The Coming Evangelical Collapse article hits the media…

Michael Spencer’s article referenced earlier in this blog has gotten the attention of the mainstream media – it was published in the Christian Science Monitor today.
I think this newer, 1500 word version of the original post is more cohesive than the original. My prior comments stand – I think he’s mostly right.

I’ll also add that I think that affluent suburban megachurches and their satellite institutions will be affected just as deeply by the coming shifts. This is partly due to the phenomenon I’ve described already, which I’ll term here “The Building-Driven Church.” Already congregations with multi-million dollar facilities with million-dollar maintenance budgets are laying off staff, clinging to their gilded temples while the economy melts down around them.

Let me preface what comes next with an admission that my children attend private Christian schools, but I’m really torn about this. I’m grateful that we can afford to send them there, but I can’t lay my finger on the Bible verse that says, “Go into all the world and build multi-million-dollar church buildings and hugely expensive private ‘Christian’ schools for the children of privilege.” Somehow my gut tells me that the equation of Christianity and material affluence is an abrogation of the Biblical ethos, and one of the facets of consumerist evangelicalism that I don’t think anyone should be sad to say goodbye to.

Michael Spencer is right, and as grateful as I am to evangelicalism for all it has done, in its current iteration its inevitable decline is not only a good thing, but absolutely necessary if a recovery of biblical Christianity is to have any chance. If you will read Spencer’s article, he is not suggesting what some of the more radical Emergents are suggesting, but says that evangelicalism’s collapse is due to its failure to proclaim a robust, fully articulated theology that upholds Biblical truths – not just convenient cultural shibboleths like being against abortion and gay marriage (please don’t misunderstand this as a statement of support for either one).

As a cultural observer of a few decades ago observed, “The times, they are a’ changing.”

The working-class philosopher who worked and thought on the waterfront had a companion observation:

“In times of change
Learners inherit the earth,
While the learned
find themselves beautifully equipped
to deal with a world
that no longer exists”
Erik Hoffer

I and my fellow seminary graduates should take note.

This of course

Another well-intentioned but misguided Evangelical leader

I believe David Wilkerson is a decent man with only the best of intentions. But his recent pronouncement of a prophecy which he feels he has received from the Holy Spirit is almost certainly misguided.

Here’s Wilkerson’s prophecy in his own words:
http://davidwilkersontoday.blogspot.com/2009/03/urgent-message.html
And a follow-up post he published to underscore the urgency of his first message:
http://davidwilkersontoday.blogspot.com/2009/03/further-word.html

Have a look at a couple of articles concerning Wilkerson’s latest proclamation of imminent apocalyptic doom here:

http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/03/david-wilkerson-and-prophecy.html
and here:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91097

Reverend Wilkerson has definitely done some great things for the progress of the Gospel, including starting Teen Challenge which came out of the gang ministry described in The Cross and The Switchblade, a book that was very inspiring to me as a young Christian 25 years ago.

But he has a rather sketchy record of prophetic over-reaching. In 1994 Wilkerson claimed at the Solomon Church that he “felt in his spirit” that there would be no more Christian television networks. Considering the state of the 1-800-BIG-HAIR network, he may have had a point – what is there claims the name of Christian but the actual content is questionable at very best. In a prophecy of September 7, 1992, Wilkerson claimed recurring visions of a thousand fires burning in New York City, with race riots and other civic mayhem. Although at the time Wilkerson said “next year” he has demurred and claims this is still a valid prophecy for some future time.

On April 15, 2000 Wilkerson predicted the imminent collapse of the financial system after the Dow fell 618 points. The stock market rallied and reached a record high the next month. Wilkerson confessed that he was wrong, and questioned if those who called him a false prophet were right.

I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I think that Reverend Wilkerson is misguided and mistaken, and his record of ill-advised highly public pronouncements has become an embarrassing punctuation mark on a spiritual career that has seen some genuine contributions.

