Thursday, October 31, 2013

Let's Talk

I’m serious.  Let’s talk.

I have the great privilege of traveling all around this synod and I have the opportunity to listen to rostered leaders and congregation members on a daily basis.  This is one of the blessings of my current call to synod work.

What I am hearing right now is a lot of fear.  This isn’t new.  What is different is the level of that fear and the heightened anxiety that accompanies it.  As a result, rostered leaders and congregations are experiencing a lot of pain.

There are common themes.  Congregations are projecting their futures and what they see is decline and death.  Numbers have been sliding for quite some time and the outcome appears to be inevitable.  As a generation of generous and faithful givers fades away, finances become tighter and the focus turns inward.  More money is spent on operating expenses and less on outreach and mission.  Young people are largely absent from the life of the church.  But, truth be told, it was my generation that began to drift away.  Many of my generation’s children have never been part of a church community, yet we expect them to “come back” to a place they have never been.

Worse yet, the church has lost its voice.  No one really seems to care about what we have to say.  The Christian voice is fractured and noisy, so it is lost in the blurriness of background noise.  Rostered leaders, especially our pastors, fear that they are becoming irrelevant or already are.

These are huge issues, but they are symptoms of a massive cultural shift that is much bigger than the church.  Have you noticed?  Everything is changing.  Everything.

During this past August, I marked my 30th ordination anniversary.  I had thought that it might be fun to reflect on those 30 years for this blog.  But, I never found the motivation I needed to do so.  Of course, it was fun for my wife and me to look back for a few minutes.  But, as I searched for words to write, the more I looked back, the more I was drawn to look forward.  While looking back is informative (we really have to know our history), I think we need to concentrate our efforts more on today and tomorrow.

Recently I had a conversation with one of the synod’s younger pastors.  We were talking about the current conditions in the church.  I told her that my seminary education certainly did not prepare me for what we as pastors are facing today.  I then told her that my consolation is that her very recent education did not prepare her any better for it.  None of us, clergy or lay, is truly prepared. 

I recently attended a continuing education event at which I heard Phyllis Tickle, Brian McLaren, Tom Long and David Lose speak.  The theme was “Preaching at the Crossroads.”  I attended specifically to hear what these voices had to say because they seem to have a handle on some of what we are encountering in the church today.  Let me tell you what I heard in just a few sentences.  The world is changing.  We had better get used to that fact because there is no going back and there is no stopping it.  Things are changing fast and it is going to continue.  In the midst of this change, the church must ask itself if it is going to accommodate the change or help lead the change in a way that will benefit the world in the name of Jesus Christ.  This is a time for courage and innovation.  All of the speakers agreed that we do not yet know where all of this is leading, which is stressful.  But, in these stressful times, the church, you and I, are called to remain faithful.

The problem I see is that we are not talking.  Congregations are not talking about what is happening and putting it into a larger context.  I see congregations grasping at straws in attempts to accommodate rather than lead.  Congregations are not talking to their neighboring congregations to see how they are doing.  I see pastors and lay rostered leaders becoming frustrated and depressed and contemplating just calling it quits.  They feel isolated and alone.  Pastors become the focus of misdirected anxiety in many congregations.  But, pastors are not talking to each other, sharing their own joys and sorrows.

So, let’s talk.  I’m serious.  If you asked me, I couldn’t begin to guess how many unproductive, unmotivated, useless meetings I have attended over the course of 30 years.  Let’s not waste our time with any more meetings that have the goal of just meeting.  Let us ground ourselves in the Word of God and start talking about things that matter.  Let’s start talking to each other for the purpose of mutual support and discovering new ways to share the good news of Christ.


Thanks for reading.  Comments?  Go to the blog website or comment on Facebook.  --JC