The Wonderful Church of Disney

On a recent trip to Orlando with 320 high school music students I spent three out of four days at Disney theme parks. On day 1 we were at Animal Kingdom from the moment it opened until 4:00 when we “park hopped” over to Epcot staying until it closed. The next day we spent 13 hours at the Magic Kingdom. Two days after that we spent the day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park, again from open until close. I spent much of that time with another chaperon who, like me, was content to see a few attractions but also spend significant amounts of time sitting on a bench watching people and thinking about what the world’s number-one-tourist-destination says about our culture and how similar it is to the Christian church in America.

It Is a Small World

I recently returned home from Florida where I helped chaperon 320 high school musicians on a six day trip to Disney. On the third day of that trip I found myself wandering the streets of the Magic Kingdom on a Sunday morning instead of leading worship in my congregation. We had turned the clocks ahead for Daylight Savings Time in the middle of the night so there were relatively few people in the park when it opened. It was the best way for me to experience the Magic Kingdom but Disney’s nightmare: A individual walking the park alone without any lines to wait in and with no desire to buy a souvenir.

The first attraction that caught my eye was the infamous “It’s a Small World” ride. I hadn't been on that ride since the first time I visited the park in 1976. I don’t know why it called out to me that morning but I jokingly thought to myself that this would be penance for missing worship on a Sunday morning.  So I walked through the maze of metal guardrails and climbed aboard the aqua-colored plastic boat and began floating down the twisting canal of this world-famous ride.

Reeled In

Even when I tried to ignore my call to ordained ministry and find another path I didn’t get very far before I found myself in church again. Fortunately, it didn’t take something as violent as a storm and spending a few days in the belly of a whale to get my attention. In my case God used something I was already focused on to lead me where I needed to go.

When I left home to attend college at Central Michigan University I made one feeble attempt at connecting to a church community. I called the local Lutheran church and asked if anyone could give me ride to worship on Sunday. I didn’t have a car and there was no bus service for the local community. The pastor told me that the congregation wasn’t set up to serve college students (I’m sure he phrased it a bit less bluntly) and that I should stick with a campus ministry organization. That was all the incentive I needed to explore what life apart from the church might be like.

I found that I didn't miss the church as much as I thought I would. If to this point in my life home was where I lived, school was where I went, and church was where I belonged, college now owned all three parts of my life. There was plenty to do simply adjusting to my new independence and responsibilities without adding the social obligations of belonging to a church. With no mandatory worship to attend each week I discovered lazy Sunday mornings and the joy of reading slowly through an entire Sunday newspaper before returning to school work. (I have a serious suspicion that this is what is meant by Sabbath and I still covet the once or twice a year when I get the chance to dwell in that kind of time.)

Sitting in my English writing class one afternoon during the winter/spring semester of my freshman year I found myself ignoring the professor’s lecture in order to gaze at the profile of the cute blond sitting one row up an over from me. She leans forward with both arms resting on her notebook. Her legs fold back under her chair. She is the model student, fully engaged, ready to participate. As I secretly admire her I feel the ball of nervousness grow inside of me. This was the day I had resolved to ask her on a date.

As class ends we stand up to gather our books and bags. She turns to face me as she slides her arms into the powder blue and cream white ski jacket and begins to zip it up. She smiles and her pale blue eyes shine in the white fluorescent light of the classroom. At the beginning of the semester we discovered that our next classes were in the same building part-way across campus. We had gotten in the habit of walking together and talking about whatever happened to be on our minds. It was my plan to ask her out as we walked together.

Evidently I was unable to bear the nervous anxiety until I could slip it into our conversation casually and I blurted out, “Hey, I heard there was this thing going on next Friday. Would you like to go with me?”

This wasn’t how I had rehearsed this in my mind. Gone was the suave, casual and in-charge persona that I had secretly hoped would emerge in moments like these. In its place was a sputtering rush of words vomited out in a semi-coherent splash on the floor by my feet. Did I really say, “this thing?”

“What thing?” she asks, tilting her head the tiniest little bit.

“Umm,” I stumble, not sure whether I am being given a second chance or just being set up for a bigger drop. “It’s a party. Like a dance. But I don’t know if there will be dancing. A social kind of thing at the Student Union. You know.”

I stand there trying to look confident and certain which, in this case, would have won me an Academy Award had I been able to convince her that I was.

