Answering a comment on The Network

I’ve got enough contact with “the current leadership” (or a piece of it anyway) to know that there is plenty of angst about. The listening tour going on is of course part of that.

I find it vital in this conversation to differentiate between the Denomination (community of congregations) and the denomination (institution housed at 1700 28th St.) The Denomination is more important, of greater concern, and at the same time more durable than the denomination.

As I said in my blog piece we are in a long term cultural transition that deeply impacts the church because it deeply impacts how the church, the gospel and the Bible are understood. There are million blog posts and thousands of books written about it. We are not lacking “answers”, we are awash in them. Some are of course better than others, we just don’t know which ones. Historians will argue about it hundreds of years from now.

This is not the first time the church has faced this, in fact it faces it every time it goes into a new place, or the culture around its places changes. The Bible is a record of many such changes and how they were navigated.

We know from many such changes that there will be loss. We will lose a lot and it will hurt.

As Americans our minds turn to “what should we do?” 

We should do what Christians have always done. We should do what Paul had to do. We should do what leaders in the Reformation did. We should do what missionaries do. We work on all levels at once. We engage the context, the questions, the answers, each other with boldness and love. That work is being done in many places and by many people.

Will it be enough? 

Enough for what? To save our institutions, our traditions, our jobs, our reputation, our fame? We live in the age of decay. The age of decay eats everything which is why Jesus says to place our treasure in the age to come where it isn’t eaten. Most of what we can lay our hands and eyes upon will be eaten, the only question is “how soon”.

In the short term some good general answers aren’t that hard to come by.

1. Every church needs to keep doing mission in its place according to their place. Our polity is really quite good at this. Between councils and classes we are distributed and can engage diversity. Synod needs to work hard on figuring out what to try to hold onto and what to be loose with. That is always the challenge of the broadest nexus. This isn’t new.

2. We need to keep planting new churches they are our R&D labs for complex engagements that no one is smart enough to figure out.  Established churches need to keep working their diversity as well. Change always involves embracing the new while figuring out what of the old needs protecting. Again, our structure and tradition aren’t ill-equipped to deal with that. If we all went seeker in the 90s we might be in trouble now in some places. We never know all that is going on.

3. We need to keep writing, talking, praying, trying, forgiving, challenging, encouraging, discerning. Again, nothing new.

Unfortunately all eyes turn to the small d denomination and look to it for help. 

Because it is connected to Synod, which is the broadest assembly, and is given power, it is very difficult for it to know how to be helpful. An anxious person can be dangerous, an anxious person with a gun is MORE dangerous. We don’t want the denomination to be anxious, to ready-fire-aim with the bullets we give her. We want her to be patient, careful, wise while also being assertive and willing to take risks. This is very challenging. Let’s have a bit of grace towards our leaders even when we’re frustrated because we don’t think they’re being very helpful or working too fast or working to slow or doing the wrong thing. It’s hard.

It’s also important to realize that despite the power they seem to have, they really aren’t in a position to be terribly helpful. The real work is happening in the thousands of churches and ministries around North America and the world.

The small d denomination will pass information, pass resources, afford gatherings, afford discussion, help people connect so that we can all learn about this movement that is too large for any of us to understand.

Most local churches and leaders have long turned to other leaders in the broader church community for wisdom. The unique thing our Denomination affords is a communal, historical context to work together within. We can read books by Tim Keller or John Piper or Jim Wallis or NT Wright but we live face to face with each other. We make decisions together. We share resources together. We hold each other accountable. This is what Amazon and blogs can’t offer us, community.

One of the primary jobs of the small d denomination (and the small c classis, the meeting) is to facilitate the community of the big D Denomination and the big C Classis (the community). It manages the sharing of money, arranging space and hospitality for gatherings, facilitating communication (like this Network), helping us realize that the church is the BODY of Christ as we its members are together talking, sharing, arguing, forgiving, trusting, challenging, loving, praying.