the parish

Interview, Part Two

Q: There are many examples of themed worship services in the US designed to attract 'seekers' by virtue of their musical style (hymnal, rock, etc.) Why is this such a bad thing? Surely we all have preferences that attract us to certain denominations or friendship groups?

A: I don’t have a problem with churches offering diverse worship styles. I’m concerned with the critique that Jacques Ellul made concerning technique as a fallen power. Music is cultural language. There is absolutely nothing wrong with speaking the language of the culture you’re trying to reach. There is a problem with applying technique in the place of trusting the Spirit. Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre have pointed out that the Church is a socio-linguistic community with a distinct language and ethos, even politic. We can speak the language of the parent culture to a point, but eventually we have to teach people the language of the Church.

On a positive note there is a church in Little Rock, AR, called Mosaic; it was profiled recently in Christianity Today. They have a half dozen different worship teams, including Latino, African American, traditional, and a few others I can’t remember. They encourage everyone to come on the weeks where they don’t like the music style because part of living in community is learning to respect and even like the differences between us. Megas try to segregate based on subculture or taste. Since the kingdom of God is diverse, shouldn’t we be trying to integrate and appreciate the differences?

Q: If partnering with commercial, consumer retail outlets such as Starbucks as has happened in the US attracts new people into a church environment, why is it such a bad thing? Where should the line be drawn in such partnerships?

A: People should be attracted into church because someone in that church has gone to the trouble of developing a friendship with them. However, if the church has an arrangement with Starbucks to put a kiosk in the foyer, the question becomes a matter of financial entanglements. Is the church willing to swear off the profits? If profit becomes a motivator it sort of changes the calculus by which we decide what partnerships are legitimate. Ultimately, an unbeliever knows he can get a latte at Starbucks without having to endure bad music and worse preaching. The Starbucks is there for the believers who want to be pampered. In one egregious example of ecclesial prostitution, a church in Texas recently mailed out $5 Starbucks vouchers to several postal codes. The only catch was the vouchers had to be redeemed at the Starbucks in the church. Is this how we want to bring people to church? Do we have to pay them? A mega in my hometown gives out $10,000 every year to kick off their financial series. I suppose beer (and you know I have no objection to beer) and boobs (nor to boobs) would bring ‘em into church too. Why not?

Q: One of the difficulties facing contemporary churches is how to cut through adequately and effectively be multi-racial and multi-cultural. Is this truly achievable and why is it so important?

A: I think I covered part of this above. I don’t pretend to have an answer for this problem. Race may be a bigger principality in the U.S. than anywhere else on earth. But the Church has been dominated by Whites for centuries. The question, I think, is can we surrender our arrogance and allow ourselves to be taught by believers of other races? Can we put aside the notion that we’ve been doing this for so long that we get to determine the parameters of the conversation and listen to what the experience of God of our brothers and sisters of other races has been? And, can we not be so damned afraid of each other?

Q: American prosperity preachers are generally viewed cynically in the UK. However, there are other ways in which we can manipulate the term 'blessing of God' to mean things which aren't scriptural or logical. Which ways do you perceive and what traps should church leaders be wary of falling into?

A: In the U.S., megas are particularly effective at wedding conservative politics or so-called family values to evangelical Christianity. There is always the danger that I will define my culture and my place in the culture as sanctified. I would hazard a guess that no megachurch in the U.S. has ever critiqued capitalism through the lens of the Hebrew prophets. No mega has asked where the ridiculous trinkets we buy in so-called Christian bookstores come from. No thought is given to global policies that might cast us in a negative light. Oppression of developing nations? Environmental concerns? These aren’t issues in megas because the focus isn’t really on helping God with the redemption of the world; the focus is on a truncated soteriology and then allowing me to believe that I’m okay just the way I am, even if just the way I am relies on oppression, exploitation, or political expediency.

On another track, megas tend to view growth as the blessing of God. They never seem to ask about the worldwide growth of Islam or Mormonism. Is that the blessing of God too? Growth has become an idol of sorts and it is used, under the banner of evangelism, as a litmus test for all that megas do. Everything can be justified under the rubric of “saving souls.”

Q: Some would argue that Church's market themselves whether they like to or not; everything from a church's web design down to their order of services to whether they use fair trade coffee or not says something about the people that go there. If that is the case then at what point does church "marketing" go too far?

