What is your instinctive response to this image of the church? If you lived in Vancouver, chances are that it wouldn’t be positive. Which makes what happened this past Sunday quite remarkable. Eight wonderful souls decided to join our congregation. Five were by reaffirmation of baptismal vows, three were by adult baptism, and one was by transfer of faith. I mention this because there was a time, not so long ago, when virtually all new members would be by transfer. Adult baptisms would come along once in a blue moon. I sense a shift in the land, a sign, and a welcome one, signifying that the culture of Christendom has been defeated by modernist secularism. It’s a relief to know that those who are joining the church are doing so consciously and after very careful consideration.
When I say “joined the church”, I need to be a bit careful. Of the eight, only two were doing so because of any kind of denominational loyalty or affiliation. This, too, is new. In fact, most who attend membership classes these days are surprised to hear that they are joining the larger church. They are not interested in “The United Church of Canada.” Period. They are joining this congregation. I suspect that this is a trend that is already well established. Denominationalism is over. These people want to know what this particular group of people is up to and if they like it, they’ll jump in. Central funds like The Mission and Service Fund of the United Church of Canada are going to be in serious trouble if they expect these new people to pony up. As these central funds dwindle, we can expect ever more desperate efforts from national bodies to promote them. But the writing is on the wall, for good or ill.
Which is to say, institutional loyalty is pretty much gone on the west coast of Canada. There’s no point fighting it. “Church” and “Christian” are dirty words in Vancouver. I should qualify. For anybody functioning from a modernist and post-modernist worldview, they are dirty words. It’s just too difficult to get beyond associations with fundamentalism, biblical literalism, and how in an era of colonialism, the church too often carried out the imperial agenda. I’m serious about starting a group in the fall called
“Hurt By Church?” Every time I run a membership class, the conversation quickly turns to negative experiences of church. Two of the three women who were baptized took literally years to make their decision to join. The interesting thing is that increasingly people are showing up at Canadian Memorial who have transcended the post-modernist suspicion of “religion” and “the Bible”, and are able to articulate their need to go deep within a religious tradition. This is a small, but growing, demographic. In fact, I suspect that this will increasingly be the niche we serve.
An increasingly common question that comes up in these classes is “If I join the church, does it mean that I necessarily have to call myself a Christian?” This label sticks in the craw. We have atheists, Buddhists, secular humanists, actively participating in our congregation, (and contributing financially) and who want to be voting members, but currently there is no way to attain this status without a confession of faith. How are we going to deal with this as a church?
All eight new members were women. This is another trend. I don’t know what’s happening to men in our culture. It’s true that we have deeply spiritual and committed men, but increasingly church is a culture of women. Men function, in fact, to draw our best, single, women away from the church. Occasionally it works the other way, where they will drag their men to church, but the norm is that our brightest and best quietly disappear. These days, my first assumption when this happens is that they’ve found a man—a man who is not the least bit interested in “church”.
Finally, I learned that these people are interested in theology. Of course, theology goes hand in hand with community, spiritual practice, compassionate service, etc. But each of these people are particularly interested in a coherent and relevant theology that helps them to make sense of their lives and the world. It is rather unique for a congregation to have theology and practice as their core mission. Canadian Memorial’s core purpose is to “teach and practice evolutionary Christian spirituality”. While this is just one theology among many, it does have the advantage of regarding science as public, evidence-based, revelation. I think that we’ve soft-pedaled theology for the last few decades, but that there is a real appetite for it among those who are showing up, not because it’s the thing to do, but rather in spite of the fact that it’s most decidedly not the thing to do.
I’m looking forward this fall to launching the curriculum for our Learning Institute for Evolutionary Christianity (tentative name). I’ll be letting you know more about this in future blogs.
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i still find it easier to describe myself as a sober “alcoholic” than as a Christian. I will go a step further and dare say that fewer eyebrows are raised by the former than the latter. Your observations therefore accord with my direct experience.
I am not sure we need a new word for Christian but rather more people conveying a fresh meaning.
Thanks Mark,
And given the amount of shame that is still sadly associated (for many in our culture) with addiction, that is saying something! I’m pretty committed to the fresh meaning agenda.
Men and church. A sad thing. I have no idea what to do about that. Women drag their husbands to therapy, as they drag them to church. I guess church is like taking yourself and your image of God into therapy for an overhaul. I also notice women drag their husbands to yoga class too. Women have a lot more freedom to how they define themselves. There is less of a need to define ourselves by what we are not. I don’t have to say ‘I am not a real woman if I go to work, play sport, wear pants. Whereas a man says ‘I am not a real man if I do therapy, yoga, (and now) go to church’. Interestingly though, in my theology classes the men are most certain about their future as leaders in the church. Easy to be a woman and go to church but hard to be a woman and sort out being a leader in church. At least I better get used to the idea of church being very small, authentically intimate and always on a tight budget (although, now I am smiling as I write because I am really quite good at those three things:-)
I love your sense of humour Jill. There’s a book that still needs to be written about men and spirituality. It is so much about vulnerability and not knowing, and the heart, this spiritual path, and men continue to struggle to transcend these culturally mediated definitions of masculinity.
Great reflection, Bruce. You make so many insightful observations that I’d love to comment on them all but I’ll show (unusual) restraint and pick one.
The “Reformation” continues. The fragmentation of “believers” and the steady increase of those choosing not to believe is ongoing. The pile of “baggage” which people associate with Christianity gets heavier each year. The wisdom from outside Christian theology (both old and new) grows more insightful and heartfelt each year.
I celebrate with you the arrival of new seekers into your community. They are a precious gift and resource. Hopefully they know that it is THEIR job to define what the direction of the community will be going forward!