Then, out of some magical place where grace and goodness come forth, she says, “Sure, I’d like that.” Her eyes radiate warmth and her smile washes away the anxiety. But before I have even the slightest moment to savor this little victory, before the tiniest swell of pride begins to bloom she continues, “But I have one condition. You have to go to church with me next Wednesday night.”

“Sure. I’d like that,” I say without thinking to ask, “What church?” I know church. I can go to one Wednesday night service without getting all caught up in it. Church is easy. A simple tradeoff in exchange for a date.

I’m too excited to understand what is happening to me. I’m too involved in the moment to recognize that God has baited my path with a cute blond woman and a pair of pale blue eyes.  It would be fifteen more years before I would recognize how I was lured back into the church after my brief hiatus.

It seems like most people who are involved in a church community have experienced a time of leaving before returning once again. The impulse to return is sometimes a spouse, sometimes it’s for the sake of their children, or sometimes a tragic or life-changing event that sent them in search of meaning and community. Strangely enough, these are some of the exact same reasons that people leave the church.

I think I’ve always assumed that belonging to a church was the goal. But what if that’s not the case? What if God led me out of the church that first year of college for a reason? What if God didn’t lure me back to the church but called me forward into the church only after I had experienced a time away? And what if God is leading people out of the church now for a reason that we can’t yet see?

Finding a Place

Growing up, I spent a lot of time at church. My family was there every Sunday for an hour of worship and an hour of Sunday School. We were usually one of the first families to arrive and last to leave making it an all morning affair. Later in the week, my mom would bring me and my brothers back for what we called “Midweek,” which included a class, supper together in the fellowship hall, and then children’s choir rehearsal. During the summer there was a week of Vacation Bible School and when we didn’t have school we were at the church while my mom had her weekly prayer group. My childhood life was split three ways: Home, school and church. 

It was at Calvary Lutheran that I first started to tie my identity to the church. Most of my church friends attended different schools. I always looked forward to seeing them. As a kid I was overweight and slow but that didn’t seem to matter to my church friends. When I tried out for teams at school I wouldn’t get many chances to actually play. The church, however, had teams that played in church-sponsored leagues where everyone got to play no matter how good or bad they were. For me, the neighborhood was where I lived and school was where I went but the church was where I felt I belonged.

It was also at Calvary that I was first encouraged to share my gifts and abilities with the whole congregation. I loved being asked to help and there were a thousand different ways to do it. I helped fold bulletins before worship. I served as an acolyte and did other things in worship. I set up chairs or would carry things from the supply closet to the places that Sunday School classes were taught. I helped my dad mow the church property whenever he signed up to take care of that chore. I enjoyed being asked to help out in these special ways. People would encourage me and that always made me feel more grown up and responsible.

One day, the pastor asked if I would like help with a baptism. He said that I could put the water on the baby’s head while he said the words. The baby was my Godmother’s child, my second cousin, and I was more than eager to help. I stood there at the baptismal font in my acolyte robe and awkwardly scooped water on the baby’s head as he was held over the font while the pastor said, “You are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” I had never seen another acolyte, or anyone beside the pastor ever do part of the baptism.

Later, as an adult, I took a class where I discovered that I have the spiritual gift of Helping. Simply put, that means that I find meaning and purpose in doing behind-the-scenes kinds of tasks that are necessary for the life of the congregation or community. Most of the time people don’t recognize that someone has taken care of these tasks unless they aren’t done or are done poorly.

As a pastor I still spend a lot of time getting things ready for other people. I spend a lot of time trying to make sure that everything is ready for worship. I no longer fold bulletins but I prepare and proofread sheets for our worship leaders. I set up the presentation software with song lyrics and congregational responses that are projected on the screen at the front of our worship room. I still get to the church on Sunday morning before anyone else to open up, turn on lights, adjust thermostats, set up the sound equipment and other electronics and make sure that education rooms have been set up the right way.

Many Sunday mornings I feel more like a stage manager than a pastor. I worry about what's coming up next in worship and whether or not someone is going to miss a cue. But this is what belonging to a community/congregation is all about to me. It’s about making sure that details are taken care of so that people can come and find a place to belong. I know that I can’t create that place for everybody but I keep trying. The church became a place for me to forge my identity and share what I was good at. That has always been my understanding of what church is and what it can be.

Two Heavens: One Kingdom

The current issue of Time magazine has a feature article by Jon Meacham about the evolving understanding of heaven in our culture. (I’m sorry that I can’t link directly to the article. You have to be a subscriber. Time/Warner hasn’t fully escaped the 20^th century yet.) It is a well-researched and written piece that summarizes the cultural trends in thinking about heaven. If you can get your hands on a copy I highly recommend taking time to read it.

