By The Rev. Torey Lightcap, St. Thomas, Sioux City
 |
| The Rev. Torey Lightcap |
Chapter two of The Agile Church is titled “Faith and Spirituality in a Fluid and Insecure Age.” It’s not a feel-good part of the book, but rather a true, articulate, and (to me at least) depressing series of well-observed, high-level statements about how things really are. Perhaps you’ve read the chapter and agree with that assessment. And perhaps the fact that I have the unique privilege of discussing it with you means that I might end up depressing you even further. I beg you, then, to recall that old saw about not shooting the messenger.
This summer, God willing, I will turn 43. That puts me in the back half of Generation X. Ours is a generation wedged between the Boomers who burned their draft cards and bras, and the Millennials who, we’re told, are much more civic-minded. In other words, our parents showed us how it is helpful to deconstruct certain elements of society for the wider good, and our children are trying to rearrange those elements so we can all go forward. A lot of Xers caught between are left scratching their heads: we aren’t quite sure what has happened, and we don’t necessarily approve, but neither do we necessarily disapprove. In general, we are simply disoriented. A lot of the narratives we thought we would be able to rely on—in other words, to construct our identities, careers, families, and lives on—have shifted out from under us.
I grew up in oil boom/bust Oklahoma, in the 1980s, in the Southern Baptist tradition. It wouldn’t surprise you to learn that I was formed by Jesus, TV, and Ronald Reagan. I got the idea that after assuring eternal security for myself and others, and starting up a family, my only real task remaining would be to locate a respectable job I could work for forty years before retiring to some place a little warmer. (From there it would be Jesus’ prepared mansions, so all in all a pretty sweet deal.) Identity was not only meant to be fixed; one’s very survival was pegged to however firmly one remained every bit of what one knew oneself to be. Identity formation was a matter of just getting it all figured out and then banking on it, like pouring out a level of new concrete upon an existing one. “Know thyself” was an entirely practical maxim to live by.
(You’d have figured it out by now, but it’s worth saying that we read the Bible in precisely the same way back then. Not unlike, say, the Sooners, Jesus was a dynasty built upon the results of everything that had already taken place; heaven and earth would pass away before his words would.)
Now that I am the age I am, and live where I live, and do what I do for a living, and have the kind of life that I have, I have come to see the folly of believing in a world where things should be cast in concrete. It’s not that I don’t yearn for security and certitude; just that the more I search for it, the less I seem to find it. Life has gone all higgledy-piggledy. We didn’t ask for this. It’s just the way things are. To borrow an old military coin, life in general is VUCA—volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.
There’s a specific indictment here for those of us who claim the mantle of Christ. That wonderful and sacred mystery called the Church has been slow to adapt to the new reality and even slower to adopt the kinds of meaningful reforms that create the space necessary for genuine transformation. We must be telling ourselves that as long as we still have our buildings, our priests, our endowments, our programs, and our healthy-sounding mission statements, we’re doing just fine. If that’s the line you want to respond with, then I would encourage you to look at the numbers. Do the computations about how much longer all these things will be able to last at their current rates of attrition (not accounting for inflation, more intractable conflict, or the odd natural disaster) and see how it feels.
I can see how you might think of me in all this as some grumpy old man on his porch with a shotgun across his knees. That’s not my intent. I only want to say as clearly as I can that a church’s failure to evolve in any given moment can be an indicator of a larger pattern of a church giving in to fear and inertia, and therefore a good predictor of future failure in general. Just because “the culture” has slipped away from “the church” doesn’t mean it’s time to pack it in.
On the other hand, I’ve staked my livelihood to the continuation of the Church and her mission. And I’ve staked my life to Christ. (Those are two discrete, if overlapping, categories.) I burn at the core with a desire to see healthy congregations that radiate the truth about Jesus into their communities and participate in re/building them in fundamental ways. My interest in the strength of churches is the driving force of my ministry.
But if we aim to become stronger—or, you might say, reasonably healthy, whole, and sound—then we need to come face-to-face with the truth the way Dwight Zscheile names it in chapter two of The Agile Church.
This summer, God willing, I will turn 43. That puts me in the back half of Generation X. Ours is a generation wedged between the Boomers who burned their draft cards and bras, and the Millennials who, we’re told, are much more civic-minded. In other words, our parents showed us how it is helpful to deconstruct certain elements of society for the wider good, and our children are trying to rearrange those elements so we can all go forward. A lot of Xers caught between are left scratching their heads: we aren’t quite sure what has happened, and we don’t necessarily approve, but neither do we necessarily disapprove. In general, we are simply disoriented. A lot of the narratives we thought we would be able to rely on—in other words, to construct our identities, careers, families, and lives on—have shifted out from under us.
I grew up in oil boom/bust Oklahoma, in the 1980s, in the Southern Baptist tradition. It wouldn’t surprise you to learn that I was formed by Jesus, TV, and Ronald Reagan. I got the idea that after assuring eternal security for myself and others, and starting up a family, my only real task remaining would be to locate a respectable job I could work for forty years before retiring to some place a little warmer. (From there it would be Jesus’ prepared mansions, so all in all a pretty sweet deal.) Identity was not only meant to be fixed; one’s very survival was pegged to however firmly one remained every bit of what one knew oneself to be. Identity formation was a matter of just getting it all figured out and then banking on it, like pouring out a level of new concrete upon an existing one. “Know thyself” was an entirely practical maxim to live by.
(You’d have figured it out by now, but it’s worth saying that we read the Bible in precisely the same way back then. Not unlike, say, the Sooners, Jesus was a dynasty built upon the results of everything that had already taken place; heaven and earth would pass away before his words would.)
Now that I am the age I am, and live where I live, and do what I do for a living, and have the kind of life that I have, I have come to see the folly of believing in a world where things should be cast in concrete. It’s not that I don’t yearn for security and certitude; just that the more I search for it, the less I seem to find it. Life has gone all higgledy-piggledy. We didn’t ask for this. It’s just the way things are. To borrow an old military coin, life in general is VUCA—volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.
There’s a specific indictment here for those of us who claim the mantle of Christ. That wonderful and sacred mystery called the Church has been slow to adapt to the new reality and even slower to adopt the kinds of meaningful reforms that create the space necessary for genuine transformation. We must be telling ourselves that as long as we still have our buildings, our priests, our endowments, our programs, and our healthy-sounding mission statements, we’re doing just fine. If that’s the line you want to respond with, then I would encourage you to look at the numbers. Do the computations about how much longer all these things will be able to last at their current rates of attrition (not accounting for inflation, more intractable conflict, or the odd natural disaster) and see how it feels.
I can see how you might think of me in all this as some grumpy old man on his porch with a shotgun across his knees. That’s not my intent. I only want to say as clearly as I can that a church’s failure to evolve in any given moment can be an indicator of a larger pattern of a church giving in to fear and inertia, and therefore a good predictor of future failure in general. Just because “the culture” has slipped away from “the church” doesn’t mean it’s time to pack it in.
On the other hand, I’ve staked my livelihood to the continuation of the Church and her mission. And I’ve staked my life to Christ. (Those are two discrete, if overlapping, categories.) I burn at the core with a desire to see healthy congregations that radiate the truth about Jesus into their communities and participate in re/building them in fundamental ways. My interest in the strength of churches is the driving force of my ministry.
But if we aim to become stronger—or, you might say, reasonably healthy, whole, and sound—then we need to come face-to-face with the truth the way Dwight Zscheile names it in chapter two of The Agile Church.
No comments:
Post a Comment