PLEASE SHOW UP AS SPIRITUAL LEADERS!

Ten years ago, my friend Amy Butler was the pastor of the Baptist church down the street from my home.  In DC, the Baptist brand has been dinked pretty badly by its association with right wing American politics, so Amy's church adopted a tagline: A Different Kind of Baptist.  A decade later, a lot of United Methodists are sensing a need for such a tagline to distance their congregations from an unending food-right over human sexuality as our denominational nightmare unfolds in slow-mo.  Then, last week, two and one half pages (not column inches, but full pages) of USA Today were devoted to the total breakdown of the Roman Catholic Church in Guam in protecting pedophile priests, reminding us of the similar sagas that have been unearthed in all corners of America in the Catholic Church.  And now, post Charlottesville, we are left with two bastions of support within President Trump's political base, who will not budge even after unending moral failures of the current administration: the two groups being neo-Nazis and evangelical Christian pastors.  One of the latter (a not-so-different kind of Baptist?) let us all know last week that it is perfectly and divinely justified to rain down nuclear bombs on North Korea.

Does anybody out there wonder why the category of Spiritual but not Religious is growing by probably a million or two persons per month this summer?  Talk about the fastest growing church in America!  People are fleeing organized religion like bats flying out hell.  The younger they are and the whiter they are, the faster it would seem they are flying away.  Back-to-school Sunday will be a little leaner this year in many places.

Our family vacation this summer was a road trip into eastern Canada.  I posted Facebook photos each day of the journey. This was not something I'd planned to do, but there were so many people following this by the time we got to Maine, that I just kept going.  Canada, with lower crime rates, better race relations, more functional systems of healthcare, less polarization in civic life, and fewer religious-practitioners today that in any year in its history - a small fraction of the 1960s.  The church collapsed in Canada over the last half century.  In the USA, we are now fast catching up with the Canadians.  Stepping into Canada (in terms of its religious practices - or lack thereof) is a bit like a trip to America twenty years hence - with the possible exception of the deep South.  And, honestly, Canadian families and communities are not falling apart for their lack of church affiliation.

Please do not mistake my point here.  I know first-hand that faith in Christ is a revolutionary force in human lives, healing all manner of pain, all manner of wickedness (a good word from our baptismal liturgies that we ought reclaim) and relational brokenness.  I know that Thing which happened to Saul of Tarsus: Trump-like in his alliance with those who would terrorize religious minorities: an encounter with Christ turned him upside down, to become the first-century poster child of human moral rehabilitation by the power of God.  I believe in that Thing: the experience of conversation. I have seen it many times, and in many flavors, with all manner of people.  I know the best of Christianity's possibilities or I would not have given my life to helping create hundreds of new communities formed in the Way of Jesus.

And yet the church as we know it, or more importantly as North Americans know it these days, is failing in its witness, failing in catastrophic ways.  It is not just a different kind of Baptist or Methodist or Catholic or Evangelical that we desperately need to show the world - it is a different kind of Christian - or perhaps an old kind that is simply not prominently displayed on the airwaves, on the web or in many of the most visible expressions of church.

Something has to shift, and fast.  Those of you who seek to lead faith communities with Jesus-like compassion and integrity - it is a tough season: a bunch of your brothers and sisters have trashed your credit rating in the culture.  In times like these, I really don't care whether you sing old hymns or Christian radio top 40.  I don't care how much water you baptize with, or whether you do small groups or Sunday school classes.  I don't care how savvy you are applying Mission insite wisdom to your ministry strategies.  What I really care about more than ever is that you show your community clearly that you have integrity, that you stand for holy things, that you have compassion for the people who mess up and righteous alliance with the people who get beat up and pushed to the margins.

Please show up in your community as spiritual leaders!   Please be willing to do some Saturday evening sermon rewrites when we have crazy weeks (all too common this year!).  We can work on church growth strategies next year.  Just show up as spiritual leaders this year, and lead your churches to show up..  to a public longing for something better than that which religion or politics as usual is delivering.