Basically the change in the way we think about heaven can be summed up with two questions in a sidebar to the article: What if Christianity is not about enduring this sinful, fallen world in search of a reward of eternal rest? What if God brings together heaven and earth in a wholly new, wholly redeemed creation?

Yes. 

These are the questions that have been rattling around in my thoughts and prayers and sermons for the past few years. It’s a bit humbling to see it put so succinctly in an article printed in a major news magazine. But these questions lead to others and the lot of them have been causing some significant anxiety and stress within my mortal frame. Why? Because a faith that is built on enduring this world in the hopes of one day escaping to a safe reward feels a lot different than one where we are working together to bring God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.”

I am coming to believe (and will write about this more in future posts) that this is not an issue of right and wrong. I firmly believe that it has to do with the culture changes happening around us. Both ways of imagining heaven encourage people to live altruistically in this life as a response to God’s goodness, grace and forgiveness. (Never mind that it isn’t always successful.) It’s just that the former way of imagining and talking about God’s kingdom (or heaven) isn’t connecting with people in the emerging culture. So if we want to continue to proclaim the gospel of God’s love then we need to reimagine heaven and find new ways of thinking about God’s kingdom that will connect.

The stress and anxiety come from a place inside that recognizes that there are wonderful, caring and loving people in my congregation that exist on both sides of this issue. Because the idea that Jesus brings heaven and earth together in a wholly redeemed creation is connecting with me I feel compelled to preach and teach in these terms. The scriptures are opening up in front of me in brilliant and exciting new ways as I revisit passages that I thought I understood before.

But I am also aware of the legacy that brought me to this point. And I am aware that there are many people who have spent a lifetime developing a faith based on the thought that heaven is a place we go after we die. It would be both wrong and arrogant for me to just write that off and say, “I’m sorry you committed your life to what turns out to be a mistaken notion of what this life is all about.”

So where do we go from here? Is it possible for a faith community/congregation make the transition from one concept of heaven to another? Or are we talking about two different ways of believing? Is there an even more basic core concept of what it means to be a Christian that unites us and will allow us to have two visions of God’s kingdom? Or are we destined to see an new expression of faith emerge similar to the way Christianity emerged from Judaism 2000 years ago?

Anyone interested in helping me think about this?

Time is Not on My Side

This is the tenth and final post in a series about ways that I have missed the mark as a pastor. It began as a response to several articles about why young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here if you want some background to this current article.

I get so overwhelmed by the programs, meetings and all of the minutiae of sustaining a congregation that I don’t have the creative energy to explore new ways of being the church together.

In the 20 years that I have been responsible for the worship practices of various congregations I have seen a dramatic increase in the amount of time that it takes to prepare for weekly worship. When I first started planning worship I helped lead two worship services every Sunday morning. Each week we followed one of two liturgies that were printed in our hymnal. The three or four hymns that we sang would be chosen by the pastor from several hundred available in the hymnal. The order of worship was printed in a weekly bulletin and a worshiper could follow the service by turning to the correct page in the hymnal. Both services on a given Sunday morning were identical with the exception of inserting a choir or a baptism at one service or the other.

Today I am responsible to plan, oversee and, at times, lead four unique worship services every week. Each one has its own special order of worship. At one we use an organist and traditional hymns but now rotate between six different liturgies. At two worship services our contemporary praise band leads the singing but each has a different order of worship. At the fourth service, on Wednesday evenings,  an acoustic music group provides a mix between the traditional and contemporary styles.

All this variety means that more time has to be spent planning. There are elements of worship that change each week but are used at all four worship times (prayers, scripture readings, dialogs etc…). These changes need to be prepared up to six weeks in advance so that the teams of people who now choose the music for each service can coordinate the music choices with the theme and message for the day.

This variety also means that we have to prepare five bulletins to help people follow the order of worship. One bulletin has all the community announcements and an outline of the orders of worship. It is given to those who come to worship. Then we have a separate “leader’s” bulletin for each of the four services with more details and cues for the musicians and worship leaders.

Instead of a hymnal we use a computer, a projector and a screen to put all the lyrics to songs and hymns, scripture readings and prayers in front of the congregation. All of these things need to be put into the special presentation software not once, but four different times; once for each service. And heaven forbid that we put these words up on plain backgrounds. Artwork needs to be found, purchased or designed to enhance the entire worship experience and tie in with the themes and messages of the week.

