Mainline, Sidelined, Realigned
Posted November 24th, 2008 by Keith Howard
Will mainline denominations such as The United Church of Canada survive?
The question becomes increasingly urgent. We are long past the critic's quip of the mainline now being sidelined. More is at stake than pride of place.
The question gains energy not simply because of financial and membership numbers. The real crisis grows from a sense among membership that the mainline version of the church has lost or is losing its way.
Within The United Church of Canada, periodic laments that the church lacks vision, does not know what it stands for or is unable to mobilize members around a mission testifies to this anxiety.
Ironically, this spiritual astigmatism occurs at a time when many of the peculiar gifts of churches, like The United Church of Canada, are needed more than ever.
Fundamentally, we believe that relationships matter - relationship with self, with God, with others and with the creation. While we can focus upon each separately we also lift up the importance of the interplay of each type of relationship upon the others.
In some senses, the same could/should be said of any church. (And indeed this is the expectation of those between the ages of 30 and 45.) But The United Church of Canada brings a particular slant.
Walking through the sanctuary of the National Cathedral (Episcopalian) in Washington, D.C. I picked up a pamphlet called "Spiritual Resilience in Extraordinary Times." The pamphlet included a description of many formation and community outreach activities of the congregation, including a Sunday Forum. The forum is tagged, "Critical Issues in the Light of Faith" and draws high profile speakers to offer their reflections in conversation during a series of Sunday morning gatherings.
These words, used in the event description, leapt out at me - "honest, intellectually probing, generous-spirited conversation about the interaction of life and faith through the lens of Christian tradition." This is the seasoning we bring to the Christian kitchen and which is now deeply needed in a world of slogans (from left and right), image management and 0.6 second impressions which masquerade as decisions.
We are people of faith who talk as we walk; seeking to help each other live as more faithful disciples, involved in transforming the world to be God's place of shalom. Truthful, generous spirited, intellectually disciplined conversation is a skill we need to reclaim.
Too many of our members are uncomfortable talking about their faith. They lack language and context. Our engagement with the relationship of faith to the public realm seems to have settled into letters offering advice or chastisement. The great language and tradition of Christian ethics seems absent, moral reasoning replaced by political correctness and ethical reflection displaced by a list of things we can't say. The vitality of theological and spiritual discourse seems to have seeped away until only rhetoric or platitude remains. Theology is deemed esoteric rather than an indispensable tool in the Christian toolkit.
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Mainline, Sidelined, Realigned
I noticed in our upcoming "Living the Hope" process, that one of the three streams is "Building Connections with Community." "About time," I say. Rev. John Wesley, whose Methodism became a spark of Christian renewal and national renewal, once observed that, "The world is my parish." Fair enough. But if the world is our parish, we ought to be busy in the world. And, if we are busy in the world, we will find many others there who have the same hopes, joys, dreams, and concerns as we do, even if they come from very different backgrounds from ours. And do you know what? They're happy to work with us, if we're ready to be "team players," and not force our religion on them, but work from a common spirit. Trust me on this; I've been doing it for quite a while.
John Wesley
Why is the UCC unable to find out who it is? Historical ignorance is huge in this society and most, if not all, churches.
To say that Wesley's parish was 'the world' and to imply that we should not try to influence others for Christ is to have a complete misunderstanding of John Wesley, leaders like him--and even of the UCC just a few decades ago.
There is truth in the comment about Canadian believers--UCC or other--being out of touch with needs of the world. If you don't think that the world needs Christ and that His death was a required atonement for sin, then the word 'church' should really be taken off the sign.
This doesn't mean that we all can't work together in a spirit of cooperation; let's face it, there are people of other faiths out there who are more 'Christian' than many Canadians who consider themselves Christians. A classical NT-style Christian has more in common theologically and practically with a Muslim than with many UCC adherents.
You'd be surprised how many people that we are trying not to offend actually find the message of the cross attractive....
crux
Streaming the Mainliners
Someone once told me that the UCC is a church not founded on 'theology', but on 'ethos,' a set of shared, lived values.
I suspect that this is true, and that it is probably the case with all churches. What I think is more significant about the UCC is that, in my opinion, its shared values tend to draw more from white middle class Canadian society than from any particular branch of the Christian tradition. And this is problematic some say, because White middle class Canadian society is changing. Increasing numbers of Canadians seem to be more interested in playing X-Box, or some pop culture equivalent, than organizing and attending pancake suppers and Christmas Bazaars.
At a soul level, though, as Ram Das used to say, I would personally be more attracted to a church whose ethos was consciously,intentionally centered on a wisdom tradition. It wouldn't have to be Christianity, although that would be my choice. Maybe if we start really thinking 'outside the box' we could find a way to better structure things so that we could accommodate everyone... have multiple ethos orientations and not have to let go of anything.
