The Church of the Present

The Church in Time, Three Sermons on the Church:
Past, Present and Future

The Church of the Present

Did you notice the recent Kudzu cartoon in the Post in which the Rev’d Mr. Dunn – that’s Will B. Dunn, of course – was taken to task by one of his parishioners?

"What –" she said, "no Tanning salon?! No juice bar! – no food court! No fitness center! – And you call yourself a house of worship! – What’s the point of your valet parking?!"

I can think of no better introduction than this to a discussion of the church of the present, for though it may not point toward what we are, it does point toward the greatest danger we face, given the world as we know it.

Last week, when I talked of the church of the past, I defined the church as "a home for the faithful." But I didn’t say then, nor will I say now, what faith is, nor would I indicate what accouterments or personnel are necessary to furnish and maintain such a home.

The Rev’d Mr. Dunn’s parishioner, however, is less reticent, at least with regard to accouterments. "No tanning salon," she asks demandingly. "No juice bar! No food court! No fitness center! – and you call yourself a house of worship!" The valet parking means nothing to her without the rest. For her, it’s the whole enchilada or nothing at all. The church is a place where you receive everything you want rather than a place where you give. It almost sounds like a Cargo Cult, doesn’t it?

Last week I talked of the church of the past as being the center of its community – where people were willing to give something up in order to get along, where individuality was less important than the group’s needs because it was in the group that life was possible.

My daughter, Sasha, has been listening to the Laura Ingalls Wilder story about the winter of blizzards that her family and community went through, when survival of the entire town was predicated on everyone helping each other. One storm after another comes, and the people help each other through them. They hold each other’s hands going down the street in order to be sure that everyone gets to the other door instead of walking out into the surrounding prairie where they could walk on and on without ever finding their way back. Two young men decide to risk their lives to go out to the one farm in the area that might have wheat enough for everyone to tide them through the winter. If another blizzard comes too soon, it would kill them. But if they don’t go, their friends may start to starve. It’s the story of everyone trying to help everyone else.

The vicissitudes might vary from place to place, but the dependence of each on all was characteristic of rural communities that were dominant around the world not 70 years ago. Even in cities there were rural communities by our standards where everyone in a given neighborhood knew everyone else and most were often interrelated. There were parish churches where people from a given area all went to the same church. And everyone knew everyone else’s business. But look where we are now. How many people today drove ten miles to come here? How many drove five? How many drove just one? We’re more spread out and the ties are not the same.

And the church stood as the center of such community life that doesn’t exist for us.

But take away work relationships, take away family ties, take away the people who live within two doors of your home and how many more people do you know?

And these days, family may be thousands of miles away.
Coworkers may be scattered over two hundred square miles and more.
And next door neighbors just aren’t enough.
We may have a few scattered groupings, yes, but this isn’t the same as being known by the entire community.

When we were in Michigan, we stopped at my wife, Cathy’s family home, as we always do. Sandusky, where Cathy grew up still needs only two traffic lights, though there’s talk of needing another if a few more years. We arrived this year at just the right time for the county fair So we took the kids over to see the cows and horses, the pigs and goats and chickens, the pies and jams and jellies, the midway, of course, and all the other attractions. And everywhere we went at the fair, there were people who stopped to talk with Cathy – friends from a bygone era in Cathy’s life who still knew her and were ready to take up the relationship in mid-sentence even after fifteen years. That is the rural way and still is the rural way for some. But for more and more people, it is a bygone experience.

In this new setting, a church isn’t the center of the community. The church is the community – or at least it ought to be.
It should be the place to meet with trusted elders.
It should be the place to talk with like minded friends, as different as their individual understandings may be.
It should be the protected place to watch our children grow.
It should be a place to stand with the dying and to comfort those left behind to grieve.
It should be a place to hear words of challenge and compassion, of prophecy and hope.
It should be the place where we feel safe in experiencing the deepest longings of the human soul and where we feel the support of others to make these longings a tangible part of our lives – as great or small as our lives may be in the greater scheme of things.

