"It's the end of the Church as we know it, and I feel..."

      I had the great privilege of spending a day and a half with some of my fellow clergy folk over the weekend. We were on a retreat together that for me was very helpful and centering.  But while we were focused on spiritual practices, what I want to write about is more the recurrent themes that I heard throughout the retreat of frustration, depression, and feelings of discouragement.  I want to talk about the pervasive feelings of many (most?) pastors these days of insecurity, of being in a wilderness that seems to have no end, of not knowing the path, of feeling a bit lost in a turbulent and changing sea. As I've mentioned to my congregations both present and past on more than one occasion, the national Church is dying.  Conservative estimates are that within 10-20 years the Church as we know it (across denominations, and even across different faiths in the United States) will no longer exist.  20 churches a day closed in 2013, and that number is on the rise. The estimate was that over 10,000 churches closed in 2015.  In terms of members, 1.2 million people stopped going to church in 2015 alone.  The reasons for this are numerous, and if you are a pastor, you know that there is another article written every day about why and who and how to reverse this trend, what successful churches look like, what the dying ones are doing wrong, what has worked and failed to work.  Article after article and seminar after seminar tell us how to do it differently, what someone believes is the thing that will change this all around.  AND, the reality is, none of it is working.  What might work for one congregation seldom works for another.  We have seen attempts to slow down the decline that have bumped attendance at particular individual congregations for a while, only for a dramatic loss to follow a few years later.  Most successful churches currently center on a charismatic personality, until that person moves on, is caught in a scandal of some kind, or dies, at which point their church usually collapses.  The reality is that our congregations are all aging.  Church is not a priority for our younger families at all, if it is even on their radar.  Church has become very suspect, in large part because the ultra conservative churches are the loudest and espouse an exclusive, judgmental world view that is a real turn off for most of us. Fighting among different faith beliefs and religions doesn't help.  The bad things churches have done shout from our history books, the good we have done is often forgotten. Liberal churches don't believe in evangelizing so we allow the term "Christian" to be co-opted and we don't speak out about who we are. Progressives are afraid to ruffle feathers so we keep quiet, and often become irrelevant: country clubs rather than places that actually do the work of God.  Or we do the work (feeding, housing, advocating, caring for the poor and oppressed), but again, quietly, without fanfare, and so go unnoticed and un-noted.  But even without this, other priorities have taken our time and attention. Spirituality seems to be more individual and less rooted in community at the moment.
     About every 500 years there is a reformation of sorts: things change, dramatically, as far as the religious scene. The Protestant Reformation began exactly 500 years ago this October, so we are due for another one. The clergy I talk to see this. We recognize that God will be doing a new thing, that we can't see it yet, but there will come a time when we know what that is, and that death is just a step towards a new life that looks different; that times in the wilderness often precede very fertile growth and change. It won't be the same.  There is comfort in that, in the belief and hope that a new thing is coming.
      When I can step outside of myself and sit in meditation or delight in the beauty of the creation that God has made; when I can look at my children and hear their ideas and hopes and dreams for the future, when I can do all of that, I am more than okay with where we are heading.  I can be excited to see what is coming next, not seeing a new thing as a judgment on an old thing but as a step into something different for a different time.  I can see the mistakes we've made and make, and I can hope that the new thing coming will be more loving, more giving, more true to what I believe is the intention towards Love and connection and community. The future of faith can look radically different and I am okay with that.  I want a kinder, more understanding, gentler world where we do stand up for the hungry, for the poor, for the underprivileged.  I want a world where people understand that we are all truly connected and that therefore it is in our best interest to make sure everyone has what they need: food, shelter, community, kindness, respect. I can and do hope for a more inclusive, uplifting, empowering sisterhood and brotherhood of love, hope and practice. I am okay with anything that moves us in that direction. I know it will be different, and I look towards the beauty in that.
      But for those of us who have made this our career, I have to be honest and tell you that however faithful we are, however hopeful and trusting and convicted of resurrection we may be, that there is fear that accompanies all of this. From a practical place, finding hope and joy is more challenging. First of all, people need someone to blame and the clergy are the obvious scapegoats for the anger felt by those who are losing their communities as churches close down and can no longer afford to continue. While there are arrogant clergy, most of the good folk I know err on the side of taking on more than is their due.  We take it in, a sense of failure, a sense of not being good enough, and we take that in deeply. Depression is a very common experience among clergy these days as we work harder than ever, longer hours, lonelier hours, with less result, less return, less sense of accomplishment, community, growth. In the world outside of the church there is a huge mistrust of clergy.  To have the constant experience of meeting others, and in conversation sharing what we do for a living only to see the walls come down and the judgments descend, to experience the distancing response of those around us, is disheartening at the least.  We feel like pariahs, too often, and can end up isolated within our declining churches. Along with the depression comes anxiety as we face the questions of our own futures. I need to be able to work another 20 years at least.  I am the sole support for three children.  And not a week goes by now when I don't wonder how I will be able to get them to independence before my career is defunct, along with my ability to support them.  I have had the experience of applying for different work, only to find that the distrust of clergy makes stepping into another career as difficult as remaining in this one. Some of you may say that sounds unfaithful. But my experience is that God gives us freewill, does not micromanage our lives.  Bad things happen to good people, and yes, people are given more than they can handle on a regular basis. (Look at the folk around the world struggling with famine, lack of clean water, war, deportment, exile, and then tell me it is unfaithful to fear bad things coming.  As scripture itself tells us, "the rain falls on the just and unjust alike.")
      Fear can be a gift.  It can motivate and move us to look ahead, to start the wondering, "what if..." and to try to plan accordingly. But in a world where the future is increasingly unclear, where each day brings new uncertainties and new concerns, the future that we fear is very dim.  The "what ifs" are unreal glimpses at what is very cloudy.  We stand at the entrance to a cave.  What is beyond is anyone's guess, and the way through is not marked.
      So we wait.  And we watch.  And we listen.  And we try to hold each other up as we walk forward, reminding one another that we are beloved children of a gracious Divinity.  We search our dreams and our meditations for meaning and direction.  We study and read and attend conferences. We pray.  But we see what is coming.  It is the end of the Church as we know it.  And we feel all sorts of things in response to that: hope, joy, excitement; also fear, anxiety, depression and worry.
       Each day is a gift.  And I rest in that reality as well.  It helps to know we do not walk this alone, even as we often feel alone in our individual faith communities.  And it helps to trust that we have been called to the places we currently serve.  We are called here for now.  This time in the desert is meaningful. We will wait and look for the next summons, the next beckoning forward.  And until then we will be faithful in our work, striving to do what God would have us do, striving to serve as the people call us to serve, stepping forward on the journey even as we wait for the next turn in the road to come.

