church

The Tyranny of ‘Best’

Short Reads

“The enemy of the best is the good.”

This phrase is often used to describe the problem of settling for something ‘good’ when the ‘best’ option is available. The thinking goes: people settle for something that is good enough instead of working towards the best thing.

I have been a slave to this type of thinking, but recently I’ve come to realize how misplaced and idolatrous it can be.

There is a common myth in American culture that the best is best. We study Amazon reviews before buying something, just to make sure we are getting the best shower mat or blender or alarm clock or pair of pants. We compare cars before buying to make sure we are getting the best deal with the best options.

Please don’t misunderstand, this can be a good thing, but we have carried this line of thinking into all aspects of life.

We don’t settle on our weekend plans with one friend just in case they are not the best plans we’re presented with. We keep the door open for a different friend to present a different, better plan.

We don’t settle on the one person to marry because we are not sure that they are the best person for us.

We get antsy after a few months in a job because we are worried that it might not be the best job for us.

This is true in the Church as well. Missiologist Michael Frost said, “No one is more transient than American pastors, like rocks with no moss.”

The problem with all of this is that it forces us to spend a bulk of our time holding our breath, waiting for the best thing to arrive. Our lives pass us by while we impatiently wait for the next best thing.

That’s why I reverse that common phrase:

The enemy of the good is the best.

The goal of life is not the best. The goal of life is enough.

God promises enough – our daily bread. Jesus calls us to ‘perfection’ which can be understood as completion.

We are called to wholeness; not to be the ‘best’ but to be the person that God has called us to be.

I find myself drawn to thinking about the ‘next’ thing. What job is next? Where will we move next? What is the next step?

Perhaps God is calling me to be where my feet are – to be here.

Perhaps the next step is to do my work today; to do the next, right thing and trust God.

The enemy of a good life is the illusion that there is a “best life” just waiting down the road.

 

What the Missional Movement is Not (Super Serial Post #1)

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It may seem strange to start a series of posts on the missional movement by describing what it is NOT, but there is precedent in theological studies for taking the via negativa approach and it seems like the best way to cut through the fog surrounding this topic.

First things first, the missional movement is not a movement.

I know, I know – I have referred to it as such in the lines above and the introductory post to this series. If you’ll forgive me, that was a bit of a straw man.

As I mentioned in my original post on the missional church, there is a tendency to lump missional attitudes into the same category as many of the church growth trends that have come along in the past. It is very easy to write it off as another way consultants are trying to fill the pews of shrinking or empty churches.

“Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and there are only two people…”

The truth is that being missional is not a trend but is, instead, the true nature of the church.

In his book Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood, Alan Roxburgh tells a modern day parable about three old friends (pg. 31). These friends grew up together, spending endless hours together at play, at school, and everywhere in between. The three friends went to college together and spent many evening discussing their hopes and dreams late into the night. Through the many years they spent together, the three friends developed a relationship that was deeper than words. Each of their identities was formed and shaped by this rich relationship.

Over time, however, their relationship grew distant. The three kept in touch through social media and the occasional call. Every few years, the three would get together for a weekend to catch up and renew their connection.

One day, out of the blue and after several years without contact, the two friends received an email from the third inviting them to his house in California for several nights. The two made their plans to travel to the West Coast and when they arrived, their host sat them down for a feast.

Isn’t stock photography great?

The friends laughed and caught up with each other throughout the first night, but at some point in the evening the mood changed. The two friends sensed a heavy awkwardness had settled around the table as the host began to do most of the talking. He talked about his life, his questions, and his needs. Every question he asked was only so that he could further focus on his own interests. He seemed only interested in making himself seem more successful.

At the end of the night the two friends made their way back to their hotel and the host went to bed feeling great about the conversation and the evening as a whole.

So, what is the point of this parable?

According to Roxburgh, the three friends in the parable are Scripture, Church, and Culture. The first two friends are Scripture and Culture, while the third friend who hosted the other two for the reunion is the Church.

Being missional is not a movement because it is not about the church. Most blog posts and magazine pieces make the missional conversation solely about the church and what the church can do to grow itself. Too often we are like the third friend: inviting Scripture and Culture into the conversation only to further our own interests.

