The future of the Church?

THE DEAD POSSUM SOCIETY

The opossum, the only North American marsupial. The possum, as it is commonly called in the south, is a strange creature. It carries its young in a pouch. It is gray to black, has a pointed nose, feet that look like hands and has sharp, pointy little teeth. I have seen possums bear those teeth in an ugly grin and hiss, but I have never heard of a soul ever bitten. I am not sure, but don’t think that a possum has ever hurt a human. (To see pictures of the cute possum, go to http://www.opossumsocietyus.org/opossum_photo_page.htm )

I grew up in a land where people ate possums. They say they are greasy–I have never tried it. I have actually known people who boiled them in crawfish boil and ate them like seafood. Possums don’t have a place on my table. But, if you were a poor southerner and had nothing much to eat, a possum would do.

However, the possum does have a special meaning for me as a pastor. Yes they hang by their tails from tree limbs in unexpected places. And, yes they will invade your yard so that every dog in town barks interrupting a good night’s sleep. One might compare a possum invasion to the nocturnal interruptions and emergencies that every pastor must face. But this is not the reason a possum means so much to me.

Possums remind me of the unexpected demands that ministry makes upon ministers, particularly in small churches. And I should clarify, it is the dead possum that inspires this preacher’s heart. I remember like it was this morning.

It was the beginning of a very hot summer day in South Louisiana, the place where I have carried out most of my ministry. It was Friday, my day off, my Sabbath, the day I intend to see no one, particularly church members. It is a day just for me to think and rest and enjoy a few minutes of life. The phone rings before seven which I vaguely hear. My wife answers, she is on her way to work. I hear her sweet voice saying, “I am sure he can come over and fix it.” I woke up.

It turned out that a deacon’s wife could not go out her back door because of a stench that was coming from her roof. Her husband is a traveling salesman and would not be home for some time. So, I got up, went over to check it out. I had to climb a ladder, I am not very good on ladders. I tend to fall off of them. I inspected her gutters and found that a possum had crawled under a brace, gotten stuck, and died.

I don’t like dead animals, particularly the kind that stink. I have a weak stomach, strong odors usually turn me inside out. However, it was my pastoral duty to help. So, I took a trash bag and used it like a glove. I grabbed the dead possum and, well, it pulled out of its skin and maggots were crawling everywhere. If the picture grosses you out, try to imagine being there.

I managed to get the entire dead possum out of the gutter and wrapped it in a plastic bag and put it in the garbage can. I was glad to help. However, later I stopped to think. I did not remember this being covered in seminary. There was nothing in my pastoral ministries courses about removing dead possums.

It dawned on me sometime later that this dead possum was a great symbol of ministry. I decided that I needed to start a Dead Possum Society for ministers who have had to do very odd things in their ministries. These are the things that they failed to mention in seminary. Once I had to unstop a toilet while a deacon watched. It seems he never learned to operate the business end of a plumber’s plunger.

Somehow unstopping toilets, changing light bulbs and making coffee for the congregation every Sunday seems mundane compared to retrieving dead possums from gutters. I have also developed a well-known ministry to computers. A quick visit to a home usually involves asking questions, giving answers, saying prayers and cleaning up the spyware on their computer. At least it is clean. My latest job has been tying neckties. Yes, in our casual society, many American males have lost the manly art of tying their own neckties. Of course, it is true that most of us pastors, on occasion, still wear suits.

So, I would tip my hat to all ministers everywhere if I wore on. You who pastor the smaller church will have great adventures that pastors of larger churches only dream of. You may help round up a farmer’s cattle for worming or plow a man’s cotton while he is sick. You may help rebuild a deacon’s car because he can’t afford to get it fixed. Or you may have the high privilege of retrieving the dead possum. Whatever special case yours may be, you have earned your place in the high court of the Dead Possum Society.

WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL ABOUT BIG?

We don’t really do big in the UK. When I hear about churches in America that are considerably larger than my home town my mind has a great deal of difficulty wrapping itself what that actually means. I sometimes attend one of the oldest Christian conventions in the world – the Keswick Convention. Keswick is a little town that makes a lot of its living from tourism. Keswick people have a love-hate relationship with the Convention. They love it because it fills the guest houses and hotels. They hate it because the visitors don’t drink enough alcohol and crowd the streets with people who keep the law and don’t swear. It is all a bit surreal. I enjoy the Convention. I enjoy listening to top rate teachers and singing to a highly professional band and feeling the group dynamics of being with thousands of other worshippers. It is the only big I do in my Christian life. Yes – big is attractive.

