Early leave-ing thoughts - where are we at?
So here we are one week away from Advent…which means that even though I’ll still be working through to Christmas, this is my last sermon for many months…possibly July next year. So I thought that I’d ditch the series on Acts, and offer a few personal thoughts about where I see us as a church, and some of the things that are on my mind as I prepare to take a break from my formal role among us.
Firstly I want to say that I continue to count it an honour to serve among this community. Your authenticity and spaciousness and non-judgemental spirit create a warmth that people feel when they come into our space. Your courage in pushing the envelope theologically, in trying new practices, in being open to whatever others bring to our worship – these things keep us growing, and deepening. So thank you for your company and your care and commitment over the year.
There are four things that I’d like to notice and encourage us to step further into as we turn the corner toward a new year.
1. Being a multi-faith-stage church
I’d like to observe out loud something that you have probably noticed if you’ve been here for long enough, and that is that most of us here have moved beyond the angst and cynicism that characterised our early years as a church. The days when person after person would bring to our worship expressions of what they no longer believed, couldn’t tolerate about Christianity, their anger at God and the church, their sense of disillusionment and the feeling of having been abused and burned out by that which was supposed to give us life. And the vagueness and uncertainty about what to replace those things with, the lack of language to affirm our ongoing spiritual journey, the need to avoid traditional expressions of Christianity even though we were still hanging on to the church by a thread.
We were not all in that space then, and when I say that we’ve largely moved past that stage, I don’t mean to say that we are lock-step on the journey and should or could result in us all being in the same space now. I’m speaking in generalities.
Those of you familiar with James Fowler’s writing on Stages of Faith, or the more accessible work of Alan Jamieson in researching why people leave the church, will recognise that what I’m talking about is loosely a shift from stage 4 faith development to stage 5. Most of the churches we came from can be characterised as ‘stage 3’ – a stage marked by conformity of thought and belief, right behaviours, a kind of monitoring of ‘who’s in and who’s out’, a leadership structure that tends toward authority.
Stage 4 is what I was just describing…the disillusioned, reacting, angry stage – It’s usually the point at which people leave the church altogether to embark on individual journeys that may or may not fold back into church life again at a later point. Where Cityside was remarkable in its origins is that it was a church that managed to hold space for stage 4 people to be cynical and in faith crisis, without calling it backsliding, and without laying on heavy expectation for people to ‘get over it.’
But now…now I think that many of us are in a shift to stage 5 – a stage characterised by being able to affirm our convictions, but hold them loosely, without needing others to believe the same. By a willingness to embrace mystery and uncertainty, and also to use conventional religious language because we relate to it as symbolic rather than always literal. It’s a stage that finds deep meaning and connection with God in ritual and prayer, but not always in the same forms as in the past. This is a stage that has something to give to the church, rather than being in reaction to the church. And, it can have a corporate expression rather than being individualistic.
My sense is, that in shifting from stage 4 to stage 5, many people have found their way to a deep inner well, have found ways to pray that involve more listening than talking, and have explored theological territory that has provided a new language base for our faith. These have been personal and quiet journeys. My invitation to us now has two parts:
To explore and begin to put into practice what the corporate – the church or group - expression of that personal inner deepening looks like…how does what we have been moving toward as individuals become part of our worship life, and also what we have to offer beyond our group? I am very much looking forward to seeing aspects of this unfold over the coming years.
To be intentional about holding space for diversity, but especially giving room and permission to those who are still coming to Cityside in stage 4 – the burned out, questioning, reacting, often cynical, often anxious stage. Because these are the people who are vulnerable in faith and needing some care. These are the people for whom much of the church still has no understanding or patience. At the same time, we need to recognise that in our midst are those who are stage 3 and happy with that. And that we need to keep nurturing a faith for our children that’s appropriate to their stage of development. My hope is for us to be a multi-stage congregation, allowing people to be in whatever space they’re in, while also choosing to affirm, and give voice and form to what is new and evolving within our midst, especially the fruit of people’s journey out of the wilderness.