The real concern I have for this kind of foolishness is that a leader like David Wilkerson is genuinely respected in the evangelical community. When someone who commands the kind of respect Wilkerson has among evangelicals makes public proclamations that are the stuff of the tabloid press, the Gospel suffers.

“Oh yeah,” I can hear an unbeliever saying. “Christianity, huh? That’s like that windbag Wilkerson at Times Square Church, the world about to blow up or something like that? Thanks but no thanks. I need to live in the real world.”

I am sad to see someone like Wilkerson devolving into a convenient clown for the media to trot out and say, “Here’s someone who speaks for Christians!”

Perhaps Reverend Wilkerson really is hearing from God. I’ll admit the possibility, but in view of his very spotty track record, I don’t really expect to see him vindicated. His latest Jeremiad is a lose-lose proposition: If he’s right New York burns. If he’s wrong, people have more excuses to avoid investigating Christianity – I say excuses, not evidence. The problem is, people wind up rejecting this sort of nonsense, and quite rightly so! – thinking they are rejecting Christianity, which they can’t reject because they’ve never even seen the genuine thing itself.

The Heirs of Evangelicalism

After reading Internet Monk Michael Spencer’s post “The Coming Evangelical Collapse,” I read Part 2, “What will be left?” today.

Michael’s predictions:
1. An evangelicalism far from its historical and doctrinal core, which has exchanged the success model of pragmatism, therapy, and church growth methodologies for doctrine.
2. An evangelicalized Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
3. A remaining portion (I’m NOT saying faithful remnant) who will continue toward theological reconstruction and recovery, which could move toward historic “Mere Christianity” or a resurgent reformation.
4. The disappearance of the emerging church from the evangelical landscape.
5. The disappearance of evangelistic fundamentalist churches, leaving only museum pieces.
6. Perhaps a revived evangelicalism in what is now known as the foreign mission field.

My observations:

I think Michael is spot on with #1. Consumerist Evangelicalism will continue to grow bigger, slicker, more aggressively marketed religious shopping malls because that is what Americans know how to do. The rise of methodology over doctrine and the loss of a robust supernaturalism are already well along. So we will see a lot of gargantuan consumerist churches dotting the landscape. Joel Osteen will continue to rake in the dough.

Number 2 is a healthy development – in my Masters thesis I marveled at the missionary vitality and acumen of the Eastern Church of the first millennium, whose history records a missiology as advanced as the modern missionary movement (albeit with some of the same problems as well). The Church of the East may yet look up from its eucharistic contemplations and step forth into the world again. Evangelical dialogue with Rome and the East will increase in frequency and resonance. Evangelical conversion to Rome and the East will probably also increase, as seekers look past the glitz and bling of the consumerist churches in search of spiritual reality.

There are already signs of Number 3 – witness the tensions between resurgent, robust evangelical networks like Acts 29 and traditional evangelical groups like the Missouri Baptist Convention. These tensions are, I think, healthy. I’m also encouraged by the alliance between absolutely doctrinally solid Christians like Tim Keller, Don Carson, C.J. Mahaney and others like them with the resurgent networks.

On numbers 4 and 5 I can only sadly agree about the emergents, some of whom have already thrown out the doctrinal baby with the bathwater. The evangelistic fundamentalists have not only become sterile, but have largely adopted a policy of veritable filicide toward their young people. As Ed Marcelle of Terra Nova has observed, “they will likely be able to continue to exist only by putting up velvet ropes and selling tickets to Japanese tourists.” (paraphrased from memory – apologies if I got the wording wrong.)

The sixth prediction is already becoming established fact: evangelicalism is growing in a robust fashion in the developing world, and we may see the West become a mission field for the churches there. Older evangelicals will not accept the leadership of immigrants, especially people of color, but younger Christians won’t have any problem with it. This is a hopeful sign.

Now let me go a bit further – what will the shape of the surviving churches be like after the evangelical collapse has unfolded?

