It was the spring of 1984 and I was taking Systematic Theology with Dr. Frank Tupper, a brilliant if rather eccentric professor. We were talking about ecclesiology, the theology of church.
The lecture was going well when a friend, rather innocently, asked, “Dr. Tupper, don’t you think ministry can happen outside the church?”
Frank went ballistic! Pointing his finger at the student he said, “That’s the problem with you liberals! You are going to go and save the whales, stop nuclear war, feed the hungry and leave the church and it is all going to go to hell!”
With that he stomped out of class. We waited for him to return, but he didn’t. I was left pondering his words 41 years later.
He proved to be prophetic. You only have to look at enrollment in seminaries. Recent statistics show a slight uptick in students—most 2nd career students, but few if any state that they are going to work in the church. Instead they are leading worthy and good ministries, but the church?
There isn’t a week that goes by when I don’t get a dire warning about the demise of the church. Everywhere we look we see the shrinking numbers—in attendance, in giving, in churches. Gallup reports that between 200 and 2023 the percentage of US adults who regularly attend religious services declined from 42 to 23%. Thom Rainer, reacher with the Barna Group, predicts that given recent trends 15,000 churches will close this year. And it is not just in th US. There are predictions that the Anglican Church in Canada, that nation’s largest denomination, will collapse by 2040.
Dire reports!
And you understand why! While occasionally we do hear good news coming out of churches—the incredible work Trinity Moravian had done in paying off medical debt, most of the church news we hear has to do with scandals. Once upon a time pastors were seen as one of the most trusted professions, but now… Clergy rank 29% below garbage collectors!
Do you understand why I use the word dire?
Even if you put aside the scandals (like we could or should) we have to admit that the world has changed. I tell people that the model of church has changed. When I grew up the model was school. You went to church on Sunday because you went to church on Sunday, just like you went to school on Monday. Church was the center of the social universe. Businesses in my home town closed at lunch on Wednesday so owners could get in a round of golf before Wednesday night prayer meeting! And planning something on Sunday?
Now I suggest that the model of church is the Emergency Room. I don’t go to the Emergency Room all the time, but when I need it I want it to be there, open 24/7. I want it to be a Level 1 Trauma center and having lived in Canada, I don’t want to pay for it!
See today, church is just one option of many. On any given Sunday you might stay home, have another cup of coffee and watch CBS Sunday Morning. Maybe go to Starbucks, head to the beach or mountains, check out your child’s soccer or lacrosse match. Perhaps you might glance at an online broadcast. I had one member tell me in the midst of Covid when our services were on youTube, “I like this because I can just fast forward past the parts I don’t like!” Welcome to the new world!
As much as we might wish to go back to the good old days, we have to face the reality that isn’t going to happen. We in the church are having to answer some questions that we never thought of before, not the least is which, why church?
Why church? Of all the options available to us why church?
Too often we have neglected the question. We have just failed to give an answer to why church is important. The results have been devastating. Don’t take it from me, a pastor with a vested interest in church. Take it from more secular sources.
In 2017 Robert Jones wrote in his wonderful book, The End of White Christian America, that throughout our history the church has been at the forefront of all the major social movements—education (you know Harvard was originally a school to educate ministers) healthcare, child labor, civil rights? The church has help drive the improvements in our lives. We have been able to do that because the language of faith has been the mortar that has held our country together. But now, that mortar is beginning to crack. What happens now? What will hold us together?
In a book published just this month Jonathan Rauch says it has led to our country being at a crisis. Full disclosure, Rauch is a self-identified gay atheist, yet he says that part of the issue facing our nation is the failure of the church to live up to our part of the bargain! He says “our founders did not expect Christianity or any other religion to have greater loyalty to the Constitution that to God. Religion’s job is not to support… government. The founders did however generally believe that religion was important for stabilizing government because it teaches virtue and thereby makes Americans more governable.”
He goes on to argue that “Traditional religions…have been unwilling or unable to offer compelling meaningful accounts of the world, provide their members with purpose, foster sustainable communities or put for evocative rituals.” This atheist writer calls on us to live out our calling, because our nation needs it!
Why church? Because our nation, our world needs us. But let’s be honest. Most of us aren’t motivated by the BIG picture. It is like my mother telling me to clean my plate because there are starving children in China! That didn’t work very well, and neither will telling us that we need church to save our democracy.
But when it becomes personal, when we have reasons that hit our lives. But again, many times we have been reticent to say them, at least out loud. It sounds rather pretentious, self serving—and it is! But that doesn’t mean we don’t say them.
