For quite some time now I have been of the opinion that most churches are tragically beside the point. Now I admit that this isn't true of all churches. A very few, a minuscule minority, have some degree of relevance, but most really are beside the point. I have reached the allegedly cynical conclusion that the phrase "in pursuit of irrelevance" should figure prominently in most congregational mission statements.
This irrelevance is seen in that there is seldom any engagement with contemporary culture for the purpose of pursuing any type of transformation at any level.
Congregations simply gather together in their habitual holy huddles, and attempt to convince themselves they truly believe they are sinners but in the final analysis their self-righteous piety always wins out. They make their way back into the hypnotizing mundaneness of their respective worlds unswervingly entrenched in their unaffected and unchanged states of religious delusion, and certainly with no heightened sensitivity to the cultural crisis taking place around them.
And if there is any awareness of any cultural crisis or social chaos on the part of the local assembly it serves only the purpose of further convincing them to thank their "gods" that they are not part of the pagan culture going to hell in a hand basket around them, which by the way is in just this condition because of the failure of the church.
This has not always been the case.
The time was when the church at least endeavored to react to, if not shape, the culture in which it existed. During the apostolic era, the relation of the church to culture was reactionary. Everything seemed to be "clear cut" in the mind of the churches and their leaders. They at least had an awareness of what they should not be and an awareness that they were not to accommodate to the standards of the culture around them. As tragic as this type of isolationism is, it at least conveyed the early churches awareness of the cultural context in which it existed.
With the emergence of the Ante-Nicene Era, however, there was increased confusion about the place of the church in culture. Christianity was reviewing and reassessing its previous stance on issues such as war, women's roles, church state relations, race relations and sexuality. The Apostolic church's passion for isolation from the culture seemed to be vanishing since it seemed that Jesus was not going to come back any time soon and so the church was going to have to "find its place," so to speak.
Then, in the ultimate swing of the pendulum, in the Post-Nicene Era, the time of Constantinian Christianity, the church seemed to have committed itself to full blown cultural accommodation.
It seems that in each of these eras, however the church at least had an awareness of what was taking place around it. In other words, the church was not narcissistically self-absorbed. I get the impression these days, however, that not only does the church not care about the contemporary cultural cateclysm taking place but it does not even remotely care.
Call it what you will. Head in the sand. Freudian denial. Blinders on. Whatever. The church is completely content to wallow in its self-absorption.
I saw this "sanctified obliviousness" clearly this week on a local churches website. A particular congregation (which will remain nameless, not so much for my own sake but for the sake of the embarrassment which its leadership and people should have but won't which also speaks volumes) was celebrating by challenging their youth and entire congregation to wear their "favorite pair of jeans" to church to support the youth program.
How cute.
So my wife and I talked last night about the renewed focus of parental consent laws before the state legislature, lectures in her family law class about 13 year-olds having sex and becoming pregnant, and the legal system providing an avenue for these teens to have abortions without parental consent, yet nonetheless having to handle this entire mess of what to do in those circumstances.
And this is only one major mess among many.
It seems to me that generally church is like the clowns at Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Traveling Circus. The elephants make gigantic messes but it is of no concern to them since cleaning up behind the elephants isn't what they are about. Thank god picking up the elephant "stuff" is someone else's job. The clowns are just about putting on their favorite pair of jeans, and having fun in front of a mega-crowd.
So put on your Lucky's or your Levi's, and make you way to the local self-absorption enablers group this Sunday, and take a big sip of the Congregational Kool Aid.
Drink deep and drink big.
While the rest of us thank god that the Kingdom and the church are two separate realities, and that the two are seldom if ever to be identified with one another and also that God, like every good hard working farmer, knows how to plough around the ecclesiologic stump.
