FAITHFULNESS THROUGH A REVOLUTION

We went to a drive-in movie the other day - in my hometown. It was the first time I had been there since I was 15, when my friends and I stayed for the late show without calling home. (We all got grounded.)  Now I am too old for the late show, which had promised to be the better of the two movies.  So we quietly departed after movie number one.  The Rubidoux Drive-In had not changed at all - in a world and a city where almost everything else is different than before.  It is frozen in time, like a space alien, a holdover from another century. 

Before the movie, as we drove up and down the main drag of the city where I grew up - I marveled at the Indian and Korean groceries, how big the trees had grown, and just how much the place had morphed in the forty-plus years since I left. The Riverside, California that I knew is gone.  The only things unchanged seemed to be the drive-in and Box Springs Mountain, that rises over the University of California.  But even the mountain is different now because we can see it more clearly - as the air pollution is so improved.

All of us could tell similar stories of the places we grew up. Change has become a constant.  It is normal and expected. We have grown accustomed to it - at least change at a certain speed.  

And then came 2020: a year when the speed of change accelerated with a cosmic bang, breaking the sound barrier. None of us saw this coming.  The year started out like every other year of late, with the same trends steadily trending - and then BANG.  A once-a-century pandemic hit, paired with technology that allowed us to limp along rather than to shut down entirely, shifting our shopping trips, our classrooms, our offices and our worship services to online platforms.  Experts estimate that we may have permanently lost ten percent of the jobs in the USA within two months - due to the economic and technological shifts sped along by the pandemic.  And as we adjust and adapt, we are limping less and starting to walk.  Soon we will be running - and by the time there is a vaccine, we will never go back to work, to church, to school, to stadiums or to shop the same way as before.  

Everything will be more digital.  We are becoming a fundamentally digital society where, sometimes, we choose to show up physically.  (We were  still the opposite of that, just three months ago.)

With all this change, one aspect of our life together has been notable for its stuck-ness across the decades - lingering racism and systemic injustices for persons of color.  But all the other chaos of 2020 has helped push things to a tipping point, where now thousands of people are in the streets saying "Enough is enough!"  All bets are off on what happens next, but the crisis of justice may well eclipse the pandemic as it intensifies the stakes and the emotions of the political showdown in November.  The election and its aftermath could be the most significant political event of our lifetimes (so far).   The cultural polarization just grows wider.  Holding together a diverse nation, or a diverse church, grows ever more difficult.

And of course, through all of this, on indefinite hold, there is a United Methodist Battle of Armageddon. Previously scheduled for May of this year, the next UMC General Conference will likely be the one that splinters a major American denomination into pieces.  Maybe that meeting happens in 2021 or 2022.  Who knows, really?  So much change will occur between now and then.  

Revolution is not too strong a word to describe the space we have entered in 2020.  Is 2020 a bridge to a new normal that might span decades, or simply to more revolution? We are about to find out!

For the church, a few words:

1. See where the Spirit is leading, and go with the change, no matter what.   Even if it is not yet clear what we are becoming, trust the Holy Spirit!

2. Do not, under any circumstances, fool yourself with the notion that a church can stay on the sidelines of the new civil rights movement, and thrive.  That is impossible.  Get in the game.  Pay close attention to what the Spirit is doing in the hearts of your young neighbors: black, brown and white!

3. Make peace with the fact that yesterday is gone.  Gone gone.  1950, 1980, 2018: none of it is coming back.

4. Accept that synchronous (same time), online gathering is real - and adjust your sacramental practices accordingly.

5. Leave a place for Mama in the new church you will create - she may not readily hop onto the internet, yet in many cases, her tithe is still paying the bills! Try not to pull the rug out from under her or her friends.  In some cases, they can be great missional allies.  In other cases, they will be content to let the younger generation lead, so long as we treat them with dignity.

6. (But) If Mama ever forces you to choose between her and the emerging mission field of the 21st century, leave her under a tree, with a good supply of lemonade and some shade, and move forward without her.

7. This is a season of of movement: choose to be a traveling church rather than a settled church.  Expect to stay in traveling mode.  (Remember the ten year site-development plan with phases 1,2,3?  That is now about as helpful as having a place for folks to tie up their horses during worship.)

8. Live with hope and offer hope to the world.  Expect great things from God and encourage that expectation in others.