-for-millennials-and-church_14.html

A very important, and unstated in the previous post, aspect of having a Biblically based class is that the leader absolutely must have a minimal level of Bible training and knowledge.  In fact, having a leader/teacher who does not have a minimal level of knowledge could potentially do much damage and allow for interpretation that is quite different than what one would want. I would find it difficult to teach Christ or the mission of the church without knowing what they are. And I say this from personal experience, in my first couple of years after coming to faith I lead a Bible study and looking back it truly was the blind leading the blind.

The biggest issue (to me) would be a leader presenting material with a specific agenda in mind that would be contrary to what the scripture says. This can be done by downplaying scripture and focusing on a specific conclusion, or by cherry-picking scripture out of context (proof-texting scripture). These concerns of course can be realized no matter what the level of education of the teacher/leader. The second issue, as mentioned above, would be ignorance of scripture. The leader could have a good heart and pure motives but would still struggle to understand much of scripture, and this could be especially dangerous when encountering hard teachings or difficult questions that may be raised. (The flip side, is someone who is too educated providing answers that are high-minded but do very little to communicate anything worthwhile. The greatest lesson I took away from Seminary was a realistic idea of the damage I could do to believers if I wasn’t careful).

In addition to education there are several qualities that would be desirable in a leader/teacher – such as being a good shepherd, allowing for all people to contribute and ask questions in a safe place, allowing free inquiry, showing limitless grace, validating people who ask questions, and many more. This could in fact be its own post and is a good reminder that being a leader/teacher is really difficult and is something worthwhile for the church to consider and to invest in.

This is what brings me to the topic of the post, the idea of the Seminary. I have seen that in many ways the Seminary is in trouble. I know the problems of my own Seminary (Bethel), but the struggles they are facing are not unique across the country. I do not have all the numbers, but I have heard and read that a significant number of Seminaries are in serious trouble in the next decade and may go away.

Part of this is the changing financial realities of our society. I had a good friend tell me that the age of the professional Christian may be going away. Each passing year sees fewer people (as a percentage, if not absolutely) working as pastors, professors, parachurch organizations, and other places of employment. This will lead to a decrease in demand for students willing to enroll in Seminary. And there are many people who went to Seminary with hope of paid ministry that have struggled to find it (ahem). Add to this the reality that costs are not going down and there is a lot of strain throughout the system.

Also, and this is admittedly anecdotal, but I sense that the church models that are seeing the largest amount of growth do not necessarily have the same demand for Seminary educated leaders, or they are opening their own Seminaries, or they are just emphasizing more lay leaders in support positions. There simply is not the demand from churches for the Seminary educated student.

Another critique I have heard is that specific Seminaries are failing because of what they teach or how they teach or political views they may have. While this may be true on a small scale, I see these issues as being dwarfed by the bigger macro issues that are facing Seminaries across the country.

So what is being lost? Well, for starters, we are in danger of losing a large amount of educated members of our church. This will have a trickle down effect in our congregations and will impact on the ability of the church to interact with larger society.

Another loss is the ecumenical aspect of the Seminary. Leaders from a variety of church traditions with a variety of perspectives are able to mingle, learn together, challenge each other, and take that accumulated knowledge back to their own churches. There is immense value in this, as it demands people interact with those that are different and to have a more robust understanding of the church. That can certainly flow down into the congregation.

So what can be done? Perhaps it is time for a new understanding of Seminary and what it can mean for the church community. The mission of the Seminary was to train young people as the future leaders of the church, but this was probably thought of in the sense of professional Christians. As stated, this role is probably in permanent decline in our society. But teachers and leaders in the church are still needed, no matter what their full time profession may be.

Models within the Seminary are shifting, but as best I can tell they are still focused on the model of churning out professional Christians. Perhaps it is time for a more expansive view of Seminary, to provide short term or extreme part time programs. To target specific training for small group leaders/teachers. To provide training for missions, for board leaders, for youth leaders, for other people within the church. I do not know exactly what this would look like, but it can help define a new view of the Seminary.

We need to save the Seminary. But we also need to acknowledge the reality of the new world that the Seminary serves. The mission of the past couple of centuries is becoming less of a reality, but the need for educated leaders and teachers is as needed, and perhaps as critical, as it has ever been.