Church movements exist for the church – to increase their size or influence or relevance or whatever it may be. Being missional is not just another movement because it is about returning the three friends to their original relationship.

Roxburgh argues that the focus of the missional conversation is three-fold: Scripture, Church, and Culture. For too long we have pretending that the church has a monopoly on the Good News, as though we are the only way that God works in the world. The missional conversation starts with the assumption that God is already at work in the world, within and without the church.

Later in his book, Roxburgh says that the church has taken itself into a cul-de-sac with this inward focus. He says, “Church questions are at the forefront of our thinking, so we default to questions about what the church should be doing and what the church should look like.” We are wrong to think that a new movement or program will fix what ails the church in this time. Roxburgh goes on to say, “This is not something that can be ‘fixed’ with programs or discussions on church health or by appending the word missional to old habits.” (pg. 54).

Being missional is not about growing your church membership.

Being missional is not about growing your church membership.

So we have established that the missional church is not a trend or new fad, but is a return to the original calling and nature of the church. This should let you in on the fact that this series will not give you the three easy steps to become a “missional” church. This whole conversation is about changing our thinking and our view of the church. If becoming missionally focused brings more people to your parish or community, great. If you enter this conversation with the motivation of increasing church membership (or relevance or whatever), you are missing the point. The point is to stay true to our calling as Christians in the world.

Stay tuned for the next post, in which I will explore what this calling actually is.

Cliffhanger

“Go ye into all the world”: The Missional Church Movement (A Super Serial Set of Posts)

Short Reads

“Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel.”

This inscription was written above the Great Commission window in the original 1881 chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary. The phrase, from Mark’s Gospel, inspired generations of seminarians and continues to be embedded in the culture of the seminary. It is our fundamental mission as Christians.

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I wrote a blog post a few months ago about the Missional Church movement and how it is more than a trend or church-growth plan. I tried to go beneath the catch phrases and sound bytes to show a bit of the theology and ecclesiology that undergirds the Missional movement.

Since writing that post I have accepted the call to serve as the Canon Missioner for Youth and Young Adults in the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, beginning in June. The Diocese of Southwestern Virginia is a great group of Christians who have taken on this Missional conversation, thanks in part to their Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Mark Bourlakas.

The Diocese is very focused on shifting the Episcopal Church in Southwestern Virginia from an “attractional” stance to a Missional orientation while equipping the people and parishes of the Diocese to be missionaries and ambassadors of the Gospel in their communities.

I have the unique gift of being able to accept a call while still deep in my last semester of seminary. Because of this, I have developed an Independent Study (under the guidance of Dr. Lisa Kimball) that will explore the Missional movement as it relates to Episcopal youth and young adult ministry. I will study the history of the Missional movement and how it has been applied to the Anglican/Episcopal context. From there I will develop resources for Missional youth and young adult ministries that will available for use by parishes and Dioceses across the Episcopal Church.

This is the first of six blog posts that will cover these topics (hence the “serial” in the title). I’ve chosen blog posts over an academic research paper to make this information accessible for more people who can (hopefully) benefit from this conversation.

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I do hope that readers will leave comments, ask questions, and give suggestions for what you would like to see in this series. While primarily for my own edification, I want this work to help as many people as possible to see the what this Missional conversation is all about so that we can more effectively preach the Gospel to the whole world.

This post is brought to you by MailChimp*

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*MailChimp is not actually a sponsor.

The (Missional) Episcopal Church and why it’s more than just a catchphrase.

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The level of snark present on a seminary campus is fairly overwhelming. This trend seems to hold true with many Episcopal clergy, especially on social media. New church fads and movements are skewered in class and at the lunch table. Some groups bring this on themselves, for instance this church that gave away assault rifles at a revival. But many church movements or ideas get shot down (pun intended) in conversation before they are even understood or investigated.

Some ‘trendy’ models of church have been thoroughly investigated and have been found lacking in certain areas. The seeker-sensitive movement came across as watering down doctrine and tradition for the sake of membership numbers. The emergent movement, at times, drifted out of the lines of Christian orthodoxy.

