When someone admits to a conversion experience in a CBC interview, my ears suddenly listen a bit more attentively. When that person is the vice-president for government policy with the National Association of Evangelicals in the United States, admitting to a major shift in his thinking about the environment, I become really curious! Richard Cizik did precisely that in late March after witnessing first-hand the extensive environmental degradation in Alaska. He said he could no longer bracket environmental issues, as so many evangelical Christians had tended to do. He had to make a connection between his deepest spiritual convictions and the world around him. His understanding of God as Creator and the creation as God’s gift compelled a new perspective – and also gospel engagement.
Poignant experiences can forge a new connection between our understanding of the gospel and the world around us. In 1981, when I returned to my teaching duties at McGill University after a sabbatical in Central America, I was told that students felt I had experienced a conversion. My response was, “You are absolutely right!” In the face of acute marginality, I saw the gospel as inextricably connected to issues of poverty. There is no Good News if it is not good news for the poor. My theoretical reflections on the structural causes of poverty somehow had to be linked to the blunt reality of what I had witnessed. The gospel now challenged my middle-class perspective in a more direct way.
It is interesting to view our response to our experience of the world in light of Paul’s key statement at the beginning of Romans 12, where he urges church members to be transformed by the renewing of their minds. Actually, the Greek word used for ‘renewing’ is the word from which we get ‘metamorphosis.’ Think of the radical change from a caterpillar to a butterfly and one has a sense of a marvellous newness that is possible through the influence of really being grasped by the message of Christ.
Notice, however, that in Paul’s letter the root motivation for changed ethical behaviour is not human experience but theology. Paul has just completed an elaborate exposition of how God has acted in Jesus Christ for the redemption of a broken and sinful world. Out of this theological understanding, he encourages the church to be a community of people who witness to the gospel in the midst of the world.
Both theology and experience are needed to discern how we are called to be the church today. This is a challenging process, because a secular world does not take God seriously. Even when religious language is used, the overall perspective leaves God practically unimportant – often just a way of simply emphasizing something.
In addition, the church is no longer at the centre but on the periphery of much public discourse. Where religion is allowed into the conversation, it has tended to be relativized as though all viewpoints are equally valid. By appealing to tolerance and inclusivity, most of what we hold to be distinctive is reduced to very little. At that point many, especially young people, say, “Why bother?”
It is not surprising that some are discouraged about the future of the church. Declining membership (with an increasing number of people preferring just to be adherents rather than members), challenging finances, and the struggle to maintain buildings that seem too large and too old are among some of the issues frequently raised. But the numbers game is the world’s game. Unless a business is growing numerically it is failing. But the church was never intended to be a mere reflection of culture.
For me, the central question is not how will a denomination with a declining membership survive, but how do we remain true to our rootedness in Christ and seek to live this out faithfully together in the world. This involves several deliberate moves.
First, we have to take an honest look at our understanding of the church as more than just another human organization. What kind of community are we? The New Testament calls the church “the Body of Christ.” Around the Lord’s Table we receive the presence of Christ himself and become a community bound both to Christ and to one another for the sake of the world. The followers of Jesus were sent out to continue the awesome movement begun in the ministry of Jesus with its fundamental significance for the world as a whole. We should stop acting as though the church’s destiny is all up to us. We need to re-think our tendency to find the latest technique to increase our control over our future. The life and future of the church ultimately belong to Christ.
In each generation our church needs to recover our own spiritual heritage within the scriptures and the reformed tradition of the 16th century. How do we read an ancient text like the Bible? How does this complex and fascinating library illuminate the journey of the people of God and witness to Christ? How does scripture continue to speak to us and to our world today?
