Forty-one years ago, Bill Rader wrote this regarding your centennial celebration: “The preparation of this very brief summary of the history of our congregation has been both revealing and challenging. It has been revealing because of the visionary goals attained by the help of men (and women) to whom the leadership of our early congregation had been entrusted. Revolutionary ideas of their time, such as special training and devotional services for young people, state evangelists and world missionaries were fostered with bold determination. It has been challenging because they accomplished so much, not only in helping establish congregations, schools and conventions throughout the state, but by their unapologetic witness to their faith. I hope as you read this [history] you can catch the positive, imaginative way they met the problems of their time. In our own age, if we will but use the same resolute action in meeting our challenge, we can insure a valuable heritage for the generations yet to come.” Since then,Kenneth Ray ComptonCharles LindbergJames FraleyOliver JohnsonLarry HansmeierDaniel DixonKathy HammelRobert Richard SmytheJohn PiperRichard BeachAnd Ed BishopHave served as your pastors. Since then, you have moved from downtown to this location. Since then, your daughter church – Maze Boulevard – has ended it’s ministry with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Since then, friends have died and moved away. New friends have come and gone and some have stayed. The town of Modesto has grown immensely. House prices have changed a LOT. Wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq have changed the world. Civil Rights have changed. And Rock n Roll is here to stay. In just the last twenty years average worship attendance has fallen from 115 to 107 to 101 to 85 to 79 to 67 to 55 to 51 to 50 to 40 to 30. Your outreach giving has fallen from nearly 10% in 1987 to only 2% of your operating budget in the last few years. In 1966 you wrote about the future saying: “The First Christian Church is now situated in a rich, fertile valley that is growing in every area of its life. New families are moving into our community every day. The church that one day had horses and buggies tied up in front during the worship services now has fast moving automobiles that carry their occupants not only to church, but to many far off places. The challenge that faces the Church in the late 20th century is perhaps the most formidable of its history.” And you know what? This is the same story we tell today. Even faced with the stark reality of decline I consistently hear from you a story of hope. No matter how hard the facts of history are to face – this church believes that this is a fertile place to do ministry. I’m going to read another version of our scripture for today. I know that sometimes I need to hear a story more than once for it to sink in… Soon another Feast came around and Jesus was back in Jerusalem. Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves. Hundreds of sick people – blind, crippled, paralyzed- were in these alcoves. One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years… I’ve got to interrupt this story. Thirty eight years. Thirty eight years ago was 1969. Three years after your Centennial celebration. In 1969 the Beatles gave their last public performance. In 1969 the lottery draft was instituted for the war in Vietnam. In 1969 Apollo 11 landed on the moon. In 1969 the famous Woodstock festival took place in New York state. In 1969 anti-war protests fill the news. In 1969 Sesame Street aired its first episode. In 1969 the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) had only been organized as a “denomination” for ONE year! A lot has happened in the last thirty-eight years. Our world has changed in ways that you could never have imagined just three years earlier in 1966. There are people nearing their 40th birthday – the birthday notorious for being an “over the hill” celebration – that never knew the world before the cultural revolution of the late sixties and early seventies. I read this story of the hundreds of sick and disabled people surrounding this pool hoping for healing – and I see in my mind churches that are waiting for that same healing. The story says that Jesus singled out a guy that had been there for 38 years. How long have we been at the gate looking for healing? How long has the church been paralyzed by the swirl of rapid and constant change in our culture? How long have we stood like deer in the headlights – unable to move because we know what church is supposed to be like and how it used to be and we can’t quite figure out why no one seems to care any more. Thirty-eight years. Now before you start thinking this is going to be a totally depressing sermon… we’ve got to look at the rest of the story… … When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, “Do you want to get well?” The sick man said, “Sir, when the water is stirred, I don’t have anybody to put me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody else is already in.” OK. I have to interrupt again! Jesus asked “do you want to get well?” If Jesus asked First Christian Church that question today what would you say? I think he’d hear a resounding “YES.” But more than that – just like the sick man you could say that we have been trying and trying and trying over the years but we just haven’t been able to get there. If we just had a little help – we know we could do it. And like the sick man you continue to try through the frustrations, disappointments, and discouragements. With no