Is Willow Creek Just Shifting the Titanic's Chairs?

If you go by the numbers, the church is in trouble. We’ve reported it before. Statistically, the population of people going to church is shrinking. Now a major survey of people still attending church suggests the problem could get worse before getting better -- and getting better isn’t guaranteed.

On Thursday, May 16 Christianity Today Magazine led with a story about how Willow Creek, the Chicago area the mega-church, is making major changes in an attempt to halt the exodus. Willow Creek’s actions came in response to a four-year study called, “Reveal: Where are You?” Here’s how Christianity Today reported the situation:

“Since 1975, Willow Creek has avoided conventional church approaches, using its Sunday services to reach the unchurched through polished music, multimedia, and sermons referencing popular culture and other familiar themes. The church's leadership believed the approach would attract people searching for answers, bring them into a relationship with Christ, and then capitalize on their contagious fervor to evangelize others.

“But the analysis in Reveal, which surveyed congregants at Willow Creek and six other churches, suggested that evangelistic impact was greater from those who self-reported as "close to Christ" or "Christ-centered" than from new church attendees.”

Here’s where the real problem comes in: a quarter of the "close to Christ" or "Christ-centered" group describe themselves as "stalled" or "dissatisfied" with the role of the church in their spiritual growth. Worse yet, about one-quarter of the "stalled" and 63 percent of the "dissatisfied" are contemplating leaving the church. So Willow Creek is using its findings to shift it’s focus away from showmanship, and toward serving “mature believers seeking to grow in their faith.” But this group isn’t happy either. Sounds like “damned if you do, damned it you don’t.”

To learn if the problem was unique to them, “Willow Creek expanded its research into churches of varying geographic locations, sizes, and ethnic and denominational backgrounds” and found similar patterns everywhere.

Let me pause to say many millions are still attending church in America and being fed spiritually. For all its faults and failings, the church is still the greatest force for good in our culture. I haven’t seen many atheists or agnostics banding together to build hospitals. But this isn’t about what’s good for the church, it’s about healing a broken world and discovering how the church can best shape itself for the job.

To stay vibrant -- and reverse the growth trend, the church needs to make some essential changes. Simply revising musical or preaching styles isn’t going to do it. Refocusing on keeping the old guard rather than drawing in newbies won’t be enough either until basic questions are answered about the essence of what has gone wrong. Why are people “stalled or dissatisfied?” The tendency at times like this -- the tendency we’re seeing at Willow Creek -- is to fall back rather than ask how can we leap forward in a truly different way. So Willow Creek decides to drop its “fire ‘em up” Wednesday service in favor of some good, old-fashioned Bible study and theology classes. The question is, what will happen in those classes that makes a difference for the “stalled and dissatisfied,” or for newcomers trying to decide if this church or any church can feed their spiritual hunger -- tomorrow as well as today.

The Willow Creek study seems to say that mimicking contemporary forms isn’t the answer, and neither is nostalgia for that old-time religion. We in the church, we in this community which exists to sustain spiritual health, look out upon a cultural landscape that everyone, even the young, can see is an empty shell satisfying no one. We can‘t succeed by copying such a model. And only tired and unimaginative minds think the answer lies in a return to the old school. The old school had it’s chance and didn’t cut it.

I’m happy to report that our problem is also an opportunity. We get to go back to the drawing board with a chance at an exciting new beginning! Next time in this space, “where should we go from here?” I’ll give my thoughts, whatever they’re worth. Yours are welcome too. Just click on “comment” below.

Dreaming of a Future for "Neural Christianity"

In my world the phrase, “favorite conservative commentator” might be considered an oxymoron. But I want to give credit where it’s due. David Brooks is one of the most thoughtful, least biased of all commentators in the popular media. And his reach goes beyond partisan politics. Yesterday’s column in the New York Times is a good example. He describes recent trends in neurological research which suggest a native tendency in our species toward goodness:

“Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.”

That’s great news and what he writes should help feed optimism for our future. But what Brooks says next shows what a poor job we in the progressive church have done in spreading our enlightened understanding of Christ to our culture. “The cognitive revolution,” Brooks asserts, “is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going end up challenging faith in the Bible.” He goes on to say that this new research will most likely “lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.”