Easter

Christ is Risen Indeed!

Jeremiah 31:1-6

John 20:1-18

            It is understandable that there are times, at least, when we find the resurrection so distant from us that it doesn’t really affect our daily living.  We live in a cynical age, an age of pessimism and despair.  I listen to the words of popular songs on the radio.  20, 40, 50 years ago the words were things like, “Every little thing she does is magic” and “Love is all we need” and “I can see me loving nobody but you, for all my life!” and “God only knows what I’d be without you!”  But today words to popular songs on the radio include “I’m not going to write you a love song!” and “All these fairy tales are full of it, one more stupid love song, I’ll be sick!” and “Now you’re just somebody that I used to know!”  and “And now it’s clear to me that everything you see ain’t always what it seems.  Falling from cloud nine, crashing from the height.”  “Who died and made you king of anything”  “I don’t care for your fairy tales, you’re so worried about the maiden but you know she’s only waiting on the next best thing.  Once upon a time in a far away kingdom, man made up a story said that I should believe him, but go and tell your white knight while he’s handsome in hindsight, I don’t want the next best thing.”  “Gotta move on and be who I am.  I gotta do what’s best for me, You’ll be okay.” “No one said it was easy.  No one said it would be so hard.  I’m going back to the start.”  Even Christian lyrics express this broken idea of love, “How I wish we could go back to simpler times, Before all our scars and all our secrets were in the light, Now on this hallowed ground, we've drawn the battle lines, Will we make it through the night?”  Etc.

            I read a wonderful book called The Beethoven Factor by psychologist Paul Pearsall (Charlottesvill, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing, 2003).  In it he discusses what he calls the eighth deadly sin or “Acedia”.  He says, “Acedia was removed from the list of deadly sins in the sixth century by Pope Gregory the Great, but this sin of living with fatigued apathy, cynicism, ennui, and general spiritual weariness is still committed by millions every day.  In fact, languishing now far exceeds depression as the number one emotional problem in the Western world.  Unlike those whose life crisis led them to discover the capacity to thrive, flourish and savor, three of four of us are missing out on the full gift of being alive.”

And this cynicism is not just relegated to the secular world.  It exists in our churches as well.  Gil Rendle’s book,  Journey in the Wilderness (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2010) looks at the alarming rate of decline in our Christian churches in the United States as well as the attempts over the last 50 years to stop the decline, to reverse the decline.  Every effort we’ve made has been unsuccessful, though we have tried many things with these different attempts.  And this does not just leave congregations fearful (especially where finances are concerned), desperate and needy.  It affects individuals and perhaps especially clergy.  There are increasingly too many clergy for the smaller number of congregations.  But it is more than that. 

