Moving The Mouse…(Part Four) De-dichotomizing The Church

Let’s begin with a definition shall we…

di·chot·o·my Pronunciation: dI-'kä-tuh-mE

Function: noun, inflected Form(s): plural –mies
Etymology: Greek dichotomia, from dichotomos

1 : a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities ; also : the process or practice of making such a division

I remember how much I had the joy of life upon me when I was a wee lad. My family was very close. We did everything together from water-skiing, to baseball, to picnics, to shared meals, to watching the three channels we got on our black and white TV. We were a tight-knit, loving, mid-america, middle-class family.
The only slight sadness that I recall from my early days was our typical Sunday morning routine. For some reason, sometime after I had applied my little dab of butch-wax to the time I arrived at the breakfast table, I would begin to sob. For a little “tough guy” this was extremely embarrassing and I couldn’t really explain to anybody why Sunday mornings made me so distraught – at least at that time. All I can tell you is that each Sunday morning, as the family gathered around one of my mom’s incredible breakfast feasts, and everyone sat silently reading their Sunday School quarterly in preparation for Sunday School followed by church – I was deeply depressed.
I also remember this – that right after church we would usually head to the local IGA where my dad would purchase his weekly cigar and a copy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It was somewhere between church and the IGA that the feeling of sadness would lift off of me and I would get happy again. I was entering back into the “real” world. The “real” world being – not at church.
Some might suggest that I, as a little flat-topped boy, was experiencing some form of spiritual warfare – that Satan was making me unhappy with church. I suppose that could be true. But, I don’t think it was quite that dramatic. As I have pondered these strange emotional swings in my formative years, I have come to another conclusion; and, the conclusion is very simple: The real world felt comfortable, expansive, and full of God while the whole Sunday morning church experience felt staged and stifled. I remember having a God-consciousness at a very early age and chatting away with God every night as I passed seamlessly into sleep. The one place where God didn’t seem particularly friendly and expansive was sitting in church. Sitting on the floor and watching football next to my dad’s big burgundy recliner, while he puffed merrily away on his Swisher Sweet, seemed more real, more natural, more like the God I talked to before I fell asleep each night.
Imagine for a moment how strange a church service might be through the eyes of a small child or a person who has had no church orientation. You enter a service where people greet you like a long-lost friend at the door and then disappear to go huddle up with their friends. The service begins. You are told to stand up and sing– so you stand up and try to follow along the best you can. You are told to sit down – so you sit down. Following the standing up and the sitting down time, you notice a group of men passing around neatly carved little wooden bowls into which people start dumping money. After that, a group of gents walk to the front and grab some pretty silver trays and start handing out microscopic cups of purple drink – not even equal to a shot of whiskey – along with the tiniest of square crackers – hardly bigger than a button. Next, a guy gets up and reads a bunch of announcements that you already have a copy of in your hand. “Perhaps there are a lot of illiterate people here,” you innocently think to yourself. Finally, a man in a suit gets up to give a talk. You notice that all of his points begin with the same letter. There are three points: “Sin, Saved, and Sanctified.” You can’t help but think of that commercial you heard for the product that fixes clogged drains: “Liquid Plumber: It drains, deodorizes and disinfects!” You look over and notice that one of the people who greeted you and passed the little wooden bowls around is snoozing away during the talk. You have a question about what the speaker is saying but you do not know if it is okay to raise your hand. Being a visitor, you’re afraid to draw attention to yourself. The talk ends – or so you thought. Actually, a new talk begins which is accompanied by music and more singing. This talk is a little shorter but way more animated. A few people get up and wander down to the front. The man who gave the talk says a few words to these people. Then he smiles. The service ends with the speaker telling everyone about the important decisions that have been made and nearly everyone grunts out an “Amen”. The speaker says a prayer and the program is over. The whole experience has been a bit odd, a little other worldly. On the way out, you see little groups of people huddled together having a smoke and talking about the same things you talk about with your friends during the week– football, politics, telling a good joke and such. A few minutes before, these guys seemed all tensed up and serious. Out here they seem almost normal – even approachable. But no one says another word to you and you make it out to your car and go home. As you drive, you say to yourself, “Well, I guess that’s not my thing.”
Remember our beginning word – the word dichotomy? Let’s revisit the definition: a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities. When I read the life of Jesus I am met with a person who seemed to go out of his way to combine the great teachings about the Kingdom of God with ordinary people in ordinary, everyday circumstances. In other words, there was no dichotomy- no division - between the spiritual and the natural. Jesus de-dichotomized the spiritual and the natural. Jesus taught in open fields. Jesus spoke with a guy sitting in a tree. The bow of a small fishing boat served as a makeshift platform. Jesus found his way into living rooms of notorious boozers, swindlers, hustlers and prostitutes. There seemed to be very little disconnect between His message and the real world into which He was born and ministered. There was no “putting on”, no staging of events, no getting gussied up for a meeting. Jesus' ministry took place in the midst of the sweat, grime, insanity, disease, cursing, sinning, gambling, backstabbing, gossiping, lusting, partying, and hypocrisy that is the sad lot of all mankind. He was in the “real” world. He didn’t create alternative safe-havens, holy ghettos of sinless people to whom to minister. His ministry was spontaneous, immediate – in the moment.
This is the God who found me in my little bedroom as a child. We had lovely chats. Somehow, without any sophisticated reflective abilities, I “felt” His absence on my treks to church. Nothing seemed real. Nothing seemed normal. I preferred the smell of my dad’s sweat to the smell of his English Leather. I was comfortable seeing my mom zipping around the yard in her shorts & floppy gardening hat rather than a dress, pumps and beehive. It was many years later that I sensed that I had permission to think this way. It was many more years after that before I felt free to speak of it.
The great purpose in our time is to bring God to the streets once more. I hesitate to use the word “relevant.” God is always that. Many are trying to make God relevant by pepping up the music, offering high-tech shows, and creating a plethora of goods and services in order to attract people to a geographical location. For the perceptive seeker, these sorts of “updates” are a mere change of clothes to a newer style. The same old gelatinous person is still in residence underneath the new outfit. But, here’s the deal – unless God actually “works” in the marketplace, or on the campus, or in the neighborhood – what good is He? He is still a contained God. And God, ferociously, has said through His Son Jesus Christ: “No more of that.” Jesus left heaven, a place of Divine confinement, in order to dwell (the words means: to pitch His tent) among us. The metaphors of the church compel us to move out and do life among the walking dead in the real world. We are ambassadors. We are salt. We are light. We are apostles (the word means: sent ones, or deliverymen). We are not the huddled!
So we end where we began – moving the mouse. That slight shuffle of the wrist which feigns busyness and productivity is something that we at Patrick Crossing are intentionally leaving behind. Rollo May once said: "It is an old ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way." Life is too short to invest time and resources and energy – to run faster - in creating more things to show up for at church - even when those “things” are compelled by the greatest of intentions. We cannot continue to mistake activity for achievement. As we re-order our lives around a simpler approach – I encourage you to ask God to show you your entry point into the “real” world. He will have a place custom made just for you.