The reformers sought to recover a biblical understanding of the church and its faith. They articulated their convictions carefully for their particular time and place. How do we live out of their theological heritage? Our most recent doctrinal summary, Living Faith, as a liturgical expression of what we believe, is a very helpful statement. But like all such creedal pieces, it needs continuing exploration and further concrete elaboration
Unless we are clear about what we believe, we won’t really have the depth of commitment necessary to be a lively, engaged, and faithful believing community. This hard theological work has to be woven into the very fabric of the life of the church, in all of its parts, including its colleges, assemblies, national boards and committees, presbyteries, and, yes, also congregations. Scholars and theologians of the church are important but so are pastors, elders, and regular church members. Without deeply spiritual communal engagement with our foundational convictions, our discernment will be shallow and tepid – and this includes a recovery of doxology that is the essence of worship, especially when we celebrate the sacraments that move us beyond words into the mystery of God’s awesome grace.
Second, greater clarity about what we believe urges exploration of how we live in the world. The church is always being enticed to fit into the world and as individuals we are continually being shaped by our culture, often subliminally. It is incumbent on the church, therefore, to explore the world’s ways of thinking and behaving through the lens of the gospel. For example, we believe in the inherent value of human beings as persons. When a society elevates the sphere of economic relations above all others, everything is commodified. If our federal government adopts an immigration policy that promotes the commercial value of would-be immigrants over, say, family unification, is this not starting to commodify human persons contrary to our Christian values?
But first, congregations need to reflect on how they themselves may be reflecting secular culture without realizing what they are doing financially. Their members may think that when they participate in a marriage or a funeral they need to pay for these “services.” After all, the whole notion of service in our society has been commercialized. We expect to pay extra for services. In the fellowship of the church, however, such special occasions ought to be seen as integral to the church’s collective life. Has our stewardship been replaced by money-raising schemes?
Finally, we are called not only to look at how culture has shaped our life, but also how the church’s understanding of the gospel can imagine an alternative world. If we think of Paul’s description of the incarnation in Philippians 2, we see a distinctive way of looking at power. The divine Son emptied himself of all divine prerogatives and took the path of suffering – and finally death on a cross – in order to pour out the awesome love of God for the world. The church is urged to have what he calls the “mind of Christ, and to manifest it in bold and compassionate service.” So how do we look at the world’s exercise of power and particularly its preference for using military force? In a world of conflict and violence, alternatives to such force have often been much more effective.
Rethinking power relationships can be linked to the exercise of justice. Yale professor Miroslav Volf is a theologian who looks at the radical forgiveness revealed in the cross. He outlines the difficult journey of repentance and forgiveness that can create a far deeper kind of community than one based on a law-and-order approach. In a post-9/11 world, it seems far greater emphasis is placed on secret trials, even tolerance of torture, and certainly punitive justice. But Christian leaders like Rev. Desmond Tutu have enabled truth and reconciliation commissions in various countries that have opted for the healing power of restorative justice. Our own church is currently participating in a journey of healing and reconciliation with Canadian First Nations.
As I think about our church at this particular time, I believe we need discernment that leads to engagement with the world for which Christ died. In my previous two pieces, I have suggested that it is helpful to listen to voices like those of Stanford Reid and Douglas Hall, who prod us to recover something of our heritage as the lens for discerning our own times. Many other names like John Calvin and Walter Bryden could be added. Now I am also suggesting that we need to be open to being converted individually and collectively to live the gospel more faithfully. Let me push this further by saying that it would help us as a denomination if we could learn to hold our own passionate views in real dialogue with alternative possibilities. We have the capacity, says Gregory Jones in a recent Christian Century article, “to hold conflicting ideas in constructive tension” and move toward integrative thinking. This is highly preferable to our culture’s way of defining ourselves over against others.
The discernment I have been probing needs serious conversations in and among congregations where constructive tension framed by prayerful openness encourages both the recovery of our deepest spiritual heritage and its engagement with our experience of the world. Presbyteries can play a key role in fostering this through their own reorganization as deliberative gatherings rather than primarily business-processing courts. Other agencies of the church can then redefine themselves to give wisdom, support, and encouragement. The result could be a creative movement of the Spirit in which we become both more distinctive in the world and creative in fostering its redemption and shalom.