I suppose mega church is like living in the middle of a continuous Keswick convention. I don’t suppose Rick Warren is worried about the central heating pump or if Mrs Jenkins will turn up to teach the 6-7 year-olds on Sunday. I bet Bill Hybel's phone never goes to tell him the organ builder says the f sharp above middle c will never work on the Cornopean and the whole rank will need replacing and he could do it when the great to pedal coupler is being renewed – whatever all that means. Big is attractive. All those tasks I have to beg, plead, cajole and threaten in order to get done; all those things which I was not trained for at college (why do we not get lectures on photocopier maintenance? J, D, E and P have a lot to answer for!); all those Sundays we sing Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war whilst thinking “Here am I Lord, send someone else.” Mega-church would make all that a thing of the past. Yes – big is very attractive.

On a really bad Sunday – say the fourth Sunday in a row when the offering has been way below budget, and Mrs Jenkins (yes – it’s her again) has said she really does want to stop teaching Sunday School at the end of this year and the caretaker says the electrician says the lighting will need to be replaced if we don’t want to see the building burning merrily (quick panic – has the treasurer paid the insurance premium?) – on a Sunday like that I yearn for big. Not Big big – just a bit bigger. Maybe an extra 50 or 75 people (and Lord, if one or two of them were really generous givers …) would be nice. I suspect many of us think that if our church was just a tad bigger life would be so much better. 25 members is too limiting; if we just had 50 …100 members is OK but if we just had 150 … Yes – Big is very very attractive.

In the Screwtape letters C S Lewis argues that the devil has a trick of making us react the wrong way. It is as if the ship is sinking and the devil shouts “Fire! Fire!” so we start throwing water around. We react in exactly the wrong way. I think the devil is shouting “Bigger! Bigger!” at us and we are running around looking for big. Big after all is a mark of God’s blessing. Look at his church – it is Big. He must be good. Look at your church. It is small. You must be useless.

So, my question: what’s the big deal about big? Or maybe, I should rephrase that. Where is big presented in the New testament as a picture of church life? Which were the big NT churches? Have we lost sight of the fact that the church in the New Testament was not big? Big churches do not meet in someone’s house. Big churches do not meet in modestly sized public halls. Big churches are not made up of people who know each other by name. Read your New Testament with open eyes and see the intimacy there is there. You cannot have intimacy with 25,000 church members or even with 2,500. You might do it with 250 members. To have that intimacy mega-churches have to set in place programmes to develop intimacy. How? By making lots of little churches out of bits of big churches.

When I stand up in my pulpit on a Sunday morning and look at the 75 people before me, I can think about Mrs Jenkins and the problems in Sunday School and I know about Mr Jenkins and his alcoholism and young Jim Jenkins and his difficulties with his girl friend. When I look at the organist and the problems with the Cornopean (and I still do not know what that it) I do not need a complicated administration to fix it. I can speak to him and know what I can leave safely in his hands and what he will need help with. I know who can be asked to help him. And if the lights really are going to give up the ghost fairly soon – well I know who on the Board can be left to deal with the problem and who in the congregation will respond to the needs. The longer we are together the more we become the church family. Like all families we have our difficult people and we live with our limitations and we don’t always get on too well. Big doesn’t give me that.

There are people who are drawn to ministry and aspire to Big ministry because it gives them status. Little doesn’t give status at all. Little gives intimacy. Little knows first names – rather like God knows first names. Hey – there’s a thought – maybe God likes little too!

THE CHURCH’S FOUNDATION

Matthew 16: 13-20

Jesus announced the establishment of his church in a very dramatic moment. One evening, Jesus got away with his disciples to talk and to pray. Jesus turned to the disciples and asked who do people say that I am. It was a reasonable question. They told him what they said. Some said that he was a true prophet. Others said that he was John the Baptist raised from the dead, something that terrorized Herod. While others were saying that Jesus was Elijah or one of the prophets. Then Jesus said, who do you say that I am? It was then that Peter gave that awesome, God inspired answer, "You are the Messiah of God." This was an important moment in the life of the disciples for it was a moment of personal discovery. The knowledge of Christ is always a personal discovery, not the passing on of a report learned from others. They were discovering God's Messiah for themselves.