Using the projector and screen also means that when I preach I have to prepare pictures and words to put on the screen. To do that I spend time searching for pictures on the internet or modifying pictures with Photoshop and then create a graphic presentation to go along with my sermon. This has easily added two hours to my preparations each time I preach.

All this extra work has been created just for worship. It doesn’t include required duties like teaching confirmation, staff meetings, council meetings, committee meetings and fellowship events. Each of these also has a certain amount of prep time and follow-up time. All of these things are primarily about keeping the institutional church running.

It doesn’t leave a lot of time or creative energy to explore new ways of being the church. As a woodcarver and someone who likes to dabble in other artistic ventures I know the importance of having enough time to let thoughts and ideas percolate before a vision or idea can take shape in your head. The church used to leave room for pastors and leaders to do that kind of thinking and reflection. But the extra worship styles, the outreach programs and the need to fund them all have robbed church leaders of that time. The irony is that these things are started in an attempt to breathe new life into the church and welcome in new people. But again, is making more people members of the church the same as making disciples of Jesus? (See my earlier post in this series Recruiting for Christ).

Concluding Thoughts

Ultimately this leads me back to the place that I started from. Should I expect the church in its present form to be transformed to meet the needs of the emerging culture? Or is something new being born outside the traditional confines that we have called church? But as my spiritual director recently reminded me, the Church is bigger than the membership of every congregation and as a disciple of Jesus a person could be working for the Church even if they no longer worked within the church. Maybe so many young adults are leaving the institutional church, not because there is anything inherently wrong with it, but because they are being led by the Spirit to start what will become a new expression of the church.

The only thing I know for sure is that I wish I had more time to explore together what it all means.

From Authority to Resource

This is the fourth post in a series about ways that I have missed the mark as a pastor. It is a response to several articles about why young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here if you want some background to this current article.

For believing that the one-size-fits-all model of spirituality and piety was ever a real thing that could be attained with enough training or persuasion, I apologize.

As I go through this week I am finding that writing these gets harder and harder. I have been struggling with this one for years and I find that I am not the only one who has trouble with it. Lay people are struggling with this one too.

In a wonderful TED Talk about learning through our mistakes, educator Diana Laufenberg shares how her grandmother attended a one room school house to be educated. She went because that’s where the knowledge was: stored in the teacher’s mobile memory device (her brain). When Diana was a student her parents bought a set of encyclopedias. She didn’t need to go to the library anymore to get information for a report since she had access to a reliable memory device at home (books). Today, with computers and even smart phones we no longer have to go where the information is. It comes to us. Instantly.

This change in where we store and retrieve the knowledge we need to learn and grow means that the principal role of the educator has changed. A teacher is no longer the authority who carries information in order to pass it along to someone else. A teacher is now someone who facilitates interactive, self-directed learning. It is a process that avoids rote memorization of facts in favor of learning by exploration.

The same can be said about church. I was trained to be the local authority on spirituality, scripture and doctrine. People came to church to learn what God said through the scriptures. Pastors and priests taught spiritual practices that reinforced what they said from the front of the church. We even wear clothes that symbolized the learning and authority we had acquired. (The clerical collar is a modernized version of the old doctoral collars worn by professors. In some denominations the pastor’s robe is similar to a graduation gown.)  

The thing about teaching a large number of people at one time is that you have to find a way that reaches everyone in the group. Basically, you have to find a one-size-fits-all piety. Then you try to cram everyone into that shape. You repeat it over and over from the front of the congregation. You back it up with bible studies printed by your denominational printing house. You invite other authorities with the same view point to “give a fresh perspective” to the congregation. And you limit the knowledge that you pass on, in part because you yourself have limited knowledge and in part because it's easier that way.

But in a world where finding information about other spiritual traditions and beliefs is as easy as typing a question into a phone or computer, people don’t need an authority. I am no longer the mobile memory device for spirituality in the community. I am another resource in the spiritual journey of each individual. At best I can serve as a trusted guide as people explore their own spiritual path. One size does not fit all in this new world. It probably didn’t in the past either but we all make do with what we are given.

In my ordination I promised to uphold the doctrine of the church (with the assumption that my tradition was the one who did, in fact, hold on to THE correct doctrine of all that is holy). I promised to be an authority. But now I see that what the community needs is a trusted resource. The transition from an authority to trusted resource is a humbling and difficult transition. In many ways it feels messy and out-of-control.

