Are we having a rummage sale?

I’m so over the word “change” – I mean give it a rest – the Obama campaign has flat worn the word out.  Before tucking the word away, however, let me offer a couple observations: 1) Systemic cultural change was well in progress before Obama’s campaign - he simply picked a good wave to surf on; and 2) The level of change the Obama campaign talked about pales in comparison to what is actually going on in American cuture and the church (specifically the church in North America).

No one describes the current transformation of the church more comprehensively than Phyllis Tickle.  Her new book, The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why, provides a view from 50,000 feet of what we are experiencing in this time of liminality.  Her assessment is bold but based upon an historical analysis and whether her conclusions are correct will only be known years from now.  But if she is right we are priviledged to be living (participating?) in a very transformative period for the church.

So what is the book about – what is the “rummage sale” thing?   Check out this short video introduction:

done

We need to be sanguine

Alan Roxburgh’s comment to a recent article titled New Economic Paradigms & Church Leadership, by Sara Jane Walker, deserves serious attention.  His comment reveals the starke reality of the challenge facing church leaders in North America.  Following is the fourth paragraph from his comment: 

“We need to be quite sanguine about the current state of churches in terms of [the] issues of economic and social change. As the ambiguity and anxiety deepens they tend to become places people seek for security and re-assurance rather than transformation and the spiritual disciplines to live hopefully through transitions that many of [them] may never see end. At the same time I am aware that something else is happening ‘off stage’ just now. More and more Christians in North America (some suggest the number is moving up into the high 40% range) are dropping out of church as they’ve known it. They have not ceased to be Christians they just can’t function inside the church-denomination systems that shaped the 20th century. This is not, I believe, about taste (music, preaching, programs etc) or religious goods and services. I don’t think that read will hold water much longer (certainly not in Canada). Something much deeper is happening. Across all age ranges, this drop out has to do with a deepening sense that the churches are irrelevant in terms of issues people are facing in their lives in cultural transition. We could say much more about that but the point is that very, very soon a huge number of existing churches will find themselves in the position where the economic model out of which the church has functioned is no longer viable. This means high anxiety for a growing number of clergy who have grown dependent upon the salary systems of their church bodies.”

Missing the point

“The point is.. all the effort to fix the church misses the point. You can build the perfect church-and they still won’t come. People are not looking for a great church… The age in which institutional religion holds appeal is passing away.

“Church leaders seem unable to grasp this simple implication of the new world-people outside the church think church is for church people, not for them.”

-Reggie McNeal