Jesus explained for the first time that the Messiah must die and be raised on the third day. Why? So that he might pay the price for our sin, might nail our sin to the cross so that we might have eternal life.

Right after Jesus' praise of Peter for his confession and his information regarding his imminent death, Jesus establishes his church. The point is almost missed by the disciples because Peter in his usual style, made a great confession of faith and then went on to stick his foot in his mouth and Jesus pronounces those strong words, "get behind me Satan."

Yet, there has been much debate about this passage. It has been the source of debate between Protestants and Catholics as to exactly what it means. Did Jesus found his church on Peter? Well, perhaps or more precisely on Peter's confession of Jesus as God and Messiah. Jesus embraces this proclamation of Messiahship. Jesus is the one who has been promised and he calls forth his messianic community, His church.

We need to be careful how we push the metaphors of church building. The Bible uses them in different ways:

Here Jesus builds his church; in 1 Corinthians 3:10, Paul is "an expert builder." In 1 Corinthians 3:11, Jesus is the church's foundation; in Ephesians 2:19-20, the apostles and prophets are the foundation ( also Rev 21:14), and Jesus is the "cornerstone." Here Peter has the keys; in Revelation 1:18; 3:7, Jesus has the keys. In John 9:5, Jesus is "the light of the world"; in Matthew 5:14, his disciples are. None of these pairs threatens Jesus' uniqueness. (D. A. Carson, Expositors Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, 368)

Nor does the text support an apostolic succession. Taken all together, it means that we build the Church on the foundation of the apostolic witness. We have that witness here is Scripture.

From this beginning we can see that the church is not a building or an institution, but a people. The word for church in the Greek is the word Ekklesia and it means a called out assembly of people. It was used by the Greeks to describe a calling out of the citizens who belonged to a city. They were called out to vote and make important decisions. But, in the O.T. the word described God's called out and chosen people. It was the congregation of God.

Jesus, who has just received Peter's confession, proceeds to announce that he is calling out God's people. It is somehow connected with the people of the O.T. and yet it is different. It is the calling of a people under a new covenant, a covenant based on the completed work of Christ on the cross. So, this is more than a mere collection of people, it is a new community. All too often we think of becoming a Christian as simply making a personal decision, just a thing between me and God. But not once do we find God calling out individuals into individualism, he calls out individuals to be a part of the church.

Today there are so many who call themselves Christians but they are not members of any church or they are members but they seem to believe that they have no responsibility to the church. Yet, according to scripture, this cannot be. The Book of Hebrews says HEB 10:24-25 “and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing near.” (NASB)

We have been called to live in a community of faith, love, and good deeds, a community that marks us and shapes us in such a way that we no longer belong to the world, but to Christ.

In this peculiar community called church, we learn that we are not to be conformed to the world but to be transformed. God's Church has certain rules, particular expectations and new values that shape us and mark us. The Church helps us achieve these expectations, we have been called to submit ourselves to one another and to be accountable to one another. In the midst of these kinds of accountable social forces, we grow in Christ likeness.

We are a society of twice born people who are submitting ourselves to Jesus in order that we might be transformed into his likeness. He did not give us a church to make us into some kind of imagined church society or even into better Americans (or whatever nationality you are) , but to transform us into his character and into his likeness. Jesus said that I will build My Church. We must never forget to whose church we belong.

Finally, notice that Hell itself will not prevail against God's church. God has promised that his church will triumph through all sorts of adversity. As I watch the powerful influences that seek to attract our youth and our adults, I sometimes wonder what will happen to us, what will happen to God's church? But, Jesus reminds us that as long as we are faithfully the Church, that peculiar community of those who have been redeemed, he will protect us and his church will prevail.

But we need to see that his promise of triumph is as much as a commission as a promise. When we understand that this is a charge to us to live out the faith in our world then we become the real church. We are commissioned to do more than just gather on Sunday and sing and pray and preach. We are called to live our lives in a godly way. We are called to be a witness. When we live our lives boldly without compromise, we are being what God has called us to be, a peculiar people who bear witness to the power of Jesus Christ.

It is a powerful thing to know who calls you by name. It is a liberating thing to know that you are called a son or a daughter of God and that he has freed you to live the Christian life. It is a powerful thing to know that you have been called out to be God's Church.

