At The Table of Thanks

Bonhoeffer's After Ten Years for our time

This post was originally published November 24, 2007 at my former blog, The Presbyterian Polis. I post it now as I believe it provides us perspective for the times we are in.

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For past couple of months, I've been drawn to the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  His short book Life Together has been a helpful perspective in a church world torn between artificial triumphalism and institutional cynicism.   It's about how real people engage one another through their faith in Christ and in their relationships with one another.

Lately, I have been reading portions from The Cost of Discipleship and Ethics trying to grasp who this man was. I find his perspective on the Christian faith and the church totally different from most of the people I know and read today.

A couple days ago, I ran into United Methodist pastor colleague Tony Sayer at the bookstore. After a wide ranging discussion that lasted over an hour, I told him I was reading Bonhoeffer. His eyes lit up. He's a Bonhoeffer devotee and after some discussion, suggested I read a piece Bonhoeffer wrote in 1942, not many months before he was arrested by the German Gestapo. So, I went home, dug through a box of books and found my 40 year old copy of Letters and Papers from Prison. The copy I have is not the expanded edition that is now available.  I've ordered it and its on the way here.

The essay that Tony suggested is After Ten Years.  It is his reflections on his work and life in the context of the rise of National Socialism under the Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler.  His thoughts are not historical, but more personal and spiritual.  I find them quite relevant to our time.

Bonhoeffer speaks of the radical evilness of evil of the Third Reich and the multitude of failed attempts to confront it.

The failure of rationalism is evident.  With best of intentions, but with a naive lack of realism, the rationalist imagines that a small dose of reason will be enough to put the world right.  In his short-sightedness he wants to do justice to all sides, but in the melee of conflicting forces he gets trampled upon without having achieved the slightest effect. Disappointed by the irrationality of the world, he realises at last his futility, retires from the fray, and weakly surrenders to the winning side.

Worse still is the total collapse of moral fanaticism. The fanatic imagines his moral purity will prove a match for the power of evil, but like a bull he goes for the red rag instead of the man who carries it, grows weary and succumbs.  He becomes entangled with non-essentials and falls into the trap set by the superior ingenuity of his adversary.

Then there is the man with a conscience.  He fights single-handed against overwhelming odds in situations which demand a decision.  But are so many conflicts going on, all of which demand some vital choice - with no advice or support save that of his own conscience - that he is torn to pieces.  Evil approaches him in so many specious and deceptive guises that his conscience becomes nervous and vacillating.  In the end he contents himself with a salved instead of a clear conscience, and starts lying to his conscience as a means of avoiding despair. If a man relies exclusively on his conscience he fails to see how a bad conscience is sometimes more wholesome and strong than a deluded one.

When men are confronted by a bewildering variety of alternatives, the path of duty seems to offer a sure way out. They grasp at the imperative as the one certainty.  The responsibility for the imperative rests upon its author, not upon its executor. But when men are confined to the limits of duty, they never risk a daring deed on their own responsibility, which is the only way to score a bull's eye against evil and defeat it. Then man of duty will in the end be forced to give the devil his due.

What then of the man of freedom?   He is the man who aspires to stand his ground in the world, who values the necessary deed more highly than a clear conscience or the duties of his calling, who is ready to sacrifice a barren principle for a fruitful compromise or a barren mediocrity for a fruitful radicalism.  What then of him?  He must beware lest his freedom should become his own undoing.  For in choosing the lesser of two evils he may fail to see the greater evil he seeks to avoid may prove the lesser. Here we have the raw material of tragedy.

Some seek refuge from the rough-and-tumble of public life in the sanctuary of their own private virtue.  Such men however are compelled to seal their lips and shut their eyes to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep themselves pure from the defilements incurred by responsible action.  For all that they achieve, that which they leave undone will still torment their peace of mind. They will either go to pieces in face of this disquiet, or develop into the most hypocritical of all Pharisees.

Who stands his ground? Only the man whose ultimate criterion is not in his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all these things when he is called to obedience and responsible action in faith and exclusive allegiance to God. The responsible man seeks to make his whole life a response to the question and call of God.

I find this a relevant discussion concerning the future of the church. There are so many attempts to address the central crisis of our age - the purpose and function of the church in the 21st century. Much of this crisis is institutional, justifiably so. Yet, that is not really where the problem begins.

Instead, the problem begins with what does it mean to live as a Christian. This question is what I find in Bonhoeffer that challenges my whole perception of what it means to be a Christian. It shows itself in how dependent I am on structure and tradition.  What comes to mind as I read Bonhoeffer is not the crisis of the church against the culture of an evil regime like the Nazis, but the church in conflict with Christ at its very core.

The various approaches to address the National Socialist threat that Bonhoeffer describes above reminds me of the various approaches that we are trying to use to fix the structure and function of the church. Bonhoeffer speaks of the lack of civil courage in Germany during these ten years, though not the lack of bravery and self-sacrifice.

