Church Issues: Rural/Urban/Suburban/Global Church Typology

Doug Pagitt, in his new book, Church in the Inventive Age, gives us a four-model typology of the church in the United States with some interesting challenges to look at as a result. He starts out by talking about three previous ages and the churches that arose within them and then moves to the current age.

The agrarian age is the first and this birthed rural churches that lived a dependence upon each other to be successful which was defined by survival from generation to generation. These were single culture churches made up mostly of famers. They defined themselves as a parish, which was a geographical space and looked for their leader to function as a shepherd.

The industrial age followed which lead to the growth of urban churches and a focus on dominance, the church being the center of the neighborhood. Their success was defined by repeatability, with the same structure working for many different ministries and spreading the same kind of neighborhood church into each new neighborhood that rose up in and around a city. Everybody lived side-by-side and the church became defined by the denominational identity and looked for a preacher to lead them.

The information age followed and this lead to the rise of suburban church, which became experts in specific ministries designed for specific people groups. The churches specialized in ministering to specific people with specific needs rather than a general ministry for everyone. Relationships of the people were spread all over as were the location where people lived. The churches became a learning center and looked for pastors who functioned as teachers for the community.

Finally we have entered the inventive age in which churches now have a global presence and connect with people on a global scale. Their focus is about discovery and they define their success by creativity within the community in all facets of ministry. Their relationships are pluralistic and cross many socio-economic barriers as well as racial barriers. The churches function more as a co-op with the church leadership acting more as a facilitator.

What Pagitt argues is that we need all four of these kinds of churches for Christianity to thrive in our US culture. We especially need more global churches because there are nowhere near enough to meet the needs of today’s young people. We also need to have all four types of churches learn to interact and communicate with each other and form healthy constructive dialogues to better share what God is doing in the world around us.

I like this typology as a useful lens and think the challenge that the lens is presenting is a very needed challenge. What isn’t said is that right now, I would say based on my own experience in the church is that the four types of churches are at a state of competition with each other and not collaboration or even dialogue driven by a few decades of decline in the Rural and Urban churches. The Suburban churches are now also showing their age and where and not enough global churches exist for most people to really learn from them.

Why are Sermons Boring?

A friend sent me a link to an article in a leading Christian magazine that focused on the subject of why sermons are boring. In it the author points out that if you look at sermons throughout history, there seems to always be a sense of most sermons being preach as boring. What the author explores is that possibility that we are bored or boring in and of ourselves because we have laid to high of expectations on the sermons and most of them have not delivered.

This article intrigued me and left me asking some interesting questions. Are we failing as the preachers to preacher good sermons? Our we failing to use good communication practices in preaching? Is the spirit of God failing to be present when we are preaching? Are we failing to be open to the Spirit of God when we are listening to a sermon? Is the failure a combination of all of these? The author of the article cited Barth's great questions for preaching, "Is it true? Is God present?"

But what if it is none of these? What if the real reason we are bored is that our boredom allows us to hide from the truth which might simply be that we don't like God. That at an unconscious level we are really afraid of God. Think about it this way, in my life all of growing up and the journey into adult hood has been about learning to do and act in ways that show my value to the world around me. This puts me in control whether I realize it or not. If I take serious the God of the bible and the cross of Christ, then I find I can not do anything to impress God, to show God that I am of value. My value comes from God as gift. Grace takes away my control and this scares me even though I want it and need it. Boredom gives me back control and allows me to not face the God who takes away my control. Of coarse this makes the issue God, us and the preaching and brings us back to Barth's questions, "Is it true? Is God present?" which maybe could be seen as we don't know it is true or are afraid that it might actually be true and we aren't sure God is present or are actually afraid God is present.

This is worth thinking about more.