A New Vision for Millennials and the Church, Part 3

Today I continue my series on a new vision for millennials and the church.

Part 1 was about the big picture failures of the church:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-new-vision-for-millennials-and-church.html

Part 2 was a more general overview of the aspects of the new vision:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-new-vision-for-millennials-and-church_9.html

Today I am going to take a more in-depth look at parts of what I covered in Part 2.

I want to start with Biblical training/teaching. Here is what I wrote in my last post:

[Biblical training/teaching] can be achieved through a variety of means and will be unique to the individual setup of the church. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, this cannot be accomplished solely through the sermon. There must be intentional Bible study within the church. The two best ways are Sunday school or small groups. I am partial to Sunday school, but realize small groups is often the best for schedules of individuals.
 The key is “Biblical”. These meetings should focus on scripture teaching and discussion rather than books or hang out sessions. There is certainly a place for those two things, but Biblical study can expose people to the fullness of scripture and prevent some of the cherry picking of verses or focus on things other than the Word. I personally have found great success in going through entire Gospels or Epistles or OT writings, forcing me to address tougher scripture that is not well known or talked about. Always for a fully understanding of God.

I want to start with a more general thought of small groups and Bible study. As I mentioned in my last posting that while I think a strong sermon is critical for a church, it is not because it will have the ability to dig deep into scripture. The strength comes from taking scripture and providing the foundation for belief, as well as vision and direction for the body. The sermon should be the start of the conversation, not the culmination. The sermon should move something in the hearer, and lead to a desire to know (and experience) more.

This leads to the small group or Sunday school class. The big gathering of the church is critical, and I am a supporter and will be always, but one of the main benefits of the big meeting is that it allows for the community that can meet in small groups. It is the beginning of community that can be developed through other means. It is valuable to take a closer look at the differences between the big gathering and the small groups that can flow from it.

The first difference is intimacy. The big gathering allows for people to come in and out and avoid any meaningful contact, without any follow up and without any accountability. It allows people to be passive participants in their faith, passive participants in their worship, and passive participants in their engagement with scripture. The small group demands a level of intimacy. There is a chance to develop meaningful relationship, to follow up on each other’s lives on a consistent and regular basis, and to have some sort of accountability in your life and with your faith.

The second difference is engagement. As mentioned above, the large gathering is a passive way to experience faith. There may be communal response, but in general if you are not involved in the service you are a consumer of what is being presented. Being in a gathering is nice and can lead to a response, but there is no way to individualize the worship experience, no to respond to the sermon with questions, etc. The small group calls for questions, answers, a more intimate sharing of struggles and suffering. It is an opportunity to go deep with a handful of people as opposed to surface with many.

The third and final difference is depth. As mentioned in the previous sentence, there is depth in the relationships with individual, but there is also potential depth in prayer and in study. There is certainly power in communal prayer, communal worship and communal teaching, but there is a need for the fulfillment of individual needs.

When I think of millennials, I think of how these three things intersect. The large group gathering is how individuals will “shop” for a church, but the small group is how they will commit to a church. There is a thought that millennials are so much different than previous generations but I am skeptical of this claim. Things may manifest differently because of different technology and life circumstances such as school, jobs, economic concerns, etc. may shift the timeframe of major life milestones relative to previous generations, but there are still commonalities of all generations. These include a desire for intimate connections, relationship, community, stability, and to serve something greater than themselves. This does not make millennials unique.

All this brings me to the last point I want to make about small groups and/or Sunday school – the content. This is one of the pillars of my new vision and it isn’t all the cutting edge or advanced, in fact it is pretty much a return to the ways of previous Sunday school. I would make the argument that the key to millennials is a true, unapologetic study of scripture. This goes back to the point that I was trying make in the first post I made, that the church is failing in the basic mission that it is called to do, namely caring for the widows, orphans and foreigners.

Too much of the curriculum has been based on trying to understand the themes or lessons of scripture while downplaying what scripture actually says. A study of scripture will provide the basis for what is needed for the people of the church to fulfill the mission of the church. The lesson I would want out of this posting is to read less books, less articles, less studies and more scripture. This will cause everyone to encounter scripture in ways that they are not used to, to explore passages that are not often taught, and to have a wholistic understanding of the Bible. To shortchange the Bible is to shortchange what the church is all about. To shortchange the Bible and focus on something else results in a church that is nothing much more than a book club. We can do better as a church. We must do better as a church.

My next post will build a little bit more upon this idea as I think about the role of the Seminary. 

GUEST POST: "The Cost of Discipleship" by Josh de Keijzer

Here is a post from a fellow Bethel Seminarian and attender of Central Baptist, Josh de Keijzer. I really enjoyed it and thought you might as well. My regular post will return tomorrow.

Here is the link:

http://t.co/ChY2bPoxoR

A New Vision for Millennials and the Church, Part 2

Today I continue my look at a new vision for millennials and the church. Yesterday I concentrated on what I felt was the primary problems of the church in regards to its attractiveness to millennials (and others as well). I focused on more big picture missional failures as opposed to the specifics that seem to bog down the debate within Christianity and the media. Here is the link:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-new-vision-for-millennials-and-church.html

For today I will look at a more technical model of what I think can will be a good model for the church as we look to attract younger people, especially in lieu of the concerns that I brought up yesterday.

I want to start with a disclaimer. This model is far from the only model, and I am quite open to other ideas for models. I also don’t want to pretend that it will be an instantly successful, and I am certainly aware of other models that have seen great growth among millennials. I will also admit that this model takes into account my very specific biases of the church and what I believe it should stand for.

The first part is strong preaching. I have a lot of thoughts on preaching that I won’t dig into too deeply here, but I strongly believe that preaching is what sets the tone for the entire church body. I do not think that preaching is the be all end all of church, and I am skeptical that preaching allows for great depth in Biblical understanding, but I see it as establishing the foundation, providing the direction, and rallying the congregation. Preaching should be Biblically based (with some leeway for the occasional topical sermon), grounded in Christ crucified/resurrected, and the life that He offers all of us.

The second part is Biblical training/teaching. This can be achieved through a variety of means and will be unique to the individual setup of the church. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, this cannot be accomplished solely through the sermon. There must be intentional Bible study within the church. The two best ways are Sunday school or small groups. I am partial to Sunday school, but realize small groups is often the best for schedules of individuals.

The key is “Biblical”. These meetings should focus on scripture teaching and discussion rather than books or hang out sessions. There is certainly a place for those two things, but Biblical study can expose people to the fullness of scripture and prevent some of the cherry picking of verses or focus on things other than the Word. I personally have found great success in going through entire Gospels or Epistles or OT writings, forcing me to address tougher scripture that is not well known or talked about. Always for a fully understanding of God.

The third part is prayer. Always be praying. I will have more to say on prayer as I continue to write, but I am convinced that prayer time together is critical for any church community.

The fourth part is fellowship. There is value in combining this with Bible study, but it is even more effective when kept separate, but for intentional fellowship time and in making sure that Bible study time does not become more about fellowship than the study.

I focused more on how the church is failing in previous posts, but one thing that millennials (and all humans for that matter) are constantly looking for is fellowship and community. I would agree this can realized in many places, but I also think the church is uniquely positioned to provide this. And if the church does a good job of focusing on Christ and remaining open to all, the church can be a place of community with some of the best diversity, including political thought, income level, social standing, racial, etc. This is an opportunity for the church.

The fifth part is service/mission. I strongly believe that millennials have a sense of wanting to serve something greater than themselves, and I think that can connect quite nicely with the key aspect of the mission of the church. The old model was to send missionaries to developing nations to spread the Gospel. While this is still important, the nations are also coming here. And physical needs are everywhere. The church has the opportunity to serve in the neighborhood, in the community, in the region, and across the nation.

The sixth part is inter-generational mentoring. This is another value of the church, the ability to spend time with people of different generations to help you in your walk with the Lord, and in life in general. I believe that everyone should strive to have a mentor, a peer, and a mentee. I strongly believe that millennials, even if they won’t admit it, need mentors and guides through life. The church is full of people that provide this for whatever stage of life the individual is in.

The seventh (and final) part is worship. I think this is a reason that is often cited for millennials not being as interested in the church but I am skeptical of the impact. I am not sure the type of worship is as critical as the knowledge that there is some sort of God-honoring worship within the church. This can take many forms.

