Church: Put on Your Crash Helmets!

It happened in worship this morning at the Next Church conference.  Next Church is a group of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders who are thinking and talking about what’s “next” for our denomination. 

This was my first time to participate at an annual conference that’s been growing in attendance in recent years; a pilgrimage this year that grew to nearly 700 participants!  And it was amazing.  I was reunited with friends a colleagues that represent more than 25 years of my life—some of them—and others who may sustain me and my ministry for the next 25 years! 

But, I’ve been accused of having an “old soul,” and no doubt, for one of the first times in 25 years of ministry, I felt old.  For the first time, I felt the weight of tradition and stayed-ness that is a part of ME, being more buffeted by the winds of change that God’s Holy Spirit is blowing through my church.  Here-to-fore, I watched the older folks be blown around like strong winds in downtown Chicago, where you’re simply blessed to only lose your hat and not be carried not-so-merrily down the street by the wind! 

The unwritten part of the liturgy was this, “Church, put on your crash helmets!”--words made famous by Annie Dillard’s description of what it means for us to be called by God out into deep waters, to be at risk in a world of risks, in ways that are uncomfortable and should be more expected than not.  An experience that matched the intended theme of this conference, “beyond our walls,” but also one that I fully recognized as a word of warning.  There was rough water coming in this liturgy just ahead. 

I knew these words, about crash helmets.  I knew some of the words that were coming in the liturgy.  “This was serious,” I thought, but I still wasn’t ready. 

We literally were invited to catch and use our BREATH as a part of God’s Spirit. 

The worship leader read the written liturgy, a poem “Wage Peace” written by Judyth Hill, beginning:

Wage peace with your breath.
Breath in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.
 Breath in terrorists/and breath out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields
Breathe in confusion/and breath out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen/and breath out lifelong friendships intact

These words came after jarring images for me during the celebration of communion.  An image of persons wearing orange jumpsuits and whose heads were covered in black bags.  Tortured detainees?  ISIS prisoners?  Except the image held the Supreme Court building in the background, and a Police Officer standing as if at a pulpit. 

In light of recent pictures in news, I found this image jarring, frightening, and dis-comforting.  Just give me a little Jesus, please.  The Jesus who love me, who loves us, the Jesus who displaces violence with love.  I am a part of that love.  Give me my Jesus, please! 

I was uncomfortable and angry.  I began parsing a carefully worded e-mail in my head to the leadership team.  How dare they take away my Jesus! 

And then it hit me.  That is my Jesus. 

The Jesus who was tortured, who was unjustly condemned, associated with the worst human beings.  The Jesus who dwelt his last night on earth in control of those who would make him suffer and die, abused, surrounded, poked and prodded, dehumanized.  There, in fact was my Jesus, crucified in front of me. 

And what was discomforting even still, or perhaps even more, how often was it that my church would seek to deny THIS Jesus in favor of the one who only comforts us, but cannot save us?  How much my stayed Jesus teaches me to love my comfort, my safe theology, my safe faith—that actually saves little. 

JESUS, beyond my “stayed Jesus” dares to save the world—promised John’s gospel in last week’s lectionary passage (John 3: 14-21).  And so it is that this Jesus, the one present in suffering and dying, the Jesus of protest and proclamation, beckons me and my whole church beyond where I am comfortable.  And we need crash helmets! 

Can I imagine a world, a church, a faith, a hope, a Jesus-incarnation that dares us to “breath in terrorists and breath out sleeping children and freshly mown fields? 

It’s too idealistic, some will say. 

It’s too offensive, others will decry. 

“It’s not realistic,” “it can’t be real,” we’ll say--standing at the foot of the cross. 

The truth is, I’ve been taught to see Jesus in all of these places of death—be they torture, the death penalty, abortion, or the death penalty.  I see Jesus, I know Jesus—reaching out in love, displacing the victimized.  “He takes our place,” some have taught me.  He redeems.  He loves.  He makes right—in the way only God can make right.  But this is not the comfortable crucified Jesus, hanging blithely in front of the sanctuary or on necklaces. 

In all these places, Christ is dying; but Christ is raised by God.  Christ is dying and Christ is being raised, again and again.  This is Jesus who transforms the world, who transforms the church, who transforms me. 

Sometimes, I’m afraid of letting things die in me.  It is the way I’ve been taught, the church I know.  Hang on! 

Because when it’s dead, part of me will be dead. 

But the great mystery of faith is that just at that moment when we are afraid we are dying, or at just the moment we ARE dying, we are already being raised. 

Easter is coming, and this story of death is the story of resurrection.  “I believe, Lord, help my unbelief.”  “Help me die, Lord, so I can be raised.”  And then, a crash helmet seems wise; but really not necessary. 

No.  I wasn’t ready for that. 

I am now, profoundly grateful for it. 