Reflections from Germany IV

I walked down the narrow street with Olaf at my side pointing out historic places in the small village. The streets were only wide enough for a single small car at a time. All of the houses were two or three stories high covered in a grey slate stone siding with a lime green trim, which Olaf says is the historic custom of the village. Many of the homes have a storefront on the street level with residents above. Just like back home, many of the main street stores were empty with a ‘for sale’ or ‘for rent’ sign in the window. Somewhere outside of the village was a new big box store that had taken the place of much of the village center.

We rounded a corner and before us stood on a hill in the center of the village the church Olaf and his wife serve as pastors. The exterior was all large stones with a black tint due to age. There were stone steps leading up to large wooden door held in place by hand forged metal hinges forming decorative patterns one the wood that looked like vines holding a reshaped tree guarding a secret place. As I stood there gazing up at the roughly four-story tower of a church I could just see the age. Before me stood a church that had been standing here for over a hundred years before Oshkosh was even a place, let alone an event destination.

We walked inside and the ancient wooden floor creaked with aged warmth beneath our steps. The pews were steep backed, wooded and looked half the age of the church. Olaf turned to me and said he would love to replace the pews with chair and right now he is in a window of opportunity where it could happen. The pews were over ninety years old so people would be okay with letting go of them and they were not quite a hundred years old where the historical society could step in and block any change. I laughed, what a dilemma to have to deal with.

The walls were all white which accentuated the beautiful woodwork. The lights were newer and modern looking but fit the architecture. Olaf said the historical society had to approve them because of the age of the old lights. A balcony ran around the room on three walls about a story and a half above the main floor and rising up to what would be the height of a third floor. On the wall where there was no balcony a long narrow, beautifully adorned, hand carved wooden platform with waist high walls jutted out about ten feet with a roof over it and a pulpit at the end closest to the center of the room. Above the platform, sat the pipe organ, which climbed the rest of the way up the wall toward the ceiling above. The organist had to climb up narrow stairs to the equivalence of the third floor to play the instrument.

Olaf wanted me to experience the pulpit so he took me into a back room, up narrow winding stairs in hallways where I had to duck my head until we reached a small door behind the wooden walkway. He opened it and invited me to step out into the pulpit. I stepped out cautiously, fearing the age of the wood and my weight. My hair brushed the ceiling as I walked out to the pulpit at the end of the walkway. I placed my hands on each side of the pulpit and looked out. In front of me, hanging from the ceiling was the Christ candle, to my left, right and across from me on the far side of the Christ candle were twelve paintings forming a sort of circle that I completed while standing in the pulpit. The paintings were the first apostles. So to stand in the pulpit of the church Olaf serves is to stand in the circle of the apostles and look into the Christ candle as one preaches God’s word to the faithfully gathered. How awesome and intimidating both at the same time!

I was humbled and in that moment I was reminded of how big God is and how much God cares about the little things such as my day-to-day struggles in my life. We are each a thread in a beautiful and diverse tapestry that God is weaving and would look good in both Olaf’s church and our church. Praise be to God!

High School Reunion

I went to a high school class reunion the other day and found the experience very interesting. There were a few observations in particular that intrigued me such as how my class mates dividing into one of two groups, those who stayed in town after high school and have never left and those who left immediately and have never come back. Another way in which my classmates divided was as those who have adult children and grandchildren; as opposed to those who have children in late grade school, middle school or early high school; and finally those who have toddlers and grade school aged children. They also divided by those who continued on to more school and those who went straight to working once high school was over. And of coarse there were those who hadn’t aged much and those who aged significantly.

Another thing that interested me was the number of people who never left our hometown and yet rarely ever ran into another classmate. Even more interesting is how many of them let go of all of their high school friendships and now have a completely different, unrelated set of friends while still living in our hometown. It makes me wonder if it is a perspective thing? This makes me wonder if there are two kinds of people, those who live in the present always looking to the future, and those who exist in the present always looking to the past? This would be interesting to think about for a while and somehow explore further.

