The Progressive
Christian Movement
Phillipians 2:1-11
This being
the day of our annual meeting I’d like to take stock of where we are. Most of what I intend to do will be
description: description of the context
in which we find ourselves as the
I have three approaches to this topic in mind. First I’ll read an excerpt from Nancy Ammerman’s book, Congregation and Community. It is the best book I’ve ever read about local churches. And she knows us like you know your backyard. You could call Nancy Ammerman an ecologist of congregations. She asks how congregations exist in their communities, and whether they are adapting to the changes around them.
Second,
using Ammerman’s idea that
Finally,
there are challenges in our environment.
Deer ticks and Lyme disease come to mind, but there’s yet another
challenge I’d like to explore. Ticks are
almost everywhere, but living in
I
recommended Ammerman’s book to
Forthwith, this is what she
read:
In many ways,
In this
congregation full of well-educated, well-paid people,
Probably the most
precious commodity in a busy suburban community is time. Precisely because
families are so privileged, multitudes of activities vie for time on their
calendars. Children are in Scouts and on sports teams; dads play golf and
travel on business; moms volunteer at school and for various other good causes,
in between managing car pools and households and perhaps a job of their own.
Church activities are unlikely to make it onto the calendar except for Sunday
mornings, and even those sacred times are often crowded out by family and
leisure activities. The people who responded to our survey can be assumed to be
among the most active in the congregation. Still, they were more likely to
participate in civic and community activities than in any church activity
beyond worship. Over one-third of them reported that they do not attend worship
weekly, which indicates that the normal pattern in the church is probably
attendance a couple of times a month, with large numbers attending rarely, if
at all. Only a small portion of the church's members are more than nominally
involved.
Where members are
involved in the life of the church, they bring considerable skills and
experience with them. Financial decisions have the advantage of advice from
investment bankers; educational decisions are guided by professors,
administrative changes by managers. Beyond this specialized knowledge, the
sheer levels of education, along with experience organizing and managing
everything from the PTA to multimillion dollar corporations, give this congregation
a marvelous pool of creative talent to draw from.
Where members are
not involved, there is an equally talented and creative professional staff to
do most of the work of the church. They write the prayers and craft the worship
services that are the central focus of most members' experience of the church.
The children's
staff and the music staff not only run an impressive program for the church's
children, they also write music and create whole musical productions. Not
satisfied with existing Sunday school curricula, they are writing their own.
Carmel United Methodist's staff remains a very valuable resource to a church
short of time of its own to give.”
Finally, the field
scout reports… “within a few minutes of
the benediction, (here in
Sound
familiar?
“Time, the
most precious commodity in a suburban community…’
“A
congregation full of well-educated, well-paid people, whose affluence is
evident.”
“Church
activities unlikely to make it onto the calendar except for Sunday mornings, with
even those times often crowded out by family and leisure activities.”
“The normal
pattern is attendance a couple of time a month.”
“Where
members are involved… they bring considerable skills and experience with them…
the congregation has a marvelous pool of creative talent to draw from.”
Now
what? Should I launch into fire and
brimstone? Berate you for not spending
as much time around the church as Ellen and I do? Scold you for over-scheduling your children’s
lives, and make you feel guilty about taking off on weekends for a little
R&R?
What would
be the point of that? What good would it
do? And what justification would there
be? Precious little or none. I simply accept our social environment as a
given, this is where and how we live. I
get paid to be here every Sunday, and if you approve the budget later this
morning, I’m going to get what I asked for, another week’s vacation! Yes, our children’s lives are over-scheduled,
and most of us work too much; our lives are out of kilter in a host of
ways. And yes, we should try to get
things back into a healthier balance.
All of this is true. At the same
time however, to paraphrase Garrison Keillor’s mother, “that’s life: make the best of it.”
There are
churches which do otherwise. They
attempt to be what a sociologist once called, “total institutions,”
institutions where virtually all of one’s wants and needs are satisfied. Prisons are total institutions. Monasteries.
The military. Boarding
schools. Virtually never a minute
unplanned or unsupervised. Churches which
aspire to be total institutions have ATM machines, child-care programs, schools
and academies, dry-cleaners, gyms, weight loss programs (What would Jesus
do? Eat less!), restaurants, fellowship
and support groups for every demographic; Bible study on Wednesday nights and a
full round on Sundays.
Now that’s more like it!!
If
that’s what you like…
As for me, no thanks. A monastic life, separate from, and unstained
by the hurly-burly of the world has never held any appeal for me. And seemingly, not for you either. We are what we are: a church in an affluent community, where the
most precious commodity is time, where a host of other activities compete with
what we offer, and where Sunday is our one best shot at gathering a crowd,
though not the whole one. A fairly
accurate description, wouldn’t you say?
Deal with it.
If what
I’ve talked about so far, is our social milieu or the setting of our
congregational life, then the second description is about our identity within
that setting. There are six other
churches in the Mendhams. Or to be more
accurate, counting us there are seven different churches in the
Mendhams. There are similarities of
course, more in some cases than others, but each somewhat unique. Once upon a time, 5 of those 7 were described
as mainline churches. Back in the day,
we represented the religious majority in the country. We are still over-represented in Congress and
on the list of Presidents. But changes
in society have lead to changes in the religious ecology. There is greater diversity now, a vast
diversity not simply encompassing Christianity, but one in which each of the
great world’s religions is broadly represented.
With these changes, the mainline church has been moved toward the
side-lines. We’re still here, but a
minority now, and a better descriptor is required. Another sociologist of religion, Bill McKinney
has proposed that churches like