This grew out of a CRC-Voices discussion on the rupturing of the American Anglican church.

Ginger wrote:

I’ll read this, of course. It’s difficult when a denomination or congregation loses its conservatives, because conservatives often do more work and give more money. (Maybe that’s a NY generalization:-)

My old RCA lost most of its conservatives at the time I left, and the congregation that was once large(600) and wealthy is now smaller(200) and having financial difficulties. Had to let its associate pastor go. (She’s the one who said Jesus wasn’t born in Bethlehem)  and is considering one service instead of two.

I hope the CRC will be cautious about pushing out more conservatives. Calvary Chapel is waiting and growing.

Ginger

Ginger’s post here prompted a lot of thought for me about liberalism and conservatism. I don’t have complete thoughts on it but I want to write to at least gel some of my half-baked thoughts on it.

What Ginger notes here is well established historically in our context but there are lots of subtler angles to it as well.

1. Church growth pundits have long noted that groups that grow almost always have clear, specific, counter-cultural views that motivate their people to action (attend, volunteer) and give sacrificially (provide for the well being and future of the institution.) Part of this to me is clearly motivated by fear (our situation is both critical and desperate) and glory (there is an eternal reward that will justify all my sacrifice.) There is a formula you can follow and get these kinds of results, but a formula alone usually isn’t sufficient. It goes best if you are “a true believer”. Eric Hoffer wrote a famous book on this in the 50s. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer)

2. Liberalism also has a predictable track record. Liberalism kills churches dead. Why? Why not? I don’t care, let’s go out for drinks… That’s just it. Why tithe? Why have the spiritual discipline of going to church EVERY week? “Well, I may get energized by a cause I believe in, like Proposition 8 or Tibet or Iran or hunger or the treatment of women in the Muslim world, but I certainly don’t need a church or a preacher to get involved with any of these things. I’d rather be a free agent, hang with the people I like and do what my own spirit and lights guide me towards. Maybe I like the liturgy, the music, the opportunities to sing in a choir, etc.” That will tend to be true of people raised in a CONSERVATIVE church (like the CRC) wanting an aesthetic upgrade. But there would obviously be no reason to not enjoy the aesthetic or spiritual offerings of a Buddhist gatherings, etc. There are places like this too: http://www.slcworld.org/

Especially in a left coast place like Sacramento (or more left-coaster places still) you’d imagine that this would be popular. It is inclusive, tolerant, embracing of everything good and nothing bad. Kindness, gentleness, gratitude, relationships, etc. It’s all there. Are they the megas on the outskirts of town? I know people in this church, they don’t have a building, they may get some turnout for some things but there is one small group in Sacramento.

3. This dynamic is obviously not a mystery to conservative groups who feel vindicated by it. They shouldn’t get too smug though, because for every dying liberal group there are dozens of conservative movements whose popularity is explained by other conservative groups as having sold out or being fueled by “itching ears” or the devil. This reality is not lost to liberals. There, you can both enjoy the folly of your adversary.

4. Conservatism is nowhere near as honest or pure as it often imagines itself to be. There are also lots of conservative groups that die too. When conservative groups die the reason given is often “they weren’t adaptive to change” which is usually true. But there in the difference is a subtle detail about popular conservativism. Popular conservatives have quietly managed to change some things while not changing others. In many cases they aren’t necessarily sure of exactly what they have changed and what they have not. They’ve operated at a level of instinct and hunch and they have gotten some things “right” for their context so that they have managed to gain some popularity within a specific context.

It is not the case that if you go to a popular conservative group it is like stepping back into time. There are places where you can go and “step back into time” but they’re usually not the popular conservatives. To my knowledge the Amish are about as fundamentalist and conservative as they come, but the Mormons, Muslims and Pentecostals are still cleaning their clocks (if they have clocks) when it comes to church growth.

5. I think in our context part of the fatality of liberalism has to do with individualism. Deep in the heart of liberalism (and you don’t have to be a liberal to share this) is the belief that ultimately I decide for me. “homo-mensura”: “man (or woman)” is the measure.” Relationships are valued depending upon how they pay out towards the goals I select and value. Churches are (not just for liberals again) arrangements of convenience and as soon as the cost-benefit balance tips out of my favor I’ll seek out another convenience, or lifestyle that seems more “life giving” to me.

Again, we see here that many conservatives are plenty liberal down in their cores as well. When levels of this are high in our personalities and for whatever reasons (by no means individual) we no longer can stomach a God who says all of these seemingly arbitrary senseless and things to us like we find in the Bible (or other holy books) we strike out on our own. Fortunately (or unfortunately) in safe, affluent, comfortable, entertainment and distraction filled North America we have lots of ways and places to find value and spend our time and money, often rewarding us with a far higher return of “life giving” on our investment. Really, can’t curling up with a good spiritual book, or having coffee with a friend, or taking the kids to Yosemite offer a much more predictable outcome of the juices we understand to be “spiritual fulfillment” than sitting in some church singing some songs we may like or listening to a preacher that really only seems to get it right now and again? We’ve learned to fine tune the rest of life, why not our “spiritual” lives? TIVO helps us watch on the programs that “work” for us. Our RSS readers bring the best websites to our attention. Our well worked through Twitter list keeps me up to date with a vast group of people with common interests for me.