guarantee of success or healing but a faith that it is worth the effort! Jesus said, “Get up, take your bedroll, and start walking.” The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bedroll and walked off. That day happened to be the Sabbath. The Jews stopped the healed man and said, “IT’s the Sabbath. You can’t carry your bedroll around. It’s against the rules.” But he told them, “the man who made me well told me to. He said, ‘take your bedroll and start walking.’” They asked “Who gave you the order to take it up and start walking?” But the healed man didn’t know, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd. The rules say that you can’t carry your own bedding on the Sabbath. It’s breaking the law! Jesus was willing to break all the rules to give healing to someone who wanted it. After thirty-eight years as an invalid – this guy was noticed by Jesus. And Jesus said the way things have always been done do not work for this situation. This guy is trying to get in the water for healing and that hasn’t worked out so well – so he’ll arrange healing in a different, unexpected way. The rules say that work can’t be done on that particular day – but that just wouldn’t work out either. So the rules were broken. The way things have always been done doesn’t always work any more. A little later Jesus found him in the Temple and said, “You look wonderful! You’re well!! Don’t return to a sinning life or something worse might happen.” The man went back and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. That is why the Jews were out to get Jesus – because he did this kind of thing on the Sabbath. But Jesus defended himself. “My father is working straight through, even on the Sabbath. So am I.” God is working in people’s lives – even in this crazy culture. God is just as real and present today as God was when our churches were thriving in the fifties. Maybe now is the time – after thirty-eight years that Jesus will notice us, we will break all the rules, we will be healed and whole and hopeful and willing, able AND equipped to begin a new chapter in our ministry that does not have to be defined by numbers – but is a qualitatively growing and vibrant witness. There is good news to share and a LOT of people that need to hear it. How can we become a church that shares it? I hope as you [remember] this [history] you can catch the positive, imaginative way they met the problems of their time. In our own age, if we will but use the same resolute action in meeting our challenge, we can insure a valuable heritage for the generations yet to come.”
Back to Blogging
October 26, 2007It has been too long since I’ve posted on this blog. The task keeps sliding down to the end of my never-ending TODO list.
I think the reality of never-ending work is true for many people. I think it is especially true for ministers – after all the work of God is never done! And as a church planter, the interim minister of a transforming congregation and part of Regional Staff – my todo list can be truly endless.
But I’m finding how important it is to maintain spiritual practice in the midst of busy-ness. Maybe blogging can become part of that spiritual practice – a way for me to connect with God, with myself, with other people. Maybe this can be something that is not “one more thing to do” but rather something I look forward to, that is a priority, that feeds me instead ot taking away.
Maybe. With God’s help.
10. More than Couches, Coffee and Candles
December 21, 2006Molly, you have said a whole lot in these essays and repeated a few things multiple times. Where are you now on the subject of the Emergent
Church?
The term “emergent church” just has too much confusion and baggage surrounding it already. Having visited a few churches that consider themselves emergent and reading extensively from people who are leading the movement, I am finding two things. First, there is little agreement on what is meant by both “emergent” and “postmodern”. Secondly, many churches are looking for a formula to place over their existing processes to make them suddenly attractive to new people and see “emergent” as something that would fill the bill.
You prefer “church in emerging culture”?
Yes. I think there is a major cultural shift happening right now. The basic assumptions that shape our perceptions of reality are changing. The church has an opportunity to recreate itself to both respond to this culture shift and affect the end result of the shift.
How do we do that?
First, we have to rethink what it means to be church given our highly secular culture. How do we embrace the culture shift and how do we challenge the culture while being authentic to our faith?
So what does it mean to be church?
I would say the goal of a church is to create authentic community that is seeking to know God while working to create the kingdom that Jesus talked about for all of God’s people here today.
How does this work in today’s consumer mentality?
I think there are some realities of our consumer culture that we need to attend to that depend on your particular cultural context. Here, people expect excellence. Excellence in appearance, in coffee, in marketing, in preparation, in execution. However, these are all things that bring people into contact with our content and our community. We are not appealing to shoppers but inviting people to enter into community. The church should not be the best deal in town. Discipleship is not inexpensive but this is what the church can teach.
Why does this have to happen in community? Isn’t it good enough that I have a private spirituality?
