How do we know when things are actually, significantly, and permanently changing?
Maybe it will take a decade or two to play itself out, but I share a sense with many others, that we are in a time of real change. This change will turn out to be social, cultural, political and religious.
Before the impact of change settles, you can often see signs of it. This might look like an attempt to continue with an old, well-established way of doing things that doesn’t seem to fit the time, but has not yet given way to a new structure, technology or social context.
For example, I attended a church service over a week ago via livestream. So that’s a bit of a change right there, but really it is a change of medium, a change of how gathering occurs. There is some change in this, but the fact that the church service itself was pretty much what it has been for a century, in terms of set-up, points to the fact that significant change has yet to take place.
Here was the scene; I was in my garage having just completed a virtual bike ride. I logged into the service right after the ride, didn’t even have to change clothes. I could be all sweaty and still “go to church”. I missed the opening of the service, saw one of the songs and landed just before the sermon. The preacher was a really good preacher. He has spoken around the world, had a number of books published, been a journalist, and lived in at least a few different countries. He was theologically astute and I think that he was funny. But he battled the setting. Approximately 35 people in a room built for closer to 200. He included, in his sermon, a number of jokes, but they fell to the ground each time. He remarked after one joke, not laughed at, that he expected to hear a laugh, and then another laugh-less joke later commented, “C’mon! That was funny.”
Granted, I was watching the livestream, so maybe I am part of the problem, but it seemed to me that the issue was not with the preacher or the content or even the jokes (they were funny). The problem was that the sermon was situated in a room that was built, physically and socially, for another time. Things have changed. Things are changing.
Looking around the room, and considering how I was engaging, I once again had words in my head that I often think at such times,
“Even people who go to church don’t go to church anymore.”
It seems like when change is upon us there is a temptation to hold onto the past or to tell ourselves and others that the past was better. What if what comes next is better? What if churches find ways to connect with people, speak a message of hope, address some of the most meaningful questions of life, without having to gather one day a week in a big room where everyone faces the front as if it is some kind of stage? There are other ways of gathering, learning and being in community. There are other ways of worship and remembrance.
In the midst of all significant change there is uncertainty. Right now there are all kinds of models for how churches can meet, but things seem scattered or less than stable. That is what change brings. Lack of stability is not always a bad thing. There are also some churches in which the model of the past century seems to still work. I can’t speak with any authority as to how things are going outside of North America, but I hear the reminders often from people that in some parts of the world the church, as we have known it structurally, is thriving. We could, of course, say that people are the problem and the model is just fine as it is. I think that such assumptions tend toward lazy thinking.
A couple of days ago I had an email forwarded to me by a friend. It had the tagline, “Thought you might find this interesting.”
It’s from a daily email that goes out which is comprised of portions of writing from Frederick Buechner (writer and Presbyterian Minister). This excerpt is from a book written by Buechner in 1988. That’s a long time ago for those who are wondering (2022 is to 1988 what 1988 was to 1954). However, even in 1988, Buechner and others could see that change was needed in terms of how churches meet, what makes a church service, and how many denominations exist:
All the duplication of effort and waste of human resources. All the confusion about what the church is, both within the ranks and without. All the counterproductive competition. All the unnecessarily empty pews and unnecessary expense. Then add to that picture the Roman Catholic Church, still more divided from the Protestant denominations than they are from each other, and by the time you're through, you don't know whether to burst into laughter or into tears.
When Jesus took the bread and said, "This is my body which is broken for you" (1 Corinthians 11:24), it's hard to believe that even in his wildest dreams he foresaw the tragic and ludicrous brokenness of the church as his body. There's no reason why everyone should be Christian in the same way and every reason to leave room for differences, but if all the competing factions of Christendom were to give as much of themselves to the high calling and holy hope that unite them as they do now to the relative inconsequentialities that divide them, the church would look more like the Kingdom of God for a change and less like an ungodly mess.
Maybe actual change is here. It’s been a long time coming.
Myself, I don’t see churches looking like an ungodly mess. I have been to seven churches in the last few months and I did not sense that any one of them was an ungodly mess.
The pandemic has thrown a wrench into all institutions including families and it might appear that the whole world is in an ungodly mess.
In my life, every decade has seen change. Church is not the same at all as it was when I was a child.
Maybe the big change will be that we will have more choices. For some people, Bible Study can be church. Listening to a podcast which includes spiritual teaching can be church.
Gathering together with like-minded believers for a meal can be church.
And, as well, gathering on a Sunday morning in a building to sing praise and hear God’s word, can be church.
It doesn’t matter where we hear God’s word…it only matters that we hear it.