Maybe, when it happens NEXT, I’ll be a little more ready.  And, God-willing, I’ll be even more willing to embrace it. 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania

We Know What You Need--the Apostles' Creed

A couple of weekends ago I participated in a regional event sponsored by NEXT Church (a group of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders committed to conversations about what’s “next” for our congregations and denomination).  The keynote speaker was Rev. Dr. David Lose, the president at Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia, sharing with us the importance of story-telling in the Church, and in particular, how Christians can and should be shaped by Biblical stories they encounter at/through/with church. 

An image David Lose shared with the NEXT Church Regional Conference

He spoke at length about cultural shifts and changes in the past few decades.  He reminded us about values that are now prevalent in the world around churches, and how many practices within churches often prevent us from pursuing the goals of the Kingdom of God which we all believe Churches are called to be about in the world.  He didn't say it exactly this way, but his suggestion was that if we were serious about pursuing the goals of the Kingdom, we need to change what we do “at church”—moving from worship as performance to worship as “practice.” 

Lose pointed to our Christian “in house” approach to worship as being counter-productive because worship is seen as a preacher-dominated environment.  Church communities have taught people to sit nicely and listen to the preacher in worship and to expect the preacher to be the hired Christian who will proclaim and act out the stories of the Christian life.  Lose reiterated the propensity of most congregations to be known for “good preaching,” with expectations of scholarly study and profound delivery; but practiced so well, this actually has a negative effect on how Christians perceive their role in the world. 

For most churches, worship is designed around the proclaimed word, presented as a monologue, surrounded by familiar words and ritual, where despite “practicing” for weeks, years, and lifetimes, preachers are seen as experts and congregants are always novices.  So Lose thought a much better model might aim at helping people feel better about their own faith and their own expertise honed by years of experience so that people would feel more confident about their Christian contributions to the world around them.  So that in his view, “Church” becomes a place to practice what we believe with the impetus of taking our faith with us into the world—using it in the real work of ministry.  That is, for each of us—preacher and congregant alike—to become “experts” in doing and being faithful. 

I was reading something totally unrelated (I thought) in the last few days—from an article about Interim Ministry by John Wimberly: 

"Telling people what they need is, in most instances, a highly flawed way of relating to others. It usually works best to ask people what they need from us." 

As a result of the conversation with David Lose, a number of us immediately noticed the systems at work in the congregations we serve as being counterproductive to sending people out into the world as fully-formed Christians with their own expertise.  For years, generations even, congregations have rested and insisted on “telling people what they need.”  We’ve taught Church doctrine and even Bible stories as if they simply “tell us” what we need to know.  As if “faith” and “believing” were an exercise that can be performed in our heads. 

Do you believe in Jesus?  “Yes, yes I do.” 

As if believing in Jesus were the key to eternal life—nothing else required.  As if attending church were only a bonus.  As if participating personally and financially in the life of a congregation was inherently a “good thing” but what really matters for us as individuals is our “personal relationship with Jesus Christ”—to open the gates of heaven. 

We've relied on the mantra that Christians SHOULD attend Church and participate.  We tell people frequently and often this is what they NEED; and often, when we then hear that’s problematic, we are well-known for backing off our presumption and telling people also, “you know, come to church when you can make it.  God doesn't mind if you have other commitments.” 

True to our word, people have found reasons why they CAN’T attend worship or “church” each week.  We can see the data in the declining worship attendance numbers. 

And rather than offering an expectation about participation, we acquiesce to the excuses of family events, little leagues, or jobs.  Rather than helping people find other ways of participating, or other connections between faith and life, we trust people to make up their own mind, insisting on the things that always have given us comfort. 

In my own congregation, people have said, “we NEED to say the Apostles’ Creed because it’s an important part of our faith.”  And so sometimes we say the Creed, almost as if saying it is salvific in and of itself.  Congregants often express resistance to using other creeds or confessions that might reveal deeper connections between faith and life not because we don’t believe them, but because they are unfamiliar and they make us feel “uncomfortable” in worship.  And we don’t ask others, who aren't in worship, what might be comfortable for them, or in particular, what the church could do to be helpful to them. 

It’s not just that we’re tied to our own tradition and ways; the reality is we’re becoming more and more disconnected from the community around us, the people around us, the people who in some respects don’t know that they need church too.  By practicing our traditions to perfection we haven’t realized how closed we have really be come.  And we haven’t recognized that “practicing our traditions” is different from “practicing our faith.” 

About a year ago, our Church Session started talking about “inviting others.”  We recognized that around the session table most folks had become members of our congregation because someone asked.  The fact that most of our ruling elders became members more than 25 years ago will tell the story that we've stopped “asking.”  But since then, that conversation about “inviting others” hasn't gone away.  We’re working on it again. 

The trouble is we need to recognize that that “invitation” should be more of a two-way street.  We shouldn't be inviting people because we know what they need—that they need to do and be “like us.”  We should be inviting people because our relationship with Jesus invites us to a life of transformation.  That we’re not stuck or stopped in the same place.  That we have the capacity to be renewed and reshaped by our faith—together.  We have to be open to asking more realistically what others need from us.  And hearing THEIR story, perhaps we will find our own revitalized. 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania