On Receiving a Scary Letter

Imagine that your congregation received a communication from a prophet who had just had a vision.  And that communication said, "Some of you are about to be put in prison on account of your faith. You will likely be tortured, and it will be terrible for 10 days.  But remain faithful until death, and you will conquer."

I'm not sure I can imagine such a thing.  It is so far outside any religious experience in our culture.  So if such a letter arrived at our church, no matter whom it came from, I would likely think the person a crackpot, some Tea Party sort who had gone completely off the deep end.

But what if, by some remarkable circumstance, I or you could be convinced that this communication was true?  Perhaps I'm wrong, but I feel reasonably certain that the vast majority of American congregations would lose over 90% of their members instantly.

The book of Revelation is a letter written to Christians facing just such difficult circumstances.  And unlike many modern Christians, they understood that this letter meant to assist them in remaining faithful under very trying circumstances.  It wasn't giving detailed predictions about the future or the end of the world.

Revelation was written in a very different time and to a very different Church.  Those Christians understood themselves to stand outside prevailing culture to some degree. They experienced a fair amount of tension between their new life in Christ and what it took to fit into Greco-Roman culture. 

When I was growing up, it was very difficult to separate Christian faith from the prevailing culture. There was a symbiotic relationship between the two, although I've often thought that the Church sold its soul in that bargain.  My Presbyterian/Reformed Tradition often spoke of Christ/Church as a transforming presence in the culture.  To be sure, some of that happened, but it cut both ways.

Over the years and centuries, Church became a very worldly institution, and like all institutions, it is often more fixated on preserving itself than anything else.  When the culture realized it no longer needed or wanted a symbiotic relationship with Church, the watered down thing we had become began to struggle without the stores and malls being closed on Sunday morning or religious indoctrination conducted by the public schools. (I think that the origins of the "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" I mentioned yesterday emerge from this transition.)

In the last 50 years or so, membership in Mainline churches has dropped by half.  And most who left did not join other denominations or mega-churches.  They simply left.  This group of "Nones," as some have labeled them, is huge and growing. "Nones" make up an estimated 20% of American adults, and the percentage is surely much higher among young adults.  But church congregations often seem blissfully unaware unless they are experiencing a big loss in membership and therefore worrying about how to get more people to come so their congregation can survive. 

In the staff meeting at this church today, I asked folks an identity question. (I borrowed it from a book on church planning by Kenneth Callahan.)  How would our neighbors finish this sentence?  "Falls Church Presbyterian, it's that church that___________." It's hard to know for certain if their answers accurately reflect what non-member neighbors would say, but I suspect they are fairly accurate.  Suggestions included something about our nice buildings, the Scouts that meet here, community events that we host, our great music program, or our once a month "Welcome Table" where we offer a free meal along with gift cards for a local grocery store and other items to people in need. 

As I looked over the list, it struck me that many congregations might have prompted a very similar list.  It also struck me that only the last item - and it was one of the last suggestions from the staff - had a direct connection to anything Jesus called us to do.

There are times when I wonder if the "institutional church" can actually be the Church. Sometimes it seems the best it can do is to house and nurture occasional episodes of Church, of Christ's body present to the world.  But the bulk of its energy and resources get tied up by the institution and its edifices, regardless of whether those do much to further the work of Christ in the world.

Perhaps I'm just having "one of those days" and being too hard on this thing we call Church.  What do you think. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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