Because we each have a unique set of experiences, we each have slightly different understandings of God. Since God is so multi-faceted, to best know God is to find ways to experience new facets. We cannot do this alone as we have only our own knowledge of God. But in authentic community, we share our experience for the spiritual benefit of the whole.
How does a church do this?
By being the body of Christ in the world and truly meeting people in their everyday life. Some faith communities may never practice weekly worship, but they are still creating authentic community that seeks to know God while working to create the realm that Jesus talked about for all of God’s people here today. Others may achieve these same goals by only practicing weekly worship. Either way, engaging the whole self and nurturing interdependence and mutually supportive relationships are important aspects for the church in the emerging, postmodern culture.
So, it is more than coffee, couches and candles?
Yes. These are all things that some churches that are effective in the postmodern context are using. However, they are all context specific. You cannot move in a bunch of couches, serve name brand coffee and light a bunch of candles and call it emergent. Worship needs to be authentic to the context. It needs to either blend with existing traditions or build upon core values. The ideas of ancient-future church, vintage Christianity, and the postmodern parish are good. But they must be tailored to the context and support the result of authentic community.
You’ve left a lot of questions unanswered.
Yes. Isn’t that great? The very nature of this culture shift is we cannot yet see what will come next. We simply cannot imagine the answers yet. We cannot even imagine all of the questions yet.
I hope to continue this exploration into these questions and help capture in words a piece of God’s vision for the church in this coming age. I believe that God continues to work in the world and invites us to share in creation, meaning-making, community building and worship. I give thanks to God for being part of this dynamic and exciting transition in the life of the church and the world.
9. The Progressive Voice
December 21, 2006The liberal, mainline protestant church enjoyed prominence as the civil religion in the
United States for a long time.[1] Everyone was assumed to go to church. Your social standing was defined by your ecclesial connections. While I would never suggest that authentic Christianity did not grow out of these churches, there was an element of church membership that came out of social expectations. Brian McLaren makes a convincing argument that during the 1960’s, the mainline Protestant church fell out of favor as the civil religion when it took a stand against the government in the areas of Civil Rights and the Vietnam War. Peace and social justice were not endorsed by the state. Those involved with church as a civil responsibility no longer felt that responsibility and thousands of people left the church. Over the years, the evangelical (Religious Right) has in many ways taken over as the civil religion. We hear a lot about “family values” and “moral issues” which basically code phrases for social issues that the conservative church has adopted as a critical spiritual litmus test. Yet even while conservative mega-churches blossom and the Protestant Mainline churches decline, whole new generations are being born and raised outside the context of any religious community.
I see a lot of excuses presented by the progressive[2] (liberal, post-liberal, etc. etc) church. Some suggest that “young people” (or people in general) simply are not interested in “our” sort of church. Others suggest that lack of denominational loyalty is a defining characteristic of postmoderns and we should just expect to die. Others suggest that consumerism is so entrenched that only the mega church with all its attending programs will attract and keep the postmodern person. As I see it, all of these are excuses; simply excuses for the declining mainline church to avoid the revolutionary changes that will need to happen to adapt to the postmodern context.
I think the progressive church, especially those of us with congregational polity, will be extremely attractive to postmoderns. We already embrace the diversity of opinion and the welcoming of questions, dialogue and thoughtful reflection. Our traditions have untapped potential for embracing the mysteries of faith and focusing on spiritual development. We seek to create an environment where people feel that they “belong” and are part of a community that journey together in faith and life. We are justice oriented and want to make a difference in our world. These are the same descriptors used by the secular postmodern population. Our congregational polity allows us a lot of freedom to tailor our ministry to our unique context while remaining in covenant with a larger church body. It allows local leadership to shape their own experience in such a way that creates authentic community. It also allows those who see themselves as “spiritual but not religious” to enter into a community that seeks to grow into deeper spirituality together while not carrying some of the baggage that is called “religious.” To the postmodern, “religious” means guilt, condemnation, narrow-mindedness, ignorant of and irrelevant to their cultural reality, and a place concerned more with ritual consistency than mystical experiences. There is so much potential but we need to make significant changes to live into this potential.
