Like pastors, churches have lost a great deal of status. Many people view churches with great suspicion. Even those who find spirituality and Christian faith somewhat attractive may want no association whatsoever with an actual church congregation.
Congregations respond in various ways to this situation, and these responses can create a good deal of stress. Some congregations "circle the wagons" and become righteous remnants, preserving old ways at all costs. But such attempts to guard the tradition can produce nasty battles over exactly what constitutes the tradition, especially around music and worship. Conversely, congregations that respond by trying to change the tradition and do new sorts of worship can find those changes producing stress and conflict over what changes to make and what is good worship and what is not.
Anxiety about where the church is headed magnifies every choice and decision. Wrong choices could have dire consequences. This is stressful, and when people are stressed out, they rarely exhibit their most endearing behavior. Fights over worship are common in both innovating and conserving congregations. Or it can lead to a kind of paralysis where people don't dare do anything.
In such an atmosphere, congregational leaders and pastors can feel overwhelmed and inadequate to the task at hand. The stakes seem so high, and every little problem, misstep, or upset can feel life-threatening.
In today's reading from Romans, Paul speaks of the difficulties that he and others face as they work to build up the church. He writes, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."
I am inclined to think of difficulties, of pain or groaning, as signs that something is terribly wrong. But Paul seems to view the very same things as signs of something new being born.
I like to talk a lot about call, about my own and about the church needing to hear a clear call from Jesus. But I have to acknowledge that difficulty and pain and groaning are more likely to stop me dead in my tracks than they are to seem like signs of something new being born. I want a call that does not include any pain or groaning or difficulty or struggle.
Paul clearly understands Jesus much better than I do. He has totally bought into Jesus' language of taking up the cross, taking up suffering, and even death, as the path to true life. How else could he say what he says to us today. "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us."
We live in a time when it is hard to be the church, when church is not highly valued by the culture, when the way of Jesus is not a way many people, even many in the church, want to embrace. We also live in a time of great spiritual hunger, a time when people are longing for something they cannot find in the culture at large.
This is very different time from the time the church knew when I was born, but in many ways, it is a time not so different from the one Paul knew when he wrote his letter to the church at Rome. I wonder if I might be able, like Paul, to sense, in the difficulties and struggles and groaning that seem so much a part of being church in our time, the labor pains of something new that is being born.
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Yes, something new for our church - I feel it too. A newness both scary and exciting.
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