THANK GOD FOR STEREOTYPES

There are only three clerics appear regularly on British television. They have 101 different faces but these are just different actors; there are only three types of clergy person ever discovered by the script-writers of the English-speaking world.

There is the Vicar of Dibley. She (oh yes, non-British viewers who have not caught this show should understand that it is very important that this character is female) is hilariously funny. Her battles with her parish council are gut-wrenchingly funny. My wife and I pointed excitedly at the screen and say “That’s…” but here the laws of defamation prevent identification. The Vicar’s god is a friendly guy. He’s one of us, enjoys a joke – even a very smutty joke – and doesn’t mind if the Vicar doesn’t seem to know any theology, gets drunk and seduces a passing hunk.

Our second media minister is the Innocent Abroad. He (oh yes – only a man could be as naïve and simple as this fellow) drifts from plot to plot in soap operas, seeming to be somewhat lost. He has picked up his counselling skills from the back pages of a rather tame and inoffensive women’s magazine. His theology centres on a deity called Human Goodness. He sees the best in the worst in this world. Nobody takes much notice of him in or out of the drama. Script writers do not have to go to the trouble of writing him out of the story-line. He can disappear and it will be months before any viewer notices.

And finally there is the paedophile, murderous, serial adulterer who has a ready stream of biblical texts at his disposal. Once upon a time he might have been gay but that clearly could not be the case now. He is the only one of our three pastors who has read the bible and all the texts with words like “whore”, “blood” and “vengeance” have lodged in his mind. He is evil; he is a hypocrite; and he proves that you can’t trust a clergyman – at least not with your child, your wife or your life.

I am really grateful for these stereotypes. I hear colleagues bemoan the poor representation of pastors and teachers on television and in the cinema. I have been caught up in their grousing about it. But when I pause and think about it I am grateful for the stereotypes.

I know pastors who long for a portrayal of our work by a square-jawed, ruggedly-handsome, world-conquering, powerfully-preaching, theologically-literate, tall-building-leaping hero actor (Greek: hypocrites). How we long to be Tom Cruise of Christendom.

Some of still believe we are that. “I am the minister of this parish” I hear colleagues petulantly declaring when they suffer yet another defeat at the hands of a church committee or yet another rebuff by an atheistic administrator.

But then I thank God for the stereotypes. I come home at the end of a day with all the usual challenges of Christian ministry in this 21st century and as a flop down in front of the TV they are all there. I laugh to the point of breathlessness at the Vicar of Dibley and the antics of her congregation and then weep at the utter godlessness of her morality. I cringe at the ineffectual irrelevance of some nameless nonentity with a bit part in a “human interest” play and then I rage at the incarnate evil of the Bible-text-spouting villain of a police drama.

Is that how my congregation sees me? A useless and comic hypocrite, albeit not drawn with the broad brush strokes of television?

It doesn’t matter. I thank God that these images humble me. I am not doing this job because it carries with it status, or power, or honour. It once did in this country. Not now. As the images humble me I speak to God.

I start angry: “You called me to THIS?”

Then I calm down; maybe even I cry: “You CALLED me to this?”

And then it becomes clear: “YOU called me to this.”

And twenty-one years on I am still here; still in this small town which has nothing that makes it world famous; still in a small church; still never likely to be on a conference platform; still watching the country I love drift aimlessly away from its Christian heritage. People shake their heads and say, “Ooh – it’s spiritually hard there. There’s not much life in the church there.” They may even think “there’s not much life in you”.

And I think, “YOU called me to this.”

Thank God for the stereotypes which bring me back to my proper starting point: God’s call.

Why This Blog?

I have developed a growing concern about what I call normal sizes churches. The mega church seems to have stolen the spotlight. They are bigger therefore better, or at least, that is what they say. But the average church runs 100 or less in worship. They are still the backbone of American Christianity. Their demise would be devastating to both the Christian faith and to the spirituality of millions of believers.

I believe that in the next 10-20 years, large numbers of smaller churches will close their doors. Unfortunately, it seems that denominational leadership has not taken notice of this. In my own denomination, the emphasis has been on the larger church. This can be seen by the literature they write, the programs they produce and the speakers and churches they promote as examples to be followed.

It is my hope that this blog can become a place of research and dialogue in regard to smaller churches. And I hope that I can contribute in some small way in furthering the cause of Christ through his Church, whether large or small.