I have written before about building upon Richard Niebuhr’s work Christ and Culture to include another form that is more relevant to the postmodern context. I have been calling this “Christ in dialogue with Culture”. By this I mean that the church can transform culture just as culture transforms the church. The rejection of a single meta-narrative is a defining characteristic of postmodernism. Many, if not most, Christians balk at this because since
Constantine, we have understood Christianity as the single story that defines (or can or even should define) all things in all times. However, as a postmodern friend of mine[3] said the other day – that would be fine if any two people could possibly see and interpret scripture, Christian tradition, or Jesus’ life, death and resurrection in the exact same way. There is not a rejection of the Christian story. If anything there is a great seeking for the transcendent. And there is acknowledgment that engaging the variety of stories involved in the biblical stories is a way of taking these narratives more seriously, encountering them more authentically, and finding meaning in them more deeply.
The culture that was built upon the foundation that there was a single, discernable truth has been discarded. Therefore, for the Christian story to remain relevant, the church must be transformed by the cultural shifts that shake this assumption to the core. It is interesting to note that Jesus lived prior to the Enlightenment. The scriptures were both written and canonized prior to the Modern Era. The Christianity we have today is built upon foundational cultural assumptions that were not part of the Jesus story and are being replaced today.
I realize that being within this sort of massive shift will create dramatic crises of faith for many faithful. This is one reason I am coming to believe that new churches, planted from within a postmodern context, are the best and most effective places to illustrate the revolutionary possibilities for the twenty-first century church. The progressive church clearly has an important role to play in the coming years of the church. The sorts of things that are being explored by evangelicals and conservatives within what is being called the “emergent church” are more consistent with the traditions and values of the progressive church than of the conservative church. Yet, we are not leading the revolution. Why not?
We offer one of the most compelling expressions of Christianity around in terms of addressing the desires of postmodern Americans. We just need to separate the core of our tradition from the trappings that surround it and allow the current culture to transform the church. If we can be open to God working through us in this way, we will be able to bring and live the good news of God’s redemptive love with an audience that has never heard it. We will be able to transform culture by reintroducing the Christian lens to whole communities that have decided that the church (or “religion”) has nothing to offer them. We will be able to create an authentic expression of Christ’s church within a postmodern context that does not require a search for a single truth but welcomes the mysterious workings of God through Jesus Christ in our world today.
[1] McLaren, Brian, A Generous Orthodoxy, (
Grand Rapids: Zondrrvan, 2004), 136.
[2] There are so many names to describe the “liberal” church. I find the definitions for “Progressive Christianity” most helpful. A list of eight descriptive (not prescriptive) point may be found at: http://www.tcpc.org/about/8points.cfm.
[3] Rev. Kirsten Liford is pastor of Westwood Hills Congregational Church in
Los Angeles, CA.
8. mega, mini, organic, house: form or function?
December 21, 2006There is a lot of discussion about the form churches are taking these days. There are the mega-churches with thousands in worship and small groups for every imaginable segment of people. There are the family-sized churches with less than seventy-five people where everyone knows and loves each other. There are house churches where small groups meet in homes and when they grow too big to fit comfortably in one home, the group is split and a new leader is sent to start a new worshipping community in their home. There are program-sized churches and pastor-sized churches. There are new churches and long established churches. There are churches that start a new worship service and churches that start a new, autonomous church. There are churches with praise bands and churches with organs. There are churches with no music at all. There are churches with trained, ordained pastors. There are churches with only lay leadership. There are churches meeting in hundred year old buildings and churches meeting in middle school cafeterias. There are churches that celebrate communion every week and others that “save” it for special occasions. There are churches that serve brand name coffee and those that serve the worst coffee you might drink all week. There are churches that prefer Gregorian Chant and gothic architecture and those that prefer rock music in a community center. There are churches that worship in English and churches that worship in most every other language on earth. There are churches that have rows of pews all facing the same way and others that sit in the round and others that prefer couches and overstuffed chairs. There are churches that fill their space with candlelight and others that ban candles to protect the building. There are so many variations. Churches take so many different forms.
Thank God that God has so many ways to reach people and to transform their lives through faith in Jesus Christ. Thank God for churches which authentically live out God’s vision for them, testifying to the good news of Jesus Christ and sharing God’s redemptive love with the world. Thank God for churches which function regardless of form.