I want to offer you three, just three reasons.
The first is community. We are made for community. From the very beginning God created us for others. It wasn’t Adam. It wasn’t Eve. Even Jesus needed others. He chose 12 friends to accompany him as he traveled around. As he went on his missionary journeys Paul always had someone with him. We need others—whether we want to admit it or not.
There is that great American myth that we are self made, of the cowboy riding the range alone, with just his horse and a harmonica. But we know it isn’t true. All the great heroes had someone else!
We need other people.
We need people to emulate. Who are the people you look up to, the people you think, “I would like to be like them.” I will say that for me, I have discovered those people in church. I could give you a long list—of people whose fingerprints are all over my life, but also people that I have just watched from afar; people that I have learned from in ways big and small.
I remember sitting in the living room of Rick and Eleanor Traylor as a college student, just watching them, how they interacted with each other, with their children. It was like an anthropologist stumbling upon a strange new tribe! I watched them and remember having the conscious thought, “So that’s how you treat your spouse! That’s how you teat your children!”
After our daughters were born I had a conversation with a father, who had two of the most gorgeous daughters. One eventually went on to model. I asked his advice about raising daughters! It helped me with our rules!
We need church, community to help us learn how to be human! How to be good humans!
We also need a church community for support. Again, we so want to think we are fine! We don’t need anybody else. But as William Sloane Coffin said, “It is often said that the Church is a crutch. Of course it is crutch. What makes you think you don’t limp?”
We all limp. Maybe not today, but we all limp. Life just does that to us. Jacob wrestled with God and limped the rest of his life. We all do!
I know there have been times in my life when I really don’t know what/how I would have survived without my church community. They have been there to hold my hand, literally; to hold me up when I didn’t think I could take another step. Seeing their face in the darkest part of my life was the light I needed to know I might survive!
Oh we need community!
We also need church to make a difference in our world. In my post on our Friday update I referenced a like to an article from the former Surgeon General. It has been removed, but it is so good there are some printed copies in the back. If you need another one, let me know.
But Dr. Murthy prescribes service to heal our land and our lives. He defines service as the actions we take to benefit others. But it has a profound effect to the person doing the service. He writes:
Studies on older adults show that sustained service efforts can reduce the risk of hypertension, stroke, early death, and depression. They can also improve cognitive functioning and keep us more connected to others. Service can help build the skills, character, and dispositions to be effective in the workplace and in civic life. At a time when so many people feel like they don’t matter, service also reminds us we have value we bring to the world.
You matter! What you do matters! And what better place than church to show that. There are a multitude of opportunities for you to do something for others in and through the life of Kernersville Moravian Church. What do you want to do? Serve food—Bethany Cafe; love children? Be a mystery reader in our preschool, a helper during Godly Play. Like working with your hands? There are always needs around our church, in our community that we can connect you with. Do something in church! It will make a difference to our world and to you.
Now I am not naive enough to think that church is the only place you might find community, where you can serve. But there is another reason for church.
Many years ago our youth group was at camp, sharing the facility with a soccer camp. One day at lunch the director or the soccer camp sat with us and asked what we were doing. We explained and then he said something I have never forgot. “Well, we’re doing the same thing, just in a soccery kind of way.”
No! No!
Jonathan Rauch quotes Jessica Grose, “A soccer team can’t provide spiritual solace in the face of death, it probably doesn’t have a weekly charitable call and there’s no connection to a heritage that goes back generations.”
Amen. Other organizations might be similar, but they aren’t the same! I want to say that what church offers that you can’t find anywhere else is a story big enough to live! Church offers a depth of meaning to life. It is that depth that our world so desperately needs. It is through church that we can find meaning, purpose, a place to wrestle with and settle on the big questions of life. That is why we need church.
It isn’t easy! It never has been. Even in the early days the disciples watched as many who had been following Jesus left. And Jesus asked his disciples, “Do you wish to go away too?”
This following Jesus, this church thing, it is hard. And on more than one occasion I have seriously thought about chunking it all, leaving the church, doing something else. Anything else!
But on those times, I have heard Dr Tupper’s rant! “That’s the problem with you liberals! You are going to go and save the whales, stop nuclear war, feed the hungry and leave the church and it is all going to go to hell!”
Why church? Because the alternatives are just too dire. As Peter said, where else can we go for the depth of life that is so needed by our world, by us.
Amen