Church Amalgamation before the Death Watch Begins

Mountainside United Church in Westmount (Montreal) is moving or amalgamating. As the article below suggests (to me at least) this raises all sorts of interesting questions for all of us, regardless of our denomination. Montreal’s situation is unique, of course, given the role language (to some degree) has played in the equation. But the underlying dynamics, where only a fraction of the people who used to go to church still do, is relevant to all church members, especially those of us who worship in large urban/suburban centres.

One of my parishioners who grew up at Mountainside noted that Montreal churches seemed more adept at amalgamating than Toronto churches. The subtext of her comment was something like this: “Why are there so many churches that insist on struggling on to the bitter end in Toronto? Why don’t we talk about amalgamation earlier, before the death throes set in, when there is still opportunity to do something new and exciting together?"

I think that when churches are forced to amalgamate because the alternative is death there will be little energy left over to do a new thing. Staving off death is the overriding goal, after all. I also believe that earlier, strategic amalgamation might allow the pursuit of other goals before energy and resources have evaporated. Such churches could consider multiple types of worship throughout the week and on Sundays, targeting services to different demographics. Resources for appropriate staffing, marketing, and outreach would not yet be used up. Congregations would arrive at the amalgamation service less anxious about survival and more willing to work on new ventures.

Lyle Schaller, the (mostly) mainline church admin expert, told me once that when two churches amalgamate, the final attendance numbers would finally level off at the level of the best attendance of the largest of the two churches amalgamating. He also suggested that the only way around this trend, which he had long observed, would be to amalgamate before the death watch set in. Death-watch amalgamations are so tempered by sadness, regret, emotional loss, and often, conflict, that they rarely succeed. What is needed to make amalgamation work, in other words, is vision and resources, not the last best hope for survival.

I think that those of us who have thought of amalgamation know this in our guts. But we have little stomach for change and its risks—including for ministers, potential job losses, and for members a whole new Sunday routine in a strange place. We’d rather soldier on till retirement, or till a better opportunity comes along, and we’d all love to avoid conflict and the pain that goes with hard (even if strategically smart) decisions. But maybe it is time for many more local churches to sit down together and talk this through, and maybe even dream a bit. It seems a small thing given that much of what we’ve tried in the past hasn’t worked at all.

What do you think?

Preaching "The Lion King" Instead of Scripture

         This coming Sunday I’m preaching The Lion King. Although we’ll read scripture during the service, a single image from The Lion King will serve as the sermon text. It’s the scene where Simba is lectured by his father, King Mufasa, for putting himself and his friend Nala in danger by disobeying him and visiting the Elephant Graveyard. While there, three hyenas almost manage to eat Simba and Nala for lunch. King Mufasa saves them in the nick of time. But he is angry that his son Simba has disobeyed him.

         Now, as Simba walks toward his father to receive his punishment, he puts his tiny paw into a huge footprint made by his father’s much larger paw. And that image, the naughty child’s paw in the magisterial father’s paw—that image is the sermon text.

Will Simba ever measure up? Will my preaching?

         This freedom is new for me. In seminary, I was taught that all sermons had scriptural texts. Not only that, it was the preacher’s unique job—something that he or she trained many years for—to get the interpretation of that text exactly right. There was a whole long process for doing so—I used to teach it, in seminary, the “hermeneutic spiral.” You read the text in Hebrew or Greek to make sure you catch interesting nuances not available in translation. Then you read the text in its immediate context, trying to discern how it fit into the passage it was found in. Then you compared it to similar texts in the Bible, in order to discern how it fit into its larger message. Then you fit the text into the larger “redemptive-historical” story of the Bible, the one where Jesus dies for everyone’s sins and is raised on the third day. All along the way you pretend to be able to bracket your own prejudices, hopes, dreams, and ignorance. And finally, you figure out how to state your conclusions in a way that is relevant for people who live today.

         All along the assumption is that all of scripture is divinely inspired, that there are no mistakes in it, that it all fits together like a puzzle (even if at first it didn’t seem to), that every tense change and verbal mood fluctuation was intentional and important, and that all of this is authoritative for all of life and so on.

         You get the picture.

         But what happens when you don’t buy these assumptions anymore? When you don’t think it is all “God-breathed,” that it is all coherent? What happens when you recognize that scripture is full of inconsistencies, that you often can’t get into the mind of the original author, and that if you could you’d find that it was probably just as confused, inconsistent, stubborn as you are? How do you preach when you think that the Bible’s attitude towards gays is hateful, towards adulterers is far too harsh, that its attitude to slavery has been too long forgiven, its mythology of end times too fantastic and inconsistent, and overall its message about God is more confused and various and anthropomorphic and incredible than most conservative Christians are allowed to think?

