There's a narrative that many churches in Canada are hearing on a consistent basis – we are in decline. Earlier this year I presented a paper at the Wesley Studies Symposium, sponsored by Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, ON. Here are few excerpts...
Last year, James Emory White commented on a Canadian report from Alpha Canada and Flourishing Congregations Institute. White is a former president of Gordon-Conwell Seminary. He says, “The church is in decline because we are turned inward instead of outward. Our hearts are not breaking for what breaks the heart of God, which is people facing a Christ-less eternity. And sadly, only a simple “invite” is all that is often needed: “Come and see, come and hear, come and explore.”
The antidote that I hear in much of this narrative of decline, is that “we need to do something.” WE need to DO something. White says we just need to “invite people.” We need to turn outward instead of inward. Others say we just need to pray more. Or just modify our orthodox theology. And then our congregations will be thriving again, people will love us again, we will be relevant again. And then we will return to the place of privilege/influence in Canadian society (if that were ever true). But is that really the goal?
“We are becoming a secular society. The church is in decline, we are losing our voice in the public space, and we must do something about it.” That is the word of caution and concern that we are hearing.
That’s the backdrop, now let me take you on a brief journey of reflection. More than 40 years ago, Malcolm Muggeridge, British journalist and social analyst, delivered a lecture at the U of Waterloo. The lecture was published as The End of Christendom. He was describing social circumstances that were contributing to the decline of Christendom in western society. I remember reading at the time, this statement: “in these circumstances why should anyone expect Christendom to go on forever, or see in its impending collapse a cosmic catastrophe?” Coupled with this pessimistic reflection, he offered this optimistic word, “amidst the shambles of a fallen Christendom, I feel a renewed confidence in the light of the Christian revelation with which it first began.”
Muggeridge then suggests where his renewed confidence comes from – the thriving of Christian faith and community in locations where it has been most repressed -- in his historical context (1978), the underground church in Communist Russia. His conclusions: “let us then, as Christians, rejoice that we see around us on every hand the decay of the institutions and instruments of power… For it is precisely when every earthly hope has been explored and found wanting, when every possibility of help from earthly sources has been sought and is not forthcoming… it’s then that Christ’s hand reaches out sure and firm.”
Muggeridge was describing the impact of modernity upon inherited forms of Christian expression, suggesting that decline might not be a bad thing.
In a recent article in Faith Today, Canadian church consultants, Chris Bosch and Lon Wong commented, “There are megatrends, like the decline of Christianity in Canada, that a local church can’t do anything about, … Just as death is a natural part of human life, it is part of life for churches. Churches have come and gone in different regions of the world, but that doesn’t mean the faith is irrelevant or all is lost.” They go on to say, “A healthy church can benefit from asking questions about why it exists.”
Not what should we do, or how should we do it, but why do we exist? Why does this “called-out” community of Christian believers exist? That’s a question I reflect on fairly frequently. Not out of a sense of despair regarding the future, but to continually adjust my focus, when things are getting blurred by this narrative of concern or that strategic planning exercise.
Charles Taylor talks about the importance of social imaginary, or the articulation of a story, a narrative, that shapes who we are and where we want to go, what we are trying to bring about.
If I was continually reflecting on the narrative of decline, that would probably lead to despair. If I was continually reflecting on the narrative of “we have got to do something!”, that could very easily lead to burnout.
In Matthew 11:20-24, Jesus laments (denounces) the towns that were unresponsive to his ministry, including Capernaum where he had invested significant time. He carries on in verses 25-30, “I praise you Father… because you have hidden these things from the learned and the wise and revealed them to little children.” He concludes with, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’”
I hear a narrative in this passage. “All my energy invested there had limited results. The Father reveals to whom he chooses to reveal, and these (disciples) are the ones he gave me. Come to me and I will give you rest. If you work with me, the work is easy and the burden is light.” That’s an alternative narrative to, -- “you’re not being effective, so speed up and do something.”
So here’s my alternative Wesleyan narrative. It’s not a formula, but a story I tell myself that centres my call to ministry in these times.
