Are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of the question about getting “back to normal”?
You have doubtless seen articles on how various things will change after the pandemic ends.
Grocery shopping - Have you actually appreciated the one big line instead of trying to find the quickest line? What about curbside pick-up?
Work - Are you finally going to be able to work from home at least some days? Do you want to?
Dining out - Are you wanting plexiglass barriers to stay up?
Entertainment - Are you going out to see a movie? Are you in favour of verification of vaccination for events?
Inter-personal interaction - Is the handshake coming back?
Birthdays - Do you want people blowing out candles on cakes again?
What about church? How will church change? Does it matter to you? Maybe churches will have to keep doing Zoom or live streaming services. Maybe some people will not come back to church in person.
Maybe this is a time to consider what actual change might mean for the Christian church.
A few years ago a writer, professor, and theologian whose work I appreciate was presenting a seminar on church and culture. At the end of the weekend he took a few moments for, what seemed like, a more personal, vocational reflection on the time in which we live. He spoke joyfully as he shared what he obviously thought was a hopeful possibility.
“We might finally,” he said with a smile on his face, “be witnessing the end of Christendom.”
Darrell Guder, who spoke those words in Vancouver at St. Andrew’s Hall, was joyful about the possibility of the death of Christendom because he saw how much Christendom had curtailed the communication of the hope of the message of Jesus Christ. Empires and institutions, denominations and multi-national organizations have been built. Great masses of wealth have been accumulated by churches in the era of Christendom. Churches have aligned themselves with state power or have sought to become the dominant power in society. Much of this is a long, long way from Jesus in the gospels.
If there is to be real change, the church must emerge, and joyfully, from the legacy of Christendom. Many churches are still formed with the Christendom model in mind. Bigger is better, is the apparent thought. A recent trend in many parts of the west is that small churches have declined in attendance as some (not all) large churches have seen attendance increase, mostly perhaps with transfers from the smaller churches. This is not mission. It is empire building. It is a Christendom model.
For now, I encourage you to consider what you feel might change for church in the days and years ahead. Try not to give into the assumption that moving church from an old church building to a movie theatre is actual change - that is, more rightfully called, redecoration. The most “old school” churches, theologically, in Vancouver (often with rigid and divisive views on gender, sexuality and morality) are maybe the ones that look the most updated in style. Actual change would mean differences in how we talk about faith, in what we think about other faiths, in what we understand about heaven and hell and eternity. Change, by the way, can be biblical and arguably ought to be. You don’t have to ponder for long to see that what has been presented as biblical in many religious circles has had more to do with power and less to do with the Bible.
So what change would you like to see?
I will go first.
I have been thinking lately about how individual churches have had to try to be all things to all people. Having been a pastor for 25 years I am familiar with the pressure that church leaders face to try to please everyone. Each church has scrambled to have a kids’ ministry and a youth group and a zillion other programmes (pre-teen, singles’ ministry, women’s ministry, seniors’ ministry, men’s ministry, recovery programmes, Bible Study small groups, a “missions” programme, etc. etc.) This model is a late-stage version of Christendom. It works on the assumption that church will be the social hub for everyone who attends.
Is that what you want from church?
There used to be a restaurant not far from where I live that I really didn’t like. I can sum up why. It had a huge menu. They served every kind of food. You could get Greek food, Chinese food. You could get a hamburger and fries or seafood. I think that they had sushi on the menu as well. They had everything. It was terrible.
So why do churches still spend so much on trying to be all things to all people? Drive around your neighbourhood and note the churches. There are likely more than you assumed. In some ways they are like restaurants with massive menus. They are trying to please everyone. Maybe the ones that people think of as “thriving” are simply the biggest ones with the most programmes, like the Cheesecake Factory. The Cheesecake Factory has almost everything on the menu, but they try to distract you from the mediocre food by the overall presentation and manufactured glitz of the place.
One of the changes that I would like to see from church is the confidence to say, “This is what we are going to do. That’s it.” At the non-profit with which I work we have a saying that sums up how we want to communicate that we see no division or fear or exclusion of anyone in true Christian Gospel. The saying is this: “Everyone. Everyone. Everyone.” (yes, it’s also a Van Morrison song). We further have a description that seeks to focus us towards who might be interested in how we are speaking about faith and life. The description is itself intended as a way of being gracious to those who might not be interested in what we have to offer. The description is “It’s not for everybody.”
So - “Everyone. Everyone. Everyone. It’s not for everybody.”
The thing about restaurants with massive menus is that it turns out that nothing about them is exceptional. The thing about the Hopeful Gospel is that it is entirely exceptional. It is hope for ALL people, even those who don’t believe it.