Church Decline, The Great Commission, and Christian Optimism

Today's gospel reading comes from the last five verses of Matthew, a passage often labeled "The Great Commission." The remaining eleven disciples are sent "to make disciples of all nations" (or "all Gentiles," depending on how you translate the Greek). This is accomplished by baptizing and by "teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you."

Just over 100 years ago, many people thought the Great Commission was about to be fulfilled. The missionary movement would soon reach every corner and recess of the world, and the 20th Century would indeed be the Christian Century. A magazine by that name still exists. Not so the dreams of a fulfilled Great Commission. This week The Washington Post published a story entitled, "Christianity Faces Sharp Decline as Americans are Becoming Even Less Affiliated with Religion." And the certainty of a century ago erodes a bit more.

For some this simply reinforces the angst that is already prominent in American Christianity, one more bit of confirmation that the sky is falling. But I suspect that this angst is as overblown as the confidence of a hundred years previous. Both the confidence and the angst emerged more from the perceived strength or weakness of the nation than from any promise of divine presence and help.

Old notions of a Christian Century were closely connected to American confidence and hubris. Expectations that the 20th Century would be an American Century buttressed hope for a Christian one, and at times it was nearly impossible to separate American hopes of expansion and empire from missionary zeal. Similarly, America's current, shaky self-confidence gets mirrored in today's religious angst. But just because Christendom folded wedded faith to culture doesn't mean God ever did.

In fact, if by "Christianity" that article in The Washington Post means to speak of discipleship, the sort Jesus commands in his Great Commission, then the headline may even be a factual error. By measuring Christianity largely on the basis of participation in institutional churches, the statistics in the article may actually chart a decline of cultural expectations rather than a decline in faith of any real significance. For decades, the culture propped up church participation, meaning church affiliation was never an accurate measure of the Great Commission's fulfillment.

I have long felt that the demise of "cultural Christianity" was a great opportunity for the Church. (By Church I mean the body of Christ and not any particular denomination or congregation.) We have the chance to consider whether what we do is about following Jesus and his counter-cultural Way, or whether it is a remnant of days when we had been co-opted by the culture for its purposes. And here the measure is not adherents or the number of folks who "believe" in God or Jesus. The measure is discipleship which Jesus describes as obeying "everything I have commanded you."

Congregations are always a messy amalgam of discipleship and culture. This is necessarily the case because we exist in the world. It is quite appropriate for a congregation to use its culture's styles of communication and interpretation in teaching and living out its discipleship. But this cultural connection becomes a problem when the congregation or denomination starts to exist to propagate its culture. This happened in the missionary movement a hundred years ago when converts in sub-Saharan Africa were told they needed to adopt Western clergy attire and Western music and instruments in order to be Christian. And it happens today when congregations imagine that part of their calling is to ensure that their cultural ways of being church survive.

This is not a call for churches to junk their pipe organs or embrace whatever the latest fad for attracting people to faith is, far from it. It is a call for us to step back and wonder WHY we do the things we do. Are our activities about faithfully striving to become disciples who obey Jesus and about helping other to become disciples, too? Or do they primarily serve some other purpose? This is critical information because when our efforts are about making disciples, it is hard not to be optimistic. After all, Jesus promises to be with us, and what could be better than that?

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Sermon video: Liturgy of Abundance - The Uprising of Stewardship

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Don't Be So Negative

Over the years I've heard my share of complaints regarding the "prayer of confession" in weekly worship. Not  everyone feels this way, but it's not unusual to get a critique regarding such prayers' negativity. "Why do I need to say I'm no good week after week?" people ask.

I sometimes remind folks that many alcoholics find the mantra, "I'm Joe, and I'm an alcoholic" to be anything but negative. It is instead a truth-telling statement that opens them to new possibilities, and prayers of confession can be understood in much the same way.

However, I do think the Church has overplayed the sin hand at times. We've spoken of sin as making us so appalling that God can't possibly love us without resorting to some sort of trickery to remove our stench, namely the cross. God so loved the world, but apparently, this involves holding her nose while looking the other way until Jesus has done his magic.

I blame Greek philosophy for some of the problem here. When an Eastern, Jewish, apocalyptic faith met Western thought, there were bound to be some problems. The God of Israel got re-imaged through Western eyes. Narratives got turned into doctrines and a dynamic and multifaceted God morphed into static perfection. To make matters worse, sin became an inherited problem traced back to Adam and Eve. The devil tempted them and we've been living with that baggage ever since. Never mind that there is no devil in the Genesis creation stories.