We are living in challenging times, as a minority people, in a society from which God seems to be absent, and most people are fine with that. My task as a spiritual leader is to equip, to prepare, the congregation that I serve for their daily, ministry interface within this set of circumstances in which we find ourselves. To aid our daily ministry,
- we need to experience the living, resurrected Christ as present in our lives; that we are being healed and made whole as we surrender our lives, increasingly, to the renovating work of the Spirit;
- we need to experience the encouraging, Spirit-directed promptings of our brothers and sisters in Christ as life-giving, as necessary, something we can’t do without;
- we need to experience opportunities for engaging with, perhaps serving, those who are different from ourselves (age, gender, education, language, culture, economic position, life-stage), because Christ will meet us in those encounters, in ways we cannot imagine.
In short, we exist to affirm that the living God is not absent from our society, and that truth impacts how we live our lives. As we do this, we bear faithful witness.
Identity: self-constructed? socially-constructed?
With a surplus of identity options out there these days, there is a strong populist, cultural assumption that identity is self-constructed. That is, that our identity is self-chosen. We "find" ourselves and tell a story about how we discovered ourselves. We live out, or perform that identity. And performance requires affirmation or recognition, which then, of course, reinforces (or not...) our self-chosen identity. And recognition is essential to achieving the hypergood of happiness. Recognition is important in the moment, because happiness is happenstance. And so one follows the path of continued affirmation.
This is all fine, if our chosen identity is validated by the people around us. It helps with the closed loop. But when our chosen self is not validated, the seeds are sown for the birth of ressentiment, a narrative of injury. A new story we begin to tell about how our quest for finding our true self has been thwarted by someone, or something.
This assumption, however, is a cultural misconception of how identity is formed. Identity is not solely an internal decision born from a self-enclosed feel. But identity is never self-enclosed; it is always formed through some kind of conversation. Identity is more "socially constructed" than self-constructed. That social construction is significantly impacted through our family of origin (for good or ill), by the cultural context within which our family is situated in our formative years, and then progressively by teachers, friends, literature, media, habits, rituals. No identity is discovered in a vacuum. All identities come out of some kind of exchange, with various conversation partners, yes, including our own internal selves. (Joyce Bellous and I wrestle with this notion in our book, Conversations that Change Us, where we tie these ideas to the constrasting opinions of Piaget and Vygotsky.)
When we buffer ourselves from other conversation partners, communities of discourse, and rest on our own sense of self, creating a hidden closed spin, we also buffer ourselves from transcendence. We mock the necessity to move outside ourselves to know ourselves. ("Nobody else can tell me who I am") Until... we are not validated, or recognized, and ressentiment emerges. We find it "safer" to spin things closed, because this gives us control. We concede that the self cannot/should not ever lose itself in "something more." Charles Taylor calls this "the eclipse of grace." In this hidden closed spin, "transformation" via transcendence becomes something to fear, because transformation reorders the self, over against its own volition, but never without its own full participation.
All identities come out of some kind of exchange. The very necessity of this exchange opens up the possibility that discovering an identity can give us ourselves, by taking us outside of ourselves.
This is the profound claim of the gospel, and it's why the Christian faith claims such a deep identity in Christ -- 'I know longer live, but Christ lives in me.' There is such an exchange at the heart of the Christian life that our identity becomes Jesus. We may lose control of our own story, and that is troubling for the populist views of our times.
The above represents my reflections on and co-opting Andrew Root's language in his book The End of Youth Ministry? -- that is obviously so much more than a book about youth ministry. This is a little synopsis of my engagement with education philosophy, social construction theory, culture formation and discipleship through a Wesleyan lens, over the past 30 years, and how it relates to several highly relevant 'hot topics.'
There are two narratives in Scripture that echo these thoughts. The story of the rich young ruler and his identity search that preferred the closed spin loop. The story of Saul/Paul and his closed spin loop that was blown apart by the emergence of the transcendent, with which he then fully participated for his ongoing transformation.
Posted at 09:47 AM in Books, Social justice commentary | Permalink | Comments (0)
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