         And how do you preach when in spite of all this, you still love scripture and are amazed by what you find in it?

         I’m feeling my way here. When I joined the United Church of Canada, four years ago, it was as if someone left the gate open. At first I galloped out of the coral and just reveled in the feeling of not being tied up anymore, not being restrained.

         But after awhile, once you’re free, you have to ask yourself, “what next?” and “Where to?” and “to what end?” That’s where I am now.

         So I’ve put together a couple of ideas that are (loosely) guiding me. They’re not a systematic theology of preaching or anything like that. I’m guessing that some will take strong issue with them, and others might be able to add helpful comments. So here are ten thoughts on preaching the Lion King instead of scripture.

1. I don’t believe that scripture has a divine authority that I carry with me into the pulpit. Such a belief is pure hubris. I’m too aware of my own prejudices and predispositions to believe in such authority. And given how many different versions of the truth are preached in many different pulpits each Sunday, the notion that there is some sort of divine authority that attends such confusion is just short of ridiculous.
2. But I do believe there are big themes in scripture that are worth sharing from the pulpit: shalom, justice, love of neighbor, mercy, grace, hope, forgiveness. These tend to be the big moral (not historical or theological) themes that churches have always theoretically agreed on (but often failed to live up to).
3. The problem with focusing on morality is that preaching can easily devolve into badgering. I try to remember that the big themes of scripture are not merely a list of “to-dos” but a panorama of insight, hope, mystery, longing, and inspirational history. Sill, I find “not badgering” is hard to do.
4. Most of scripture’s big themes have corollaries in other religions and philosophies, as well as in literature and popular culture. These other sources often illuminate scripture, confirm its wisdom—but at other times, improve on scripture. These other sources are benchmarks that help preachers avoid going off into left field.
5. But then, I don’t always need to go to scripture to find a great starting place for addressing these big themes. Sermons on musicals like Les Miz and cartoons like Lion King and books like Wizard of Oz or the epigraphs in Wade Davis’ marvelous The Wayfinders are fun, interesting, surprising, attention-grabbing places that I’ve started sermons lately.
6. I no longer parse texts to within an inch of their life believing that by doing so I can somehow better understand what God really meant to say or what the intent of the original author was. When preachers do this they’re (usually inadvertently) making a show of their training to insist on some doctrine they’ve been taught or a prejudice they hold. Many of these doctrines are debatable, and few of these doctrines are agreed upon by multiple denominations. If some great truth depends on parsing a single text correctly, it probably isn’t a great truth. Or even a minor one.
7. Which isn’t to say that preachers ought to ignore texts, or not love scripture. Scripture is the deep source of our tradition, our shared ancient memory, the galaxy in which we spin. But read it whole and don’t focus on its jots and tittles.
8. Writing a sermon isn’t a science. It involves weighing and sorting many strands of evidence, many factors, many possibilities. I think of my sermons as “spiritual op-eds” relevant for living life today.
9. Preaching is as much about the hopes and fears, the dreams and struggles that congregants face as it is about anything that might serve as a text for your sermon. In fact, these emotions and daily realities can be sermon texts.
10. Preaching is more about finding our way today than recovering the ancient past.

         I’m pretty sure I know what my friends in Evangelical circles will think of such musings. But I might be surprised. I’d like to hear more about what my new, theologically liberal friends think. What insight would you add?

Messing With Communion

            Thirty years ago, while attending seminary, my wife Irene and I belonged to a church that celebrated communion every Sunday. It was a church with many young families like ours, and full of gifted musicians. During weekly communion, while Taizé music played we stood in a circle and passed the bread and wine around. We all knew each other. Flutes, guitars, and piano played. It is a good memory.

            Communion is harder for me now.

            You see, I’m fine motor challenged—which is a fancy way of saying I’m clumsy.  Always have been. As a kid, when I kicked the soccer ball, it never went where I aimed. If I swung a bat, I whiffed. I tried hockey, one year, in a city league. I scored one goal. The team’s star shot from the point. The puck hit my ankle and bounced over the goal line. I limped off the ice.

            Not much has changed. If you walk through the church I serve and look carefully  you will find coffee stains all over the floor and stains in the carpet. You see, I’ve never learned the art of keeping my wrist steady. Whenever I buy new shirts, it’s usually because the old ones are full of wine stains. Ask Irene. I’m fine-motor challenged.