In the course of a long history we Germans have had to learn the necessity and the power of obedience. The subordination of all individual desires and opinions to the call of duty has given meaning and nobility to life.  We have looked upwards, not in servile fear, but in free trust, seeing our duty as a call, and the call as a vocation.  This readiness to follow a command from above rather than our own private opinion of what was best was a sign of a legitimate self-distrust.  Who can deny that in obedience, duty and calling we Germans have again and again excelled in bravery and self-sacrifice? ... The trouble was we did not understand his world.  He forgot that submissiveness and self-sacrifice could be exploited for evil ends.

He then discusses the ethics of success as no better for understanding where one fits in history.

All the time goodness is successful we can afford the luxury of regarding success as having no ethical significance. But the problem arises when success is achieved by evil means. It is no good then behaving as an arm-chair critic and disputing the issue, for that is to refuse to face the facts.  Nor is opportunism any help, for that is to capitulate before success.  We must be determined not to be outraged critics or mere opportunists.  We must take our full share of responsibility for the moulding of history, whether it be as victors or vanquished.

Bonhoeffer points to a responsibility that is ours given to us by God. The question that I have is what does it mean to be responsible in our time. What does it mean for the church to bear the responsibility for history as he describes it?

To read Bonhoeffer is to be struck hard with the reality that this is a man whose engagement with the world was so complete that his relationship with Christ had come to replace his relationship to the church. For most of us, the church serves as the place where we find God. Without the church there is no faith that is secure and real. This is why, I suspect, that the early Calvinists were so adamant about the place of visual and sensual representations of Christ. That these worldly objects could easily come to replace the living God in Jesus Christ as a result. Is this what has happened in churches? This is what I believe lies behind Bonhoeffer's discussion of folly.

Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than malice.  You can protest against malice, you can unmask it or prevent it by force. ... There is no defence against folly. Neither protests nor force are of any avail against it, and it is never amenable to reason. If facts contradict personal prejudices, there is no need to believe them, and if they are undeniable, they can simply be pushed aside as exceptions.  Thus the fool, as compared with the scoundrel, is invariably self-complacent.

Folly, Bonhoeffer writes, is a moral rather than an intellectual defect.

The fool can often be stubborn, but this must not mislead us into thinking he is independent. One feels somehow, especially in conversation with him, that it is impossible to talk to the man himself, to talk to him personally.  Instead, one is confronted with a series of slogans, watchwords, and the like, which have acquired power over him.  He is under a spell, he is blinded, his very humanity is being prostituted and exploited.  Once he has surrendered his will and become a mere tool, there are no lengths of evil to which the fool will not go, yet all the time he is unable to see that it is evil.  Here lies the danger of a diabolical exploitation of humanity, which can do irreparable damage to the human character.

But it is just at this point that we realise that the fool cannot be saved by education.  What he needs is redemption. ... the only cure for folly is spiritual redemption, for that alone can enable a man to live as a responsible person in the sight of God.

This redemption is not simply joining a church, becoming a member and joining a program. Rather this is the transformation of the whole person to be one who is totally available to God.  This is what it means to be responsible and free. It also means that many of the "things" of this world become constraints or entanglements that rob us of our freedom. The problem with many prophets and ministries that call for absolute discipleship accompanying vows of poverty is that they are like the rationalist, the fanatic, or the moralist who intellectually or emotionally tries to change the world by sheer will.  It rises from that sense of duty that gets confused and clouded in the multitude of motivations that rob us of our freedom.

What my reading of Bonhoeffer leads me to see is that this responsible, spiritually mature person is simply a whole human being.  We aren't to be some super-heroic super-spiritual being whose accomplishments and failures are on some grand scale. Rather, we are to live our human lives as the beings God created us to be. All the things I've quoted from Bonhoeffer above have pointed to how our human lives become diminished in so many ways. The problem with these various paths to perfection is that they result in de-humanizing us and therefore affecting our attitude toward others.  Here is what Bonhoeffer says about those who hold such a contempt for humanity.

There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity.  We know full well that it would be very wrong, and that it would lead to the most sterile relation with our fellow men.  ... The man who despises others can never hope to do anything with them.  The faults we despise in others are always, to some extent at least, our own too.  How often have we expected from others more  than we are prepared to do ourselves!  Why have we until now held such lofty views about human nature? Why have we not recognised its frailty and liability to temptation?   We must form our estimate of men less from their achievements and failures, and more from their sufferings.  The only profitable relationship to others - and especially to our weaker brethren - is one of love, that is the will to hold fellowship with them. Even God did not despise humanity, but became Man for man's sake.

For Bonhoeffer, as we well as it should be for each of us, how we relate to the other individual is where the practicality of our faith is formed. From this simple, basic approach to our relationships with people can grow the ability to demonstrate the kind of civic courage that he practiced in his own ministry.  It simply becomes how we act in love towards others, regardless of who they are.