One movement, though not new at all, has been the topic of many conversations at the seminary recently. When you say the word ‘missional’ you usually get one of two reactions. First, a person may respond positively without knowing too much about what it means to be missional. Second, a person may respond with disdain for another church growth fad and dismiss missional ecclesiology…also without knowing too much about what it actually means.

I’m hoping this blog post will be informative about what it truly means to have a missional understanding of the church, but my true goal for this post is that it be a starting point for conversations (with minimal snark) about the future of the Episcopal Church and the future of the Church as a whole.

Being missional is first and foremost about relationship: Relationship with oneself, with the worshiping community, with the community/neighborhood/area as a whole, and especially with God. The primary goal of a missional church is not increasing membership numbers or average Sunday attendance. The focus is not the capital campaign or getting more folks to come to the annual chili cook-off fundraiser. A missional church is primarily concerned with its member’s relationships with each other and the church’s relationship with the broader community. This is not a very popular answer to the ‘problem’ of decline in the Episcopal Church. It seems that people want the five easy steps or the perfectly crafted program that will magically draw people to the empty Episcopal Churches across the country. This brings me to the second characteristic of missional churches.

Missional churches reject the purely attractional model of church. The attractional model has dominated Christianity in America for a very long time. The basic idea behind this model is that you start at the physical church building and draw people in the doors. You draw them with worship services, educational programs, entertainment, prayer groups, etc. The attractional model church presents the people in the community with a menu of religious goods and services in hopes that something will catch their eye and bring them to the building. It is a sign of the consumer understanding of religion.

This model is not working in most of the country. It is not a bad model and it has served us very well for a long time, but it would seem that it is no longer serving the needs of the church or many communities.

There are some hot spots of church activity in major cities/suburbs, but for the most part every denomination is struggling to maintain and especially to increase membership. No matter how many new programs or church growth consultants they bring in, people are just not coming to church.

Missional churches doesn’t see the question as ‘How do we get people to come to church?’ but ‘How do we get the church to the people?’

I recently attended Common Place, a gathering of young adults and young adult ministers hosted by the Diocese of Washington D.C. The weekend was filled with conversations and stories about young adult ministry success and failure. The Rev. Mike Angell, the Young Adult Missioner for the Episcopal Church, spoke about the current trends in young adult ministry in the church.

At one point in his talk, Mike said, “When I give talks or presentations, people tend to ask, ‘Where are all the young adults?’ to which I respond, ‘I don’t know. Let’s go find them together.'”

That is the missional church; one that goes out into the world and interacts with the people who would otherwise never interact with the church.

The Five Marks of Mission is a list of the characteristics of the church’s mission that was adopted by the General Convention in 2009. Since that time, the Five Marks of Mission have been engaged (and not engaged) differently in each Diocese.

The Five Marks of Mission are:

~ To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
~ To teach, baptize and nurture new believers
~ To respond to human need by loving service
~ To seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation
~ To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth
This is the mission of Christ and, by extension, the mission of the church. The Episcopal Church, in my experience, is really good at the last three Marks. We’ve got the service, peace/reconciliation, and sustainability issues fairly well covered. The Episcopal Church, again in my experience, has a hard time with the first two. It seems that we have lost our voice when it comes to proclaiming the Good News and teaching new believers. In our reaction to the incredible growth and influence of the conservative Evangelical branches of Christianity we have forfeited all talk about the Gospel, salvation, and sin, just so we won’t be associated with the more extreme members of the Christian family. It is as if we hope that we can just do works of service for people and the Gospel will somehow seep into them. Call it osmosis evangelism.
The third characteristic of the missional church is that it knows its own story and can tell others about it easily. A missional church knows what Jesus Christ means in its life and wants to tell the world. A missional church can articulate the key points of the Christian faith when asked. 1 Peter 3:15 tells us that we are to always be ready to explain the hope that is within us, the hope that comes from God. The Episcopal Church must also reclaim its identity as Anglicans. As the recognized Anglican church in North America, the Episcopal Church has access to a great Anglican tradition of reform and renewal. The fighting and legal battles of the past decade have zapped a lot of energy from the Episcopal Church, but the same hope that we have in Christ is the hope that propels us forward. This leads into the fourth characteristic:
Missional churches are hopeful. With some of the talk above and with much of the talk around the blogosphere and social media, it is easy to become discouraged about the future of the church. It would be easy to see the declining numbers and shrinking budgets and resign ourselves to keep everything as it is and go down with the ship. The missional church isn’t discouraged by the projections and numbers. Sure, it’s sad that our numbers are lower than they were at one time and it is always sad to see a church close its doors. That being said, there is a lot of room for hope.
God is doing something new in the Episcopal Church and in the Church around the world. With the influence of Pope Francis spreading around the world and the spotlight of American culture fading on conservative Evangelicalism, the Episcopal Church is in a great position to renew itself. The type of renewal that we need is much more than reforming the Executive Council or the General Convention rules of order. We need a grassroots renewal of our identity and understanding of ourselves. This process can begin right now in whatever context you find yourself or your church. Go outside and get to know the neighborhood. Figure out what is important to the people in your church and in your community. Don’t immediately jump to a new bible study or bar event – singing hymns while drinking beer will not solve our problems, although it can be fun.
This may be frustrating to some folks. This process is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Forming authentic relationships takes a long time and a lot of work, but it is the best way for the Episcopal Church to move forward in faith and hope for the future. Being missional is much more than a church growth trick or new ecclesiological fad – it is a return our roots and the roots of the Church. If we are to be ‘fishers of people’, the days of the huge, industrial fishing fleets is over. We must return to the days of individuals casting small nets on the shore, where it all began.
This is by no means an exhaustive explanation of the missional movement. For more in depth study of missional ecclesiology I recommend this book and this book, which is directed specifically at the Episcopal Church. Start this conversation with those around you and see what the Holy Spirit is doing in your church. Please, please, please don’t just bury your head in the sand and hope that things will turn around if we just wait long enough. The world is in desperate need of the Good News of Christ and the Episcopal Church can be the voice that proclaims it if we start renewing our vision and reviving our mission.

 

 

4 Myths about Young Adults and Church

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It seems like the heat has died down somewhat around Millennials and Young Adults. There was a stretch last year where it seemed like every blog post or magazine article had something to do with my beloved generation. We were either too lazy and self-centered or incredibly altruistic and compassionate. We were, at the same time, coddled by our parents and forced to fend for ourselves in a economic recession. Each blog post offered the secrets to tapping into this ‘market’ for companies, employers, and anyone else who stood to profit off any insights into the largest generation in America.

Church blogs were no different. Posts offered the new tips and tricks to get Millennials/Young Adults through the red doors of the church. Contemporary music, ancient hymns, bible studies in a bar, no church building, huge cathedrals. The tips and trick were legion. And they were oftentimes wrong.

They were wrong because of the premise with which they started. The idea that any large group of people can be boiled down to a blog post listing of characteristics and traits is foolish (I recognize the irony in that statement as I write a blog post listing). Millennials are the largest generation in America; there is no way that a blog post can sum up their collective interests or common attitudes.

To help spur this conversation on, I have complied a list of the most common myths that I have seen or heard about Millenials and Young Adults, especially when it comes to church:

1. Millennials are monolithic. As I mentioned above, there is no way to succinctly say what every Millennial wants or cares about and anyone who says that they know “what Millennials want” is a)lying or b)trying to sell you something. In the same way that no one can speak for every retiree or every baby boomer, no one can speak for every young adult. What this means for the church is that there is not one solution to the “young adult” problem. There is not one magic program or secret bible study curriculum or perfect liturgy that is going to have young adults flocking to your church.

2. Millennials aren’t interested in organized religion. The Emergent Church movement capitalized on the myth that the “church of the future” wouldn’t look anything like the institutional church that we all know. I contend that the Emergent Church movement blew up in popularity because of baby boomers and Gen X-ers, not Millennials. Many of the young adults I have talked to about the institutional church are fully aware of the sins of the past and the blunders of the recent decades, and yet, they are interested in being a part of the community and bringing about positive change from within the church. Organized religion is not going to suddenly disappear because young people aren’t interested. If anything, organized religion will disappear because it has lost sight of its original purpose and lost its soul. This is especially true of Christianity in America. The “Great Decline” could be linked to the  mainline churches losing their ‘saltiness’. Jesus warns that we (the Church) are the salt of the earth, but if we lose our saltiness we can never get it back and we will be thrown away. Millennials, for the most part, aren’t opposed to the institutional church, they just wish that we would embrace our saltiness. They are drawn to Jesus but they can’t seem to find the same attractive, “Other-ness” of Christ in the average church.