A: Ludwig Wittgenstein said every utterance has a home. In other words, all concepts, ideas, ideals, ethics, etc., make sense within a proper context. You can’t simply pull vocabulary from one cultural/linguistic/economic system (what Wittgenstein called a language game) and introduce it into a different system and not bring in some of the assumptions that give it coherence in its original home. Marketing has introduced demographics, homogeneous growth models, targeting and branding to the church. In marketing, the criterion for success is a successful marketing campaign. How do you define success when you mix marketing and church? I believe faithfulness is the telos of the church, not growth, not buildings, not offerings, nor any other false telos. Churches can have web sites, take out ads in papers, run television commercials, etc. That is not necessarily to adopt a marketing ethos. It’s simply to put yourself out there so someone who is looking can find you. But who is looking for a church? Unbelievers? Not usually. Marketing has had the unhappy (unless you’re a mega) result of attracting Christians from one church to another that seems to offer a better product. The moment you decide that you’ll accept transfer growth as a sign of the success of your marketing program, you’ve signed on to a different language game. You’re using the vocabulary of Christianity with the grammar of marketing. People should come to church because a friend invited them. We don’t want to do the hard work of developing friendships with people who are different from us, so we rely on techniques, marketing, gimmicks, productions, etc.

Q: Many evangelical churches are turning to business models and drawing upon business practices in a bid to increase their congregations and get people to engage with Church and Christianity again. If this is the language the modern mainstream most used to isn't this reasonable? What specifically is dangerous about this and what are the alternatives?

A: Most of this is answered above. I would like to add that most people don’t talk like business people. They talk like suburbanites or moms or teachers or any of dozens of other possibilities. The church has accepted the business models so the vocabulary of business has become ubiquitous in churches. We have grown used to it for that reason. Better by far to become used to the language of the church. We can’t pretend that the Church is not a cultural-linguistic community. To be full participants in that community means to know how to speak the language. Again, increasing congregations can happen a few different ways. Rare is the megachurch that does so through conversion growth.

Q: If a church sees a surge in growth and goes from being a medium sized congregation of five hundred or so to over a thousand is it not inevitable that the community has to be managed in a way not too dissimilar to megachurches?

A: Carl George has long contended that churches must make a conscious decision to break certain church growth barriers. You don’t become a megachurch by accident. Church planting can alleviate growth strains and multiply the reach of churches in very healthy ways.

Interview, Part One

I'm posting the full text of my interview with the British newspaper in two parts. This may answer some of the questions my abstract generated. These are the germinal thoughts that will become part of my presentation. Thanks to Goz for the opportunity.

Q: What worries you about the Megachurch phenomenon?

A: Three things. First, the megachurch model relies on consumerism and individualism to flourish. It might be possible to grow a church of five or ten thousand without pandering to so-called felt needs, but I don’t believe I’ve seen it done. In the U.S., churches are currently asking what services they can provide that aren’t being provided (i.e., Starbucks coffee in the foyer, game platforms for the youth, fruit smoothies, Krispy Kreme donuts, McDonalds, bookstore, etc.). There is very little wrong with any of these things, but when the purpose is to provide a better product to shoppers, then the telos of church has changed from cruciform life or faithfulness to satisfying consumers. Barth called this the difference between a church operating out of agape and one operating out of eros. The Church is called to agape, not eros.

Second, the megachurch, and now especially the multi-site, model has led to a commodification of the Gospel. Sermons are focused on what Dallas Willard calls “sin management.” Rather than tying the preaching cycle to the lectionary or some sort of theological center, pastors are “preaching” about finances, parenting, marriage, social issues like abortion and homosexuality, and traditional cultural roles. All of those things are valid topics, but is Sunday morning the best time to talk about issues? In order to communicate with the broadest possible audience, the sermons are made as generic as possible. The Scriptures are reduced to pithy sayings or practical advice or a guidebook for life. The Gospel, or preaching as an opportunity for a Word of God event (as in Barth where God reveals Godself by means of Godself to the listener) to happen is absolutely neutered by this reduction of preaching to a commodity that must serve some “practical” need. As Kenneson and Street point out in their wonderful critique Selling Out the Church: The Dangers of Church Marketing, whatever is perceived by the consumer to be a felt need is in fact a felt need for the purpose of advertising, preaching and ministry.