And so we in the Church deserve some of the bad press we get about sin. However, that doesn't mean sin is some terrible, negative idea in contrast to the rosy views of the prevailing culture. While the typical America probably does think of herself as reasonably "good" as opposed to evil, our culture actually bombards us with images that are decidedly negative. "There is something wrong with you," says much of the advertising we see daily.

We are not pretty enough, successful enough, smart enough, rich enough, popular enough, and the list goes on and on. Our TV screens are too small and our smartphones are outdated. Our retirement portfolio is insufficient and our clothes are out of style. Much of life is a harried, stressful struggle to ensure we don't turn into the miserable wretches we're sure to become if we don't get good enough grades, attend a good college, make the right connections, get the right job, and on and on. And we are only as good as our latest performance. Our worth is about what we can produce and accomplish and achieve.

By contrast, a biblical understanding of sin is positively uplifting. The Bible says we are good at our core. What's more, God loves us and is committed to us. There's no denying that something is amiss. We are remarkably good at messing things up and engaging in self-destructive behavior. We are prone to be so worried about ourselves that we hurt others. But you don't need a Bible to tell you that, to realize that something (what the Bible calls sin) distorts us from being who we truly are (what the Bible calls salvation).

Prayers of confession are part of this process. They are not about unlovable humans becoming lovable because Jesus somehow sanitizes us sufficiently for God to be able to touch us. God's love simply is. God cannot hate or despise us. And as we come to realize this, we are free to drop the masks and facades we all construct. Trusting in God's remarkable love, we have no need for spin or image control. What is more, God's love can begin to transform us. We can begin to see others as God sees us, those who are loved and longed for. And all that sounds pretty positive to me.

Sermon: Liturgy of Abundance - The Uprising of Stewardship

2 Corinthians 8:1-15

Liturgy of Abundance

The Uprising of Stewardship

James Sledge                                                                                       May 10, 2015

From time to time I’ve turned on my local PBS station hoping to watch Frontline or Nova only to discover some well-worn show featuring over the hill folk musicians. Instantly I realize it’s a PBS fundraising campaign. If I give $50 I will receive a lovely tote bag. And if I give more, I will get an autographed CD featuring some of the music.

I’ve never really understood the strategy of putting on tired reruns rather than the programming I’d like to watch to entice me to give. I can appreciate the need for financial support. I just find the process a little distasteful.

I suspect a lot of people have similar feelings regarding church stewardship campaigns. They often feel a little contrived. If you’ve been around church long enough you know what I’m talking about. You’ve seen the campaigns with cutesy names such as The Pony Express. Everyone realizes that the church can’t operate if people don’t give, but the process sometimes leaves something to be desired.

It doesn’t help that stewardship is often just a churchy word for fund raising. I wonder if we don’t need to separate the two, to fundraise unapologetically and then, quite separately, to help people grow into the joyful, life-giving practice of stewardship, generosity born of  new life in Christ.

Getting better at church fundraising is a pretty straight forward project. I’m not saying it’s easy but it is mostly a matter of learning best practices. Stewardship is another issue altogether because some of the basic tenets of Christian stewardship are fundamentally at odds with the cultural and economic world we live in.

Sermon video: Freed for Minsitry Together - The Uprising of Partnership

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video for April 26: Worship in the Kingdom

After some "technical difficulties," sermon videos are back up.


Audios of sermons and worship available on FCPC website.

Sermon: Freed for Ministry Together - The Upsrising of Partnership

Acts 16:16-34

Freed for Ministry Together

The Uprising of Partnership

James Sledge                                                                                                   May 3, 2015

Imagine for a moment that you are out for a walk on a nice spring day. As you walk down the street you hear something up ahead and you begin to smell smoke. You pick up your pace a bit and round the corner to see a house with flames lapping out several of the windows. It looks pretty bad, but there are no firefighters. Then you spot someone yelling from a window of the third floor. She sees you and yells more frantically. “Please, help! Save me!” In such a situation do you,

a.       Grab your cell phone and call 911?

b.      Take the ladder you see lying there and try to reach the window with it?

c.       Tell her about Jesus?

Now imagine an entirely different scenario. (Or maybe you won’t need to imagine. This has happened in real life to me a couple of times. ) Again you are out for a walk, but this time someone comes up to you and asks, “Have you been saved?” In this situation do you,

a.       Ignore them and keep walking?

b.      Tell them that you are already a Christian?

c.       Stop and tell them about that time you were rescued from a burning building?

