A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on February 1st, 2008 in Progressive Faith

From Street Prophets, I discovered this bit of reporting that either makes me shiver or nauseous, I’m not sure which. It’s pretty much uniformly bad from start to finish:

Recent reports about the age of messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention have alerted some to the “graying” of the convention. Specifically, the percentage of messengers aged 18-39 dropped from a high of 35.9 percent in 1985 to a low of 16.1 percent in 2005.

First of all, it’s important to remember that “messengers” are just delegates picked by their home church to represent their interests at the Convention. There is no indication that they ever were, are, or ever will be actually representative of the demographics served by that denomination. So it does not indicate a “graying” of the denomination – just its leadership. It represents a failure to prepare the next generation to take over when their time comes – and who knows when it will come?

Consider this fuller look at statistics. The percentage loss of people under forty is almost exactly mirrored by those over sixty. And we are looking at a twenty-seven year time-span. So close to half of those who were “under forty” in 1980 are now “over sixty”. Coincidence? It’s hard to believe it could be.

Then there is this bit:

While the 18-39 age group represents 17 percent of Southern Baptist senior pastors, it mustered only 13.1 percent of attendees at the 2007 annual meeting. The 60-plus age group constitutes 24 percent of senior pastors yet accounted for 35.4 percent of the 2007 attendees.

I wouldn’t find it alarming at a four percent difference in the youngest pastors, nor would I find it alarming to find that older pastors are over-represented. I would find it intriguing, in fact, if anything else were to happen.

Instead of asking if an unusually large number of young people came in the mid-1980s – an era marked by high levels of conservative religious activism – it is automatically assumed that this is a sign of collapse. I don’t know who benefits from the alarmism, but it’s pretty obvious that something is being blown out of proportion.

Then there’s the next part in the original article:

Strictly speaking, this is not news, and it is certainly not unique to the SBC. Across the Protestant world this age range has been shrinking. A little more surprising is that Illinois’ Willow Creek Community Church, once thought to be the hope of the Church’s future, is now experiencing its own malaise. According to a study at Willow Creek, roughly one quarter of its congregants are “stalled in their spiritual growth” or are so dissatisfied they are considering leaving.

I’d be surprised if anyone can find a church where at least one-quarter of the people aren’t looking for more than they can find. The problem is that Willow Creek was built up as “the place for everyone” and the reality is that there is no such place. People are discovering that. They want to find something else.

We have a serious misunderstanding of the purpose and nature of worship. And this impoverished understanding of worship has serious implications for the formation necessary for long-term obedience and discipleship.

To take this seriously, we would have to believe that the reason one-quarter of Willow Creek is “stalled” in their spiritual growth is because they don’t understand how to worship. As if worship were the alpha, omega, and everything in between of spiritual formation. Worship is the “one-size-fits-all” period of finding community and purpose in faith – but if worship is depended upon to provide all spiritual development, then it’s a bit like trying to make all of the parishioners fit into a size ten shoe. It won’t work for everyone and they will eventually get tired of their feet hurting. Hopefully, they’ll move along somewhere else that feeds their soul, but some will be so hurt and disillusioned by the experience that they just stop searching.

An even more egregious instance of this reduced and confusing language is the replacement of “worship” with “worship experience.” The former focuses on God, the latter on us. It was the late Elizabeth Achtemeier who observed that God did not bring Israel to Mount Sinai in order to provide them with a “worship experience;” he came to tell them to have no other gods before him.

This is a bit of a spin on the story. It’s also a bit of a side-step. God didn’t lead the Jews to Sinai to worship. They came to Sanai to receive the law. Now, God being God, he could have just dropped it from Heaven like mana – but instead, he gave the people a real experience. Spiritual foundation requires experience – and sometimes we can learn from the experience of others. But experience has to have relationships, community, and purpose to provide fulfillment. Experience outside of community and purpose and relationships to make it meaningful is just empty spectacle.

Annie Dillard is surely right to remind us of the kind of expectation we ought to bring to worship: “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares. They should lash us to our pews.”

None of that would stave off God’s wrath. Why bother? Besides, Paul tells us that we should approach the throne boldly. We are made sons and daughters of the living God – why should we cower in terror in the presence of our loving father?

But where does this leave us? Should we place helmets at the doors of the church with a sign, “Danger: Beware?” It would surely be foolish to appear so uninviting. And yet even Moses, despite his terror and dread, was drawn to the holy presence in the burning bush. To acknowledge that worship is risky, even dangerous, is also to say it’s not simply about us. It’s about a God we cannot domesticate, a God who surprises and even shocks us out of our easy complacency.

Worship is risky? You’ve got to be kidding. Worship might not take you to a predictable place, but you aren’t going to be killed or injured for worshipping – not in this country, anyway.

In Luke’s Gospel, Mary was greatly troubled and then afraid before God’s messenger. Yet Mary gave birth to the greatest scandal of all: God made flesh.

Mary was also a young girl who was about to put herself at risk for getting killed. It wasn’t an act of worship, but an act of obedience.

It ends with this nearly-unintelligible statement:

We are easily tempted to believe that the survival of the church depends upon us. If this were true, we would have to figure out ways to make the gospel more palatable on the world’s terms. Yet “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor. 1:25). As foolish as it seems, worshiping with “holy helmets” prepares us to be astonished by a holy God.

Hmmm. I guess that Great Commission thing was just a big ruse then. And, if we are to use Paul as any sort of an example, then we should, indeed, try to make the Gospel more palatable – if that is even possible. I mean – if we are offering salvation, and really believe that redemption is real, then it doesn’t need to “be made palatable”. Even using that phrase in respect to teaching the Gospel would indicate, to me, a deep and abiding misunderstanding of what the Gospel is. But Paul approached his new converts with great care – “I have given you the milk because you weren’t ready for the meat.” Or “I saw an altar marked ‘To the Unknown God’…” What about Peter talking to the eunuch? In fact, is there any story in the New Testiment where the apostles, or even Jesus himself, tried to frighten someone into accepting the teachings of the Christ?

I didn’t think so. So put the helmets away. Instead, as Cowboy Troy puts it, “Shake a hand instead of shaking a fist”.

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