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