Churches just really can’t be so easily tweaked. People can be a delight but without the filters through which we control our interactions with them they are predictably uncooperative, disruptive, time-wasting and taxing.

This of course reveals to us a deeper, uglier truth about ourselves. We are users, not lovers. We have via society and technology managed to “harvest” from people products that we experience as “life giving” and figured out how to minimize the downside.

Jesus (and others) consistently remind us to give to the poor, pay attention to the alien and the widow, but we’ve managed to package the application of these commands as well. Participating in these things is “life giving” for us too. We like to feel obedient. We like to feel generous. We like to be helpful. We like to do something good for others. We find ways to do this that maximize the “life giving” experience of it and minimize the negative contact of it.  A few days ago I posted a really cool little video on homeless people in NYC and Sydney. It’s really a nice artistic piece but all of these pieces bother me because I’ve had enough experience to know enough homeless people up close and personal and the “life giving” filter that the piece creates is dishonest. In many cases these living “artifacts” on our streets are attached to gut wrenching, brutal stories of which the person is usually both victim and perpetrator.

One of the first questions I ask people who walk into church off the street looking for the next $5.00 that will save their life is “where is your family.” I don’t ask for information. I don’t really know why I ask it because I already know the answer. Maybe I’m just being cruel. We are not hatched into this world. We come in via a wonderful God-given network called a family that provides for the infant the elements of a start. Other networks come into play along the way, school, church, neighborhood, friendships, government, etc. All along the way either non-engagement, non-commitment, or just sin devastated conflicts have isolated this person and brought them to a place that they have to reach out to a total stranger for a hot dog that may keep them from hunger, for now.

We love individualism when it “works” for us. The truth is it is death. I’m not sure Jesus told us to feed the hungry just because they need food (which they do) but rather to fuel the “giving and receiving” that we were made to do. Feeding the hungry, loving the ugly, and serving the selfish is good for me, but like strong medicine I seldom enjoy the process.

We should thank John Calvin, or Augustine, or some other insightful person way back when who realized that knowledge of self and knowledge of God are connected. Get either side out of whack and the other won’t be right either.

6. Why do people and churches become liberal? That’s easy, because over time the negatives get hard to hold and the struggle to believe what seems unbelievable wears us down. We also learn that pure “conservatism” can’t save you either. Deciding NOT to change anything, well, we’ve all seen what that looks like in hundreds of different ways. It also presupposes that at some point we got it all perfectly right and so why change anything. Today we figure that no one before us got anything right so why not change everything. It’s all a chasing after the wind…

7. For a person to be wise they have to at some point realize that their own head is an echo chamber and that ears can be helpful. Part of the reason we figured out how to stop using our ears was because we started hearing “NO” and we didn’t like it. Wisdom and maturity is beginning to hear “no” and to deal with it. Churches have lots of “no”s, not all of them good, but also not all of them bad, and we can’t always tell the difference.

Another scary lesson wisdom teaches us is that we are small, weak, vulnerable, completely unable to secure for ourselves hardly anything we want or need. A wise person will therefore begin to seek others, and bind himself or herself to them. They will learn the discipline of staying even when it sucks. In learning this discipline there is much hope. When it is valued, we begin to live, and support that little community, or church.

Last week an immigrant worker had his tools stolen just as he started a new job. Construction jobs aren’t easy to come by now. He was worn out after a hard day’s work and so he left the van unlocked. My neighbor came to me and asked if I could help. He was going around house to house looking for handouts for this friend of his in a bad place. My answer was easy. “Come to the church this Sunday. We’ll talk to the deacons, I know they will help him.” I didn’t say a word to the deacons about this. I didn’t need to. I know them.

When the deacons help people the response is almost always the same. “I’ll pay you back. I’ll come to church. I’ll do some work for you.” Our answer is “no, this is a gift.” Most of pledge to repay, attend or offer work never do. It doesn’t matter. When the church is like this, I love it. There is a group of people who are generous and lovely. They can be found. They will help if they can, no strings attached.

8. Where this leads us to is love. Fear or hope of reward are ultimately too thin a motivation for the kind of sacrifice and giving we’re invited into by Jesus. All gifts out of fear or hope of reward come with strings and we all know how we feel about gifts with strings. The only gifts that are really life giving are motivated by our need and the love of the one who gives to us.