Language is a strange thing. We like to think it provides us with a precise means of communicating, but the reality is that even the best communicators get misunderstood with regularity. Every pastor I have ever known has stories about someone coming up following worship and expressing thanks for a word that spoke directly to that person’s situation. But upon further conversation, it became clear that the person heard something the pastor had no intention of saying.

I know a pastoral counselor who is fond of saying that it’s a wonder that we manage to communicate at all.

One of the problems with language is that words pick up a lot of baggage over the years. Take that word “save” and its companion, “salvation.” Both show up in our reading from Acts. The spirit possessed slave-girl whom Paul cures had been going on and on about how Paul and his companions “proclaim to you a message of salvation.” And when a jailor realizes that his prisoners have not escaped after an earthquake opens the doors, he cries out, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And we hear these stories nearly 2000 years later and think we know what the words mean.

Tears for a Far Off Kingdom

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,

     whose hope is in the LORD their God, 

who made heaven and earth,
     the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
     who executes justice for the oppressed;
     who gives food to the hungry. 

The LORD sets the prisoners free;
     the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. 

The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
     the LORD loves the righteous. 

The LORD watches over the strangers;
     he upholds the orphan and the widow,
     but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

 Psalm 146:5-9

As I read Psalm 146 this morning, my thoughts turned to Baltimore, to the violence, the hopeless desperation, the crushing poverty, the senseless looting, the justifiable anger, the lack of opportunity, the fear... It is so tempting to draw easy and simple explanations, to point a finger and say, "There! That's the problem." But mostly I just find myself horrified by all of it, wanting to cry but unable.

A colleague, Ray Roberts, posted this on Facebook last night. "Watching Baltimore burn and praying for our country. Jesus wept over Jerusalem because they did not know the things that make for peace..." We still don't.

As I mulled the psalm over in my mind, I wondered if the psalmist had experienced happiness from God executing justice, feeding the hungry, lifting up the bowed down, and thwarting the ways of the wicked. Or was the psalmist instead longing for those things, even attempting to stir divine action by reminding God of God's own character.

Jesus came speaking in a manner much like the psalmist. He said he came "to bring good news to the poor... proclaim release to the captive... (and) to let the oppressed go free." But people didn't much listen to the ways Jesus proclaimed and taught, and we don't listen much better today. Surely Jesus weeps over Baltimore, and most other cities in America, just as he once did over Jerusalem.

Faith is hard sometimes. I'm not talking about magic-formula-faith that hopes God will reward me for sharing that Facebook post or punch my ticket for heaven if I believe the right things. I'm talking about a faith that actually embraces the things Jesus and the psalmists proclaim when they insist that God is working to bring down the powerful and lift up the lowly, a faith that lives as though that were really true.

Almost 2000 years ago, Jesus was on better terms with folks like those in troubled areas of Baltimore than he was with religious leaders, police chiefs, governors, or captains of industry. He proclaimed a new day, a kingdom of God without a top or a bottom, a day when those who had plenty used it to make sure all had enough. But the powers that be thought that a terrible idea. And they still do.

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Sermon: Worship in the Kingdom

Acts 2:41-47

Worship in the Kingdom

James Sledge                                                                                       April 26, 2015

I have a vivid memory of something that happened during worship at a church I previously served. That particular sanctuary was a bit different from ours. It was a longer and narrower. Like ours, there was a narthex just out the sanctuary doors, but it also had a large fellowship space straight through on the other side of the narthex.

More importantly, at least for this story, the back wall of this sanctuary had windows that went all the way across. This meant that the choir and I could look out of the sanctuary during worship into the narthex as well as into a bit of the fellowship area.

This could be distracting during preaching. A few ushers always stayed out in the narthex and were often moving around, getting a cup of coffee, finding the offering plates, arranging furniture in the fellowship area, and so on. I tried very hard to ignore them.

One Sunday while preaching, I saw a fellow who looked like he might be homeless enter the narthex from the doorway just out of my view to my left. He did not make it before he was intercepted by one of those ushers. I could see what happened but not hear anything. The usher appeared to act cordially and probably asked what he could do for him. I assume the man said he was looking for help, and the usher said it wasn’t the best time because he then led the man, gently but firmly, back across the narthex until he disappeared from my view again, headed to the exit.

I don’t know if people in the congregation noticed my distraction. I kept preaching, but my focus was on the other side of those windows. That moment has stayed with me, and I’ve  wondered about them from time to time. Did the usher ask the man if he wanted to stay for worship? Did the man volunteer that he would come back later when told worship wouldn’t be over for another 30 minutes? I don’t know.

