New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
January 26, 2014
Last Friday I attended a leadership
workshop at Andover Newton Theological School, entitled “New Habits for Nones:
Practicing Digitally-Integrated Ministry in the Post-Christian World”. It focused on those who are unaffiliated with
any religious institution and how we can form connection and do ministry with
folks who have opted out.
Later that night I had
dinner with a friend from high school.
When we had finished, we ventured on to another restaurant to have a
drink and continue our conversation.
Instead we found a place that was on its way out of business and a
gregarious bar mate I’ll call Bruce.
Bruce
was unabashedly himself. He not only inserted
himself into our conversation, he drove most, if not all, of its major
themes. He could speak knowledgeably on
a wide range of subjects and never lacked for an opinion. So much for my friend and me catching
up. But could this be an invitation in
disguise? An invitation to form
connection whenever and wherever we can, with whomever presents themselves. Here was one of the “nones”—in Bruce’s words,
“a lapsed Jew”—trusting and connecting with this wide open world in the form of
me and my friend.
We are soft-wired for connection
and trust. We come into this world
trusting that the people around us will take care of, love, feed, and comfort
us. Through our relationships with our
families and later on, with other adults and peers, our ability to trust
becomes more complex. We adapt what
we’ve learned, gauge what we can say and do with new people based on previous
experiences, and choose whether to renew trust with someone who has broken it. If we’ve experienced any kind of abuse, it
can be very difficult, even painful for us to form connections, to feel like we
belong, or to trust ourselves, let alone anyone else.
But
we are hard-wired for caution and fear, and with good reason. These innate characteristics have saved human
beings from becoming the next meal of a grizzly bear or African lion all the
way to keeping us from making friends with every person on the street. Caution and fear are what keep us alive some
days. They wise us up, saving us in our
foolish and reckless youth to living to be older and levelheaded adults.
The author of Matthew
himself gives Jesus some geographical credentials by quoting from the prophet
Isaiah: “He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by
the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the
prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea,
across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— the people who sat in darkness have seen a great
light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has
dawned.”
The territories of
Zebulun and Naphtali, two of the lost tribes of Israel, to listeners in both
Isaiah’s time and in Jesus’ would be like us hearing about places like
Mogadishu, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Egypt, Syria—places where war and violence have
made a living hell for those who live there.
So when Jesus moves
into this neighborhood, he is saying in no uncertain terms that he has come for
the lost, for those who live in the shadow of death, for those who have been
forgotten. Jesus and his disciples would
not be fishing for converts but for those the world has left behind. They would be doing God’s work of gathering
in those still in exile: the poor, the
outcast, those considered unclean. Jesus
was declaring not with words but with his actions that he was ready to do
messiah work. For this reason, these
first few disciples trusted Jesus with their lives. They initiated a new kind of community, made
up of some of the most unlikely folks to succeed, setting up shop in a place
not to be trusted.
Jesus takes his message
and his disciples to those who need him the most. He goes where they are. He does not wait for them to come to him,
though many do. Jesus is more interested
in closing the gap, making a connection with those who feel disconnected from
God.
The time of churches
relying solely on growing through attracting new members is gone, long
gone. Yes, we have a good, functional
website through which some folks have found this church and found
community. But there are many for whom
church is irrelevant and benign at best and hurtful and abusive at worst. An ever-increasing population of religiously
unaffiliated folk number as many as all
mainline Protestants combined.
They’re called the
‘nones’: when asked in a survey about
their religious affiliation, they respond ‘none’. It’s a very negative designation, the
assumption being that folks who are unaffiliated with organized religion are
not religious. Actually, the majority of
these folks do believe in God or Spirit or a higher power. 70% hail from a Christian background, which
means it is our churches that have produced this phenomenon. Ironically, churches have become communities
in which disconnection is more than just a by-product. In the last 50 or so years the church has
been so focused on survival that we didn’t look to ourselves to answer the
question, “Why are people leaving?”
People continue to make
meaning, connections, and ritual regardless of whether they are in church or
not. Most human beings share a desire to
make a difference in the lives of others, to recognize the sacred in our
ordinary lives. But if folks aren’t finding meaning and connection in church,
then it’s time for us to go where they are, rather than continuing to wait for
them to come to us. If we aren’t finding meaning and connection
in church, then it’s time for us to examine just where we do find meaning and
connection and take the church with us.
It’s time for us to trust
where Jesus is leading us, which is right through the doors of this
building. Which means how we do church
needs to change. It means using
technology to create a web of relationships and connection with not only
ourselves but with anyone who would like to do ministry, create meaning, and
imagine traditional rituals in new ways.
It means we need a broader understanding of what it means to
belong. It means that the institution,
the Church, can no longer look for institutional solutions to save itself.
Up until now, the
institutional church has looked at all of this as decline, disaster, and many
of our efforts as tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on the
Titanic. What if, instead, this is
Jesus? What if this is Jesus setting up
shop with an unlikely crew in a place we’re not sure we trust because we’re
afraid we’re the ones who will be lost? What
if instead of responding with our hard-wired fear, we went with our soft-wired
trust and desire for connection? What if
the so-called ‘nones’ are leading the way and the church is the one who has to
catch up? What if this isn’t the end of
church-as-we-know-it but the beginning of what church could be? What if this is the way to resurrection?
I know these are not
easy questions. I’m hoping, though, that
we’re up to the call to imagine the possibilities, the Holy Spirit maneuvers,
traveling the Jesus path in new ways.
Not to survive, not necessarily to grow, but to be faithful to the trust
God places in us each day. Amen.
Trust is...
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| by Kristen Noelle - see more at her website Trust Tending |
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