PLAYING CHURCH

As I write this, I am staying as a guest in the home of Jeff Petrillo and Beth Estock in Portland, Oregon.  Beth is a coach with Epicenter Group and a collaborator with me, reflecting on the challenges of Christian ministry in the twenty-first century.  Beth and I are working together this week, talking through the major ideas and movement of a book, to be released in 2016.  The book concerns the future of the church - what will it look like by mid-century.  Many prophets of doom remind us (correctly) that the sky is falling.  Beth and I agree with that assessment, but we also have a strong sense of what is emerging!   Indeed we believe that the church has a very bright and wonderful future - albeit a future that may seem weird by twentieth century sensibilities.

Between chapters this afternoon, we took a walk in amazingly mild February weather (It is currently 18 degrees in DC, my hometown - the jet stream is favoring the West this winter.)  

On our walk, we talked about playing church, about how easy it is to just go through the motions and to become increasingly alienated from the meaning and holiness of what the church is really about.  I recalled my son, Jonathan, when he was around four years old, playing church.  He could reenact turning on the lights (as his father did early on Sundays at church), he could light the candles, open the hymnal, preach the sermon, and pass the offering plate.  He had the moves down.  He had our number.  The boy could play church.

I then recalled the first time I preached to 1000 people, back in the early 1990s.  I recall thinking something like this:  "I get a shot at 1000 people today.  Some of them will be distracted by things far from here, others by political life within these walls. Some of them really don't want to be here.  Some of them are here only to see their friends or to see their children sing in the choir.  A few of them will really hear the Gospel this morning, in ways that illumine their way and transform their future.  It is for that few that I stand to preach to 1000."   That is about all we can ever say about a flesh and blood church - it is a group that has a shot at hearing and acting.  A good number amazingly discover grace and hope and are moved to live in ways that flow with the Spirit.  But so much of what we do is just play-acting.  

We live in an era where most people have little interest in playing church.  To most Americans, church no longer seems a compelling use of time or money.  It is often easier for the neighbors to see the ridiculousness of our charade than it is for the people on the church council.

I believe there is a rich future, many parallel futures actually, for the church - beyond play-acting.  

For all the kinds of churches that will blossom and morph in the years ahead, there is one that is an endangered species - what H. Richard Neibuhr called the "Christ of Culture" church - the church that plays the game so well.  The church that is religious, but not very spiritual.   The church that never rocks the boat or offends the donors with the Gospel.  That church's time is coming to an end in most places. 

The years of playing church are about over, except in a few places where people leave a bucket of endowment.  Welcome to the world beyond Christendom!