Moving from authority to resource means stepping away from the front of the community and walking with people where they are. It means letting go of the need to control details. It means being available when an individual is ready, not making them be ready when I am available. It’s a lot more one-on-one. It’s an overwhelming task in a large congregation. As people walk their own path they will make mistakes. They will venture beyond the bounds of “correct doctrine.” As they serve in the church community as part of their spiritual journey they will pass along bad ideas and misinformation about the faith. But they will also inspire others and give birth to new ways of understanding the mystery of the Holy.

Many lay people resist this transition because it means they have to be responsible for their own life of faith and that's a difficult thing to do. So I feel caught between the people who want me to serve as guide and those who want me to serve as authority. I find that doing both is impossible. I flip-flop back and forth and am aware that this isn’t helping. I am hearing God’s call to make the transition to resource/guide but don’t know how to do it. I’m still waiting to see how that might happen. 

With Apologies

Recently I have read some blogs by people who, by all accounts I can see, are God-centered people. What they have been writing about is why they, or others, have left the church. (Here are a couple by Christian Piatt: Seven Reasons Why Young Adults Quit Church and Four More BIG Reasons Young Adults Quit Church and one by Rachel Held Evans: 15 Reasons I Left the Church.)

My first response to these articles is, “Yeah. Me too.” These are the reasons I want to leave the church. But I can’t seem to do it for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that, as a pastor, my family and I depend on the paycheck that I collect for being a part of the church.  I truly believe that the Holy Spirit it at work outside of the institutional church and I want to be at work where the Holy Spirit is but I’m genuinely having trouble making the transition.

My second response is that I want to apologize. I want to apologize on behalf of the Church. But I can't. I can only apologize for the way that I have represented the Church as a leader and for the way that I have participated in the very things that have driven people away. I apologize for:

A Broken Church

The Church is broken.

(Which isn't a bad thing. It's just not broken in the right way.)

I am amazed at how hard the institution of the Church fights to remain whole and viable. "Unity" is the rallying cry as thousands of years of divisions within the church are officially healed, by legal sounding documents. Synod leadership rushes around to put out the smoldering fires in disgruntled congregations. Congregations face the shame and embarrassment of shrinking membership and the worry of unmet budgets. They begin to make decisions based not on who can be served but who can serve them in their attempt to stay open.

To be sure, there are many good things happening in the church and we can spend out time showing and telling what marvelous things God is doing through us. But you can also focus on the various pieces of a broken tea cup without mentioning that it is broken. You can talk about how well designed and useful the handle is and how it is secured to the cup. You can describe the way the base sits flat and true and how we designed that base together. You can keep your attention on the smooth porcelain finish and make a case that none of us could afford a tea cup this good by ourselves. But if you never step back and look at the condition of the whole tea cup you might never understand that it is broken.

I ran across this video clip by CNN about a Christian congregation in Texas that put up a billboard proclaiming that they (Christians) were a bunch of jerks. What I find interesting is the commentary by guest Gabe Lyons about the way the Christian church is perceived in our culture and how people are working to change it.

I'm sorry I can't embed the video in the blog. Restrictions of a free service I suppose.
or you can watch the video in the right column for a time.

Truth be told, the Church is supposed to be broken. In communion we actually celebrate that the body of Christ is "broken for you." In the Gospel of John, when the resurrected Jesus appeared to the disciples in a locked room and showed them his wounds; his broken body. They could even put their finger inside the mark of the nails. If the Church is the Body of Christ as Paul suggests in this letters (and as the entirety of scripture points to) then the Church is supposed to be broken.

The problem is that the Church is not broken "for you." It's broken exactly because it is no longer "for you." The church has become a place that is "for me." Divisions happen when people feel that the church no longer agrees with their opinions. When I can't be comfortable in my own pew (every pun intended) I find something to fault and build a theological case around it. The God that created everything is never given the chance to do anything new but is restricted to literal interpretations of past actions.

For the Church to be whole and at peace (shalom) again it needs to be broken. The Church needs to die so that it can be raised as a new creation. We need to sacrifice those Church things that give us the most comfort: Sunday mornings, low-commitment serving opportunities, drop-in visits with the pastor, soft seats and spacious fellowship areas, favorite musical genres and "the way we've always done it."

When the Church quits trying to be a church and becomes the Body of Christ it will be broken. But that is the way it is supposed to be.