Fight for your right to polity

I read Ty Ragan's article in the December Record with interest. I too have faced the challenge of how to open up the doors and chip away at the mortar of our churches so that young people can fit in. Here's my suggestion for Ty: treat yourself to a copy of the Book of Forms for Valentine's Day (get the "romancing the laity" edition). You're worth it! Then read the handy guide to how our church tries to get things done from cover to cover; learn to love it. Embrace this peculiar Presbyterian passion even if the dour prose makes your tattooed flesh crawl. As daunting (perhaps ludicrous) as it may sound, your long-term task is to clear a path for some of these multi-pierced, hell-bound, hormone-driven, not-necessarily-all-that-reformed whippersnappers about whom you write to one day get onto the Board of Managers (or the Session) in your church. Then they'll be given the keys to the church and they can open the doors personally. In my experience, you have to take the first step toward the "institutional" church — it won't come knocking on your wi-fi laptop at Starbucks. Of course, this will take time and a lot of running back and forth between coffee shops and big stone buildings. A decade or more of perspiration may be required before you see any results. But I'm sure you didn't become a leader in this whole Jesus thing expecting to beam anyone on board. Let this be your mantra: "By 2015 there will be at least one member of my church's Board of Managers with a tattoo." John Calvin took a similar approach in Geneva and look where that got us.
As I always say, you've got to fight for your right to polity.