Author Karen Armstrong, in her lectures about the Buddha, always relates the parable which the Buddha tells about a person who, faced with the crossing of a large river, cobbles together a raft and floats across. Once across, she is faced with the decision to continue to lug along this raft, which has proven useful in the past, or leave it. This is the decision facing every person and institution in the face of inevitable change.
Thanks Don,
You describe well what we are facing as an institution. What to lug along with us, and what to let go of…
Yup, this is totally where we are here at good old Leaside United in mid-Toronto.
While there are a few who hold to the traditions of the past, all my newer folk are not at all interested in belonging to a denomination, they are deeply spiritual and very committed, and they are completely up-ending this congregation. It’s delightful.
I do have lots of active men, and a very loud and vocal group of single senior women. My sense is that men who haven’t been to church in a while are not plugged in to new (evolving) theology; most have old notions of Christianity.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks John,
Good to know we’re not alone! Hope you’re finding a way through the up-ending, the Pentecost of the New Order breaking through.
Thanks Bruce for putting into words some of my own experience. It seems like the gulf of the wondrous Pacific Ocean doesn’t mean a jot when it comes to practicing connectionality! At the moment in post-quake Christchurch an anxious regional church is trying to find its way beyond the upheaval, loss and destruction. So much of the way we have thought and done things no longer makes sense. Yet the viability word is aimed at small parishes like New Brighton Union where I am based. I am increasngly finding myself in complete rebellion against how the national church defines “membership”. Once a month we celebrate Holy Communion in a Sunday service – most participants are technically members. Once a week I run a community barbecue in our carpark next to our op shop. Many who regularly come and eat with us and engage in conversation are not members. The barbecue has a deeper sense of sacramentality than the traditional communion, more joy and deeper connection. I think the Spirit is crashing the inner walls that the earthquake couldn’t move. My constant prayer is to not get in the way of what is going on!
Thanks Mark,
That reading from Acts must be especially meaningful to you folks—earthquakes shaking the foundation. I’m feeling the riskiness of using a tragic natural occurrence as a metaphor when people are still suffering the effects. But you give me permission. I do think Spirit is moving to overturn/liberate. Love your b-b-cue story and imagining that event as sacramental. We were in Christ Church on my last sabbatical seven years ago now. Spent a lot of time in the city centre square. Not getting in the way, yeah.
new land
deep currents stirring
silt stilling
stream sparkling
clear
like finding greater expression
clearing the throat
playing with words
heard and unheard
and speaking afresh
with a smile
Thanks Gabrielle,
Always something stirring in Spirit
Welcome to all the new communicants. I pray that they will know the joy of time spent with God.
Here are some of my own thoughts on new life and Christianity based on some current events and on Thomas Merton’s “Seasons of Celebration: Meditations on the Cycle of Liturgical Feasts,” which I just recently started reading. It being the Easter season, I started my reading with the Easter meditations.
Of Easter, Merton says, “But now [after our Lenten metanoia], the power of Easter has burst upon us with the resurrection of Christ. Now we find in ourselves a strength which is not our own, and which is freely given to us whenever we need it, raising us above the Law, giving us a new law which is hidden in Christ: the law of his merciful love for us.” He then goes on to say that this is “a truth that we Christians have barely grasped, a truth that has gotten away from us, that constantly eludes us and has continued to do so for twenty centuries. We cannot get it into our heads what it means to be no longer slaves to the law.” (He goes on to quote and expand on St. Paul and others.)
For myself, I think that this is why Christianity has so much trouble with evolution. It lives in fear of the new rather than realizing that that is exactly what Jesus was trying to teach us to overcome. We seem to not really believe that he is actually still here with us to breathe new life and understanding into us, but instead want to keep him buried away in past words and past understandings. (Not to say that those past words have no meaning – just that they need to be constantly re-understood in light of the new – and the Holy Spirit will help us to do exactly that.) Funny, but it was precisely my questioning of my “faith” in light of evolution that led me to understand it and love it more deeply than I would have ever imagined I could.
Beautifully put Carol. Thanks so much. Freedom, not to simply repeat and preserve the past—however noble it may have been—but to participate directly in the emergence of the “new thing” Spirit is doing.
Hi Bruce,
a few late thoughts – for some reason didn’t see the email prompt:
this blog grabbed my interest but not sure what to say after pondering for awhile. if my daughter hadn’t pulled me in i don’t know that i would have joined, or would have known that i could. i know that i didn’t join to belong to a traditional church, and still have doubts about the structure, politics. i also notice that if i dont attend for awhile (i lost the sunday morning going to church a long time ago, and find that it is a great time to go to the beach, work in the garden, build something, do some art that i have been procrastinating about) that i drift away. i find that reading the lectionary readings gives me focus. i read through Acts and found it the most fascinating part fo the big book – both in its resonance to our time and also in its strangeness and randomness – in a kind of real time, real people sense. i wish i could make it to the bible study on tuesday but it is right in the middle of my working day.
i also found the connection circles a very good focusing practice. the energy propels me beyond skepticism, doubt, confusion about translations,
getting off the topic a bit but i have found looking at the history of the early church fascinating, and seeing traces coming through to our time.
i wonder if it takes some kind of personal tragedy/health issue to bring men into the church. maybe it is also the fuzziness of the whole business that doesn’t attract men. So hard to define things, to find your footing – but then it isn’t just a philosophical pursuit.
better get back ot work.
Jim
Thanks Jim,
For your honesty. Yep, we compete with the great outdoors on Sunday morning. We really should have outdoor celebrations more often. Early church: with the collapse of Christendom, we do resemble in many ways the early church with smaller, intentional gatherings, and only people who are seriously committed would bother. Men: “fuzziness”, yes all that right brain stuff, night language, metaphor, etc. But it’s about time that we men did a little more right brain living.