Random Notes from Annual Conference
It has been a good conference, I think. I mean, parts of it are boring and tedious. And then I wonder, what would a neutral observer learn about the church? A related question: is Annual Conference important? If it is, then a neutral observer should come away with some sense of what Christianity is. But I don’t think they would come away with what Christianity is about. So maybe we need to change what Annual Conference is and does.
The New Church and Congregational Development (NCCD) Committee report was good news. The Rock was started by NCCD, and they are helping us plant Roz’s church downtown. The reason I say it was a good report is that it vindicates our work. The United Methodist Church in Kentucky had a net decline of 400 people in worship from 2007 to 2008. But the new churches started by NCCD provide the church with 2000 worshippers. So the decline would have been pretty steep without us.
In those moments you snatch from Conference, I compiled a list of reasons as to why we suck. Actually, the list came in response to the Indiana Bishop, Michael Coyner, pointing out that there is not a county in Indiana where Christians are in the majority. Man, if you lose the heartland, what are you going to do? So here goes:
Why we suck (or, causes for the ineffectiveness of Christianity)
1. We’re not relevant. I don’t mean doing things the way “the world” does to be relevant, because even hard-core pagans know the world is not relevant to real life! I mean we don’t help people live life. Most of this is because we don’t preach from the Bible, the source of life-wisdom. Another part is that we ourselves don’t understand life. We miss how terrible and wonderful it is. We reduce it to some strange saccharine middle ground where all is well if you smile hard enough.
2. The people in the pews are not committed. They don’t tithe, they don’t invite, they barely worship beyond showing up. It’s a miracle I even show up for church. Seriously, if it weren’t that I know how wild Jesus is, and how much He wants to do with me, I don’t think I’d choose to worship in most churches.
3. The people in church don’t believe Jesus saves. They don’t believe that if you don’t believe in Him you go to Hell. If they do believe this and have not told anyone, they are the most hard-hearted, pitiless people the world has ever seen.
4. We’ve let the world in. Whatever the world does, we do. So when the world wanted to own slaves, church members and even clergy did, too. Because the world wants homosexuality, the church will swallow its convictions and cave there, too. That’s contextual ministry for you.
5. We are purveyors of Cheap Grace. We teach people, by precept and example, that there is no need for repentance. You might not even need to feel bad. All you need is to trust your cosmic sugar daddy to tell you it’s all going to be ok. This goes back to being relevant. A sinner in the grips of his sin knows that’s crap. He’s begging for a way out. But as long as you’re still ok with your sin, it’s time to join the church.
6. We privilege “brokenness,” creating a climate of hysteria where we won’t let Jesus fix us because we like the attention we get—both for being broken, and “ministering” to the “broken people.” (if you can’t tell, I hate the word “broken.”) This is no more than co-dependency. We’re more prone to have a prison ministry than a victim ministry. I have seen first-hand how this hysteria grips a church. We had a sad case of adultery, lack of repentance on the part of the adulterers, and when they were sent packing, we had people trying to defend them, even to the point of attacking the spouses who had been left.
I know this doesn’t sound like a good conference, but this kind of thinking spurs me on. I love getting to hang with old friends, guys who push the envelope—the kind of guys who ask what was your most spectacular failure, because they know the lessons learned are where success will come from.
Our new Bishop, Lindsey Davis, will he shake things up? Will we live into our job, nothing to do but save souls?
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1 comment:
Hiya, Aaron. I think that, even though I don't agree with some of this, I can see where you're coming from. If I've read your posts right, you're annoyed by the hypocrisy of a secularized culture that claims to value fair-mindedness and equality and yet marginalizes Christian faith. Even more bothersome to you are the encroachments of these secularized values into most Christian churches. As someone passionate about your faith, the tendency even among Christian of wanting to ignore the hard parts of Christian doctrine, and of seeing expressions of Christian passion and devotion as kind of unseemly and embarrassing (meanwhile it's fine to be passionate about something like politics or your career) also really irritates you. I think I can totally get that.
That said, I hope you'll forgive a complaint about one thing you said. I'm just wondering what all that has to do with saying the church shouldn't accept homosexuality in your point #4. I don't see how NOT approving of homosexuality is any less a culturally influenced choice than approving of it. Is your suggestion that the church should not accept it based on the thing in Leviticus about homosexual acts being an abomination? But (and surely you must have heard this next point made before) if you're basing your views on taking every verse in the Bible at face value then, referencing your own argument here, the church should still be accepting slavery as well, because the Bible says it's OK to sell your daughter into it. In fact, there's a lot of weird stuff in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Are you planting more than one kind of seed next to another in that garden of yours? I hope not! Maybe your point isn't to do with literal interpretation of the scriptures, and you have some better reason. If so I would be interested to hear it. As for me, I don't think the essence of the gospels teaches that we should condemn others for who they are. I read them to mean the opposite of that.
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