3. Millennials all want to hang out in bars. The newest trend in the mainline churches is to host bible studies or hymn-sings in local bars. “Theology on Tap”, started by the Catholic Church, was the first organized effort to take the church into the saloon. It seems to have all the things that the mainline churches love: alcohol, community, and a very clear way of saying that we are NOT like those other, prudish Christians. We’re cool. We’re hip. We can pray and drink at the same time. The issue is that not every single young adult loves hanging out in bars. Alcoholism is a problem for young adults, just like it is a problem for every other age group. In fact, many young adults come out of college with an extremely unhealthy relationship with alcohol. There are many young adults who are alcohol dependent, but have no idea that their drinking isn’t normal because of the current zeitgeist around alcohol. There are also young adults who just don’t like to drink or hang out in bars. Some think that the Church should be different from the culture, not just a copycat. How many folks, not just young adults, are automatically excluded from church events because they are held in bars or because alcohol is the underlying theme? An article in the June issue of Christianity Today calls on churches to reconsider their relationship with alcohol in light of the commandment to “love our neighbor”. If your neighbor (or parishioner or young adult seeker) is struggling with alcoholism, how loving is it to host a bible study in a bar? At what point do we recognize that we are sacrificing inclusion of all people for the sake of being ‘relevant’ and ‘cool’. If you are a young adult (or anyone) who thinks they might have a problem with alcohol, please follow this link.

4. Millennials can be attracted, if only we have the right [liturgy, programming, leadership, whatever]. The moment that the Church stops seeing Millennials as a group to be attracted is the moment that Millennials will feel comfortable in church. It feels wrong to talk about tricking people into coming to church, but that is essentially what churches do when they pretend to be something they are not to attract young adults. By adding programming and other things that are out of character for the local church, we become salespeople who are trying to repackage Jesus so that he is more palatable. The truth is this: Jesus doesn’t need our help attracting people. The Word of God has been calling folks to himself since the beginning, with or without the exciting new programs the Church has invented. Young Adults are not the target audience for a new marketing campaign, they are people who need the love and peace of God like everyone else. We cannot afford to be reductionist about the people in our churches, because the mission of the church is far bigger than Millennials – it is about the holy, ordinary people of God…of all ages. The source of most sin is disunity, which may be why on of Jesus’s last commandments is a call to unity. If we focus on the wide variety of people in our churches, of all ages and stages in life, perhaps we will see our unity and our saltiness return.

The Episcopal Church is doing just fine (sort-of)

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Despite what the title of this post may imply, I am not a fact-denier and I do not have my head buried in the sand. I know all of the talk and blogs and tweets that are circulating about the decline of the Episcopal Church and the decline of the “mainline” denominations across the board. I do not deny that the numbers show a steady decline. I do not deny that the numbers are alarming for people who judge the church by attendance numbers. I do not deny any of this.

Did you catch what I did there?

The decline in attendance numbers are alarming for people who judge the church by attendance numbers. That’s it.

When did church become about how many people show up?

My reading of the New Testament tells me that church is much more about a group of people (two-two billion, the numbers are not whats important) that come together to share a meal, praise God, and then go out into the world, take care of the folks that can’t take care of themselves, and spread the Good News that death and the slavery of sin have been defeated.

Instead, for some reason, we only understand church as a building in which, for a healthy church, 100-500 people gather on Sunday mornings to do “the service”. If this truly is the meaning of the church then the Chicken Little’s throughout the church are right: the sky if falling!

But what if we let that image of the church die?

What if we let go of our need to be “successful” in the eyes of church growth experts and ecclesiological  abacus movers?

What if we found our success in the strength of the relationships formed within our church communities? What if the sign of a healthy church was the service that happened apart from Sunday mornings?

My last post was on the “Doomsday Preppers” of the church. With this new post it seems that I am holding the bludger and preparing to beat the poor, deceased horse.

I’m sorry if you are tired of hearing about church decline.