Within a matter of a few months of Dietrich Bonhoeffer writing this letter to friends in 1942, the Gestapo came and arrested Bonhoeffer, and within two years he was hanged for his leadership of the church in Germany.  Eberhard Bethge, friend and biographer of Bonhoeffer, in the introduction to Letters and Papers from Prison,  tells the story of what the man was like during his emprisonment.

Bonhoeffer's last weeks were spent with prisoners drawn from all over Europe. Among them was Payne Best, an English officer. ... Best writes: "Bonhoeffer ... was all humility and sweetness, of joy in every smallest event in life, and of deep gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive. ... He was one of the very few men that I have ever met to whom his God was real and close to him."  And again, "The following day, Sunday, April 8th, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer held a little service and spoke to us in a manner which reached the hearts of all, finding just the right worlds to express the spirit of our imprisonment and the thoughts and resolutions which it had brought.  He had hardly finished his last prayer when the door opened and two evil-looking men in civilian clothes came in and said: ' Prisoner Bonhoeffer, get ready to come with us.'  Those words 'come with us' - for all prisoners that had come to mean one thing only - the scaffold.

"We bade him good-bye - he drew me aside - ' This is the end,' he said. 'For me the beginning of life,' ... Next day, at Flossenburg, he was hanged."

We live in a time of great change and ferment in the church. We have church schisms in our own denomination. We have Megachurches that are questioning methods and whose leaders are examples of moral failure in tragic ways. We have churches emerging as communities and communities that are emerging as places of hope and love in cities. All the foundations of the church are being shaken to see what will remain.

What I am finding as I travel this journey of spiritual and ecclesiastical change is that the Christ that gave Bonhoeffer joy and peace at the time of his execution is real. The church is not the whole faith, but one place where we meet God, find nurture and nourishment, focus and replenishment for the lives we are to live outside.  While I am a realist, it is my faith and the experience of it that teaches me to be an optimist. Thank God for the life and legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

The Real End of the 20th Century

 

Historical Context

Forty six years ago, this picture appeared in a publication of Asheville Presbytery of the old Presbyterian Church US. Years later, a friend of my grandparents gave me it knowing that I'd want it because my grandfather stands in the center-left of the picture behind the man sitting second from the left. 

When this picture was taken, Europe was engaged in what was called The Great War, and my grandfather was a year away from leaving his law practice in Asheville to enlist in the U.S. Army to serve in an artillary battery in France.

I find this point in time significant for understanding our point in time today. Here is Canadian historian, Modris Eksteins in his cultural history of the war, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (1989), describing its context.

Like all wars, the 1914 war, when it broke out, was seen as an opportunity for both change and confirmation. Germany, which been united as recently as 1871 and within one generation had become an awesome industrial and military power, was, on the eve of war, the foremost representative of innovation and renewal. She was, among nations, the very embodiment of vitalism and technical brilliance. The war for her was to be a war of liberation, a Befreiungskrieg, from the hypocrisy of bourgeois form and convenience, and Britain was to her the principal representative of the order against which she was rebelling. Britain was in fact the major conservative power of the fin-de-siecle world. First industrial nation, agent of the Pax Britannica, symbol of an ethic of enterprise and progress based on parliament and law, Britain felt not only her pre-eminence in the world but her entire way of life threatened by the thrusting energy and instability Germany was seen to typify. British involvement in the 1914 war was to turn it from a continental power struggle into a veritable war of cultures.

At the same time the tensions were developing between states in this turn-of-the-century world, fundamental conflicts were surfacing in virtually all areas of human endeavor and behavior: in the arts, in fashion, in sexual mores, between generations, in politics. The whole motif of liberation, which has become so central to our century - be it the emancipation of women, homosexuals, proletariat, youth, appetites, peoples - comes into view at the turn of the century. The term avant-garde has usually been applied to artists and writers who promoted experimental techniques in their work and urged rebellion against established academies. The notion of modernism has been used to subsume both this avant-garde and the intellectual impulse behind the quest for liberation and the act of rebellion. Very few critics have ventured to extend these notions of the avant-garde and modernism to the social and political as well as artistic agents of revolt, and to the act of rebellion in general, in order to identify a broad wave of sentiment and endeavor.

Here, too, this same conflict between progressivism and conservatism has been waged within the Presbyterian community for a century. For many believers, it has meant a loss of belief in the church as the spiritual institution of Christ's kingdom on earth. As a result, a cynical and ironic perspective developed that viewed institutional religion as a false spirituality and the source of many of the world's problems. 

This loss of faith goes beyond the boundaries of religion to the socio-political ideologies of the 19th. century.  Paul Fussell in his insightful book The Great War and Modern Memory, writes,

Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because it means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends. In the Great War, eight million people were destroyed because two persons, Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his Consort, had been shot. The Second World War offers even more preposterous ironies. Ostensibly begun to guarantee the sovereignty of Poland, that war managed to bring about Poland's bondage and humiliation. Air bombardment, which was supposed to shorten the war, prolonged it by inviting those who were targets to cast themselves in the role of victim-heroes and thus stiffen their resolve.