The contrasts were stark, though. The usher was in coat and tie, the other man was disheveled and in ragged clothes. The usher and almost everyone in worship were white while this fellow was black. Whatever the particulars of his conversation with the usher, he was not one of  us. He was not like us. And he did not stay for very long.

Watching those events in the narthex, it was easy to imagine the usher reinforcing the racial and economic barriers of our society, although I doubt he meant to. He was just concerned about decorum and order in worship. I know he supported the ministry where homeless families lived in our church building for a week at a time, eight times a year. He just thought of worship and mission as two separate things.

In that sense, he was little different from me. As a second career pastor, I can recall those times my wife and I looked for a church to join. When we did, we sought people who were “like us,” who sang hymns we knew and had a worship style we were used to. And the churches we ended up joining had people that looked like us, dressed like us, and mostly had skin color like us. Looking for a church, for a place to worship, was not about breaking down cultural, racial, or economic barriers. It was about finding a comfortable place to attend.

Endings, Beginnings, and Liturgical Correctness

If you're the churchy sort, you likely know that Easter is not yet over, that it is a season lasting until Pentecost. I've seen a number of reminders of this on Facebook, some of them quite humorous. I myself have sometimes reminded folks myself about Easter not being over. But I do wonder if this doesn't start to sound like "liturgical correctness" at some point.

Yes, Easter continues. For that matter, every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection, even those Sundays in Lent. Yet in terms of all the build up and preparation leading to the services on Easter morn with huge crowds and brass quartet, the big day has come and gone. Even if we keep watering and caring for those Easter lilies, they're starting to look a bit bedraggled by now.

I love the way we do Easter big. Unlike Christmas, most of the excitement is not about secular things (Easter bunny aside) but about the good news that Jesus lives. There is a problem, however, when Easter is just a celebration of something that happened long ago, and not about the start of something.

If you read this blog often, you know that our congregation is letting Brian McLaren's book, We Make the Road by Walking, guide our worship. He uses the theme of "Uprising" for all of Easter, and today's theme is "The Uprising of Discipleship." It draws on the story in John 21, where after the resurrection, after Jesus has said to the disciples, "As the Father has sent me, so I send you," after Jesus breathed on them saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit," after Jesus appeared to Thomas, after all this Peter says, "I am going fishing," and a number of other disciples join him.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it feels a lot to me like Easter was over for Peter. No doubt he was thrilled that Jesus was alive. Considering how badly he had failed when Jesus was arrested, it was wonderful that his denial of Jesus wasn't the last word. But now Peter was going fishing, going back to what he knew. Did he think his failure had disqualified him? Was Easter a great moment for him, but now it was over; now it was time to get back to his regular life?

If Peter is thinking that way, Jesus sets him right. In a threefold question and command formula, Jesus seemingly undoes any lingering trouble from Peter's threefold denial, and Jesus commissions him to care for the flock. And he utters the original call once more, "Follow me."

Peter nearly gets off track a second time when he looks over at "the beloved disciple" and asks "What about him?" There's always a "what about" that gets in the way of following Jesus, isn't there. If anything, Jesus sounds more irritated with Peter here than he was when he "undid" the denial. In so many words he tells him, "That's none of your concern," and then he calls once more. "Follow me!"

I don't think John's gospel includes chapter 21 (it looks like it could be an addition to a work that seems to finish with chapter 20) just to tell what happened to Peter. Most of us find ourselves in Peter's place from time to time. There are things we've done, things about us, ways that we've failed that surely disqualify us. There are also "What about?" questions that get in our way. But Jesus reminds Peter and us that Easter is a beginning, not an end.

The big celebration of Easter may indeed be over, but the work of Easter is just getting started. And it continues when we hear Jesus speak to us, dismissing our failures or whatever else think disqualifies us, redirecting us from our inevitable, "What about?" and calling us once more, "Follow me!"

On Loving One Another

Linus, the character in the Peanuts comic strip, once uttered this. "I love mankind. It's people I can't stand." I imagine many of us know how Linus felt. Peanuts is not popular all these years after Charles Schultz's death because he wasn't a keen observer of the human condition.

It is easy to love humanity in general. It's when they start to become particular people that loving them becomes problematic. In our day the hatred between liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, progressive Christians and fundamentalists, sometimes borders on rabid. But you can find hatred and nastiness within like groups. Look at the sort of infighting that occurs within political parties, or the fights that take place within Christian denominations and congregations.

I assume that the writer of today's epistle reading from 1 John is familiar with this sort of intra-congregational nastiness. Why else would he go on so about how important it is to love other followers of Christ, saying that "whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness"?