Studies show that pastors work harder than ever now, with decreasing rewards as we are paid less, focus more and more energy on building our churches, and are often blamed for their decline at the same time.  I have a pastor friend of another denomination who went to a renewal of his clergy vows and was sharing with me the ethos of despair and pessimism and cynicism that he experienced among his colleagues who were there to renew their answer of “yes” to God’s call for their lives to be clergy.  They chose to do this renewal of vows because they love God and love the church, and yet there was a strong feeling of depression, of sadness, of despair, even in that renewal as they looked at the struggle to find lasting employment in declining congregations, as they struggled, sharing ideas about how to keep small congregations in shrinking denominations from dying, and realizing the many things that have been tried without success. Is it any wonder that we find stories of the resurrection distant?  Inaccessible?  Irrelevant?  That in many of our congregations people sit, even on Easter, and say “Christ is risen” as if they were saying, “It’s raining outside today” – as if it didn’t matter, as if it made no difference to their lives at all?

Does it matter? Does it make a difference? We come here every week to proclaim the good news that Christ is Risen. We come here as a statement that it does matter.  It matters more than anything else in the world. It is the deepest truth we will know and experience and it makes all the difference in our lives.  I stand here and proclaim this every week because I believe that it matters.  I do it more because I have seen that it is true.  I have experienced that it is true.  I have experienced the presence of the risen Christ, and I have experienced again and again that death, especially death for others, out of care, out of compassion, out of grace, ends with the resurrection, with renewal, with new life when we are open to God’s movement and God’s ever-changing love.  The truth that began with Jesus’ resurrection that God will raise us from death, this is a truth that transcends everything.  It is a truth that is so deep, that is so important that even our fairy tales and classic stories espouse this truth again and again and again.  What is the most popular selling book other than the Bible?  The Harry Potter series made more sales than any other book in the history of publishing except for the Bible.  And how does the series conclude?  (spoiler alert - so anyone who hasn’t read the entire series yet may want to cover their ears for a moment), 1st Cor. 15:26 is quoted in the final Harry Potter book, when Harry visits his parent’s graves. He is disturbed by these words “The last enemy to be destroyed is death,” but Hermione tells him that these are not words to be disturbed by but that they bring comfort. Harry finds that in order to stand up and defeat the evil in his world, Lord Voldemort, he has to defeat his fear of death.  It is the fear of death that he has to conquer, and to conquer it, he has to be willing to die to save his friends.  But as we know, that death, just like Jesus’ death, does not have the final word.  And while Harry Potter is a story, a fairy tale, I believe that a large part of its popularity is not just that J.K Rowling is creative and inventive, but that, like most deeply appreciated literature, it tells truths that tap deep into our psyche.  The truth of love protecting Harry against evil, the truth of love being a stronger “magic” than any other, the truth of a life lived connected to Love or God being stronger than even death, the truth of resurrection after death – all of these truths speak to us deep in our souls.

            Again, we see this in most of our classics.  The ones that are more existential in their faith end with the death – like in the Tale of Two cities – they end with the idea that love is being willing to die for another.  But the ones that speak to Christians the most tend to be the ones that include the resurrection following the death.  Authors such as Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, but also secular authors tell the same story.  And we love these books because they speak truth.  They speak the truth not only of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, but of ours as well.  They speak the truth that we all need to hear, that God loves us more than we can imagine.  And that it is out of that love, out of that love that transcends everything that we are given new life after every death if we only open ourselves to the God who gives it.

If we can see this, if we can embrace this, if we can experience the resurrection, we can live, not only in the life to come, but NOW as well – letting go of our fear, letting go of our languishing, living into hardiness, happiness, healing, growth and HOPE.

            Paul Pearsall told this story in the Beethoven Factor, “There stood Beethoven, gravely ill and totally deaf.  Eyes closed, he kept conducting the orchestra even after they had ceased their performance and the audience had risen to its feet in thunderous applause.  As a singer stepped from the choir to turn him around to see those whose shouts of “bravo” resonated throughout the concert hall, tears of elation filled his eyes.  Perhaps the worst loss a composer could experience had been the catalyst for a remarkably adaptive creativity that allowed him to transcend his tortures to become immersed in the thrill of conducting the premiere of his Ninth Symphony, the “Ode to Joy”.  At that moment, and not only in spite of but because of his adversity, Beethoven had experienced the thrill of thriving through adversity.”

            As Christians we would tell the same story, with one extremely important difference.  We would put it in terms of the cross.  Because of the pain of the cross, there is a resurrection.  Because of Jesus’ willingness to die for love, new life, greater life, better life, God’s life can shine not only through Christ, but through us as well.  As a church, the story is the same.  Gil Rendle continues in his book to the promise that even for the church a resurrection is promised, though we will not know yet what that looks like.  All of us, as community and as individuals are invited into new life by the resurrection of our Lord.  Will we seize it?  Will we embrace it as we face challenges, hardships and even death?  Will we raise our voices in song, in exclamation, in praise for the God who calls us to LIVE into all the blessings of each day?  Will we say with enthusiasm and with conviction, “Christ is Risen, He is risen indeed!”  For that is the truth.  The deepest truth. 

     Christ is Risen!!

            “He is risen indeed!”