Now, Brooks doesn’t explain his concept of Buddhism so I’m not sure what he means, except to imply from his other comments that he views it as a kind of loving instinct for good that transcends our personal biology. We can all say “amen” to that.

What he doesn’t seem to understand very well is Christianity. Or more accurately, he understands Christianity the way the Evangelicals have taught him to understand it, which is no surprise. Speak of James Dobson and everyone nods in recognition. Say the name Marcus Borg and you get a quizzical look. “Faith in the Bible,” as Brooks describes it, is the literalist belief in the word-for-word inerrancy that Dobson peddles. Somehow Brooks has failed to realize that millions of Christians have a more sophisticated view in which Jesus is a transcendent spiritualist, and a social activist. When it comes to biblical faith, we don’t labor over the syllables but interpret intention in the full light of the God’s message of love, mercy and compassion.

Brooks could open his horizons by reading Borg’s side-by-side comparison of very similar teachings from Jesus and Buddha . And Borg isn’t the first to link the two. Christian teacher, philosopher and pastor Paul Tillich, recognized by many as among the leading thinkers of the 20th century (not just religious thinkers), often yoked Jesus and the Buddha together as the greatest spiritual prophets in human history.

I don’t blame Brooks for any of this. I blame our inability to move our progressive message outside the sanctuary and into the public spotlight. Interestingly, when we do, it is often in the form of confrontation with the Evangelicals. An article in Dobson’s online publication this week told of the Christian gay rights group Soulforce traveling to six so-called mega-churches around the country as part of its American Family Outing campaign. They kicked off the journey with a visit to Joel Osteen’s church on Mother’s Day. Osteen refused to meet with them. Now the others are trying to figure out how to handle their turn in the barrel. A spokesperson for Dobson’s organization Focus on the Family advises they should try to balance “the inerrant truth of God's word regarding sexual behavior and the compassionate grace of our Lord Jesus toward those living outside of it.”

“Living outside” of God’s grace? Foolish me, here I am thinking that even under the Evangelical definition Grace belongs to all who accept Jesus as God‘s son. I think that’s what Paul said -- that all of us on our own fall short of God’s glory but thankfully are justified by God’s Grace. Maybe Grace sounds to them a little too much like what Brooks described: an instinct for good -- in this case God’s instinct for good. Funny how inerrancy can ebb and flow as it suits one’s political purposes.

What I long for is a time when groups like Soulforce can just bypass the Evangelical mega-churches as irrelevant. In that day, hopefully, there will be no more mega-churches, only faithful communities of believers embracing and sharing God’s loving spirit. Soulforce would disappear into the mainstream in the true church of Jesus Christ, a church known by Jesus’ commandment to love one another as he has loved us. Brooks would no longer need to speak of undermining faith in the Bible, and could predict an age of “neural Christianity.” If he wanted to include the Buddha, that wouldn’t bother me.

When People Meet as Angels

I have a friend who sees the active hand of God in everything. Things always happen “in God’s time.” Because she’s looking for someone to share her life, she says, “God will send him when God is ready.” In general, she believes God has a plan, a kind of master script in which our lives play out.

I used to chuckle over this theology and call it God of Marionettes, as if we were all puppets worked on strings. At my church in Florida a publications person was fired for running an article in the newsletter about a 9/11 survivor who claimed to have prayed for God to save him, and believed he survived because at the last moment God reached out his mighty finger and pushed the plane upward to strike the building two floors higher. Apparently, God had no use for the people on that floor.

I once scoffed at this interventionist view of God. “We are God’s hands and feet,” I would say. “We are God’s toolbox.” I do still believe God needs and uses us to carry out divine will. And I can’t accept God picking winners and losers in sports contests or in terrorist attacks. But I now believe that if we keep our eyes open, and process what we see with our hearts more than our minds, we will see the force of God’s love moving constantly on the face of the earth.