But the Great War was more ironic than any before or since. It was a hideous embarrassment to the prevailing Meliorist myth which had dominated the public consciousness for a century. It reversed the Idea of Progress. ...

Irony is the attendant of hope and the fuel of hope is innocence. One reason the Great War was more ironic than any other is that its beginning was more innocent. ... The certainties were intact. Britain had not known a major war for a century, and on the Continent, as A.J.P. Taylor points out, "there had been no war between the Great Powers since 1871. No man in the prime of life knew what war was like.  All imagined that it would be an affair of great marches and great battles, quickly decided."

Furthermore, the Great War was perhaps the last to be conceived as taking place within a seamless, purposeful "history" involving a coherent stream of time running from past through present to future. The shrewd recruiting power depicting a worried father of the future being asked by his children, "Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?" assumes a future whose moral and social pressures are identical with those of the past. Today, when each day's experience seems notably ad hoc, no such appeal would shame the most stupid at the recruiting office. But the Great War took place in what was, compared with ours, a static world, where the values appeared stable and where the meanings of abstractions seemed permanent and reliable.  Everyone knew what Glory was, and what Honor meant. It was not until eleven years after the war that Hemingway could declare in A Farewell to Arms that "abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates." In the summer 1914 no one would have understood what on earth he was talking about.

The church has not been immuned from these changes in society during the 20th century. A similar loss of innocence raises the question about how God acts within history as wars, genocide, and political and economic tyranny happen.  

The Place of Institutions

It is not unusual to hear persons of my age lamenting the decline of the church, of civility, of government, of business, or of sportmanship, ethics, politics, culture and community in general. Their reaction is similar to that of people one hundred years ago, who felt the same way, as the Great War turned from a short idealistic defense of a nation's values into a violent and costly war of attrition.  At the heart of this change of mind is the decline of the value of the institutions of society.

Hugh Heclo in his book, On Thinking Institutionally, addresses the growing distrust that people have of institutions.

We are disposed to distrust institutions. That is the basic fact of life we share as modern people. And it is the point of departure from which this account must begin. As good pluralists, tolerant multiculturalists, secular or religious moralists (choose your term), we can be divided on almost any other imaginable subject. But a fundamental distrust of institutions is the one mark we have in common as inhabitants of these times. ... With few exceptions, growing distrust in the modern mind is directed toward the entire institutional apparatus of modern society. If you imagine that apparatus as a sort of bank, the overall picture is one of many withdrawals, few deposits, and a continuous depletion of trust reserves.

The correlation here between the distrust of institutions and the decline of institutions is not one-to-one. Distrust is just one facet of the decline. The decline is also a function of the diminishment of values as a core function of organizations and communities. What has replaced values are processes, bureaucratic functions, and political positions that are more or less intended to preserve power and the access to wealth by those with a controlling interest in the institution. 

In the church, the diminishment of denominations is part the product of institutional decline, and partly a product of the growth of the individualization of consumer culture. Churches that have thrived in this environment are more congregational than connectional, and more focused on personal religion than on socio-cultural role of the church as a transformational agent in society. 

The question that confronts us as the church today is whether these trends from the 20th. century will continue through the 21st?

For some time I've been witnessing a shift in churches.  They are not the product deliberations and decisions of the General Assembly, or of  a Presbytery or the Session of a church. Instead, these shifts rise out of the social interaction that people are having with one another in their churches. Most of what I see is describe in the guide, 21st Century Congregation Distinctives.

These shifts mark the transition from the 20th century church that functions as an institutional pillar of society to one that is a community of shared mission. These shifts lay the ground for a revived institutionalization of the church that is better suited to the 21st. century.  To better understand this, let me return to Hugh Heclo for a moment, and let him describe what an institution is.

... let me simply observe that institutions represent inheritances of valued purpose with attendant rules and moral obligations. They constitute socially ordered grounding for human life. This grounding in a normative field implicates the lives of individuals and collectivies in a lived-out social reality. To live in a culture that turns its back on institutions is equivalent to trying to live in a physical body without its skeleton or hoping to use a language but not is grammar. A culture wholly committed to distrusting its institutions is a self-contradiction.

Heclo's description adequately identifies the church at all levels.  His insight reveals partly why as a denomination that we have declined over the past two generations. Increasingly, our common membership as Presbyterians has been based on the governance structure of the national church. We are Presbyterians, less because of our theology, our values and, even our worship, than we are by the relationship that we share through the Book of Order. For this reason, I welcome the new Form of Government because it forces us to reevaluate who we are and what our purpose as a church is.  These shifts are preparing us for the next era of the Presbyterian church.

21st. Century Congregational Missional Shifts

We are transitioning as a church from an institutional form to one centered in mission. The former is internally focused. The latter externally. You look down the list of the churches in any presbytery and see that the externally focused congregations are growing, and the internal focused ones are committed to preserving a conception of the church that worked for them in the last century. I have often spoken of these churches as "museums of memories" with the pastor as their curator.