1. They will likely be more charismatic than the current evangelical mainstream, manifesting a robust supernaturalism.
2. Doctrinally they will be more grounded and connected with historic Christianity than the current charismatic mainstream, but less exclusivistic than traditional pentecostals.
3. The new churches will show manifest and practical concern for social justice.
4. These churches will be Green. Concern for the environment will become a mainstream Christian value rather than cause for suspicion as it is with many evangelicals now.
5. Politically the church will be courted and shunned from both sides – liberals will find the heirs of evangelicalism too conservative, and conservatives will suspect them of being too liberal.
6. The heirs of evangelicalism will probably embrace mainstream scientific thought. It will not be thought unusual for Christians to accept Inflationary (Big Bang) cosmology initiated by God, and church leaders will increasingly see no inherent conflict between biological evolution under the providence of God and commitment to the authority and infallibility of Scripture, but not necessarily a literalistic hermeneutic.

Because the term has already acquired too much baggage I’m reticent to use the term “post-evangelical.” It’s already associated with a specific school of thought. It sounds too negative to call those who remain committed to historic Christianity after the collapse of evangelicalism (with which thesis I sadly agree) leftovers, and too sanctimonious to use the word remnant. So I’m left with “heirs of evangelicalism.” It means those who have inherited much from and respect forebears, but nevertheless acknowledges that the baton has been passed, that a new chapter has begun in the pageant of Redemption Jesus has invited us to join as his fellow workers and incarnational presence.

The coming evangelical collapse?

Internet Monk Michael Spencer has a really sobering piece on what he calls “The Coming Evangelical Collapse.”

(HT: Tall Skinny Kiwi)

This segment predicts the nature of the collapse, its antecedents and some of the effects. Parts 2 and 3 will look at what is left afterward and whether the collapse is a good thing, respectively.

Much of what Michael has to say isn’t new – earlier voices in the precursor to what might be called “Missionalism” today have spoken for at least three decades about the fact of Christendom as a spent cultural force, and the need for a mission to Western Culture, making many of the same points Michael has.

On this blog I’ve discussed some of the same factors he brings up, and none of them are original with me – the love of church buildings, creeping consumerism, leadership that is good at theology but not very good at anything else, and other issues. And there are also voices today which speak to the need to deconstruct religious moralism and legalism which predominates in much of what is called evangelicalism.

One of the points that Andrew Jones points out as especially salient is point 7 from Michael’s post – the question of economic sustainability, exacerbated by the current macroeconomic effects of the global financial crisis. In my own hometown of Memphis, I received a prayer request regarding a “prestige” church that was having to lay off staffers because of a drop in contributions. The effects I discussed in this post (again the idea did not originate with me) have already begun, and I think Michael clearly elucidates the issue of economic survivability of the status quo. I think that his thoughts are sobering if not troubling, and should especially be so for “tall steeple” churches.

But I can’t help but to ask if some of this isn’t wishful thinking or even schadenfreude – Michael is a very thoughtful fellow and doesn’t fit the “angry young church dude” profile.

And yet in my gut I can’t help but get a feeling of “serves them right!” when I read his post on the collapse. Again, this is more a visceral reaction – I can’t point to anything explicit that says this, and my feelings are very suspect and unreliable when it comes to judging the motivations of others. More darkly I fear that the feeling may simply be the expression of a latent affection within me that I’m projecting on Michael. I’m of the same age range as Michael; neither of has qualified as “young” for at least 15 years in the most charitable construction of the term.

Regardless of what’s behind it, though, I think that Michael’s prediction is more likely to be correct than incorrect.

I’m going to have to do some more thinking on the issue before I comment further on what I think God may be trying to do through this, but one thing is certain: this too is under the Lord’s providential superintendence, and God has a redemptive purpose for it. Just as I dread the consequences of what may be coming in the economy but am excited to be alive to see these interesting historical events unfolding, so also I dread what may be coming for churches, but am excited to be a witness to what God is doing: it’s shaping up to be something completely new.

