Another thought on church shopping and polarization

Yesterday’s post on church shopping and cultural polarization reminded me of a question I’ve been cogitating on for the past week or two.

What would it look like if we were forced to go back to attending local community churches? How would it affect our view of what was necessary in a church and what things were “essentials”?

Say gas prices spiked to the point where we couldn’t afford to drive the 10 miles each way to our church of choice. Our choices are now walking or riding bicycles on Sunday morning. In my neighborhood, that would limit my choices to four churches, one Catholic, one United Church of Christ, one “Community of Christ” (which I know very little about) and one Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

In our 2008 church search (not limited by driving distance) we didn’t really consider any Lutheran churches; would a walking-distance limit change my mind? Probably, given my options. Another possibility: would we canvas the neighborhood to see if there were other like-minded evangelicals who wanted to meet in a house church with us? Seems like an option, but it also seems somewhat fractured and silly given that there’s a LCMS church in the neighborhood.

See how quick the criteria changes? All of a sudden I’m thinking about what might be “good enough” rather than finding the church that’s exactly what I want. So what I’ve proved (to myself, at least) here is that in my non-distance-limited church choosing I’ve unconsciously made a tradeoff, choosing a church that more closely aligns with my doctrinal and worship style comfort zone above a local church that would have me going to worship with my neighbors.

This isn’t an unusual trade-off; it’s one that our suburban culture has widely adopted. Gas is (relatively) cheap, driving everywhere is natural, and so we spend time in the car to associate, or shop, or worship, with those of our choosing rather than those of our neighborhood. And this post isn’t really all that different from a slew of other blog posts and books wrestling with the suburban culture and longing for a true local community.

But it’s a challenging exercise to think through. What churches would you have as options? What would you do?

Church shopping and cultural polarization

CNN.com has a blog post today exploring “How Church Shopping is Polarizing the Country”. Written by law professors Naomi Cahn (George Washington University) and June Carbone (University of Missouri Kansas City) who have recently co-authored a book on cultural polarization, the particular focus on church shopping intrigued me. Heck, I was church shopping not all that long ago. I’m helping cause cultural polarization? I must know more.

Fascinating (and saddening) are their definitions of the two polarized camps: traditionalists, who “…believe in an eternal and transcendent authority that tells us what is good, what is true, how we should live, and who we are”, and modernists, who “…would redefine historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life”. Modernists, they note, “…have become less likely to attend church at all.”

In previous generations, they say, both modernists and traditionalists tended to attend the same churches, typically right in their community. Today, though, the ability to church-shop has the traditionalists seeking out churches that affirm their “personal values”, and has modernists staying home.

The authors lament the decline of the mainline Protestant denominations that in previous generations housed both camps, and complain that today’s evangelical churches (full of like-minded traditionalists) are self-reinforcing in belief, and that evangelicalism’s close ties to the Republican Party serve to marginalize those who might be in agreement politically but not religiously (or vice versa). In the end, they say, traditionalists group together and talk only to themselves, and modernists leave church altogether, resulting in an increasingly polarized society.

There are certainly places where I disagree with the authors’ views on the topic. I think that Protestants seeking churches where their beliefs are shared and reinforced is a good thing. And drawing rosy pictures of a post-WWII generation where everyone attended the same community church regardless of what they believed only serves to hide the fact that those weak, any-belief-is-OK churches in large part helped cause the modernist/traditionalist divide we see today, by valuing the form-over-substance mindset that was eventually cynically discarded by Generation X.

However, within the microcosm that is the evangelical church, there are good lessons to be learned here. We need to be vigilant to ensure that we limit our “distinctives” to the fundamental Gospel truths. As soon as our teaching, or even our church culture, becomes, even by way of unspoken assumptions, ’the gospel plus conservative politics’ or ’the gospel plus homeschooling’ or ’the gospel plus pre-millennial dispensationalism’, etc., we will alienate those who either desperately need to hear the Gospel or who could be vibrant, participating members of our local body.

The good news that Jesus Christ is Lord of all is polarizing. We should not be surprised when law professors find it so. But there is still a lesson for us here: let the Gospel be polarizing, not the cultural things we are so apt to add on to it.

Well, we joined.

After taking quite a bit of time to make our decision, Becky and I yesterday became members of Stonebridge Church (EFCA). For a while we were wondering if enough members would show up to form a quorum so we (and 14 others) could be voted into membership, but eventually enough trickled in to make it official.

