Dear Blooming Glen Friends,
I’ve been meditating a lot these days on the story found in Ezra 3, where the people of God are rebuilding YHWH’s Temple. It had been destroyed and the people carried away into exile. In exile, the people of God learned new spiritual habits – reading, studying, and teaching from the scrolls of the Torah; singing together from a collection of hymns and liturgies we now call the Psalms; meeting in small groups known as synagogues to foster lives of prayer, discussion, and accountability. And when given the opportunity, the people of God returned to the City of Zion, and they began work on a new temple. They built a new altar (Ezra 3.1-6), and a new foundation for a temple to replace the grand and magnificent temple built by Solomon almost 500 years in the past (Ezra 3.7-9). They celebrated the completion of the foundation (Ezra 3.10-11) and recognized the hesed (faithful love) of God.
But then, they realized something else. Ezra 3.12-13 cap the story of the temple’s rebuilding with mixed emotions. Those who had seen the original temple wept in sorrow over what had been lost, and those who had not seen the temple cried out in joy (v12). The co-mingling of weeping and shouting for joy was a cacophony heard far and wide (v13).
We live in an era of rebuilding. As a congregation, and as Christians from many traditions, we are in a space between the grandeur of what was, and the wastelands of our fears. God’s people no longer gather by the thousands on Route 113 to hear the gospel of salvation preached. Our youth no longer gather by the thousands in great downtown convention centers to hear the good news proclaimed by the leading youth communicators of the era. The crashing collapse of Christendom, the failing to find unity during the COVID pandemic, and the digital Babylon of information without wisdom has broken the church in North America and Western Europe. Today, fewer than ½ of all Americans attend church as often as once a month. Denominations once legendary for their commitments to evangelism and church growth are cratering in attendance. Whatever we think or feel may be problems with MCUSA and the loss of over 50% of our membership in the last 20 years, let’s not kid ourselves – we aren’t alone. Young adults have especially stopped attending church, and they cite some pretty good reasons for doing so …
First, they have grown tired of the irrelevance, hypocrisy, and moral failures in the church today. Those behaviors are compounded by the judgementalism of the perpetually self-righteous. The antidote to this deadly drink is for the church to form a deliberate counterculture of integrity and grace. Of caring deeply for everyone and challenging everyone directly. The fruit of radical candor as part of following Jesus daily in life will be that the church becomes a magnet, and not a repellant (Thanks to Carey Nieuwhof for that image).
Second, they’ve grown tired of the bait-and-switch in the church today. People go to church looking for God but find precious little of God in the trappings. All churches – liturgical or charismatic in worship, rock-show band-oriented or four-part harmony a Capella in music – all of us spend way too much time focused on the accoutrements of worship and program performance, and not near enough time on remembering the essential point of worship – celebrating the sin-eating, life transforming resurrection of Jesus. A new reliance on the centrality of the scriptures may be our way out of the worship wars and the program expectations we seemed destined to fight about until there is literally no one left to care.
Third, they’ve grown tired of false certainty and the absence of legitimate doubt. Remember, people come to church looking for God. We can no longer afford the idolatrous luxury of our trite answers to deep and painful questions. Neither can we afford the lazy luxury that ambiguity is all we’ve got. Living with the tension, speaking with clarity, and cultivating spiritual practices of curiosity, discovery, engagement, dialogue, empathy, authenticity, and dignity are essential to real personal and social transformation.
Finally, they’ve grown tired of pretend community. COVID created not just a global viral pandemic. It has also created a growing and accelerating epidemic of divisiveness, alienation, and loneliness. If we loved the way Jesus loved, people would line up outside the church doors to get a glimpse of what’s going on (again, thanks to Carey Nieuwhof for the quote). We think community is found in program participation or in criticisms of those we disagree with in the neighborhood or the congregation. Neither active, world class programs, nor ideological purity will heal our broken communities. Only love will heal us. The early Anabaptist’s first confession of faith written in 1527, was not a theological confession. It was a list of seven distinctives to explain how those Christians would love one another. In the subsequent 496 years, whenever we as Anabaptists of various denominational striping have tried to write confessional statements of faith whose prime role was to define who is in and, more importantly, who is out, we have been guilty of a great adventure in missing the point. When our confessions of faith seek to define how we embrace the always faithful love of God and how we then in turn embrace our neighbors near and far in that same love, we tend to flourish. In 2006, the Mennonite World Conference created the most recent such theological statement. I was present at the creation of that document. I was moved by the desire to confess a centering, missional, intercultural faith that accepts the love of God and shares it with the world.
We can weep that things aren’t what they used to be before we entered this liminal exile. Or we can choose the path of joy marked by a discipleship based on radical candor in our relationships, reliance on the scriptures in our search for God, living out a set of peacebuilding spiritual habits that allow for curiosity and dialogue en route to transformation, and becoming a community confessing God’s love at the center of all things.
Love you, Church!
Pastor Jeff
jeff@bgmc.net
PS – If you got to the end of this blog, congratulations. Here’s a reminder: I’m available Monday mornings (7:30-8:45 am) at the A&N Diner and Friday afternoons (3:30-4:45 pm) at the Broad Street Grind to listen to you. Whatever you want to talk about is why I’m there. I’m available other times as well, but these are in my calendar regularly. I’m not there to convince you I’m right – I’m there to listen to whatever is on your mind. Hope to see you there!