Nancy Pelosi may be dead wrong on the economic effects of family planning.

No pun intended, but Speaker of the House Pelosi may be dead wrong on her thinking that “family planning” will be a boon to the economy. In fact, the long-term global trend is not overpopulation – it is depopulation and a shrinking global economy as population drops and ages. Ms. Pelosi’s approach may provide short-term convenience to some, but in the long term her ideas exacerbate the devastating economic effects of depopulation that seems to be coming as surely as death and taxes.

Phillip Longman is a demographer who makes a pretty airtight research case on long term demographic trends. Here’s his book “The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity”.

Longman spoke to the LongNow Foundation seminar on Long Term Thinking, a think tank on the West Coast (not Christian, but thoughtful). Here’s a link to the talk he gave five years ago, which is still thought-provoking:
MP3
Ogg Vorbis
And to the accompanying PDF file on the talk and the slides.

Though I am unaware of Longman’s religious views, the obvious resonances between his research and Christian regard for the sanctity of life made him a natural pick for a Christianity Today interview here.

As stated Longman makes a compelling case. All the more reason for Christians to take the admonition to be fruitful and multiply seriously.

Hiring professionals for ministry or developing from within?

The church where I am a member just finished a conference which featured some national-level headliners – I didn’t get to attend all the sessions but every session I did attend was really terrific and helpful. I’m very grateful to be at a church that has a large membership (3500+) can afford to bring in speakers like these.

At what is normally our Sunday School time a group of worship musicians played acoustic instruments, a pleasant change from our usual organ, robed choir and sometime orchestra. I enjoy both types of worship – this post doesn’t concern style.

After the conference I had an email exchange with one of our pastors about the worship musicians – I asked if they were members of our church or hired for the conference. He replied they came from the other end of our state and remarked how excellent he thought they were.

I replied, “Yes, they are a great group, I enjoyed worshiping with them very much.

I asked if I could pose a follow up question: Smaller, newer churches view leadership development of congregational members as a vital part of their mission. Larger, more developed churches are more apt to simply hire professionals to engage in ministry rather than to develop from within.

What are the long-term effects of hiring professionals instead of engaging in leadership development? Does the practice contribute to greater engagement by church members? Or does it contribute to encouraging church members to be spectators? Excellence is an important value for a church to have – there are too many churches who display mediocrity. And yet, is the practice of hiring professionals in order to comport with the value of excellence in conflict with other values the church perhaps should cherish as highly?

It wasn’t my intention to buttonhole one of our pastors or to be confrontational. I love, respect and trust our pastoral leadership. And yet sometimes I think that all of us get so used to swimming in this aquarium that we lose the ability to contemplate the water . There isn’t an easy sound bite answer to this question. I think it is one of which we should be cognizant, and one that forces us to grapple with it.

There is certainly a place for highly qualified, trained ministers. We have all seen theological and practical disasters that result from church leaders out of their depth, and in the church of pop-Christianity there is more than enough mediocrity to go around. There is no coherent polemic against a value of excellence in church leadership, and yet exclusivity of excellence can have negative effects for leadership and congregation alike.

Pondering this question certainly isn’t original with me.
Bob Hyatt explores some of the issues in this posting, “Escape from Consumer Church.”

One of the pastors of Huntsville’s Sojourn church comments on Bob’s article “It was working in a mega church that opened my eyes to the fact that in many ways, the church in America had pursued a model that created consumers of church primarily and community only incidentally. I’m your pastor, not your cruise director.” His comment can be seen in its entirety at this Sojourn Blog post.

Finally, Todd Rhoades talks about the downside of overdoing excellence on his Monday Morning Insight blog here.

I can’t really end this post with a satisfactory conclusion. It’s just a matter we’re going to have to wrestle with.