Moving The Mouse...(Part Three) The Fisherman

(This is part three of a four-part series entitled "Moving the Mouse." The big image that we are using - that of moving a computer mouse around in order to look busy - serves as a backdrop metaphor to challenge the oftentimes pointless busyness associated with modern day ministry that has little to do with the call of Christ to simply go. Today, I borrow a great parable entitled "The Parable of The Fisherman" that I first heard when I was in seminary. The author remains anonymous. The message is powerful. Enjoy).

THE PARABLE OF THE FISHERMAN

Now it came to pass that a group existed who called themselves fishermen. And lo, there were many fish in the streams and lakes throughout the surrounding area....Week after week, month after month, and year after year, those who called themselves fishermen met in meetings and talked about: the call to fish; the abundance of fish; and, how they might go about pursuing fishing as an occupation. They declared that fishing is always to be the primary task of fishermen. But, they never fished.... These fishermen built large, beautiful buildings for local fishing headquarters. The plea was that everyone should be a fisherman and every fisherman should fish. One thing they didn’t do, however, was fish.... In addition to meeting regularly, they organized a board to send out fishermen to other places where there were many fish. The board was formed by those who had great vision and courage to speak about fishing, to define fishing, to promote the idea of fishing in far-away streams and lakes where many other fish of different colors & sizes lived. Also, the board hired staffs and appointed committees and held many meetings to: define fishing; defend fishing; and to, decide what new streams should be thought about and studied. Many people began to get into the fishing supply business because they didn't feel that fishing was their call or gifting. But, at the end of the day, nobody went fishing... A speaker bureau was provided to schedule special speakers on the subject of fishing. After one stirring meeting on “The Necessity of Fishing,” one young fellow left the meeting and actually went fishing. The next day he reported that he had caught two outstanding fish. He was honored for his excellent catch and he was scheduled to visit all the big meetings to share how he did it. So, he quit fishing in order to have time to tell about his experience to the other fishermen. He was also placed on the Fisherman’s General Board as a person having considerable experience. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in Fishology and was asked to attend an International Conference in Switzerland on world fishing where he was a keynote speaker. But, he never again went fishing... Now it’s true that many of the fishermen sacrificed and put up with all kinds of difficulties. Some lived near the water and bore the smell of dead fish. They received ridicule of some who made fun of their fishermen’s clubs and the fact that they claimed to be fishermen, yet never fished. They wondered about those who felt it was of little use to attend the talks about fishing. After all, were they not following the Master, who said, “Follow Me, and I will make you to become a fisher of men”? (Mark 1:17)... Imagine how hurt some were when one day a person suggested that those who didn’t fish were not really fishermen, no matter how much they claimed to be. Yet it did sound correct. Is a person a fishermen if, year after year, he never catches a fish? Is one following if he isn’t fishing?