Some spiritualists refer to the intersection of our needs with the force of God’s good will as synchronicity. You may have experienced it. You are hurting over some event in your life and have nowhere to turn. While shopping, you happen upon a long-lost friend who is particularly good at listening and sympathizing. After an hour over cups of coffee, you feel unburdened. Or, you are wishing you could do more to help the less fortunate, and you have this old dining room table cluttering your garage. The two things have nothing to do with each other until … along comes a poor, old woman in a wheelchair who lives in public housing and desperately needs a table. Ah, but have no way to get it to her until … along comes a man with a pickup truck who also is looking to do good in his life. Synchronicity or simple coincidence? God at work or simply God’s followers serving as God’s toolbox?

Earlier this week I wrote a column for this space discussing actions taken against gays and lesbians at the United Methodist General Conference in Fort Worth and how they failed to meet the criteria of Christ’s great commandment. I contrasted this with the reconciling church I attend in Chicago, where people of various sexual orientations, races, ethnicities and physical abilities, worship and serve together without ever stopping to ask if they should be disqualified as God’s hands and feet.

Soon after I posted the blog, I received a comment from a woman who had been in Fort Worth with her partner protesting the church’s actions and felt “heartbroken” by the results. She said I was “like Jesus” for speaking up for justice. Little did she know I’d been feeling doubt and discouragement over whether my work was bearing fruit. To me she was an angel, saying “yes, you are helping.”

Just when she needed to hear someone say God’s will for her is greater than any church body, I appeared. And when I needed someone to say keep it up my friend, you are helping to heal broken hearts, she appeared. Synchronicity? The hand of God? Or just two people trying to live out the great commandment? Maybe it’s a distinction without a difference.

Diversity Prospers Despite Hits from Fort Worth

The news from the United Methodist Church’s General Conference in Fort Worth was not good. The delegates had voted to retain language in the church’s constitutional Book of Discipline describing gay and lesbian people as out of step with Christ. Meanwhile, in my reconciling Methodist Church in Chicago, gay and lesbian people continued to share their love of God and bask in Jesus’ healing grace, undeterred by the bias in Texas.

In Fort Worth delegates used the word “integrity” to describe positions hurtful to Christians different from themselves and obviously inconsistent with Christ’s great commandment to love one another. In Chicago gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender Christians substituted faithful actions for statements about faith, obeyed Jesus and treated each other with love and kindness.

In Fort Worth heterosexual people firmly told homosexuals they are not welcome; in Chicago homosexual believers joyfully worship along with their straight brothers and sisters confident that all serve the same God.

In Fort Worth, the Methodist Church posted a slogan claiming, “Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors. ” In Chicago gay and lesbian disciples actually practice what the church preaches, opening their hearts, minds and doors to anyone and everyone.

In Fort Worth the church voted down a majority report which at least acknowledged that, “Faithful, thoughtful people who have grappled with this issue deeply disagree with one another; yet all seek a faithful witness,” and substituted minority language retaining statements in the Social Principles that the “United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” Meanwhile, in Chicago, having heard of the church’s actions, believers lifted their voices in praise and exchanged the peace with each other, confident that no human body is authorized to separate them from the love of God.

In Fort Worth delegates stood in their self-righteousness to mouth old clichés about gays and lesbians, with one describing them as “from the devil.” In Chicago, loving brothers and sisters basked in the righteousness of God’s healing grace, rolled up their sleeves and prepared to go on working to bring the message of Jesus and God’s unconditional love to all that need it.

As a straight man, I feel honored to worship in an atmosphere of loving diversity at Broadway United Methodist in Chicago. As for those in Fort Worth who seemed blind to the Spirit of Truth … it’s not mine to judge. Thankfully, we all serve a most forgiving God.

Let's be Honest, Messiah is a Tough Calling

It will soon be two thousand years since the days of Jesus’ ministry teaching and preaching among the peasants of Galilee, Judea and Samaria. Another fifty years and we’ll reach two thousand since the books of the New Testament began to appear. It’s a good time to stop and ask, has Christianity made a difference, and how should we expect our faith to impact the world over the next two thousand years.

Debating what might have been different if Jesus never lived makes an interesting parlor game. I’ve played it in Bible Study classes. Most believers assume Christianity has had a significant and positive influence but others think the good done under the guise of Christian love would have happened anyway -- that people motivated by altruism would have assembled under some secular banner. On the flip side, the religion haters point to the wars and atrocities perpetrated in the name of our faith and the others.