Third, there has been a redefinition of the role of the pastor in the megachurch model. I’m not sure which church growth guru came up with the metaphor of rancher as opposed to shepherd, but the trend has caught on. Pastors no longer pastor in the megachurch model. Or, to hear them tell it, they pastor a staff who then pastor the church. Now I think metaphors matter. Hans Frei, following Barth, argued that metaphors in Scripture matter. As part of revelation, they weren’t simply plucked out of thin air and applied willy nilly. If shepherd was the controlling metaphor for pastor, there was probably an idea in the mind of Jesus and the early church as to why that metaphor mattered. Any notion of the pastor as a man or woman who preached a six-week series on managing household finances and investments to a group of people whose names the pastor didn’t know, and whose children were strangers to the pastor, and whose lives were hidden from the pastor, and for whom the pastor only prayed sort of generically (i.e., Lord, bless these ten thousand people whose names I don’t know.) surely wasn’t in the mind of the church leaders who wrote texts about shepherds and called Jesus that Great Shepherd of the Sheep. Shepherds care about sheep, including individual sheep, thus the stories of leaving the ninety-nine. Shepherds know them, care for their wounds, tend to their needs. Megachurch pastors have no time for that. They “pastor” cowboys, if we’re to follow the metaphor, who then work the ranch on behalf of the rancher. It’s time for megachurches to fess up that they’ve adopted a Catholic model of bishops and ministers. The megachurch pastor functions as a bishop. Now megas are talking about franchising and branding so that they can replicate themselves in geographically disconnected regions. The Catholic Church has been doing that for millennia; they simply refer to their franchises as parishes.

Q: In the past you have said that you don't think Megachurches are a valid expression of God's church. That is a bold and wide statement. Can you unpack it a bit for us.

I think a church has to be small enough for people to know each other. The Gospel is about a group of people who covenant to live in community with accountability and mutual affection and support—all that goes with the idea of community. Megachurches may offer a valid worship event, but they aren’t offering church. They stress a small group model for real discipleship. I’ve always argued that the small group is actually the church, and again, whichever staff pastor oversees the small group leaders is a bishop with ministers under his authority.

A megachurch worship event is a very sterile thing. Worship is supposed to shape us into a particular kind of people. If I go to receive a blessing or an event that is tailored to my felt needs and I’m never required to minister to my fellow parishioners, what kind of person am I being shaped to be? A narcissist? A consumer?

Q: In the present day, when the Christian church is under such attack from the mainstream (esp. in the UK) many would claim it's counterintuitive to criticise certain Churches over their management style and presentation when they ostensibly seem to be contributing in a positive way to their communities and steadily growing. What would you say to this?

A: I think tradition is an ongoing conversation between concerned parties about what is best for the community. Isn’t that a paraphrase of Alasdair MacIntyre? I think I read too much. The conversation, the critique never hurts. What hurts are ad hominem attacks, unfounded criticisms and ignoring ecclesiological errors that are counterproductive to the development of the community of God. There will always be enemies outside, just as there will always be enemies inside; that doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility to clean our own house—I believe the NT refers to the idea that judgment must begin at the house of God. These aren’t just management issues. Worship is one of the vital tasks of the church, and some things we do are good and some are bad. I’m of the opinion that bad theology leads to bad praxis, just as bad ecclesiology leads to bad Christians. It’s become fashionable to write off the critiques of theologians as too academic or too highbrow or too elitist. Let’s be clear; everyone does theology. The question is good or bad theology.

There are many organizations that contribute to their communities in positive ways. If that was the only telos of the Church, I’d probably leave megachurches alone. I repeatedly apply the Barthian critique to megas because Barth is the last great theologian who lived at a time when the position and standing of the Church before the culture and government really mattered. Sometimes it is not the task of the Church to be good citizens as defined by the parent culture.

Help Me With My Math

I read that the WB and UPN are merging to form one network. Does that mean we'll be twice or half as likely to see crappy programming? Just wondering what sort of metric you use for that kind of problem.

Conference Abstract

In case you're interested, here are the synopsis and abstract I submitted for the Christianity in a Consumer Culture Conference.