Here are two areas of the church where I see these shifts taking place, and what they look like.

LEADERSHIP

Shift from leadership as Control to one of Equipping the membership for ministry.

Shift from leadership as an Organizational Role with defined Administrative Responsibilities to Relationships of Shared Responsibility.

Shift from Leadership by a Select Few to a Community of Shared Leadership.

Shift from a Passive Acceptance of Other People's Leadership to Personal Initiative to Make a Difference that Matters.

MEMBERSHIP

From being a Member on the roll of the church to a Personal Call to participate and contribute to Christ's mission through the church.

From the church as an Institution to a Community in Jesus Christ.

From being spectators and recipients of THE professional pastor's ministry to Participants with him or her.

From Consumers of religious services to Contributors to mission of the church.

This is a marked departure from the mindset of the past century which was cynical, ironic and anti-institutional. This shift marks a growing embrace of purpose, values and a belief in the possibility of making a difference in the world that truly matters. This is not just an idea taking place in a few churches, but a trend beginning to gain momentum on a global scale. When people take responsibility, act collectively based upon shared values, then the basis for creating new institutions for society grows.

This is what I see taking place in the church.

The question that now faces us

With the decline of institutions being one of the products of the 20th. century, as Presbyterians, we are faced with the need to reenvision what it means to be a connectional body. For I see the course of the past century as one of de-connection toward disconnection and dismemberment. The growing congregational culture of our denomination is a product of our time. But that time is passing, and the call to community by society is growing. I believe it is time to rethink what we mean by our connectionalism.

First, it must be relational, or social, or communal. It cannot first be an administrative structure. Instead it must rise from a clarification of our mission as the church in relationship with one another.

Secondly, it means that presbyteries are needed to provide a relational structure to support our shared mission. Presbyteries must be rethought of as something other than an administrative governance body. Instead, as some presbyteries have already begun, they become missional bodies for the coordination of the collective mission of churches.

Thirdly, it means that we need to rethink precisely what is the church at the congregational level. Our structure was right for a homogeneous culture. Now, as I'm beginning to see, we need a broader perspective of what is a worshipping community. We need to provide space for innovation and experimentation so that new communities of Jesus Christ can emerge from relationships of shared responsibility and leadership.

The Real End of the 20th. Century

The loss of innocence that came as the result of the Great War, and the conflicts that followed, is now being replaced by the recovery of purpose and mission. The Presbyterian church that is needed for the 21st. century can be created through the openness of our nFog structure to create a structure that builds relationships between churches, mission endeavors, and other avenues for the Gospel to be expressed in society. I welcome the rebirth of our connectionalism as we discover a new how the Spirit of Christ leads us forth in mission.

Worshiping Communities - the essential question

One of my New Testament professors in seminary would regularly caution us about the hardening of the categories in our interpreting the Scriptures. As the new Form of Government is implemented through the presbyteries, and as the Fellowship of Presbyterians promotes their vision of a New Reformed Body, I feel that we still must guard against the hardening of the categories as we look to what the PCUSA will be for the 21st century.

My question isn't primarily theological or biblical, but rather social. It is a question of how the church as an organization in society adapts to changes that are influencing us.

So, let's play a little thought game to get at the heart of this issue.

*One million Lebanese gather in Beirut, March 14, 2005, to protest Syrian occupation and the assasination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

The Post-Pentecost Structure

Let's say that right now at the end of the year 2011, Pentecost is happening, not two thousand years ago.  Right now. It may look like the picture above of a crowd of a million people in central Beirut, Lebanon in the spring of 2005.

You and I are present as the Spirit descends upon this random multi-cultural crowd of people gathered in a city square or park in places like Los Angeles, Hanoi or Beirut. On this day, we are present at the spiritual birth of the church.  Not the creation of a new denomination, but the church of Jesus Christ.

How would the media cover the event? What would the Twitter feed of the event be recording? How soon would there be a Facebook page up asking people to like the new social network of Pentecost? How would the dominant religious institutions of our time react? What would be the mainstream religious traditions, if there had been no Christian body for the past two thousand years, until this afternoon?

What do you think the people caught up in the Spirit's appearance would do next?  What do you think would happen tomorrow or the next week? After a year, what do you think would have happened to this group of people? Would they still be together?

More importantly, what organizational form would the people caught up in the Spirit's movement adopt? If the church were born today, what would it look like?  Would it look like a mass uprising or a few people sitting around a table in a coffee shop chatting? Would it look like a downtown, tall steeple church, a mega-church or a house church meeting in a suburban living room?

We have the Acts record to know what happened two thousands years ago. But what about now. The new Form of Government or NRB or any other traditional formalized structure of a denominational church are patterns of church organization that are also logical adaptations to current forms of secular organizations.  As a result, all church structures are products of their historical context. To understand this insight is to recognize that change is not necessarily destructive, but rather how the church adapts to the culture around it.