I am going to keep writing on it until we finally stop looking at the declining numbers and then immediately to our navels for the solution. There is no secret fix or ten step blog post that is going to “save” the church. (*Full disclosure: my last post contained a list. So did the one before that. I am not averse to blog lists in general, only when the list proposes a solution to an imaginary or misconstrued problem.)

The church has never been about success or numbers or strategic growth.

Unless I have greatly misunderstood my professors in my time so far in seminary it would appear that the church is all about failures, small numbers, and inefficient growth. If we really want the church to stop shrinking and to grow we should start living like the church. We should join people who are radically different from ourselves to worship, share, and serve. We should get out of our cells of individual convenience and into the untidy, complicated mess of community.

For all of the talk of decline, there are so many wonderful Episcopal churches that are doing amazing things. Big churches, small churches, urban, rural, “missional” (whatever that word means) ministries of all shapes and sizes.

The Episcopal Church has got it all. If we showed off what we have and refused to add another voice to the never ending waterfall of pessimism and cynicism about church numbers, maybe we would see our churches grow.

The Episcopal Church is doing just fine, as long as you judge the success of a church based on lives changed and good work done in the name of Christ.

For those still hung up on attendance numbers, I pray that God would so enlarge your heart that you would see the people in front of you. If there is no one in your church on a Sunday I have good news for you – there are a ton of folks out in the world who could use your help (yes you), so lets get to work.

Doomsday Preppers (Church Edition).

Short Reads

People love to talk about why the church is dying. They have graphs, numbers, and possible causes.

What people don’t have is a solution. Some suggest that churches need to be more open and accepting; others say the church needs to be more tech savvy; while others say that denominations, themselves, are the problem. There are endless posts bemoaning the slowly dying church. But much like the character in Monty Python’s Holy Grail who is trying desperately to put his father on the cart of dead bodies before he is actually dead, I see this conversation about the dying church as a little misguided.

In fact, I say its all rubbish.

In keeping with the increasingly popular blog format of list-making, I propose a few reasons why the seemingly endless talk about the “end of the church” is not helpful or needed.

1. “The Body of Christ has died once, it cannot die again.” I wish that I could claim this wonderful insight, but it comes from Bishop Susan Goff of the Diocese of Virginia, where I am a Postulant. It came in the context of a talk she gave to my seminary class during our retreat last year. She said that the church can never die because its mission is too serious, its existence is too needed, and, most importantly, it is called for by God. This does not mean that the church will always look like it does right now (but more on that below). The Early Church would be shocked if they saw the church today – not because of any failing morals, but because there is no way they could have imagined what the church/world would look like two-thousand years in the future. In the same way that Martin Luther (whose actions were seen, by some, to be killing the church) could never have imagined a church that would produce Martin Luther King, we have no frame of reference for what the church will look like hundreds of years from now – let alone twenty-five years from now. They kept fighting the good fight because they believed that the Body of Christ would live on and that it would continue to be guided by the Holy Spirit.

2. Judge a tree by its fruit. Jesus was big on tree talk. He talked a lot about how some trees produce good fruit while other trees produce bad fruit. The good fruit producers go on producing good fruit, while the trees that produce bad fruit or don’t produce fruit at all are cut down or left to wither. It is a simple concept that applies to churches. If a church is producing good fruit (committed disciples of Christ, just and fair communities, healthy programs for kids and young adults, etc.) the church tends to grow or at least remains a stable part of its community. If a church begins producing bad fruit (increased in-fighting, cult of personality around a pastor or leader, little or no outreach, scandals, etc.) or no fruit at all, it tends to wither – sometimes slowly over years, other times quickly in a matter of months. Churches closing is not the worst case scenario if the church is not producing good fruit. Of course, the rub is that some of the churches that appear to be producing “bad” fruit (from the correct position of educated, liberal, “mainstream” Protestant denominations [please read sarcasm into this aside]) are growing at an incredible rate. I have no answer to this phenomenon except to say that the anecdotal evidence I have heard about mega-churches and their (often) “prosperity Gospel” message is that they are great places to worship… until something goes terribly wrong in your life. When life takes a turn towards tragedy and pain, being a face in the crowd at church is no longer a good thing. When it seems like your life is going to hell in a hand basket, it is refreshing to walk into a service where people know your name and can recognize the pain in your eyes. I want it to be clear that I am not bashing all mega-churches and I am not saying that every mega-church preaches the “prosperity Gospel”. Even the biggest and best-run mega-church has small groups, because they recognize that Christian community needs to be intimate enough for personal building-up and relationships.