Synopsis: The effect of consumer culture on ecclesiology has been a revisioning of worship as entertainment event and a de-emphasis of the gospel story as a competing narrative. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Christianized seeker-sensitive and megachurch business models. These two models in particular rely on the dominant narrative of the parent culture instead of the deconstructive and restorative narrative of the gospel. This restorative narrative helps cultivate an alternative way of life, best illustrated in the metaphor and eschatological reality of the kingdom of God.

Abstract: The question any congregation must answer is: what is the goal of our fellowship or to what end are we meeting and ministering? In the past thirty years the American evangelical church has undergone a shift in teleological emphasis. The new emphasis is represented by evangelical jargon such as “seeker-sensitive,” “purpose-driven,” and even “contemporary worship.” Although the phrases seem banal enough on the surface, their execution relies on business models and methodology that require the church to accept the dominant narrative of commerce. This commerce narrative redefines the purpose of Bible reading, prayer, spiritual disciplines, outreach, and every other task in which the church engages. The justification for this shift in teleological emphasis has been an insistence that the telos of church is growth, but this notion is also borrowed from the dominant commerce narrative.

When the telos of the church changes, practices and beliefs necessarily change for the sake of programming, proclamation, and growth within the new strategy. Some of these practices and beliefs are not dispensable; they establish the legitimacy of the church’s mission and identity. In order for ecclesiology to be effective in our current context, the Church must rediscover the competitive nature of the gospel story, tell it in a way that deconstructs culturally dominant narratives, and apply the gospel narrative to develop practices that shape believers into citizens of the kingdom of God.

This presentation relies on Karl Barth’s critique of the Church using the agape versus eros rubric, and on George Hunsinger’s read of Barth’s underlying assumptions in the Barmen Declaration, especially the notion that the telos of the Church is faithfulness, not efficiency or effectiveness. Some of the areas to be critiqued include the commodification of life, transactional relationships, spirituality as self-actualization, and the consumerist ethos of the church growth model.

After emailing back and forth with Mark a bit about Emergent, I added this bit to the final synopsis: The presentation will use the trajectory of the Emergent brand as an example of the way church becomes commodified and co-opted by the consumerist ethos and marketing methodology.

I'll have 60-90 minutes to present and generate questions and discussion. I suspect that if there is any discussion it will center around my distinction between emergent (the reform movement reliant on postmodern theology) and Emergent (the brand reliant on personalities and marketing strategy).

They Like Me! They Really Like Me!

You'll notice I've placed a banner in the right column. It's for the...well...you can read it, but it's for the Christianity in a Consumer Culture Conference in April of this year. I submitted an abstract back in October or November and they accepted it, so I'll be a presenter at the conference. I may post the abstract later, but the gist is a critique of the mega/multi-site movement using Barth. The presentation will also contain a charitable critique of emergent and a less than charitable critique of Emergent.

These guys have done a great job of putting this together. Rodney Clapp will be a speaker. Follow the link and read all about it. If you can make it to the conference, I'd love to meet/see you there.

Talking About Race

For those of you in the OKC area, we'll be hosting a forum on race relations this Sunday night. We'll have panelists talking about three questions:

1. In what ways, subtle or overt, does the Church participate in racism?
2. What hope do we have as the people of God for reconciliation in this area?
3. What steps can we take to begin the process of reconciliation?

We're pretty excited about our panelists, but especially Pastor John Reed, Jr., of Fairview Missionary Baptist Church in OKC. He's been the pastor there for 42 years. He's been a Civil Rights leader in this city for decades. We'll also have Shirley Cox from Catholic Charities, and Jorge Rodriguez, a Latino business owner near the Southern Nazarene University campus. Jorge's family owns Java Joint, a coffee shop that countless SNU students have visited over the years. Not sure yet if our own pastor will be joining the panel, but I'm hopeful.

If you are in the area and want to participate, it starts at 6:00 p.m. in the sanctuary at OKC First Nazarene, 4400 NW Expy. The choir from Fairview Baptist will begin and end the forum, so even if you hate conversation, you gotta love the choir. You can email me if you want more information.