A Discussion of Structure

One day this past week, I celebrated the 30th anniversary of my ordination as a minister of the word and sacrament / teaching elder. I spent the day with a group of leaders from a presbytery discussing their presbytery's organizational model, and why it wasn't working. Like many presbyteries, they are divided up into regional clusters. The intent was to help this large diverse, geographically scattered presbytery create the conditions for community and shared mission. It hasn't happened like it was designed.

The essential problem, in my opinion, is a widely shared perspective about organizations that has found its way into the church. This adaptation to contemporary organizational norms sees the church as an administrative / programmatic entity created for order, efficiency and top-down accountability. This is the secular corporate model that has been the standard approach to organizations since the end of the Second World War. The PCUSA institutionalized this approach in the reunion of 1983. 

This approach elevates administrative process over human interaction. The result is the creation of an organizational environment of divisive special interests, each seeking to claim preeminence as the core mission of the church.

I am saying that the divisions in the church over the past hundred years are products of organizational design, not simply differences in theology and social / political ideology. The product is disunity in the Body of Christ.

The Structural Shift

Over at my Leading Questions blog, I've been writing for a long time about how change is affecting organizations and leaders. The key posts over the past 18 months are gathered in the compilation, Leadership for the 21st Century, that explores the social and organizational changes that are influencing what we understand the nature of leadership and organizational structure are becoming in the 21st century. Working both sides of the line that separates the church from for-profit businesses, non-profit community organizations, local governments, regulated utilities, healthcare organizations and institutions of higher education, I have come to see that there is an epic shift taking place in society from organizational structures of hierarchy to ones based upon a network of relationships. What I see is are Parallel Structures of Networks of Relationships.

Here's the juxtaposition that I see constituting a shift that is historic and transforming society as a whole on a global scale.

Organizations since the rise of the global empires of three millennia ago have functioned through a structure of hierarchy. As this image describes, hierarchical organizations are built around a leadership structure of institutional authority of delegated responsibility whose purpose is institutional integrity. This is the corporate model that we see designed into virtually every business and government institution in our society.

Functioning in parallel are relationship networks. These networks form around a shared mission or interest. I'm distinguishing these relationship networks from the more common social networks that one can find on Facebook, Google + and the myriad other online gathering points. These relationship networks are missional in nature, and are governed by the values that inform that mission. Participation in these networks is based on personal initiative to contribute. As a result, these networks are based upon a leadership structure of shared mission, shared responsibility, personal integrity and initiative to make a difference that matters.

These parallel structures of networks of relationships have always been present in the church.  They are what I see in this guide to 21st Century Congregational Distinctives and the shifts that I see taking place in congregations.

Understanding Parallel Structures

The key to understanding our future as a church and a denomination is understanding how these parallel structures function as worshipping communities.

A parallel structure is not a replacement structure, at least not by intention.

We can see parallel structures throughout the church. The Fellowship of Presbyterians is a parallel structure. The overseas mission work of a presbytery is a parallel structure. The ministry to the homeless in the congregation where my family worships is a parallel structure. The choir in almost every church is a parallel structure.

These structures provide a way for people to gather around a common interest of shared mission. It is how our diversity as a church functions. These are relationship networks that provide what I observe people saying about what they want from their life.

People want their lives to be Personally Meaningful, Socially Fulfilling and Make a Difference that Matters.

People want their values to matter and a purpose to their lives. They want their relationships to be healthy, respectful and caring. And they want to make a difference that matters.

I'm convinced that we need to structure our congregations, as well as our businesses, schools, community organizations and government organization to help people achieve these goals for themselves.

The idea of the PCUSA creating 1001 worshiping communities during the decade is an attractive one to me. It is because I see in this simple goal a way to elevate parallel structures of networks of relationships as places of worship, mission and community that create opportunities for people to find the church a place of Personal Meaning, Social Fulfillment and where their contributions make a difference that matters in the context of shared mission in Jesus Christ.

However, if this vision that I have is to be achieved, it means that we have to change some of our understandings of what church structure means.

A Reforming Structure

The organizational world outside of the church is changing. It is adopting a network perspective where relationships of shared mission and responsibility are their core organizing principle. The old corporate model is failing. The emerging paradigm is the network of relationships. This model puts a premium on personal initiative, creativity and commitment to contributing. The old hierarchical system discouraged initiative in favor of compliance. 

Networks of relationships provide a way for people to become engaged in the full mission activity of the organization. The stronger the relational interaction, the stronger the organization, and greater the opportunities for impact.  This is true in the church as it is in the business world.

For example, in my presbytery, two of our mission endeavors are partnerships with a Guatemalan presbytery and with a hospital in Malawi.The significance of these partnerships is that the Guatemalan churches are financially supporting the mission in Malawi. Shared mission, shared responsibility and the result shared impact as the church.

People involved in these mission partnerships find their faith strengthened, their skills of ministry expanded, and their perception of God's work in the world broadened through their involvement. As a network of relationships, they are functioning as a worshiping community.

