Where we're headed

Today we leave to solved the puzzle of all puzzles: Where did all the Methodists go?

Oh, we're not alone, we Methodists. Mainline churches everywhere are losing members like gun shot victims lose blood. We're gushing, for those still pondering that image.

They tell us we won't exist in 40 years if we don't change. I, being the reasonable one, understand that I might be a tad old to worry about 40 years down the road, and since I've been an active member of this esteemed organization for but 16 years, I can't possibly be held responsible. Oh, there's plenty things I can be held responsible for, but not this.

Or can I?

See, the main problem as I see it is this inordinate desire to have things (worship, service, leadership, etc.) done our way, whatever our way is.

Let me give you an example. I left my first church yesterday morning because of some business a bit late. So I was hurrying to the second one. Now, as I turned onto the road to the second church, I was beaten into the turn by a huge tractor pulling a huge tiller. We coasted along at five miles per hour.

It occurred to me that not only had this gentleman decided he had other things more meaningful than attending worship, he was gonna make me late, as well.

Second example. My dear wife Mary (in case she's reading this), went to a Christian concert the other night. The groups, all young, loud, talented, play music that sounds much like the music you hear on secular radio except the words are straight out of praise and worship circles. There's lots of personal touches as opposed to theological thinking that hymns tend to lean toward. As Mary walked in, police had put up barricades to keep protesters out. Protesters? People were protesting Christians, in Baton Rouge, La.?

Well, no. They were protesting people listening to what they consider to be music from, I don't know, the Devil or something.

One lass stuck a tract into my wife's face and shouted, "Do you know Jesus?" My wife, who is on a first-name basis with him, said, "Yes, I do. But you need to meet him."

Final example. I was listening to a preacher from the West Coast that I admire very much, Mark Driscoll. I had heard him talk about humility and I procured some of that for my Sunday sermon. (I'm a quilter, taking a patch here and a patch there as Rich Mullins used to say.) But as I listened to this sermon of his, he was taking on "the Shack."

If you've read this book by William Young, I believe it is, it's a fiction work about grief. It depicts the Trinity in an unusual fashion, to say the least, and I know some think it does it in a bad manner. Driscoll certainly did, going on and on about Old Testament thoughts about making graven images and the like. Driscoll is a fine preacher. A fine thinker. A fine theologian. His churches in one day will bring in more people than mine will in my preaching lifetime. But all I could think was, "slow down there tiger. Not everything is horrendous."
Did I mention that it was a FICTION book about grief?

Summing all this, it appears to me that we all need to simply think about why we do all of this, or any of this. We go to worship. We go to express our love to someone other than ourselves. I think the churches that do it best, that do it for the most people, that do it for the youngest of these, are the churches that ultimately understand that they are doing it for those outside of their own circle.

Do we need to have coffee houses in our entrance areas? Well, no. But I'm not convinced that is from the Devil either.
Do our music choices have to be different? Well, it helps. But again, I like Third Day, but even Mac Powell is beginning to show some age. We're never all going to be on the same page there.
Do we need certain ways to worship, to do service, to dare I say, evolve?

No. No. And yes.

But it's in finding ways for the little churches to do this in cost productive ways with increasingly older pastors that will decide what the United Methodist Churches, and the Presbyterian and many others do.

Ultimately it's not about whether young or old or black or white or male or female or even those we perceive to be sinners will be allowed into our churches, as some have said, it's about whether we will allow anyone into our churches who isn't one of us and whether we will embrace them when they come.

What that means is what we have to decide.

Do we know Jesus?
(For the regular reader, I will try to write Tuesday and Wednesday but frankly I don't know how early we start for our three-day retreat so I'm not sure. We'll see. Check in and find out. Keep reading. Tell others.)