Let’s deal with the haters first. Take Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great. Heard him speak? He’s a hater by nature. If he didn’t have God to dump on, he’d target Bambi. Fact is, our wars and atrocities would have happened regardless of religion. Power and wealth are the motivations for war and oppression. Religion is just an excuse.

On the other hand, you have the hospitals built, the orphans cared for, the children educated under the auspices of various Christian groups. Good work indeed. But would it have happened anyway, under some non-religious motivation? Believe it or not, some atheists are caring people, and given the absence of religion as a counterpoint, who knows what kind of quasi-spiritual regime might have developed. Like I said, an interesting parlor game.

A more serious question for the future is whether Christianity could have done more if it hadn’t been so timid. Can we deny we haven’t lived up to Jesus’ vision? The Jesus of the New Testament is an apocalyptic figure, a confrontational prophet who condemns the culture of his day -- economic and religious -- and declares the coming of a new age, which he calls “the year of the Lord‘s favor.” But instead of fighting to the death for this new age, we Christians did just what the church of his day did -- made peace with the powers and principalities of the world and settled for incremental improvements.

When Jesus described “the year of the Lord’s favor,” he used very concrete terms: the oppressed and the captives would go free, the blind would receive sight and the poor would get relief. He didn’t say the poor would be a little poorer, or the oppressed a little less oppressed. He promised radical change and was killed for saying it was possible. Anyone eager to take up his mission?

When Barack Obama first stood and promised a new age, he was received as almost a messianic figure. But just as we stood and watched Christ’s message shrink to a size comfortable for the culture, Obama’s message has been reduced by others to a plaintive copy of Rodney King’s “why can’t we all just get along.” Jesus was willing to die rather than just get along. Maybe a guy like Jesus doesn’t come along every two thousand years. But if Obama wants to see his message live, he should be ready to speak the full truth and, if need be, let his candidacy die.

Courage Needed to End "Zero-Sum" Thinking

There are some words best left unspoken. If the so-called “N-word” just popped into your head, that’s a good word to forget but not the one I meant.

The word I had in mind is “dialectics.” I’ve watched many a pair of eyes glaze over at it’s mention. Most people have heard it but have only a vague idea what it means -- and no desire to learn more. I promise to keep it simple.

In our contentious culture, we tend to look at life as a contest of opposites in a zero-sum game. If one side increases, the other must decrease. This balance sheet thinking leads people to a cynical world view expressed in phrases like “it’s either you or me,” and “us vs. them.” For every winner there has to a loser, and as bluesman Howlin’ Wolf famously said, “I’d rather go to your funeral any day than have you come to mine.”

In the world of opposites, people hold to their opinions like God had etched them on tablets of stone. To have their positions threatened is to invite anger, depression and a general sense the universe is tilting out of kilter. I had that feeling recently when reading about the case of Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at a Goodyear Tire plant, who for almost 20 years was paid less than her male counterparts despite having more experience. When she learned she’d been cheated she offered to settle for $60,000 from Goodyear. The company said no and Ms. Ledbetter went to court, where a jury awarded her $223,776 in back pay and more than $3 million in punitive damages.

But eventually the case went to the Supreme Court and the company won on a technicality. Congress then tried to correct that technicality, but enough senators saw it as bad for business and blocked "doing the right thing."

I say “doing the right thing,” because I believe even the people who scuttled Ms. Ledbetter’s chance for fair treatment knew she had been treated unfairly. I don’t think they did it because they are just mean, hate women, or hate women taking “men’s jobs.” I think they got caught up in the world of opposites. To threaten their pro-business, traditional gender roles world view is to threaten the very ground they tread. In other words, they are afraid and immobilized.