Thanks, Gordon

I got an email today from Gordon McClellan, the publisher of Christian Network Journal. I should say former publisher. Gordon will be closing up shop at CNJ as of this month. Gordon started the magazine as a way of educating the public, especially Christians, about pressing issues of our day. He looked at an issue from as many sides as possible and allowed readers to make up their own minds. What a marvelous idea! In one notable issue he had interviews with Bill Clinton, James Baker III, and Yasser Arafat. He did great work. I wrote for about half of the CNJ issues, and it was challenging, interesting work. He's returning to full-time vocational ministry in the PCUSA. They are fortunate to have him. So, thanks, Gordon, and God bless.

Missed This Friday, etc.

Since I'm often accused of being a liberal, I feel it's only fair to point out instances when I think liberals are dishonest and, well, bad writers. Mollie over at GetReligion posted this piece on Friday about the Washington Post's coverage of former NARAL President Kate Michelman. Mollie does an excellent job of skewering the PR masquerading as journalism, so I don't need to add any editorial comments. And, no, I'm not reopening the debate about abortion over here; I'm just pointing out how sometimes bad journalism in mainstream publications can be used in the advancing of a cause, however dubious that cause may be. Read the comments following the piece as well. The Reader's Digest parody is dead on.

On a different note: Happy Martin Luther King Day.

On a very happy note: Welcome Harper Grace McCarty to the world! Yesterday at 1:00 p.m., the McCartys of McCarty Musings welcomed their daughter to the world. I'm sure they will have pictures up on their blog soon. The hot, baby-loving hairdresser wife held little (9 lb. 5 oz.! Little?) Harper last night and pronounced her beautiful, perfect, and in need of a haircut. I can't think of two people better equipped to be loving, nurturing, excited, capable, wondeful parents than Micah and Kristen. Between Micah's love of film and music and his stoic acceptance of responsibility and hard work and Kristen's whimsical, magical imagination and love of learning and books, I don't know how this child can fail to be the world's most famous, hardest-working farmer/novelist/feminist/culture critic. Mother and baby are well. Dad is thrilled and almost goofy in love with his new baby. God's grace to the McCartys. I can't wait to see who Harper becomes.

Whose Holiday?

The parish step-child's school was involved in a controversy this past week. The school cancelled the last day of classes prior to Christmas break due to a power outage. The administration decided to make the day up tomorrow. (Aside: nothing happens the last day of school before Christmas break. Nothing. Cookies. Punch. Gifts. Why make it up?) The NAACP, Clara Luper, and other civic leaders got involved and the short version is that the parish stepchild will not have school tomorrow. When the principal called to tell me that she would not have class, I told him I thought it was an excellent decision. He seemed surprised.

Over the past couple weeks I've heard the talk begin again about MLK Day. Every year we do this. Every year I hear white people talk about a "black holiday." Schools allow African-American students to be excused or businesses allow African-American employees to take the day off. Most of the churches who recognize MLK Day are non-white. I'm embarrassed to say that my alma mater starts the winter semester on MLK Day every year. And they wonder why they don't do well recruiting non-white students. Hmm... Whenever I hear about how far we've come with race relations in this country, and I'm not denying that we have at some level, I think about the white population's response to MLK Day.

It is not a "black holiday." It is not a holiday just for African-Americans. Until white America recognizes the unique contribution that Dr. King made on behalf of all humanity, we're going to remain mired in unhelpful racial categories and stereotypes. To achieve civil rights for any part of humanity is to lift the dignity of all humanity. When liberty is extended to the disenfranchised, the previous oppressors are ennobled, the oppressed are humanized, and the hopeless find new hope. As Dr. King said frequently, he wasn't asking for America to extend special privileges; he was asking them to live up to the promise of their founding documents. I hope that his admonition isn't lost on us today. We have the potential to live up to the promise of our founding documents as Christians as well.

Blue Like Jazz, Part II

Dino as usual asks a series of excellent, clarifying questions. I was going to answer him in the comments, but decided to air it here for those who don't wander into the deep water of comments.

1. Could your hang up with spirituality and non-religious be just a semantics issue? I think the idea or implication was that there was a way to talk about faith and spirtitual matters that didn't fall into the judgmental/fundementalist, TBN, John Hagee, Bailey Smith, Freddie Gage, fill in the blank, type of religious talk.