            My clumsiness also shows up on communion Sundays. When I pour the wine, I spill it. The lady who sets the table got so tired of sending the white communion tablecloth out for cleaning after communion that she bought a Plexiglas cover to put over the communion table. I am all thumbs. When I read the communion liturgy, I can’t figure out how to hold my papers, break the bread, and pour the wine gracefully. I should probably get an acolyte to help me. But the effort to get it all right also sets me on edge, makes me anxious. So I start mixing up lines, or I mix the gluten-free bread with the regular bread and the wine cup with grape juice cup. One Sunday I crumbled a whole loaf of gluten free bread on the floor as I served it.

            But I still look forward to communion Sundays. In spite of my clumsiness and anxiety. Why?

            I think the basic reason is that communion is a deep psychic solution for a problem I have. You see, Jesus seems very distant to me. Almost unreal.

            I know about Jesus, of course, from the Bible. I’ve studied Jesus carefully, using original Greek manuscripts. In seminary I parsed every word of Jesus’ parables. And I’ve read hundreds of books about Christianity, too: commentaries on the gospels, systematic theologies, and lately, lots of philosophical theology. But Jesus still seems very distant to me. So distant, in fact, that if Jesus had been a student in my grade one class, I probably wouldn’t have given him a Valentine’s card, except that my mother always made sure I never left anyone out.

            Part of the problem is that I’ve come to know Jesus mostly through studying him from afar, through books. I’ve never had a phone call from him. I’ve never had a cup of coffee with Jesus. I’ve never heard him speak to me through my heart, like, “take this job,” or “she’s the one.” I’ve never had dreams or visions from Jesus. I don’t have what some Evangelical Christians call a personal relationship with Jesus. How could I? Jesus hasn’t set foot on planet earth for 2000 years! When people say they have a personal relationship with Jesus I think they must be kidding themselves, that they are using the English language in ways that just don’t make everyday plain sense.

            And yet, I’ve shaped my whole life around this stranger. My parents read me stories about Jesus since I was a baby. I prayed to Jesus with my first words. I went to Christian grade school, high school, college and seminary. I’ve made a career out of telling people about Jesus, and to be like Jesus.

            Do you ever have this problem? This ambivalent relationship to Jesus? Where it seems that as long as Jesus is out of sight, he is hard to keep in mind? My kids live far away from Toronto. Sometimes, when I get busy, I forget to call, or write them an email, or send them a What’s App message. But it's a vicious circle right? Because when I don’t write, or call, or text, then they don’t write, or call, or text back. Pretty soon a couple of weeks have passed, and a day or two goes by when I hardly think of them—even though their ancient artwork is still on my office wall, and even though my grandson’s Lego is all over the house. It’s so easy for the living we love to drift apart.

            But if this is true for us and our kids and work colleagues and high school friends, how much more so when it comes to Jesus? I never even knew Jesus in the flesh! He’s like my first cousin, three-generations removed, Pieter Schuil, who died in 1901, but whose diary is on my desk. It’s hard to connect those words to a real person. And its even harder with this more ancient Jesus, to keep him top of mind, to be inspired by him, to really, really want to love like him, more than anything else in the world.

            Which gets me back to communion, and why I love it even though I’m clumsy and often make a mess of it. Communion is the one place, you see, where all this Jesus stuff suddenly seems less academic, less preachy, less distant. Communion—even in the wooden, accident-prone, halting way I lead it—communion somehow mysteriously transports me away from the theology and ethics and academics of Christianity into a strange, but also deeper and lovelier appreciation of Jesus.

           

            I think this is why. On communion Sundays I smell the wine. I taste the bread, feel it crumble in my fingers. The tablecloth is starched and clean, but with use gets spilled on, just like at home. People shuffle up here, real people who I can look in the eye, people I care about—love, even. We smile. And suddenly in my heart of hearts I’m at a real table, a real meal, and realize that Jesus is much more than just this ancient preacher man I study. He’s like me. He sits down with friends. He fries fish over a fire. He slices roast lamb. He says, “I shouldn’t,” but has a second and third glass of wine anyway.

            And he does all this even on his last day alive. With his best friend, John, laying his head on Jesus’ shoulder. He hosts a meal so that they—his prostitute, tax collector, fishermen and farm-laborer friends—he does this so that we will remember him, and continue to love others as they love themselves, even after Jesus is gone. Because he isn’t just for the books. We also share a messy meal and do it in remembrance of him.

            Communion. It’s for people who need more than words preached or written on a page. It’s for people who have a hard time feeling like Jesus is sitting on their shoulder or speaking through their hearts. It is a divine tap on the shoulder for us, a meal from the ancient past, to remember the wonder and reality and inspiration of who Jesus was, for now. Communion comes to us crumbling and tasty, with chairs screeching on the floor and cups dripping red to remind us that all those words about Jesus live, that Jesus’ love isn’t merely an ancient intellectual puzzle, but Jesus’ love is part and parcel of what we strive to do ourselves, everyday.