The same day I read about Ms. Ledbetter I’m listening to some jazz vocals by Ann Hampton Callaway. She doing a Stephen Sondheim song called No One is Alone. If you’ve been around at all, you know that’s a crock. Lots of people are alone with no one to care about them. Some are even more alone than Ms. Ledbetter felt when the Supreme Court and Congress let her down. But as I listened I thought, “that’s how it ought to be, a culture where no one feels abandoned, a place where if you fall someone will catch you.” Then I’m thinking, some people oppose that culture. They oppose medical care for children, and social security, and fair treatment for Ms. Ledbetter. Didn’t we grow up hearing about the New Deal and the social compact? Now I’m the one feeling angry, afraid, and ready to fight rather than have the secure ground beneath me begin to quiver.

Do you see where I’m going with this? On one side in America, the pro-business, personal responsibility gang. On the other, the social covenant folk who say the culture should make sure life is safe and fair -- that no one is alone. The result is two sides locked in a war of opposites. Which brings me back to dialectics, a formula for moving society forward that says, “have hope; life is not a zero-sum game. We can take the best of both sides and form something new and improved.” But progress requires the return of good will, and that can’t happen if we continue to hole up within our fearful skins. Which is why we need God, or at least faith in a truth bigger than ourselves. On our own we'll never find enough courage and humility to break the stalemate.

Dreaming a New Age of Spiritual Transcendence

If I still expected the world to make sense, I’d say it’s ironic that the one presidential candidate too young to be part of the 1960s has sparked the most memories of that historic American era. To be clear, the decade we think of as the “sixties” actually ran from the time after JFK’s assassination through 1975 when we scampered out of Vietnam. The earlier part of the sixties is usually considered part of the fifties … you know: Ozzie and Harriet and all that.

The sixties are so interesting because they fostered so many crosscurrents that seemed at odds. It was a time of loud confrontation with the status quo over the war and civil rights, but also a time for quiet transcendence in a nation for which the “promise of America” had come to mean a house in the suburbs and two cars in the garage. The flowering of spirituality in the sixties intersected with pop culture to provide one of its sweetest names: “the Age of Aquarius.”

The sixties produced many trends that could be of value today. One was the tendency to distrust mainstream media and consider it propaganda. Freedom of thought flourished and alternative paradigms no longer had to square with science in order to have value. People tended to dig deeper to find “truth,” and the decade spawned a short-lived resurgence in spiritual reliance. Spiritual truth was embraced as satisfying our profound longing for understanding in a way simple information cannot.

The embers of the sixties have begun to glow again in the candidacy of Barack Obama. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman described Obama’s message as the politics of “transcendence,” but wonders whether enough Americans are seeking transcendence to make him a winner in November. There is much more to Obama’s candidacy -- he clearly stands for traditional Democratic economic issues, but it’s simpler for the mainstream to just “brand“ everything and everyone. Sorry Mr. Obama, one brand to a customer. If he tries to fashion a more complex platform mixing counter-culture and traditional messages, he’s taking a chance. Guys like Wolf Blitzer are easily confused. And anyway, America prefers to swallow its counter cultures, not learn from them. Look at how the sixties were co-opted by Madison Avenue and made over into one more marketing ploy. Maybe Mr. Obama should launch a line of tie-dyed tee shirts while he’s still hot.

Having seen the sixties dream of a more spiritual world whither away, I’m not overly optimistic that Mr. Obama can bring it back. But that doesn’t mean giving up. Jesus said seek and you will find. To seek means doing more than turning on CNN or Fox News, or for that matter clicking on Christianity Today’s online magazine. Once the truth reaches the surface it’s rarely the truth anymore.

A friend, Pastor Larry Davies, publishes a weekly meditation online that holds more truth in a few paragraphs than can be found in all the establishment seminaries in Dallas. In a recent posting he spoke about how, after Peter’s fear-filled desertion of Jesus at Gethsemane, Peter wanted to give up on the spiritual kingdom Jesus had promised: “Maybe I need to walk away,” Davies imagined Peter saying. “I can quit. I'll go back to doing what I do best. ‘I’m going fishing.’” That’s what happened as the sixties came to a close. So many walked away, went back to what they knew, and stopped seeking spiritual answers.

Perhaps the young Americans inspired by Mr. Obama would not describe it this way, but the spirit of the sixties is at the heart of his promise. Strip away all the negatives of that fabled era and what remains is faith that God’s spiritual presence can light our lives. Maybe the dream isn’t dead.