The same can be said for the campus ministries that I serve with through the North Carolina Presbyterian Higher Education Ministries.  They are very much are like mini-congregations with programs of worship, fellowship, faith development and mission outreach.

Each of these mission endeavors are parallel structures aligned with a board, a church and in many cases through a presbytery. Each one has aspects of faith development, worship and service as a part of their program. Each is a network of relationships functioning as a worshiping community.

The Structure of Future

Here are my convictions about the future structure of the church. These are not predictions. Rather what I see is how we can adapt to a 21st century social context that is unlike the last century.

1. Relationships precede structure.

2. Connectionalism first must be relational if a connection system of governance is to work.

3. Presbyteries are the key to strengthening the connectional relationship between people and churches.

4. Worshipping communities are networks of relationships of people who are personally engaged in faith development, take personal initiative to contribute, and build relationships of shared mission and responsibility to live out the Great Ends of the Church.

5. As a denomination, we'll be smaller with greater impact, as we become more missional as a church.

The essential question of what will the structure of the PCUSA look like in the future I believe is answered in the development of parallel structures of networks of relationship of shared mission and responsibility as worshipping communities in Jesus Christ.

If Pentecost was to take place today, I believe this is what we would see. Networks of Relationships as Worshipping Communities of Shared Mission.

This is our future.

 *http://www.calpeacepower.org/0201/images/Lebanon_overview_bg.jpg

Why I have hope

Optimism for me is not a luxury I can afford. I'm a realist.

I also feel that cynicism is also a luxury I can't afford. Both optimism and cynicism lead toward a detatchment from reality. If ever in the history of the church, we need to be realists, now is the time.

I preface this post with those words because I want you to know why I have hope in the future of the Presbyterian Church USA. My hopefulness is not an optimistic hope against hope. And it is also not a form of self-deception. Rather my hope is based on what I see taking place in the church. Here are three examples. 

1. Church for a New Generation  - Presbyterians Today, December 2011 cover story,  "Spirit-filled Worship," "Authentic Community," and, "Meaningful Service.

This isn't just some fringe movement. This is the future that is happening right now.

As I read this, it reminded me of what I've been observing in organizations, including churches, for about a decade. People, regardless of their spiritual orientation, have been telling me in widely diverse ways that they want three things for their life. They want it to be Personally Meaningful, Socially Fulfilling and To Make a Difference That Matters.

In practice, this means that people want a purpose, to have a mission and let a set of values define what is meaningful in their lives. The difference between this in the past is that these ideas are not just symbolic totems for appearances sake. Instead, these are the guiding principles for how their lives are to be lived.  These ideas help to create social environments where healthy relationships can result. And with these people who share a common mission and values that can do things that create an impact that fulfills their calling.

This perspective gives me hope because each of these goals create positive, constructive change wherever they are practiced. This is what I see in this article from Presbyterians Today.

2. 1001 Worshipping Communities in Ten Years.

This initiative is a grand vision for the future. Here's a pamphlet that describes ten of these churches.

What gives me hope is the boundaryless nature of speaking of faith communities. A community is a network of people in relationship to one another. Where I live near Asheville, their are prominent mainstream churches downtown. And more hidden because of their lack of church facilities are new worship communities of various traditions. One meets in a converted retail space. Another in the theater in the basement of an office building, another at the YMCA, having moved from a local music hall.

The moment I heard about this initiative, it gave me hope for the church. To create this number of worshipping communities requires us to recognize that many of them will be parallel structures that will not be like congregations that have been the dominant form of church over the past several hundred years. The world is changing, and as many institutional forms decline, new alternative structures emerge to carry on the mission and values of those legacy organizations.

3. North Carolina Presbyterian Higher Education Ministries.

NCPHEM is an organization formed by the five presbyteries in North Carolina in 2004 to distribute funds returned to the presbyteries by the Synod of the Mid-Atlantic. In January, 2011, the board embarked on an awareness / fund raising campaign to support and serve the campus ministries and chaplaincies in North Carolina. I was hired to staff the effort.

A year into our campaign, my hope for the future of our church has grown beyond my expectations. I'm overwhelminginly impressed with the quality of ministers serving the young people on our campuses. I'm even more impressed by what I see happen with students. Here are the worshipping communities of the future. You see and learn about some of them in the Presbyterians Today article linked above. And while, I don't think we needed any validation as to validity of our campaign, it was a tremendous boost in confidence when The Morgan Foundation of Laurel Hill, N.C. made a challenge endowment gift of $500,000 to the support of Presbyterian Higher Education Ministry in North Carolina. We are grateful for the leadership of Jim Morgan, his family and the board of the foundation for their vision of the church in the future.

For a long time, campus ministry has been the forgotten mission of the church. It isn't romantic like going overseas. It isn't visible like the youth ministries in our churches. Yet, it is the link, the linchpin to the future of the church. It is how these 1001 worship communities will be realized. It is how young adults will remain in the life of the church in the future.  I believe this is so because the students in our campus ministries are learning how to create authentic community in a worshipping, missional context.