It feels good to have made the decision and committed to a body of believers. We are very thankful that God has led us to this fine group of folks as we continue through life’s journey.

Partaking "in an unworthy manner"

Brent Thomas posted yesterday on the question of “fencing the table” at communion, and while the comment thread on his post has gone down the path of fencing based on doctrinal fidelity (ah, those Calvinists!), I’ve been more thinking about it from my evangelical perspective, and the idea of partaking “in an unworthy manner”. (Thanks to my brother Andrew for batting around some thoughts with me.)

1 Corinthians 11 is the relevant passage here:

In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not!

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. 32When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.

So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other. If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you meet together it may not result in judgment.

Now, in the churches I’ve been in, the pastor typically instructs the congregation something along these lines before communion is served: “take a minute quietly, examine your heart, ask God to reveal sin to you that needs confessed, then confess and partake. Don’t take it unworthily.” And while these are good instructions, I’m not sure they’re actually the point of the passage.

The problem Paul is addressing with the Corinthians isn’t that there are a bunch of unrepentant sinners partaking of communion (which undoubtedly there were), but rather that people are coming and gobbling up the food in a haphazard, flippant, gluttonous fashion, not recognizing, as Paul says, that this is the body of the Lord. They’re not taking it as a serious remembrance. Paul’s corrective summary in verse 33 doesn’t say “repent of your sins before you partake!” - rather, it says “wait for each other”. Paul is emphasizing the corporate nature of this sacrament, something that the Corinthians seem to have forgotten.

I don’t want to discount the need for examining our hearts as we come before God in worship - in Matthew 5:23-24 Jesus says to go make things right with your brother before you come to the altar to sacrifice to God. But I’ve talked to people who told me “you know, I thought about it, and I remembered something I needed to settle with another person, so I let the elements go by and didn’t partake”, and this, to me, seems to be entirely missing the point.

Partaking of the bread and the cup in communion is a reminder of the sacrifice that gave us salvation. In giving us salvation, God calls us to repent and believe, even knowing full well that perfect repentance won’t ever happen for us this side of eternity. In communion, God calls us to remember the death of His Son, with the same heart of brokenness and repentance that is working in our salvation, even as He knows that each of us will go back out and willfully commit sin.

To put it another way: communion isn’t intended to be for Christians who’ve somehow managed to get everything cleaned up. In examining ourselves, we should quickly recognize that we wretched, miserable sinners desperately need Jesus’ blood to cleanse us every day. And in partaking, we should not fear that we’ve somehow forgotten a sin and so God is going to smack us, but rather should be humbly thankful for the awesome gift we have been given.

Joining up... or not

That little announcement made its quarterly reappearance in the church bulletin last Sunday: “Times are available for those wishing to become members to meet with the elders.  Call the church office to schedule.”  It sits there on the page in eight point font and taunts me.  Church membership.  Am I really ready to join?

Ten years ago when we moved to Iowa we decided on a church relatively quickly, and once there, proceed with similar pace through the membership process.  After eight years there we left to help plant another church.  There was no official “membership” in the early stages of that church plant, but we were on the core team and I was an elder, so we were quite obviously committed. 

When it was clear the Lord was leading us away from the church plant, we finally settled on our current church home, where we’ve been attending for a year now.  Not just attending - involved, too.  I’m playing on the worship team once a month, Becky is volunteering in the nursery.  We attended the “welcome to the family” class several months ago.  It was a helpful introduction to the church’s history, doctrine, and philosophy of ministry.  At the time, we weren’t ready yet to join.  And now, as the announcement comes around again every three months, I wonder again, is it time?

My hesitancy isn’t a fear of responsibility or accountability - in fact, I’d much prefer being under the authority of a local church body to being some sort of Lone Ranger.  Three months in, I wasn’t ready to join mostly because joining felt like dating someone on the rebound - it was just too soon.  We’d been with our previous church family for nearly ten years, I wasn’t just gonna dive back in.   But now it’s been a year.  I don’t have any big doctrinal issues that would keep me from joining.  I guess it’s just mostly cold feet.  What if this ends up not being the place for us long-term?  On the other hand, how long do we stay in this holding pattern before we should just give up and admit that our current church has become our de facto home church and we should just go ahead and join?

Much to ponder.  Your thoughts are always appreciated.