Promising new help for churches that need better music

The organist moved away, the organ quit, or perhaps your church has finally decided that it needs to make music in a new way. But your parishioners, accustomed to coming to church every Sunday for the last several decades and sitting in the same place while the same person played the same songs on the organ, have become so accustomed to being spectators that no one in the congregation can make music at all, much less anything that’s a bit more up to date.

The boy geniuses at Redmond has the answer – now all your church needs is to feed your favorite hip new worship choruses into Songsmith – the computer will make a background track for your music, and you’re off and running with hip, up to date music. The commercial says it all – it’s “the cool new thing!”. With Songsmith, your church too can be high-tech, cool, and relevant!

Be sure to have plenty of bandages available, because if you actually do this, your congregants and visitors will probably want to take those little pencils in the holders on the backs of the pews and drive them into their ears to make the awful sound stop…

If your church is into robes and gowns…

For clergymen who really like their Geneva gowns and vestements, here’s a great video of a costumed prankster who very discreetly tagged along behind a bunch of clergy from Iceland’s Lutheran church.

Nice idea for processional music, too.

If you’re outraged,  lighten up!

Dying Churches

A friend posted a message on a discussion list and mentioned he was part of a dying church.

I was an elder in a dying church at one time, and God used that experience to change me and move me in my theological journey.  While I was there I was asked to be on the outreach committee.  I knew practically nothing about the topic and had very little interest in it, but I also believe that God uses the local church as one of his instruments to shape us in the direction he wants us to go, so I agreed to join, and later chair the committee.

I began to research outreach, and over time I found three types of materials:

1.  Canned methodologies – We did ABC here, if you do ABC there, it will work for you.

2.  Abstract ideas – 10 Signs of a Vibrant Church (not an actual title but a representative one)

3.  Indepth spiritual studies of church dynamics.

The first type of materials were not helpful nor were they thoughtful.  The second type had some helpful insights but really only painted a portrait in the abstract about what a healthy church looks like; there was no path for getting from here to there if your congregation wasn’t already vibrant and healthy.

The third type of materials were harder to find, but I did find some.  Turning around a dying church is not a science – no one knows how to do it in any reproducible fashion, but there are some resources that can help you understand what the state of your church is and how it got that way.

One book I found helpful was by Israel Galindo, entitled _The Hidden Lives of Congregations_.  It’s a good introduction to how congregational communities operate and some of the unwritten rules that govern them.  Dying churches are dying because of reasons, but generally the reasons are not well understood by the people in them because they are so used to their congregational context that they are unable to see what’s happening.  The smaller a church is, the more likely it is that it runs according to a list of unwritten rules and assumptions.  The church is like an aquarium, its members like fish.  The ethos and dynamics that run the congregation are like the water – the problem is if you’re a fish in the aquarium it’s really hard to put your finger on the nature of water.  You have to “go meta” and put yourself outside and observe like an outsider.  Books like Galindo’s will help.

Another great resource is from North Carolina Baptist leader George Bullard.  I’m a Presbyterian, not a Baptist, but Bullard and the community he’s part of was very helpful to me.  Please take some time to go through his Spiritual Strategic Journey tutorial located here:

http://www.ssjtutorial.org/

This will be helpful in diagnosing where your church is in its organizational lifecycle.

Another helpful resource is from James Furr, Mike Bonem and Jim Herrington, entitled _Leading Congregational Change_.  The entire first chapter is available as a PDF from the publisher here:

http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/52/07879476/0787947652.pdf

Let me implore, urge, and abjure you to please, please, please read this free PDF file.  You will find that you’re not alone.  Others have been where you are.

I will also note that most congregations, no matter how sincerely they may claim to want to move from maintenance to mission, simply don’t.  Most congregations would rather die than change.  That’s why 3,000 churches per year close their doors in America, when finally enough of the septuagenarians and octogenarians who remain in the congregation die and the church can’t meet its operating budget.

