Emily C. Heath: Five Things Mainline Christians Need to Stop Doing
1) Running churches and denominations like businesses.
I've been told that if I really want to be a highly-sought after pastor I need to get an MBA. First, I'm very happy right where I am. Second, even if I happened to be looking for a new call, no thanks.
There's nothing wrong with having an MBA. There's also nothing wrong with pastors learning from the field of business management. I do some reading in the area from time to time myself, and appropriate what works for use in the church. But I'll never get an MBA.
Why? Because it's not my call. My church is filled with well-educated people, including MBAs. They use their gifts in our church all the time. But even if we didn't have a single MBA in my congregation, I still wouldn't need one.
The church is an organization. That is indeed true. We are a collection of human beings trying to build, plan, and use our resources well. But, unlike businesses or even non-profits, we aren't here to sell a product or fix a problem. We are here for the worship of God, and for the service of God's people.
We don't do our work in isolation. We do it by being led by the Holy Spirit.
True, we can use things like budget spreadsheets, revised organizational structures, and every physical resource we have to work towards that mission. But if we are spending more time thinking about how to use those things, and how to manage the people who are doing so, than we are about discerning God's will for us, we are utterly lost.
It gets worse when the most unhealthy aspects of corporate culture make their way into our life together. In my larger church life I was once ruled out of order when I called for a prayer of discernment before a major vote. Other times I've seen transparency go out the window, or a small minority make decisions without consulting a larger group.
Check out what the Bible has to say about the qualities needed for pastors and for overseers (or "bishops"). None of them would make for great corporate leaders. But they do make for good enough church leaders. When we function as business executives, rather than church leaders, we not only disenfranchise one another, but we say we know what God desires better than the gathered church does. That is hubris at its worst.
2) Neglecting evangelism and church growth.
I've heard pastors say that they devote a set amount of their pastoral time every week to advocacy around one particular concern. It could be 10% of their time is spent on the environment, or 20% on LGBTQ inclusion. Those are certainly worthy of concern. But when I ask them this, I'm often greeted with a blank stare: "And how much time do you spend on evangelism and church growth?"
Usually none. Not unless you count the evangelism that comes as a by-product of advocacy. That's surely important, but our advocacy work should not be undertaken as a means to increase our membership. That's disingenuous.
Instead, what would it mean for our clergy leaders to actually take 10% of their ministry time and to engage in the work of proclaiming the Good News, and inviting people to discipleship? What would it look like to invest in growing our churches by encouraging life-transformative programming that proclaims God's love? What would it look like if we could positively describe why we are Christians without first saying how we aren't like other Christians?
Billy Graham once said that if you want to figure out what you worship, look at your checkbook. If I were to update it for today I'd say that if you want to figure out what you worship, just look at your planner. How you spend your time in ministry will tell you what you worship. If you, your church, or your denomination isn't spending much of it telling the story of God's love in some way, that's deeply troubling.
This is the one thing the church can do that no other organization can. We have a commission to spread the Gospel by proclaiming the love and grace of Christ. Can you imagine how the mainline could be renewed if we focused our attention on reaching out to those who are hungry for spiritual depth and discipleship that requires something of us? Our churches would be growing spiritually by leaps and bounds.
3) Paying little attention to faith formation.
Does your denomination have concrete resources for faith formation? Is time and energy invested in curriculum development for children? Are youth learning what it means to be a disciple?
In Glorify I quote a sobering statistic: only 45% of the youth who grow up in mainline congregations continue to claim our tradition as adults. That doesn't mean practice our tradition; that just means that they will admit they are one of us.
That number dips down to 37% when we are talking about Millennials. These are the kids who were raised in our churches, and they don't want anything to do with us. They are either disengaging altogether or finding new traditions, often in Christian traditions with deeper formation programs. What does that say about our effectiveness at making them disciples?
Add to that the fact that we've all but given up on our college students. Every mainline denomination used to have an active college fellowship program. You could step on campus and easily find Canterbury, Westminster, Wesley Fellowship, and more. Now college ministry is dominated by well-funded programs from conservative and fundamentalist churches.