Not being able to do it all

Kevin DeYoung just nails it in a post today. Titled “On Mission, Changing the World, and Not Being Able to Do It All”, DeYoung challenges and encourages those of us who have the inclination to try to do it all, and who end up finding themselves age 30, cynical, and burned out. A few highlights:

I understand there are lazy people out there (and believe me I can be lazy too sometimes). I understand there are lots of Christians in our churches sitting around doing nothing and they need to be challenged not to waste their life (seriously, I love that book and think Piper motivates for radical Christianity in the right way)…

…We need to be challenged, but in ways we can actually obey, not pummeled into law-induced submission until we finally feel completely rotten about most everything in life and admit we aren’t doing enough for the poor, the lost, the children, the elderly, the least of these, the…you fill in the blank. Is the goal of Christianity really to leave everyone feeling like terrible a parent, spouse, friend, or neighbor all the time?

I believe there will always be more indwelling sin in my life and I believe that I will never do a good deed perfectly. But I don’t believe God gives us impossible demands in which we should always feel like failures….

When the pastor preaches on generosity the goal should not be to make every last person feel like a miserable, miserly wretch. Because unless you live in some Godforsaken locale, there are probably people in your church who practice generosity…. Sometimes, by God grace, we do get it right. The problem with “do more” Christianity is that no one is ever allowed to get it right. And the problem, ironically enough, with never allowing anyone to get it right, is that fewer people feel like getting it right really matters.

No doubt some Christians need to be shaken out of their lethargy. I try to do that every Sunday morning and evening. But there are also a whole bunch of Christians who need to be set free from their performance-minded, law-keeping, world-changing, participate-with-God-in-recreating-the-cosmos shackles. I promise you, some of the best people in your churches are getting tired. They don’t need another rah-rah pep talk. They don’t need to hear more statistics and more stories Sunday after Sunday about how bad everything is in the world. They need to hear about Christ’s death and resurrection. They need to hear how we are justified by faith apart from works of the law. They need to hear the old, old story once more. Because the secret of the gospel is that we actually do more when we hear less about all we need to do for God and hear more about all that God has already done for us.

Go read the whole thing. It’s worth it. Really.

Taking Reproof Seriously

Nearly a week ago I wrote a piece here wrestling with some concerns I’ve had about Sunday morning worship. That post went past with relatively few comments, but this morning I had a conversation with a brother from Stonebridge who, without regard to the content of my concerns, asked why I hadn’t just come to folks at church directly with my thoughts before publishing them on my blog. Furthermore, he let me know that there were feelings hurt by what I wrote.

We had a good conversation, one with which I’ve been wrestling for the rest of the day. And while I don’t feel like this was a situation where someone had wronged me and I should’ve been following Matthew 18, in hindsight (don’t you hate that word, hindsight? just its presence indicates that something was screwed up) I can understand that there could be folks who were hurt by what came across, despite my best intentions, as public criticism of them and their service at church.

With all that in mind, I want to say just a few more things, and hope that they can settle the topic for now.

First: if my earlier post caused you hurt in any way, I apologize and ask for your forgiveness.

Second: I tried to say it in my earlier post, and I’ll try to say it again here and hope that it comes through clearly: none of the criticism I was bringing was directed at any person. I certainly have enough experiences doing unprofitable things in church on which I can look back regretfully. I am fortunate that I have had people who noted those, corrected me in a spirit of love, and then encouraged me to get out there again. I want the same for Stonebridge, but I obviously handled the lines of communication poorly.

Finally: I’ve only been at Stonebridge for less than a year, and have had precious little opportunity to get to know any of you, so I’ll say something that in better circumstances hopefully wouldn’t need said: the last thing I desire is to cause disunity within the Body. My only desire is that God be more glorified in each one of us, individually, and in all of us, corporately, with each passing day.

I earnestly yearn to chew on these topics with you in the days to come.

Taking Worship Seriously

OK, so it’s entirely possible that at the ripe age of 32 I’ve just become an old curmudgeon, but in the past few weeks I’ve had a couple of experiences at church that cause me to wonder just how seriously we take this thing we call Sunday morning worship.

Now, I’ll put some caveats at the front. Yes, I’m going to be talking about Stonebridge. Yes, I expect that there are people from Stonebridge who will read this. Yes, I’m going to ask some questions that will sound critical. So up front let me say this isn’t about any one person, or any one service, or any one topic, but rather it’s about the things I’ve seen, and about the mindset I think it reveals.

