The 21st Century Church, Part Three: Leadership

I am always comforted when I read about the disciples. They consistently misunderstand Jesus, who he is, and why he came, just as I often do.

Over and over again the disciples persist in their belief that Jesus came to be a conquering king who would throw out the Roman oppressors by force. For them, Jesus was not just a leader, but a ruler who would do everything for them and deliver Israel from her occupation.

In many ways, we have a similarly lopsided view of leadership. We look for decisive leaders who will lead the charge and tell us exactly what to do. This is especially apparent in our church experience today. In most churches, we look to the pastor, priest, or minister to lead us, almost to the point of having them serve as faith surrogates — having them believe for us, telling us what to think, and taking care of the difficult questions so we don't have to.

That's not to say we don't need leadership. We do, but we don't need clergy to do all of the heavy work for us. We need people who can guide discussions and we need mentors, but we don't need the kind of leader who becomes the focus of church instead of the message. Jesus did not come to be that kind of leader. Jesus came to exemplify servant leadership — a person who leads by walking the walk.

Peter Rollins believes that the church of the future requires a different type of leader: One who refuses to lead. What we need are facilitators, people with expertise in theology and worship who can nudge us in the right direction; conversation moderators instead of de facto heads of the church.

It isn't the fault of our current leadership that church has become a spectator sport. We don't want to take responsibility. We don't want to assume the risk that comes with servant leadership.

But if we are going to be serious about following the path of Jesus we need to get down in the trenches. Only by getting our hands dirty in the work of faith can we ever claim ownership of our identity as followers of Jesus — as Christians we need leaders who push us to think, to question, and to discover on our own. We cannot live vicariously through our leaders.

If we don't take on that mantle of leadership, we as a whole can never hope to truly know what it means to be a disciple. We have been given a task to be the light of the world and bring justice to the nations and it is only by carrying out that mission that we make our faith real and keep Christianity relevant to the world.

The 21st Century Church, Part Two: Passion & Compassion

I heard somewhere that people have been using the word "church" incorrectly for centuries. "Church" has come to used as a noun — a word for the building, and occasionally applied to the people who gather inside its protective walls. However, "church" takes on a different meaning when you use it as a verb instead. The verb "chuch" becomes a action or a behavior — an experience instead of the physical bricks and mortar.

That's the kind of church that I long for. Nowhere in the Bible can I find the place where Jesus commanded his disciples to go build a bunch of cathedrals. So often, we "go to church," meaning that we go to a building that houses our entire religious experience. What a mundane way to experience faith. If we limit it to just the confines of four walls for one hour, one day a week, then we have completely missed the point.

This is yet another reason why I think the (noun) Church is struggling. There's very little satisfaction in such a shallow experience. In Acts 2:42-47, we get a very different sense of the experience of being church: "They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds^* to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home^* and ate their food with glad and generous^* hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved."^44454647

That is what our experience could be — a dynamic church of devotion to teaching, fellowship, and community. An experience that combines passion for scripture and contemplation with a deep passion for outreach and goodwill. We, too, could praise God with glad and generous hearts, but to do so, we need to open the doors of our exclusive cliques. We have to leave the building and show compassion for our neighbors with the passion and zeal of the disciples gathered at Pentecost.

Some denominations are better at this than others (though now is not the time or place to be drawing those distinctions) and that is why I believe it is vitally necessary that a new, emerging branch of Christianity embrace the qualities of many diverse groups.

A 21st century Christianity should combine passion for God with compassion for those in need. Only then will it be relevant in our postmodern world.

The 21st Century Church, Part One: Egalitarianism

It has been over 2,000 years since Jesus — the Word made flesh — came to live and die among us. 2,000 years since the teachings of a radical young Jewish rabbi inspired the founding of a major world religion. There have been many changes in Christendom since those early days and sometimes it can be hard to tell what parts of our church experience have been there from the beginning and which have accumulated over time.

The question I have is: Do we need all this extra stuff? How important is the ceremony and frills to our relationship with God? I know I'm not the only one asking these questions. I think most people are asking them deep down. What we need is not just an answer, but a new direction. The church is going to change in the 21st century. And I'm going to humbly attempt to articulate how in my next few blog posts.

The first big shift I see is away from the hierarchical church system we see today. I was privileged to have a foretaste of that church last night, when I sat down with my good friend Ron and dissected this week's scripture readings. What emerged from the evening was a deeper understanding of the text than could ever be gained from a sermon (no offense to any members of the clergy who might read this).

I suspect that this is much like the early Christian church in the first decades after Jesus' death and resurrection — a group of equals sitting down at a table, breaking bread together and discussing the tricky questions of theology and practice.

This our heritage, and I suspect it is also our future. There was no distinction between those behind the altar and those in the pews. There was discussion in an egalitarian community. Church, therefore, is not an individual experience, but a communal one.

A non-hierarchical church centered around the Word and the Eucharist, where we are all equal members of the priesthood and engaged in deep, ongoing conversation and discovery. That's the church I want to be a part of.