2. Practising hospitality of the heart
Part of holding diversity is about keeping our hearts open to others, even when we find them weird, annoying, hurtful, or just think they’re wrong. Hospitality isn’t just a matter of having people round to our homes – though that’s a great start. Hospitality begins in the heart, with trying to step emotionally into another’s shoes and mentally journey with them, even if they’re vastly different from us, or even if we hold them in contempt for some reason. And it means being prepared to be changed by their story, rather than interacting with people only to reinforce what we already thought. I think at Cityside we’re pretty good at this, but I think that we need to keep choosing this practice, and deliberately putting ourselves in the way of people who will challenge us in this regard.
I could get very specific here about one of my concerns – in fact I did, I wrote a couple of paragraphs and then cut them out, as I thought of things that I felt were more important to say this morning. I’ll just say that, to me, hospitality of the heart is one of the most crucial aspects of being part of the body of Christ. Unfortunately it’s not something that Christians are particularly known for in the wider world. Some people say Christians should be distinctive by having fewer marriage breakdowns than the statistics in the rest of society, or some other indicator that has to do with ordered family lives or good citizenship. Well, maybe. But what interests me more is being distinctive by continuing to love, by practising inner and outer hospitality, toward those people that we not only immediately identify with, but those who we feel inclined to distance ourselves from. Love your enemies, Jesus said. The church as portrayed in the public arena still hasn’t really figured out how to do this. But until we do, we have nothing of value to share with the culture in which we live.
3. The organisation needs to serve the relationships
It’s easy for a small group of say, 30 people, to be very loosely structured, to have few organisational demands, to see the community as an organic network of relationships in the midst of a wider web of interactions. But as groups grow, there is always the gravitational pull of institutionalism lurking in the wings. People’s energies are drawn back into maintaining the life of the organisation, rather than the life in the world that the organisation is meant to support.
For a long time, we have not been a small loose network of friends, but an organisation with certain practices, such as multiple volunteer rosters and employed staff, to maintain aspects of our community life that we value. This is not in itself a problem. My encouragement to us though, is to remember that the gravitational pull always works one way, and that we may not notice it happening.
How does this relate to us now? I think we need to keep an eye on whether we are putting too much time into making church happen – by which I mostly mean our activity in this building - rather than our church life freeing us to live well in the world beyond the church. I personally don’t feel like we’re at that stage, but I also am constantly aware that we may be approaching it.
My encouragement to us is to notice the places where we start to think as an organisation, rather than as family members. Where we don’t respond to individual needs because our attention was on the needs of the church as an entity. Where the needs of Sunday morning outweigh the relationships of the community through the week. Where those of us who are in leadership feel like it’s our job to get our organisational processes right as we ‘run the church’ rather than facilitate the human life of the community. To notice if we start to value professionalism, efficiency, or ease over opportunities for people to give things a go. Or if our focus and energy is absorbed more toward this building and what happens inside it than how we are relating to one another through the week and contributing to our wider world. Or if the only discussions and meetings we have as a church revolve around the business decisions needed to keep the organisation going.
The organisational church is in decline. The future of the Christian church in the West probably does not lie with the institution…it lies with faithful people living faithful lives in networks of relationship, possibly project-based, or interest-based, or location-based rather than demanding commitment to an ongoing structure that needs to be maintained at all costs. For us to be Cityside in that landscape requires a responsiveness, and a looseness and a lightness toward all our sacred cows and our organisational structures. So let’s just keep an eye on that.
I personally have an administrative and organisational ‘bent’ – partly it’s how I’m wired, but partly it’s due to my fear of living in my full relational self. It’s easier for me to hang out in my office and write or plan something or send 100 emails, than it is for me to prioritise the face to face stuff, even though it’s that stuff that truly gives me life. I invite you to watch me on this, to remind me of it, and to call me and all of us back to the things that really matter.
4. Discipleship
Related to this question of organisation vs organic association, is the issue of discipleship. I’ll begin with acknowledging that one of the areas I think I’ve been weakest in as Cityside’s pastor is being alongside you as individuals and as small clusters, asking you about how your journey as a follower of Jesus is going, and supporting you as fellow-disciples. Partly that’s a hang-over from my first ten years at Cityside, when such a question was pretty much out of bounds. ‘Jesus – I don’t even believe in Jesus any more!’ Partly it’s diffidence on my part…what do I know? What do I have to contribute to your discipleship? I’m confused enough in my own corner. Partly it’s that I feel like making approaches of that kind would be forward, or intrusive, or unwelcome – and that’s my hang up, not your fault. So I haven’t really cultivated a culture of attention to this issue of being a disciple of Christ.