So this post was more of an overview than I thought. I was able to do a quick glance at each of the seven parts of the model of a church, but it will be more meaningful to take a deeper look at certain aspects of the model. What I wanted to make clear is that I don’t think there needs to be some radical change or brand new way of doing church. What I do think is that there needs to be a return to what the church has historically been about. There will be new ways to incorporate technology and new worship styles and new models of small groups, but I do think that fundamentally some things need to be in place.

For the next several posts I will dig into a few parts of this model that need more comments and I will look at what the potential fruit of this model well be.

A New Vision for Millennials and the Church, Part 1

So this blog has explored a variety of subjects the past month, but one I have focused on as much as any has been the plight of millennials, especially the question of why young people are leaving the church (or perhaps more accurately why they never started attending). Starting today, I want to do an overview of my views on millennials and what I think a better vision for the church and millennials might be. This examination will draw upon the previous posts that I have written, experiences I have had in church, books/articles I have read, conversations I have had, and my own intuition.

So here it goes. I will start today with my observations on the current problems with millennials and the church. There are two primary problems that I will cover.

The first problem is a fundamental problem with people as they interact with Christianity. Namely, people don’t see the need for church and Christ. Christianity starts with the realization that we are sinful and fall short of the glory of God. No matter how good we are and how hard we try we will always fall short. Because of this, we are doomed to eternal separation from God. However, because of Christ dying for us, He has atoned for our sins and allows us to maintain our relationship with God. His Resurrection is the promise of eternal life.

People tend to downplay or ignore this reality. The general attitude is that an individual can be a good and moral person without the help of Jesus and that they are fine without Him, and the church is something they are not interested in for a variety of reasons (hypocrisy, political stances, etc). I actually agree with the first part, people can definitely be moral people without Jesus. And I am certainly sympathetic to the second part, for all the reasons that have been covered in previous points.

That said, I certainly believe there is more to faith in Christ and more to the church than is covered here. I don’t want to go too deep into that other than to say that people are not interested in what the church is offering. Part of that is a general hostility, but part is surely a poor job by the church of presenting exactly who Christ is, lacking confidence of what the church should stand for, and doing a poor job of communicating what the church and Christ are about.

This leads to the second problem. The church does not focus enough of its primary mission. The primary mission of the church (God’s people) is best presented in the Prophets and has two parts:

1. To put the Lord God first, above all other gods.

2. To serve the poor, defined primarily as the widows, orphans and foreigners.

Both of these can be hard to define and can adjust depending on the cultural context. To put the Lord God first is to put Him above all things. There are many quotes that can help with this.

-where you spend your time and money is where your heart truly is

-you cannot serve two masters, you cannot serve God and money

-you have to serve someone (Bob Dylan)

When we think of the church, is it clear that the focus is first and foremost on God. Is it possible we are concerned more about growing, or young families, or making budget, or having the right kind of people, or right political beliefs, or being relevant, or being cool, hip, with it and wow.

And what exactly is being preached? There is a problem when it strays too far from Christ crucified and resurrected. Too easy to slide into health and wealth gospel or pop psychology or good feelings. Certainly there is a place for some topical sermons, but the ethos of the church needs to be on putting Christ first always.

The second issue is much more difficult, but just as serious. The judgment that God brought upon the people of Israel during there time was because they were blending gods, but also because they did not care about the less fortunate around them. There is extremely colorful and powerful language used by the prophets in damning the people of Israel. Jesus, in his teachings, takes it even further, with demands far and beyond what was found in the Torah.

This is the calling of the church, this is what our fruit must be, and too often this is not what it is. We get too caught up in the machinery and bureaucracy of the institution that we fail to fulfill the primary mission, the primary calling, of what God wants from His church. Jesus said to love God and to love your neighbor.

So who is your neighbor? Who are the widows and orphans and foreigners of today? This should be question that the church wrestles with more than any other question. I have my own answers, but I will hold off on them for now. But I will say that for someone not in the church I doubt that they think the church is doing much to stand for these people. And for those within the church, I suspect they are not expending much of their energy debating these topics and pushing them as energetically as possible in the church.

This is not to condemn all churches and all Christians by any means. There are people humbly working in these fields that do work that is beyond comprehension. But the key is to get the whole church to focus primarily on this, and to make the church known primarily for doing this work.

My next post will be on a new model for millennials.

The post after that will be on what some of the fruit that should flow from that model.