Brian McLaren was raised in an evangelical home and even thought of becoming the Billy Graham of this generation. He married a Roman Catholic and they started having homemade soup and bread suppers once a week. These morphed into a fellowship and Bible study group and eventually a church. He eventually was asked to be its pastor.
He observed that, for the most, part church pastors preach to the choir institutional maintenance. "Normal" people didn't understand the language and pastors didn't understand their questions, doubts and concerns.
40% of the American population attends church regularly and this number is shrinking. Of those that streamed down the aisles at Billy Graham crusades and prayed the sinners prayer, over 90% them were already lifelong churchgoers!
Unless the church wants to become a small, isolated enclave we need to welcome the unchurched majority with all of their questions, uncertainties, skepticism and honesty - requiring us to listen without judgment or condemnation.
He found that giving the pat answers we often hear in church just didn't work with his congregation or with him, after a spiritual crisis he went on a quest looking for authenticity. He felt his theology unraveling - rather an occupational hazard for a pastor! Long walks alone, praying and wondering - this was a scary and tough time.
Historically, nearly all of our Protestant denominations have been formed in the modern era - the institutional children of the era of Sir Isaac Newton, the conquistadors, colonialism and capitalism. Each denomination made sense of Christianilty through the "lines and boxes" (or lens) of modernity even rewriting and rearranging the ancient "data" of Christianity in a modern program, paradigm or framework.
Today the modern paradigm with its absolute scientific laws, consumerist individualism and rational certainty is giving way to a new post-modern paradigm of pluralism, relativism, globalism, and uncertainly more akin to humble confidence. Liberal and conservative Christianity, both protestant and Roman Catholic increasingly react to one another and are losing touch with the changing world around them.
By and large all churches have lost the 18 to 35 generation and Catholics extend that to 55. During the 80s and 90s the conservative Evangelicals seemed immune to this trend - suggesting their theological and socioeconimic conservatism was the secret to their statistical success. However, their trend lines are also going south now.
Phyllis Tickle claims that every 500 years or so the Christian faith holds a "rummage sale" and eliminates extra baggage that has accumulated during that time and retains "essential travel gear" thus opening a new chapter in Christian history. [500 AD - Great Collapse of the Roman Empire. 1000 - the Great Schism, 1500 - the Great Reformation, today - she proposes the Great Emergence] Others have said similar things, Kunz's paradigmatic shifts, Harvey Cox's Ages... He proposes that today we are thankfully leaving the Age of Belief [which busied itself burning heretics]. "Dynamic faith that moves mountains was out; static belief that burns or banishes heretics was in. Catalytic faith as an agent of social transformation was out; codified belief as a tool of social control was in...I recall Wood Allen's statement that if Jesus could see what people have done in his name, he would 'never stop throwing up.' " Today we enter the Age of the Spirit and something is trying to be born among those of us who follow Jesus Christ. Now nearly 500 years later, Martin Luther's ninety-five theses have completed their job. It's time for another tipping point; it's time, we might say, for a ninety-sixth thesis.
But different - we already have a enough hate in the world - and enough debate much of which is inversely proportional in intensity to the actual importance of the topic. Questions inspire new conversations that can launch us on a new quest. A quest for new was to believe and new ways to live and serve faithfully in the way of Jesus, a quest for a new kind of Christian faith,
W go back to the pastor of our Pilgrims whose sermon I quoted out the outset of this discussion - "If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as you were to receive any truth from ministry; for I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word...For though they [Luther and Calvin] were precious shining lights in their time, yet God has not revealed his whole will to them. And were they now living, they would be as ready and willing to embrace further light, as they had received."
My prayer [as written by McLauren]: Lord, I acknowledge that I have made a mess of what Jesus started...I understand that many good Christians will not want to participate in our quest, and I welcome their charitable critique...I choose to seek a better path into the future than the one I have been on. I desire to be born again as disciples of Jesus Christ. Now grant me wisdom and guide me in my quest, and create something new and beautiful in and among us for the good of all creation and to your glory, Living God.
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