True, you don't make any money supporting college students. They are a really bad investment from a financial sense. But the churches that are succeeding in college ministry care enough to spend that money anyway. They are planting the seeds that will yield a great harvest in coming years. Meanwhile, we mainliners are so short-sighted that we are slashing funding for our young adults who need support.
Finally, we don't do the work of helping adults to keep growing as disciples. This is especially true of the former "nones" who come through our doors. For those of us who were raised outside of the church formation is essential. As a new Christian I had no idea how to say the Lord's Prayer. I needed someone to help teach me the faith in a non-judgmental fashion. But even if you have gone to church every Sunday of your life, if the last time you learned anything about discipleship was high school Sunday school, then we are failing you.
4) Engaging in interfaith dialogue without doing our own work first.
I love interfaith work. I think it's absolutely crucial in our world. We need to be addressing our historical relationships to Judaism and Islam. We need to be standing against religious oppression of all faiths. We need to learn from one another. And we need to be hearing from those who are atheist and agnostic too.
But we can't do this honestly until we know who we are, and whose we are.
You know how you can't really love someone until you know and love yourself? No one should get married, for instance, until they know who they are and what they stand for first. Otherwise they will just become enmeshed with the other. That's never healthy.
And yet, well-meaning mainline Christians will often engage in interfaith dialogue without first knowing what we ourselves believe. In that case we do a disservice not only to ourselves, but to those we meet who genuinely want to know more about us. If they ask us what a Christian believes, or what our own denomination believes, and we can't give an answer, then really we aren't there as equal participants. We're just asking them to teach us.
At the same time, we also risk becoming appropriative. Just like Christians who appropriate the Jewish Seder for our own reasons, without full understanding, we risk appropriating the traditions of other religions and cultures as well. When we meet our siblings from other traditions on the path we should do so with both self-knowledge and generous spirits. And when they teach us about themselves, we should use that new knowledge in order to better understand them, not to make what is theirs our own.
5) Dismantling seminaries.
Seminaries have seen better days. Once communities of formation and learning, they've become optional in some mainline traditions. While some never receive any educational formation for ministry, others take their entire course of study online. After all, many say, I can't be expected to quit my job and move my family.
Except, Jesus was pretty clear about leaving everything behind and following him. Over half my seminary classmates packed up families, took out student loans, and left lucrative jobs to do so. Is it convenient? No. Is it easy? No. But, it's faithful. And it's worth it.
Seminary is more than an academic experience. It is a place where a community is formed by worship, learning, and living together. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his words to a seminary that still formed during the rise of the Third Reich, wrote to the students about the importance of living in community. He believed that it would transform both their faith and their ministry to come. (See Life Together for more.) Surely, if any generation had an excuse to skip the spiritual formation of seminary it was German seminarians in the 1930's. And yet, they not only formed an underground seminary, many also eventually went to prison for being seminarians.
No one is asking you to do the same. But perhaps making the small sacrifice of giving three years of your life in order to be formed as a pastor is worth it. Yes, you might have to change everything in order to do so. But if you think that ministry is going to allow you the luxury of staying in one place or doing things your own way, then you are in for a disheartening shock.
That's why denominations, and their churches, have to support their seminaries and their seminarians. This means both financially and in terms of encouraging attendance and demanding rigorous preparation. The church needs clergy who know who they are, and what they believe. We need clergy who can live in community, and wrestle within it. And we need clergy who take the call seriously enough to know they are not yet prepared to undertake it.
Without clergy who understand that enormity of this call, we will never have leaders who understand the enormity of what God has called the church to do next.
If you found meaning in this post, you'll love Glorify: Reclaiming the Heart of Progressive Christianity. There is hope for mainline renewal, and this book can show you how to claim it for your local congregation, your denomination, and beyond: http://www.amazon.com/Glorify-Reclaiming-Heart-Progressive-Christianity/dp/0829820299/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1453486699&sr=1-1&keywords=glorify+emily+heath