Having spent several years researching church turnarounds I know something about it, although I must also confess that I don’t have a track record of success.  Since I was only one elder in a dying church, I felt that I had no right to impose my views on the church, but did have a responsibility to make it known.  I presented a series of reports to the other elders, but ultimately the church leadership chose to do nothing by default.

Churches in this state may not just be dying – they may be zombies that have the appearance of a living church, but apart from divine intervention will never reach their communities or move from their current mode of maintenance.

If you will remember the death of pro golfer Payne Stewart back in the 80s, you will recall that the private jet he was on depressurized, killing all on board.  The plane continued to fly on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed, but everyone was already long dead and frozen before the plane ran out of fuel.  To all external appearances, it was still in controlled flight, but in reality the controls were locked and the crash was absolutely inevitable because there was no life in the plane, no hope of return to controlled flight.

Dying churches are like that – the controls are locked.  Unless the people inside wake up and seek God’s vision for This Church in This Community at This Time, and pray and seek His way to move at least part way across the gap between the current reality and the church’s kingdom potential, the church will die.

Observing one church in my city, I wrote this blog post a couple of years ago:

http://nakedchurch.wordpress.com/2007/08/08/embracing-congregational-death-to-birth-new-churches/

There’s more to be said, but I think that’s enough for this post.  But it’s a topic I’ve put a lot of thought into, and one which deserves more thought.

Old guys…

I’m fifty years old today.

Some of those who train church planters suggest that church planting is a young man’s game.  The statistic is borne out among church planters generally, most of whom are under 40.  But founding pastor of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church and the Acts 29 Church planting network Mark Driscoll said in one of Acts 29’s church planting boot camps (paraphrased) “When an old guy comes here and says he’s called to plant a church I tend to believe he really has a calling, and not just an agenda.”

Let me recount for you briefly the story of one old geezer who had a calling.  His name was William Tennent. Born in Scotland in 1673, Tennent emigrated to the American Colonies in 1718.  In 1726, at the age of 54, well past the expected lifespan of that severe period of history, Tennent founded a school to train pastors which he called the Log College.

Graduates of Tennents school included his son, Gilbert, who played a significant role in the Great Awakening in the 1730s.  Graduates of the Log College played significant roles in leading the church in the 1700s, and founded the college of New Jersey, which later became known by the name of the town where it resided, Princeton.

American evangelical Christianity was shaped in part by the calling and vision God gave to “an old guy.”  I take encouragement from William Tennent’s example.  There are probably some other old guys out there who may not fit in among the younger church planters.  We are probably less likely to wear tatoos and goatees than the younger guys, and those of us who are bald likely didn’t have to shave our heads to get this way, but came upon shiny heads naturally.  At this age we’ve figured out that “cool” is very subjective and ephemeral, and that the only way an old guy can be cool is to very consciously and intentionally eschew any attempt to appear to be so.

Jesus has called us as heralds the good news he brings, to a generation bored, hurt, jaded and hardened by the mistakes of the church.  We’ve been through disappointments and pain and found that through it we can still trust Jesus, not because of anything in us, but his grace manifested in and through us.  By this age many of us have buried parents, friends, and colleagues, and we begin to grasp the reality that this life truly is a vapor that lingers for a little while and then is gone.

In spite of that, though, God still calls old guys to serve him.  Why this is I can’t be sure – younger guys are surely healthier, stronger, and better-looking, and present a fresher face for the Gospel.  But God isn’t a marketing guru.  In his wisdom he often likes to use the weak, the old, the ugly, just to make sure that we understand that it’s not we who are behind the pageant of redemption.  It’s him, and all the glory is his.

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for fifty years.  Thank you for the mercy and forgiveness you showed to me in spite of my having squandered more of those years than I care to recount here.  And thank you that your word is still true, that old men still see your visions even as your young men dream dreams.