But over the past couple of years I’ve become increasingly convinced that for myself, and maybe for all of us, what matters is learning how to be disciples – followers – people whose lives are patterned after Jesus Christ. And that this is a whole of life issue that has to do with all of our choices, most particularly how we use our time and energy, where we live and work, and the quality of the relationships we nurture beyond our immediate family and friends.
It is easy to compartmentalise – even if we think we’ve integrated life and faith, how many Christians make our biggest decisions in light of our primary commitment to be a Christ follower, rather than in reaction to the demands and expectations of our nuclear family, materially oriented culture? The most common Christian discipleship pattern that I see is to live a life that’s structured the same as any lifestyle practised in our culture, but with additional extras – attempts to maintain a personal devotional life, going to church, trying to help and support our friends in the church, and a commitment to giving to or working for a set of causes with a justice or charity orientation. What is less often questioned are the ‘givens’ – the expectation of a career, or full time work, the expectation that nuclear families live in homes by themselves. The idea that we choose where to live on the basis of where we can own a home, the local schools, and the quality of the location. The fact that the majority of our time and energy outside work is devoted to family and friendship relationships, with little room for the neighbour or the stranger.
I think that our attraction to ‘causes’ – and Facebook is full of them – our desire to give something, to feel like we are part of making a difference, can be a distraction from real discipleship, which is about how our ordinary lives are shaped by the gospel. We feel better and can tick the boxes marked ‘care for the poor’ or ‘care for the planet’, without having really changed anything about ourselves, or the wellness of the culture in which we live out our daily lives.
The word ‘koinonia’ is the Greek work used in the New Testament to describe the community of Christ’s Spirit. It has many subtle and different meanings in different contexts. But basically it describes a kind of mutuality, an inter-dependence, a living with and for ‘one another’. It is the submission of our personal economics and our family units to the greater command to live a life of love, which Jesus said was to be the hallmark of his disciples. ‘By this shall all people know that you are my disciples. That you love one another.’ And what can love be if it is only nurtured in once a week or once a month catch-ups? If the day by day practicalities of life are not shared? If the silent burdens are not made known and carried by others? If we channel our generosity into automatic payments to the church organisation and to Tear Fund or whatever, but don’t seek to find out about and meet the financial need of the person sitting next to us at church? If we are so worn out by the treadmill of work and family responsibility that there is no space for the stranger or the ‘other’ in our home or in our thoughts? If the locus of our personal gravity is still individual, rather than community based? I’m not pointing the finger here – anywhere except perhaps at my own self. This stuff is hard to figure out, harder yet to free ourselves to be anything other than creatures of our culture and our compulsions.
Real discipleship cannot be made to happen, or squeezed in around the edges of already stretched and stressful lives. I am not advocating that any of us needs to ‘do more’. Probably most of us need to ‘do less.’ Real discipleship is a hallmark of the presence of Christ in a community, the action of the Spirit. And it therefore springs from prayer and openness and humble listening and a desire to be genuine followers of Jesus. I don’t want to bash us over the head saying ‘do this, do that.’ It’s not about heaving a resigned sigh, gritting our teeth, and burning ourselves out with doing what we ‘ought’ and sacrificing our souls in the process. It’s about clearing space to dwell with God, to have open hearts, to give ourselves over to the mysterious flow and tide of the Spirit who is among us and will move us if we can just loosen our feet from the mud for a moment.
So I offer you these thoughts to carry – or not – into the coming year. We are pilgrims, we don’t have it all worked out, and there are so many forces in our world that derail us from our heart’s centre and the place of our real longing and belonging. And yet Jesus calls us always to this other life, this narrow way that is marked by growing deeper into faith, opening our hearts, keeping our eyes on relationships over organisational structures, and being connected to each other in a way that transforms all of our cultural habits. If we do nothing else, let us learn to love.