I can only assume that the writer knew well that it is sometimes easier to love some unknown person far away, even when that person counts as an enemy, than it is to love that so-and-so you bump into every week, the one who has said nasty things about you, or made your life unnecessarily difficult, or blamed you for a problem not of your making.

How easy it is to seethe against those who have hurt us in ways that are immediate and personal as only those close to us can. But the epistle writer insists that we cannot be followers of Christ when we succumb to this temptation to hate those who are supposed to be in community with us, and that we stumble in the darkness when we do.

In her sermon here last Sunday, Diane Walton Hendricks shared this quote from Parker Palmer's The Company of Strangers. "When people look upon the church, it is not of first importance that they be instructed by our theology or altered by our ethics but that they be moved by the quality of our life together: 'See how they love one another.' "

Most of the congregations I've known over my life spent a great deal of time and energy on doing good worship and on having good programs and activities. Some of this has been geared toward fellowship opportunities and so community-building. But very often, community was more assumed than cultivated. It had occurred, more or less, organically over the years.

I love worship and think it essential to any Christian community. Still, I can't help wondering what church might look like if we spent the same sort of time and energy and money on building loving community as we do pulling off good worship.

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Confirmation Issues

Today is the day that members of our congregation's confirmation class make their public professions of faith, becoming full-fledged, adult members of the faith. This group has been meeting together since October, discussing and exploring the meaning of faith and discipleship. Today our congregation witnesses their choice to claim the faith as their own and to walk with Christ as his followers. It is an exciting day, and it is a special day.

Anytime I think about confirmation, I can't help but recall an old (and rather bad) joke. The story goes that a group of pastors are having lunch. One of the group shares that the steeple at her church has become the home to a huge colony of bats, and they are struggling to get rid of them. The other pastors offer suggestions, but each has already been tried. Finally, the Presbyterian pastor says, "We had that problem, but I solved it. I simply enrolled all the bats in our confirmation class, and when the class ended, we never saw them again."

All too often, at least in Presbyterian churches, confirmation classes and professions of faith have tended to be a graduation from church rather than an entry into it. And no matter how seriously a congregation takes this process, no matter how carefully and thoughtfully it is done, the results are still something of a mixed bag. Some of those confirmed today will begin to take a more active role, but others will seldom be seen again.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why some parents and young people bother with confirmation. Our culture no longer requires or much encourages church participation, yet certain habits die hard. Some parents who don't participate encourage their teenagers who don't participate nonetheless to attend confirmation and "join." It's an odd sort of cultural holdover from a different time. It is the continuation of a cultural norm that no longer exists but somehow persists here and there. Or maybe it represents a lingering hope that Christ might be met.

One of the interesting things happening in Christian faith these days is the way it is becoming counter cultural. Going to church on Sunday is declining, though still rather common. Seeking to live as a dedicated follower of Jesus is much less common. Maybe it always was but we didn't realize it when church was such a big part of the norm. I wonder how many confirmation class members - at this congregation or any other - recognize this counter cultural aspect of faith. Are they simply participating in the vestiges of an old and quickly fading cultural norm? Or do they still hope to meet the risen one? Will those who we don't see again after today bring their children back for confirmation? If the cultural inducements to church participation completely fade away, will a hope of meeting Jesus still cause people to show up?

Maybe when we talk about confirmation, the first question we should ask is how likely people are to bump into Jesus anywhere in the process. Will they encounter the body of Christ somewhere amidst the discussions or service or worship? Will they see Christ in the gathering of the faithful who meet here for worship and service and who will welcome them as members upon their profession of faith?

An encounter with the risen Christ is a powerful thing. It is not something that ever goes away completely. If those confirmation members who drift away did in fact encounter Christ, I will trust that experience, that presence, to do its work over time. And if they did not, why should they stay? And so perhaps congregations should worry less about trying to get the confirmation curriculum or process just right. Those are important, but probably nowhere near so important as being a community where Christ is met.

I firmly believe that, deep down, all people long for God. I don't think this is any less true in our time, a day when church participation is declining at a rapid rate. So perhaps any concerns about why some members of confirmation classes disappear shortly after the class ends should be refocused on why less and less people seem to think that church is a place where they might meet God.

I recently heard a sermon on Jesus' commandment that we "love one another." The pastor spoke on how very often churches are better at loving the neighbor via charity or social justice than we are at loving the people in our congregation, that difficult mix of people who are our community of faith. So how does the love of Christ flow within our fellowship? How is it experienced in ways concrete enough that Christ is encountered now and then in the life of the community? Because an encounter with this love is a powerful thing.