Moving The Mouse...(Part Two) The Restaurant

(Continued- In the first post of this four part series, we used the illustration of "moving the mouse", i.e. sitting at a desk and looking busy by having one's hand on a computer mouse and moving it around, to illustrate the busy but often pointless activity that has become the current expression of church. For this post, we'll change images to a restaurant to strengthen the point)

Picture for a moment your favorite restaurant. There are two or three that come to mind for me. Living in a resort town we have a number of very fine eating establishments – from moderately priced to so expensive that you feel you have earned the right to steal a picture or to kick the owner in the shins on the way out.

Now, imagine for a moment all of what takes place behind the scenes to make a good restaurant. I once owned a couple of Pizza restaurants so I know a little of which I speak. A long time before any of the other staff shows up, the prep cooks arrive. These folks prepare: all the sauces, things which need time to thaw out and marinate, things which need time to rise and to be poked down, and things which need to be cut in little bitty pieces to put on or in other things. These folks also keep track of inventories, place orders and receive orders with various suppliers. Sometimes the prep cooks stick around and do a little cooking for the first shift. Sometimes they do not. The next set of folks that show up are the line cooks and the wait staff. These folks are there to put on the show – so to speak. Throw in a floor manager or two, a bartender, some busboys and dishwashers and you are ready to rock – you are ready to “have restaurant.”

Imagine now that the manager has assembled all of the staff: prep. cooks, wait-staff, line cooks, busboys, dishwashers, bartender, hostess, etc. - in a room for the big weekly pep talk. For this motivational time together, the manager has gone to the trouble of rounding up a few motivational songs that all of the staff can sing to get them fired up. One of the songs has to do with the greatness of the food being served. The next song focuses on working together in harmony. The final song is about the customers for whom the food is prepared – how hungry they are and such. For this portion of the presentation, one of the busboys has volunteered to accompany the singing on his guitar. He proceeds to strum vigorously and after a slow start, the assembled workers get with it – singing fortissimo with arms akimbo in rhythm. Next, there is a motivational speech by the manager about the restaurant business and its primary purpose: “to feed people.” Everyone nods their head in agreement. Suddenly, the lines cooks, in a moment of inspiration, run to their stations and begin to cook food. The wait-staff gets excited and begins to grab the food and to hand it out to each other. The busboy sets his guitar aside and waits in eager anticipation for the chance to dive upon any dirty fork or spoon or plate and to speed it back to the dishwasher. The bartender and cocktail waitress get into the act and start pouring adult beverages right and left. Everyone takes one sip, and then another. A good time is had by all. People have been fed. They have had a great dining experience. The manager smiles: “Yes, yes…they get it.” Finally, the manager says: “Good job everyone. We have had a great restaurant experience this evening. Now, if everyone could please put a portion of your paychecks in this little box on the way out, that would be great. See you all here next week.”

How is that for a business model? A bit absurd? Sure. A restaurant that doesn’t feed anybody but its own wait staff will quickly go out of business. And so it is with how we, in the west, have gone about doing or being the church. A great deal of resources and energy - a great deal - are being spent to feed, entertain and satisfy our own people.

The church in America is a puzzle to the church in Asia, India, or any third world congregation. They are amazed by our resources. They are equally amazed at our anemia. Talking with church leaders from other countries who have observed our “closed restaurant” mentality, they quietly suggest that God might have better uses for the resources of the western church than say to: build, heat and air condition massive facilities that sit empty most of the week; continually invest more and more time, treasure and talent into very complex Sunday morning productions that last only an hour or two; create unlimited specialized ministries based upon the “felt” needs of the congregation in order to keep them from heading down the road to another church that has more & better membership benefits, etc. In the words of my analogy, we are building nicer and more comfortable restaurants with more amazing ambiance, and page after page of new and exciting menu offerings - but people outside the restaurant are not being fed.

In a research article published in Christianity Today by, Rebecca Barnes & Lindy Lowry, entitled: Special Report: The American Church In Crisis, the following statistics were given: Less than 20% of Americans regularly attend church – half of what pollsters have reported – the number is closer to 17.7%. This will trend down because of population growth to around 16.6% in 2010 & 15.4% in 2020. Between 2000 & 2004, the net gain (the number of new churches started minus the number of churches that closed) was 5,452 in evangelical churches. When you add the start/closure numbers from mainline denominational churches, there is a net loss of 2,200, leaving an overall gain of only 3,252. The most telling fact is that a net gain of 13,024 churches would have been necessary just to keep pace with population growth during this period. Only 6% of American churches are actually growing. Most admit that they are simply trading members. In the words of R.C. Sproul it is simply , “…a game of church musical chairs.” (to be continued…)