Experience #1: two weeks ago we ended the service with a great sermon from James, and started it with a good set of worship songs that were full of the Gospel - solid stuff. But the worship team had barely time to get off the stage, and the music had barely faded, before we were treated to one of the church staff dressed up in a superhero costume - complete with mask and cape and theme music! - to give us an announcement about an upcoming event. Hope you didn’t want time to reflect on what you’d just sung about. You weren’t going to get it.

Experience #2: this morning at church was “Family Sunday”, which means that there was no Sunday School for the kids - the whole family got to sit in church together. Then, after three worship songs, the children’s pastor was tasked with giving the message. First came a pseudo-introduction with a scripted “interruption” to give an announcement about a women’s event. Then came the actual sermon from James, and it felt more like a gimmick than a sermon. There was a very distracting, ever-louder ticking clock in the background (for effect!) and at the end of three short points, during what seemed like a conclusion, the ticking finally stopped, and the pastor cut off the sermon mid-sentence and walked off the stage. And just like that, we were done.

Now yes, I know this morning was an attempt to be dramatic and illustrate the sermon point. But I’m afraid that what people are left remembering this afternoon isn’t the point from James 4, but rather the awkward way everyone sat and looked at each other as the pastor walked off, as my daughter asked “is church over?”. She was confused, too. And yes, Laura, church was over. We ended up spending more time driving to and from church than we did actually in the service this morning.

I fear that experiences like these reveal that we don’t value enough the experience of Sunday worship. Yes, we show value to the Gospel in the songs we sing - but we don’t value them enough to give folks time to meditate on the great riches of God’s grace after singing. Instead, we distract them with superheroes in tights. Yes, we value and encourage the Sunday morning gathering, but then we allow gimmickry to replace Gospel proclamation, and send people home early, wondering “what was that?”.

I remarked to my wife on the way home that, on a spectrum with stodgy and boring but solid on one end, and flashy, cool, and vapid on the other, our current church home is one or two ticks further toward the flashy end than I’m quite comfortable with. Don’t get me wrong - I have great respect for a lot of people there, and have regularly heard the Gospel from the pulpit. But times like these past few weeks leave me wondering if our lip service to the Gospel isn’t quite being backed up with the sort of Sunday morning gravity that it deserves.

The Church Search: A Conclusion of Sorts

After Nick chided me last night about my infrequent blogging, and after Roger noted elsewhere that he’d never really heard any conclusions from our church search, it occurred to me that I’d never really written a concluding chapter to that story. Let me fix that now.

We knew when we made our list of churches to visit that it wouldn’t be a long list. We started with three churches that were our primary focus, and after ruling out one of them midway through, it was really down to two: Maranatha Bible and Stonebridge. We visited both of those churches multiple times, evaluating and praying that God would direct us. Looking for churches is frustrating from a time perspective, too - there are only so many church services per week that you can visit. Patience is required. Not easy.

In the end, while we liked both churches and could’ve probably been happy at either, we decided back in mid-November that we would give it a go at Stonebridge. There’s a lot of good going on there, the teaching has been solid, there are lots of ministry opportunities. We’ve signed up to join a small group that will start meeting next week. I’m excited to get the chance to start to get to know some people and really feel like I’m a part of the place. We’ll see how God continues to lead, but for now, we’re happy to start calling Stonebridge home. Let’s hope it’s a while before we have to do the church search again.

How do you select/appoint elders?

When we visited Maranatha on Sunday, one of the inserts in their bulletin was a full page giving the testimonies of each of their elder candidates. That got me to wondering what sort of selection and vetting process different churches use for choosing elders.

In my experience at Noelridge, here’s what happened: the existing elder board suggested men to serve as elder apprentices. Those apprentices had to be approved by the congregation. Once approved, they met with the elders at all the regular meetings, etc for some period of time - a year, maybe two. At the point the elders were comfortable with their qualifications and thought them ready to become full elders, the elders would recommend the apprentices names to the congregation for approval.

Things that, to me, were notably absent: any sort of in-depth theological examination. Granted, there were some one-on-one theological discussions in various meetings over the apprenticeship period, but there was nothing formal. It was assumed that you agreed to the statement of faith, and that was good enough. While we agreed that Alex Strauch’s idea of interviewing elder candidates’ wives to get their input was a good idea, in practice I never saw it happen.

So here’s my question for you, be you a church leader or just a church member: what sort of selection and vetting processes are in place for elder candidates? Popular nomination and election? Any sort of congregational examination? I remember hearing about Rae’s study sessions before his PCA elder exam, so I know some of the answer I’ll get from him, but I’m interested in hearing from the rest of you all.