"Does the Church Have a Future?"

Acts 2:1-8 and I Corinthians 12:4-13

June 12, 2011

Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37404

On June 1^st, I celebrated the 47^th anniversary of my ordination to the Christian ministry. I entered seminary in the fall of 1960. In addition to my studies, I began to serve as an assistant minister in a United Methodist Church. Thus, I have spent more than 50 years in professional ministry. There is a striking difference to ministry today than in the 1960’s. In those days, the church was largely the same as it had been 50 or 100 years before. No one would say that today.

After our excellent program this past Tuesday, (Dr. David Orr speaking on “Do We Have a Religious, Moral, and Patriotic Duty to Protect the Environment”) I spoke with a clergy friend who retired from one of our largest United Methodist Churches in Chattanooga a few years ago. We both agreed that the church into which we were ordained in the 60’s scarcely exists anymore. What has changed? To misquote Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous line: “How has the Church changed? Let me count the ways!”

Let’s begin with changes in the seminaries that trained clergy for mainline churches. At my seminary, Colgate Rochester Divinity School, those studying for the professional ministry degree, the Bachelor of Divinity, were all men. With very limited exceptions, only men were eligible for ordination. The dozen or so women at my school were studying for the Master of Religious Education degree, hoping to serve as Directors of Christian Education in some large church. A somewhat unkind joke at the time said that these young women had come to seminary to get their Bachelor of Divinity (!) and many of them did. How times change. Today, more than half of all students in mainline seminaries are women, and the vast majority of them are preparing to be ordained and serve as church pastors.

Another striking difference: in my day nearly all seminary students came fresh from college graduation. Today, at least half of seminarians are “second career” students in their 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. The curriculum of seminaries then was also different. There was a heavy emphasis on studying classical subjects: the Bible, theology, church history, Greek and Hebrew, and Christian social ethics. We were required to take one introductory class in Christian education, one in preaching, and one in ecumenism (the relationship of Protestant Christianity to other world faiths). The year before I came to Colgate Rochester the first class in pastoral counseling was offered but it was not required for graduation. There were no classes offered in the preparation and leadership of worship, prayer and spiritual life, church administration, the conduct of baptisms, weddings and funerals. In short, seminary education was theoretical, not practical. Very little of it would help to prepare someone for actual ministry in a local church. We were expected to learn that under the tutelage of an experienced pastor.

In my case that meant serving as an assistant minister in a large urban United Methodist Church. As I recall, that church had about one thousand five hundred members with a weekly attendance of around nine hundred. (Old-timers sometimes complained that attendance had been so much better twenty years before!) There were four different adult classes with a combined membership of more than five hundred. I was responsible for guiding the Sunday School for children and youth. Usually at least six hundred were present each Sunday. On Sunday evenings there were junior and senior high youth fellowships, each boasting a membership of thirty or forty kids. As I recall, there were thirty or more singers in the Senior Choir. There was also a Junior Choir and Bell Choir. For those of you interested in such things, the church had no financial problems that I ever heard of. Out of a budget of around $150,000 they prided themselves on giving some $50,000 a year to mission work. By the way, other than the monthly church board meeting, an occasional women’s meeting, a potluck dinner, the church was pretty much empty from Sunday to Sunday. It was a great place for quiet study!

Some of you this morning may remember those long-ago days. For the rest of you, the church of the 60’s must seem like ancient history. Though only a few prophetic people appreciated it at the time, the great wave of mainline church growth that had begun after the Second World War was breaking on the shore. Never again would Congregational, United Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, moderate Lutheran and Baptist churches be as large again. All these “mainline” denominations have consistently lost membership over the past fifty years. Although evangelical, fundamentalist, and pentecostal churches have rushed in to fill the gap with praise music, possibility thinking, and prosperity preaching, they, too, are now on the decline. Every denomination and local church today – with rare exceptions – is struggling with membership and financial losses.

There are some who believe, like the global warming deniers, that nothing has fundamentally changed in church life. If only we try a little harder to increase our membership rolls and financial support, all will be well again. The truth is that we are living in a period of profound change in the Christian Church. The “good old days” are gone and they will not be coming back.

But don’t take my word for that. A powerful recent book, “The Great Emergence,” by church historian Phyllis Tickle, makes clear that every five hundred years or so, Christianity goes through a massive transformation. The last time that happened was in the 1500’s, the era of the Protestant Reformation. The one universal Catholic Church broke into fragments and Christianity has never been the same since. Now we are in the midst of another period of enormous change. Because we are living in it we cannot fully see it or appreciate what is happening.

The bad news is that all churches, including this church, will never be what we were again. Old forms of church life are clearly dying. The more effort we put into keeping those old forms alive, the more frustrated we will be. Every reliable poll tells us that skepticism and secularism are growing. More and more people, particularly young people, have little or no interest in belonging to the institutional church of the past. Many of these people are deeply spiritual. They are seeking for truth to guide their lives and the lives of their children, but they don’t find much help from institutional religion. I almost said “organized religion” but few churches are very well organized anymore. People simply have far too many other claims on their time and attention for the involvement it takes to keep traditional churches going.

That’s the bad news. Unless we hear it and believe it we will never hear the good news. Believe me, there is good news. Though the institutional church as we and earlier generations of Protestants have known it is dying, Christianity is still alive and well. Why? Because Christianity does not depend upon any one form of institution, no matter how cherished, to survive. Christianity is not an organization; it’s a movement like that which happened on the first Pentecost. Christianity is a contagion. We “catch” Christianity like a communicable disease. Real Christianity is not passive, but active. It is an enthusiasm. We get caught up in it. To be part of Christianity doesn’t mean joining a membership but being part of a movement, a body, the body of Christ at work in human life. In that vibrant body every person has a vital role to play if the body is to be whole and healthy. We – we – are called to be the Body of Christ and individually members of it.

What form will this new, vital and ever-changing Body of Christ, the Church, take in the years to come? I have no more idea of that than did Luther and Calvin. I have no better image than Paul when he spoke of the Church not as an organization but an organism, a living, changing, developing human body.

All I am sure of is this: together we must be open to finding new ways to be Church in our time, in the days and months and years to come. Will some of that church of the future look like the church of today? Of course, it will. But much will be different. Will we still have church buildings and budgets? For the time being, yes. Will we still have professional clergy like myself? Maybe. Will we still have worship, education, fellowship, mission? Of course, but I am sure they will morph into new forms to meet the needs of new generations.

The best news is that you and I can be part of that living Christianity and the ever – changing Church. We can be touched by the sacred power of divine imagination and be set on fire by the eternal spirit of God.

Two years ago in January, a man entered a metro station in Washington D.C. and began to play the violin. It was a cold January morning. He played six of the unaccompanied partitas for violin by Bach for about 45 minutes. During that time about a thousand people hurried through the station on their way to work. Few people paid any attention. After a while one woman threw a dollar into his case and walked away. The person who paid the most attention was a three-year old boy. He stopped to listen. His mother pulled. He dragged his feet. He was determined to listen. Finally, his mother was able to drag him away. During the 45 minutes the musician played, only six people paused to listen. When he finished, no one noticed. No one applauded. No one seemed to realize that the man who had played some of the most difficult pieces for violin ever written was Joshua Bell, one of the world’s greatest violinists. It was an experiment conducted by “The Washington Post” to see if we have lost our ability to appreciate the beauty all around us.

I wonder: could God’s spirit be trying to reach us today? To be part of the renewal of the church in our time, perhaps, God isn’t asking us to do anything at all. Just stop. Look and listen to the spirit moving among us. Can you see it? Can you hear it? Can you feel it? If you do, then you know the church has a future.