For example... Maybe there could be at least five formal streams or "ways in" to UCC membership, each leading to its own unique ethos. The Christian tradition could be one stream, where membership would continue to come through baptism, confirmation and a commitment to spiritual formation based on the Christian tradition (Stream "C" I'll call it.) Or, alternatively, membership could come through commitment to some non-creedal, not overly specific spiritual values, similar to those endorsed by Unitarian Universalists (I'll call this Stream "NS" for "not sure.") A third stream might focus solely on concrete social justice issues (Stream "SJ"), without any transcendental concern whatsoever, kind of like a Rotary Club. A fourth stream might focus on local community centre type values, where membership would involve commitment to participate in certain local community activities like pancake suppers, hosting the Brownies, gaming, text-messaging, and so on (Stream "CC"). A fifth stream could focus on those primarily interested in administrative coordination of the other four streams (Stream "A"). This way, with five different ways in, rather than pushing everyone through the funnel of baptism, we could attract a more diverse group of people.
Then perhaps we could set up something like "visiting privileges" through which all interested UCC members could visit other streams to discern if there was something within that ethos which was missing in their life. Or, perhaps some congregations might want to limit their ethos to nothing but one stream, or perhaps two, or more. It might be ideal, though, to have as many streams operating under one roof as possible, so that there could be one-stop comparison shopping for those seeking a church home. Presbyteries could then be organized in terms of stream specialization, while Conferences could focus on inter-stream relations.
What do you think?
Streams within community
Rishi,thank you very much for this thoughtful post.
I have some friends who would agree with your streaming proposal and argue that, in many ways, it already exists within the United Church. People are there for "their thing" and often co-exist with the others, often papering over real differences with sentimentality. I do not hear your comments as advocating this but know that some paint the UCC with these colours.
I see many parallels with, what in more traditional language, might be called ministries arising out of passions and gifts. People who have particular passions - for children, community, justice, contemplation - tend to cluster together and, depending upon their gifts, assume different responsibilities within a passion "stream" (shall we say).
The challenge, in both the traditional model and the one you outline, lies in what keeps these streams/passions together. Is it simply a commitment to diversity/tolerance? Is it strategic or management concerns of efficiency, etc? And, in what senses, would it be a Christian community?
In recent years there has been a profound questioning as to whether a commitment to inclusiveness, which some say is the core value of the United Church, is sufficient to sustain a Christian community.
And the larger question to which you point is one particular relevant in these postmodern times - is it even necessary that there be a central core?
Thoughts?
Hypermodern dilemma of finding a centre for the Body of Christ
There are so many things that we can do in life (depending on our gifts and our limitations.) Think about it: we can work and earn money in various ways, we can do gardening, we can play games, we can spend time with friends, we can sing, write poetry, protest, do physical exercise... we can pray, meditate, take naps, watch TV, wash clothes, vote, raise children, appreciate nature, read, think, listen to music, take care of a pet, etc., etc. The possibilities are almost endless.
We realize through living, though, that we cannot do all of these things at the same time and with the same intensity. We have to make choices. When we reflect on spiritual teachings, such as those of Jesus, we can realize something even more important about this situation – i.e., that the key choice that we make in life, the choice that we're always making every moment of every day, is the subtle choice of what our life centre will be. And, with the choice of a centre, other aspects of our lives immediately become peripheral. It's a natural hierarchy that we can observe in human experience. Every person has a life centre, even though it is seldom chosen in a conscious way, even if it is a slippery philosophical doctrine that asserts, “there is no center.”
We know that it is the peripheral experiences of life that fill up our days – going to work, doing the gardening, washing the clothes, eating, taking a shower, watching Family Guy on TV, sleeping, going to the bathroom, and so on... But it is our invisible life centre that gives all of these peripheral experiences their spiritual meaning. Everything we do draws its meaning from that invisible core that our lives revolve around, like spokes on a wheel revolve around their hub, like rays of sunlight revolve around the sun, like ripples in a pond center revolve around the diving fish's point of entry. Because of this, consciously cultivating awareness of our life centre --clarifying it, refining it, and choosing it on a regular basis, as a community –is crucial.
Based on my experience of myself and others, I would say that having a life centre is part of the structure of human existence itself. Only in thought can our having such a centre be deconstructed away, not in lived experience. The content of that centre, however, is peculiarly up to us, even if we are unaware of that power. These assumptions are at the heart of the philosophy that runs through all of Jesus' teachings. Our difficulties in the peripheral details of life relate to the core, to the centre. Health and wellbeing in the peripheral details of life depend on health and wellbeing in the center. Or, he says it the other way around: our center gets expressed in all the peripheral details of our lives, for better or worse. Of course, he goes far beyond this existential observation and claims that the center of our lives will not hold anything that is not divine.
So, the real challenge, I agree, is what will hold together the various 'streams' which make up this complex entity we call the UCC? What will be our spiritual centre? The centre of White middle class liberal Canadian values (even the most treasured ones, e.g. inclusion), in my opinion, will not hold. They are qualitatively different than the spiritual values of the Christian tradition, e.g. the love manifest in Jesus. What most prevents us from responding well to this challenge, I think, is that we seem unable to differentiate between the two. Jesus is no longer a socially-engaged mystic pointing to the centrality of a real loving awareness of the divine in the present moment. He has become for us, in effect, a White middle class liberal Canadian.
Obviously, I believe we desperately need to rediscover our own wisdom tradition with new eyes, wide open. And I guess I have given away my stream of preference, if there was ever any doubt....