What fascinated me the most was how people’s lives had taken so many unexpected turns and they were now at a place they never thought that they would be at decades past our graduation. One choice here, and another there and our coarse ends up in a completely different place. It’s like high school was a group climb to the top of the public education mountain and once there we were told, “you now have all you need to figure out how you are going to get back down the mountain so on your way.” Every step we take that deviates from the path we took up can leave us miles from where we want to be when we finally get back down.

Reflecting on the experience I realized that one of the challenges for our class is that about five years after we graduated our high school was closed and then reopened as a middle school, which means our heritage stopped and our ability to maintain continuity from generation to generation has been ended. We can’t go back to our high school nor can we send our own children to the same high school we went to. And the neighborhood around the school has since completely changed and this change may be in some way related to the change of our school from a high school to a middle school. We were cut off from our past by loosing a part of our future.

The questions I was left with after the reunion were many. Questions like, why did some stay in our hometown and some leave? Why did those who left never come back, why did most of those who stayed wished they had left? Why could I only find one classmate who left and then after years finally came back? Is any part of us the same person that existed back when we were in high school together or has time changed us into completely different people? Why were those who were not there not there? Are we a successful class? How do we define success? Did high school prepare us for our future by giving us what we needed or by showing us what we lacked? Was high school the peak of our lives or the sending of us off to the beginning of our learning to live? Why is high school graduation a transition marker for us when who we are not is probably not very close to who we were then? Why do we come to the reunions? For a sense of completion; or hope; or a taste of the familiar; or closure; or to impress; or for the reassurance that we are all okay and that maybe our lives are okay even if they took unexpected turns?

Reflections from Germany III

On the last night I was in Germany a newly met friend, Michael, one of Rev. Bernt-Ekkart’s closest friends took me out for dinner while Bernt had a church meeting to attend too, amazing how a pastor would have to work on a vacation day. Michael, who was not native to the area but had fallen in love with the city we were in and the surrounding communities decided to take me to a nearby village for dinner. He also wanted to work on his English skills and thought that the best way would be with a dinner conversation.

So we got into his car which had a convertible top, he cranked up his stereo using his iPod which he had filled with classic American rock music so that I would be at home, and we took off through the city to the edge of town where we boarded a car ferry and crossed over the Rhine river into the countryside on the far shore.

We headed through the fields and countryside for about five miles until we entered a small town with a village at the edge. We parked in a gravel lot and stopped by the outdoor beer tent where we each got a 2.0ml glass of the local beer. After quenching our thirst with locals who had recently gotten off work for the day we headed over to the walled village near by.

The village was called Zons, a medieval village built around 1372, think about this, Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492, over a hundred years after this village was built. You could see the age in stones that someone had carried and stack hundreds of years ago. You could also see that the mortar between the stones had been continually replaced as time wore it away. We walked up to the gatehouse, which still had wooded doors and metal hinges that looked to be original and hand made hundreds of years ago. The streets were cobblestones and looked as old as the walls. We walked into the village and it was immediately apparent that this was not a tourist destination. It was a real village inhabited by real people who had lived there forever. Many of the houses looked still had hand cut wood in their framing with updated brick, work and modern windows. You could tell where a house had been replaced even if it was built to fit in you could see that difference between the really old homes and the newer homes.

We spent about an hour walking the streets touching the outer fortress like walls, putting our hands on the walls of old homes throughout the village. We found the church at the center of the town and were in awe at the ornate metal work on the wooden doors. We wanted to go in but the church was locked. On an outside was we found gravestones displayed with dates going back to the late thirteen hundreds. How do you explain what it is like to touch a stone carved by someone seven hundred years ago? Does anyone know anything about the person the stone was for or who carved it?

After walking around the village we realized that we were tired and hungry so we headed to a restaurant near the village gate. It was a family owned restaurant and the chef was the grandmother. They had been running the place for over a hundred years. The main part of the restaurant was in the village with a patio that sat on and over hung the wall where one could sit in a beer garden.