3. Change is not bad. Repeat this phrase as many times as it takes for you un-clinch your fists and see straight again. The church will never again be like it was when you were growing up. Ever. There is no returning to mythological “good ole days” of the church. I say mythological because I am not convinced that the “good ole days” were all that good, but we humans have this nasty habit of making every memory a little better than it actually was. The church of the 1950s is gone. So is the church of the 1960s-1980s. In fact, the church of 2012 no longer exists. The church of December 17, 2013 is about to disappear. In the Gospels, Christ was always moving forward, always pressing on to his goal: Jerusalem. In the same way, the Body of Christ (the church) is always moving forward towards the goal of the New Jerusalem . Rob Bell’s new book, “What We Talk About When We Talk About God” has some great insights into this matter. We so often think that anything that is good has to stay the same or it will stop being good. Think about this: is the person (or pet or family member or performing artist) you are in love with the exact same that they were the moment you fell in love with them? I sure hope not. Both you have grown and matured and learned and changed. And yet, you are still in love. Without opening a huge can of worms, it is also worth noting that the “good ole days” of the church were only “good” for a select group of people. Minorities of all types did not share in the same “good ole days” of the church. Some of these minority groups are living in what could be considered their “good ole days” as we speak. We need to check our own perspectives before we start speaking for anything as big, diverse, and mysterious as the church.

4. Young adults are not actually leaving the church. The “breaking news” in church life for the past fifty years has been how the new generation (pick one: Generation X, Y, Z, Millenials, etc.) is lazy, disrespectful towards tradition and is leaving the church in record numbers. Someone will no doubt point out the surveys and polls that show that a growing number of young adults self-identify as “Nones” and that every year the number of non-church goers rises. Here is another figure: the median age of my class at seminary is 27. You read that right. Half of the Class of 2015 at the largest Episcopal seminary in the United States is under the age of 27. Young adults like my classmates and myself are so drawn to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the Episcopal Church that we would go to seminary, in the face of this false narrative of decline (check out this lecture by the Dean of VTS on this myth), and give our lives to the service of Christ and the church. Many parishes and Dioceses across the Episcopal Church have thriving youth and young adult programs that are attracting tons of people. Folks like Jason Evans in the Diocese of Washington are doing great work to bring young adults into the church because they recognize this fact: the Episcopal Church is in a wonderful position when it comes to young adults. Survey after survey shows that young adults want authenticity, tradition, and reverence in their worship (for more on the research see Dr. David Gortner’s book). Right off the bat you should have noticed that these are three descriptions of the Episcopal Church: authentic in our worship, supported by the Anglican tradition, and with a healthy dose of reverence that is missing from most other places in society.

This list is not exhaustive or authoritative. It is not my thesis and has not been researched as such. This post is simply to observation of a young adult who is tired of being told that people my age don’t go to church and that the church is quickly dying. I reject this narrative and propose instead that we keep our eyes on Christ and keep being the church (to each other and to the world).

As Christians, we claim that there is a King and a Kingdom coming that will make everything right and new, therefore we have no time for the cynicism that pervades much of American culture. As this wave of negativity and ‘what-if’ seeps into the life of the church, we must stand against it and with the cloud of witnesses proclaim, “Alleluia!” To paraphrase the book of Esther,  we were made for such a time as this. We do not know what the church will look like in the future, but we can be sure it won’t look like it did in the past. There are already many groups that have stepped up to the task of working towards the changes that need to happen in the church. The Task Force for Reimagining the Episcopal Church  is hard at work on the national level and individual Dioceses have started groups to come together, pray, and imagine what the church can be. Honoring those who have come before, helping those in the church today, and laying the foundation for a church that will serve the people of God well into the future.

We are not called to put on sackcloth and beat our chest at the end of the church. We are called to proclaim that that God we serve is not a God of the dead but of the living. Doomsday is coming, sure. Until that time, let us be the Body of Christ to a world in desperate need.