These ministries deserve our support, just as do the work of 1001 worshipping communities does, and the new church developments in presbyteries throughout the church. Do these ministries need us? Yes. They need our financial support. In addition, they need our mutual partnership as followers of Christ. We, the people in local churches across the nation, need them because the forms of worship and community of the future are being created today through them.

I have hope because as a connectional body, we are at the very beginning of discovering a boundaryless church that is open to many new forms of being a worshipping community. I encourage you to support the 1001 effort. It is an important step for our church.

As we tell people here in North Carolina, there are three things you can do for us. May I suggest that these apply wherever you are.

  

* Graduating HS Students with Campus Ministries and College & University Chaplaincies in NC and across the US
* With Youth Pastors, Young Adult Ministers, Campus Ministers, Mission & Outreach and Campus Ministry Committees
* With Potential Contributors

 

 

 

* Conduct Special Presbyterian Higher Education Ministry Sunday
* Include campus ministry updates in your church newsletters
* Link to Campus Ministry links on your congregation’s website 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* By Including campus ministries in your church’s budget
* By having a special offering to support Presbyterian campus ministries one Sunday each year.
* Helping us identify potential contributors to help us support, sustain and initiate ministries across the state.

 

 

May you find hope in Christ's life expressed in new ways. May you find a place to connect, your story to tell, and a way to contribute that makes a difference that matters. The next generation of the church is here already. It is a good day for hope.

Change

Is the word a noun or a verb?

Which is it for the church?

Is change what happens to congregations?

Or, is change what we do as congregations?

It is an important question.

The reality that most churches face is that if they do not change they will be changed. The question therefore is what kind of change do we want.

The Meaning of Change

Sometime during my life time, an idea became embedded in the cultural DNA of the church which suggested that the church is a bulwark against societal change. We began to think that this is the one institution that can remain the same and also remain vital. We sold our members on this notion that change is bad, and stasis is good.

The truth is actually the opposite.

Changing is the only way to stay alive. Not changing is how you become a rock. When Jesus told Peter, "upon this rock, I'll build my church," I don't think he was referring to become an actual rock. Rather, to be resilient in the face of change.

There is a lot that can be discussed about change. And over time, I will address it here. There is one thing I want to say about it now to establish a centerpoint for all other discussions about change.

The  Circle of Impact

There are three broad dimensions that we address in our life and work. I call these the Three Dimensions of Leadership. I define leadership as "personal initiative to create impact." Each person, therefore, has the capacity and opportunity, every day, to lead. Each person living in the midst of the everyday dimensions of ideas, relationships and the social and organizational structures, where we live and work, including our churches, can lead by taking initiative to make a difference that matters.

Within the Circle of Impact are four ideas that I call The Connecting Ideas. They are Mission or Purpose, Values, Vision and Impact. These ideas are the glue that holds the three dimensions together. As a result, there is an alignment that happens when the Connecting Ideas matter.

When your mission is clear, then how you organize the church is given direction. When your mission is not that important, then the functioning of the organizational structure takes an importance that primarily resistant to change. This is the situation that I see in many churches that are struggling with change. Structure isn't determined by their mission, but by their tradition of activity. The old line, "We've never done it that way." is a classic statement of a church that is unclear about the Connecting Ideas. It is a church that can't tell you what its mission is, what its values are, what its vision for the future is or what its Impact is. It is essentially a museum vaguely reflecting a long passed time when the Connecting Ideas were alive and directive.

Dealing with Change

If you want to address change, you must begin to do the following.

First Step: Conversation about what matters

Start talking about the Connecting Ideas.

What is your mission? What's the impact of your mission? What difference, really, what difference does it make?

The most effective missions are externally focused. If your mission is just about the people who are already there, then the people who are not will see that there is no place for them in your congregation.

Be honest with yourselves.  Because if you are not, change will be what happens to you, instead of what you do to create the future that is in your hearts and minds by the Spirit of God.

Second Step: Care for Each Other

If on a small scale, caring for each other in your congregation becomes a part of your mission, then you must create a structure that enables it to happen. You can't just desire it. You must create structure to make it work. Structure serves Mission, and Mission serves People.

The best way to start? Small groups that practice four things. Pray for each other, study together, fellowship over meals, and serve others together.

Third Step: Encourage Each Person to Take Initiative to Make a Difference

There are a lot of positive changes that are taking place in churches. None of them though happen without significant growth in participation and contribution by members.

So, if you are listening, you'll understand that changing (verb) the church begins with changing oneself (verb) to create the change (noun) that you desire rather than the kind that you don't.

Change is personal and communal. We go through it together. It either makes us stronger and the church survives, or we cave into its stresses and fear, and the church declines.

Change is a context of faith. It is a time where we learn the content and character of the faith that we believe. We learn whether it is just an idea, or something more. The more is the difference that matters. It is what I pray you find together as a congregations.