So there I sat, at a table for two conversing with Michael in an outdoor café erected on the wall of Zons facing the bank of the Rhine River. I was drinking espresso, the real kind that wakes you up instantly, and eating Muscovy duck over lettuce greens while Michael drank beer and ate a flatbread pizza with a local ham and goat cheese. The garden was filled with people conversing in German and occasionally looking at us suspiciously as we spoke in English. My guess is that few of them knew enough English to know what we were talking about. As I watched the sun setting and felt the warm dry breezing all I could think about was that God is good. It was God who brought me here, God who connected me with all the wonderful people I had met, God who had me sitting in a conversation with Michael enjoying the abundance God has placed in my life. And I marveled at how God’s whisper is often the loudest in the simplest of places and during the simplest of times.

Reflections from Germany II

My trip to Germany was fantastic. I even got the opportunity to go canoeing down the Wupper River with a confirmation class and their parents. I even steered the canoe so that my pastor friend, Olaf, whom I was with and who has a history of falling out of canoes into rivers stayed dry the whole trip. I visited a Catholic Cathedral over a thousand years old, two Protestant Cathedrals each over five hundred years old, a church that had just celebrated two hundred and seventy-five years, and a couple of churches that were rebuild using the stones of older church that were destroyed by the bombing of World War II. I even made it to two different castles, one near Rimsheid and one in Wewelsburg. The first was a modern castle built to the blue prints of a medieval castle and the other was a Renaissance castle being converted to a medieval castle by the German SS as their spiritual headquarters and what my colleagues called the, Heart of Darkness.

I even made it to the church where the Barman Declaration was written by one of my favorite theologians, Karl Barth, and signed by a second great theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, along with many other pastors in opposition to the Nazi party, Hitler and what they were doing with Germany as a nation. The original church was bombed to the ground and the new one stands on its footprint build from the stones of the bombed church. The Barman Declaration was the Protestant Christian churches loudest cry out in opposition to the evil it saw the Nazis representing and those who signed it were persecuted. During the war the Nazis removed the church council at Barman and the pastors and place a Nazis council and pastors in place. The original council sent letters to every member saying you need to choose God or the Nazis and make a stand to which almost every single church member chose God and backed the original church council and pastors causing the Nazis to leave the church alone for the rest of the war. Today a Jewish synagogue stands ten feet from the church as the missing thesis from the Barman Declaration addressing the Nazis hatred and treatment of the Jews.

But the best part of the trip was not the colloquy, not the beautiful scenery I saw, not the coffee or ice cream, not the wonderful sausages, not the castles or churches or wonderful villages, no, none of these. What made the trip so fantastic were the new friendships I started, in particular friendships with three pastors I got to know along with parts of their families. I spent much of my time with Rev. Olaf Wassmuth and got to spend some time with his wife and children. I also spent much of my time with Rev. Bernd-Ekkehart Scholten and was able to meet his wife and one of his best friends, Michael. And then I got to spend a bit of time with Dr. Susanne Wolf and her family. Their hospitality toward me, their willingness to try and answer all my questions and explain things I didn’t understand was wonderful. They even got my dry sense of humor and liked it, which is not always easy when speaking with people from a different culture.

If I hadn’t gone anywhere or scene any of Germany other than the facility we were at, there friendship would have been enough. They had as many questions for me as I had for them and they wanted to hear my story and share their own just as much as I wanted to theirs and share mine. And they really wanted to learn about my life as a minister just as much as I wanted to learn about their life as a minister. We have been emailing each other ever since I got back. Olaf even posted a bunch of pictures that he took on a website that I can access and enjoy where he and I were exploring a castle with his wife and one of his daughters.

What brought us together and allowed us to communicate even when we didn’t have the words was our faith in God and our sense of God’s grace and love in our lives. We were brothers and sisters in Christ and our friendship was birthed out of God’s love. This is what life is about, finding God’s love in the people around us.