Miller wasn't addressing faith from an anti-fundamentalist perspective. He's addressing faith from two positions: non-belief, as in Reed College, and disillusionment with church, as in his own personal story. Like Tim, you seem to see a polemic against fundamentalism in BLJ. I don't think that's what it is. Again, I think it's a defense of evangelical orthodoxy.

And I don't think it's a semantics issue. He wants to talk about spirituality so he doesn't have to talk about religion. As Kevin points out, I want to talk about religion, religious words, sacraments, rituals, and all the things that genuinely go with church in such a way that the words are redeemed and incorporated into the community. We needn't abandon them. The church is a cultural-linguistic community, and as such, we speak a different language. Part of conversion is learning that language. The American church (especially mega/seeker) has abadoned the vocabulary of faith, and the result has been a loss of a great deal of their identity and their ability to recognize the difference between church and world. In the absence of any particular hermeneutic by which to interpret the world over against the idea of church, they have fallen back on what Kevin called the personal moral code. I don't drink; I don't cuss; I am Christian. That's the influence of pietism, which I'll bitch about below. He may be right that using the word spirituality avoids much of the baggage that comes along with using the term Christianity, but it's not as if spirituality, after three decades of hoodoo-voodoo New Age nonsense, has no baggage.

2. By old doctrines do you mean old Evangelical/Reformed doctrines? Do you mean historical doctrines of the early church fathers? Do you many any doctrine that has been formulated within the 2000 years of church history?

No. I mean a couple things, and I wasn't clear about the difference. What Miller is defending is evangelical schlock that pretends to be Reformed doctrines or Wesleyan doctrines, but is actually doctrines that have been twisted by pietism and revivalism and the American experience so that conversion is now a choice or decision that leads to nothing. For example, evangelicalism has embraced the perseverance of the saints idea from Calvin without the Wesleyan emphasis on holiness to arrive at the idea that I can be saved and never really modify my behavior in any way that makes a substantial difference in someone else's life or without loving my enemies or forgiving those who harm me. Since shorty after the Reformation there has been a conversation or a dialectic happening in the Church that kept us all from agreeing on doctrines (Catholic, Reformed, Wesleyan, Lutheran, Anabaptist), but the liveliness of the conversation assured us that these were important issues and we ought to take them seriously even if we couldn't fully answer them or agree on them. Evangelicalism changed all that. Salvation becomes a 1-2-3 process of existential crisis, decision, conversion. It's all lined out for us in Four Spiritual Laws or Roman Roads or other formulae. The historic doctrines of the Church, argued about for centuries (but all traditions at least all agreeing on a change of life to prove our salvation), are redefined into some sort of self-actualizing, American dogma that uses the vocabulary of Christianity but uses it in conjunction with the grammar of the American experience or self-help psychology or pop sociology. This is the schlock that Miller is defending.

Another example. Miller uses the analogy of literary criticism to talk about climax and choice or decision. Chapter 3, I think. He misses the point. The climax of the story is not my decision to follow Christ. That makes the story a story about me—a very American (or human) thing to do. The climax of the story is found in the Resurrection; all else is denouement, including my decision to follow Christ. Even when evangelicals try to reorient the story so that "I" is not at the center, they locate the climax at the cross, so that the sins which afflict "I" are front and center. So, ultimately the attempt to eliminate "I" from the center leads to the catharsis of the subject at the expense of the Subject, thereby assuring another self-centered telling of the story. (Again, evangelicalism needs a dose of Barth and his understanding of the subject/object relationship between God and person.)

3. Are they wrong becuase they are old? Or do they need reinterpreting for a different historical and cultural context?

They are wrong for the reasons listed above. And, yes, they do need reinterpreting, but in such a way that the convert comes to understand the language of the church, not some hip new metaphor that, thank God, keeps us from sounding like church people. The metaphors we choose need to lead us back to the historic faith, to the story of the Gospel—a story that competes with all other stories and is not co-opted for the comfort of suburbanites—and to the Resurrection, not just the crucifixion. If the metaphors lead us there and not to evangelicalism, that great compromise with and retreat from the blistering critiques of modernity, then the metaphors will be good ones. Things aren't good just because they're different. I appreciate what Miller is trying to do. I just wish his goal was to lead people to Christianity, not evangelicalism.