This, at least is what I see as being of value in the church today.

A home for the faithful, it is a place where we can share on the most profound levels, keeping faith with each other and, through this, finding the strength to keep faith with all in a world grown cold through numbers if nothing else.

From the community of the church we go out to create community in the greater world, convinced of its value for us and for all.

And thus the church is not the center of communities anymore. It is the community, created where the center of the greater society has failed.

Other such communities certainly do exist besides churches per se.

Meals on Wheels can make such a community in a given area as the people involved band together to help those about them who are in need of a meal brought into their homes. They are a community working for the good of all

Country clubs other social societies can make such a community if they work at it. If they are more concerned about others than of self, if they reach out to others in their needs. If they are simply a shrine to athletics and dancing, they are not.

My favorite organization that functions in this way is the Fly Wheel Society in Northern Michigan. They are a church community that hasn’t got a church. I’ve told my family, since our visit to the Fly Wheel Society’s yearly gathering, that I’ve fallen in love with a tractor: with a 1950 Alyse Chalmers Type G Tractor. I want it so I can be a member of the Flywheelers, of this group of men and women who get together to repair old tractors, to show them off to each other, and to help the lives of each other, of others in need, of the kids who live about them. Yes, they’re fixing tractors, but they’re fixing something more in their communities.

But the thing is that if these other groups do what is needed to make themselves a community, they are churches no matter what they are called.

But there is an adversary to this understanding in the form of the mass culture that surrounds us.

Turn on the television and you will find people who will tell you more about themselves than even the most intimate friend should know.

You can live in fantasy through the internet and can even try to make your fantasies come real.

You can come to expect more than perfection through seeing the best of the best in films and "live" presentations (that are not really live when they are watched from your home on television).

You can constantly look for hype experiences, expect violins in the background of your everyday life, want a perfection in your triumphs and your tragedies.

You can see yourselves as the stars of some Truman Show of your very own – only one that succeeds where his failed.

Mass materialism calls us to worship at the shrine of the ultimate thing, whatever that thing may be in the moment. And those who accept this call and follow mass culture look for such false ultimates everywhere in their lives – even in church.

"What!" they exclaim, "No tanning salon,
no juice bar,
no food court,
no fitness center –
    no tracker organ,
    no thirty member professional choir,
    no resident, trained pastoral counselor,
    no special program for every person or group who walks through the door,
    no endowment to pay the bills we can’t afford,
    no limit on people to those who think just like me,
    no world famous preacher whose thought is exactly like mine,
    no state of the art sound and lighting system,
    no worship turned into perfect drama –
        and you call yourself a house of worship!

Too many hear the call of the mass culture around us and seem to be looking for a church that actually has all these things and more.

They build mega churches.
They expect an emotional catharsis that can’t be avoided – and this on a weekly basis.
They want a voyeuristic place in the bleachers rather than an active sharing part in the familial task of faith.
They want the experience rather than the labor.
They want to hear the word without doing the work.
It’s not new.
We piped for you," Jesus said of the foolish children in the market place, "but you wouldn’t dance."
The difference is that so many more seem to be looking for satisfaction along these lines.

Instead of looking for a home for the faithful, they seem to be looking for a house of cards – a castle in the air – that cannot be found.

They are preparing themselves for a fall, and the church that tries to satisfy them will fall, too.

It is our task in the present to form communities that will stand over against such mass materialistic dreams:

    to found homes for the faithful that minister to real needs;
    to succor the spirit in each and all in our daily endeavors;
    to strengthen us to seek the truth and to be the people we can be;
    to challenge us to do what we can, to accept what we cannot do, and to have the wisdom to know the difference.

We stand at a crossroads in history. What will happen to the church in the future depends on our decisions today along with the decisions of other people across the nation and around the world. Some decisions bode ill for the future, but others do not. It is on this framework that we will build our next discussion regarding the church of the future.