In early April, I attended the annual spring Convocation at
Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves (of St. Louis), and listened to lectures given by the world-renown
Phyllis Tickle and famous scholar, teacher, writer, and speaker
Diana Butler Bass (both of whom have their own websites, yah).
[If you have not had a chance to do so, I recommend that you now read Bass's
books: especially
A People's History of Christianity and
Christianity for the Rest of Us.]
It was interesting to hear both women speak (with some differing perspectives) on the same topic: "Church Next". Apparently, they've done this a whole lot -- speak at the same conference, in the same city, and in the same speaking order (in fact, they did the exact thing a month before with a bunch of Episcopal bishops).
Phyllis Tickle gave what I'm told was a typical Tickle Talk -- informative, provocative, far too generalized. She gave us a sweeping overview of social and cultural changes within (I want to say) 45 minutes, going from the beginning of Time through to the 21st century, projecting into (dare I say) the 25th century. One central point that I remember from the talk was her emphasis on how people in general are not religious in the old way. We must be aware of the virtuality vs physicality of the worship experience in the 21st century, Tickle said. To back this up, she cited that in 2009, 70 million people experienced worship virtually (although she did not state a source). Tickle suggested that given the rising number of people who would prefer the virtual worship experience, such as worshiping at secondlife.com, church praxis and polity must change to reflect this new virtuality.
After hearing Tickle speak, as a conference attendee, as someone who used to work in an Episcopal seminary, and as a practicing, faithful United Methodist, I was more intrigued by some of the issues (questions, statistics, history) that Bass raised in her talks.
Most significantly, I loved her phone booth story. The gist of it is this:
Back in the old days, before iPhones and Blackberrys and Droids, there was thing invention called the phone booth. People used these small cubicles that had been set up in public places so that they could make phone calls, to communicate with one another. Nowadays, unless you were in London or somewhere in the U.K., you probably won't see a phone booth much. You'd be hard-pressed to find a phone booth in an airport. And a phone call will definitely cost more than 10 cents. If we were to chart the development and usage of public phone booths in the U.S., it would be in decline... way, way down.
Do we then look at that chart, gasp, and say that Communication is dead? Talking is no more? Does that trend mean that people no longer communicate with one another?
If anything, we are bombarded with multiple ways of communicating with one another. We communicate in and through so many different modes, languages, forums, and media that sometimes we forget how to be in solitude and in quiet. Our teens now "talk" more with two thumbs (on a blackberry) and one pointer-finger (on an iPhone) than we did sitting in a phone booth. The more handheld devices there are in the world, the more we are bombarded with options for communicating with one another.
Let's take the phone booth example and think about it in terms of God's church.
There are a lot of churches that are experiencing "membership hemorrhages". They might say this is an erosion of religion, think that we are witnessing the end of religion, that we are suffering from deadened faith. Statistics that are cited often proclaim that there is a "downward drift of congregational vitality", and that people no longer believe in God.
So there is a desire to pull people back into these cavernous cathedrals and empty parish halls. In the Vietnamese National Caucus of the UMC, and of the Southern Baptist Convention, enormous effort is put into designing annual conferences and conventions that address issues irrelevant to the contemporary Christians' daily faith. When the youth don't come, and when the young professionals don't attend, the leaders of these organized institutions bemoan the fact that the young people no longer believe in God or church.
Bass began her talk by citing some very interesting statistics (drawn from Pew US Religious Landscape, ARIS, FACT, Gallap, Barna, and others), and at the outset cautioned us to read these numbers with care and awareness of the context and cultural changes that these quantitative numbers often conceal. She reminded us, rightly so, to remember that any data which might point toward an erosion of belief in God might also be a result of terrible poll-taking practices. More importantly, we must be aware of contexts.
Truth is, people have more choices in how to worship, and they are
seeking more choices in how to worship God. Generative Christianity, or Emergent Christianity, is less about the death of the institutional church, is less about the decline of organized institutions with dogma and budgets, and is more about the emergence of new forms, new traditions of religion.
Or, better put, it is about a return to the original definition of RELIGIO, what Bass describes as a return to the experience of the Divine. People are attempting to go outside of the language, rites, rituals, and forms of traditional religion... seeking, searching. For us, now, we need to recover the insights our ancestors had in order to move forward. "Church Next" means we need to turn back in order to move ahead. It does not mean we do the exact same things our ancestors did, cautioned Bass. We do not build phone booths to increase/improve communication. Not bigger ones, not air-conditioned ones. Not even ones with digitized phone books and Powerpoint screens.
One of the statistics that Bass presented was about faith mixing. The stats indicated that 35% of people polled attend multiple places of worship. (I would be in that 35%.) They attend multiple places of worship in order to meet their religious and spiritual needs; many attend because of spouses who practice different faiths.
I have often described myself as a religious hybrid. I am a United Methodist lay speaker who loves the rites of the Episcopal church who has roots in the CMA church as well as the Southern Baptist contemporary worship scene. When I lived in CA, I worshiped with Episcopalians during mid-week chapel, and I worshiped with an intergenerational, multi-ethnic, multi-racial UMC on weekends. Since my arrival in St. Louis, I have attended services with Lutherans, Evangelicals, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Baptists.
Some might say that I am a diluted Methodist, a bifurcated member of the UMC. Some of my more conservative relatives probably pray for my soul regularly since they think I've lost my foundational faith.
I stand by my religious hybridity. I have membership in a UMC, but I am enriched by worshiping with other faith communities. I hold onto core faith values as described in the UMC Book of Discipline, and relish the concrete practices of other denominations that allow me to uplift my complex and diverse understanding of discipleship and spirituality. I have a creed. I tithe and pledge to my church. Therefore, I am even more careful in seeking a faith community that allows me to imagine (re-traditioning?) the past and recreate (re-interpret/remember) the future.
Two Sundays ago, I had the opportunity to worship at a nondenom megachurch somewhere near Grand Rapids, MI. This church calls itself a cornerstone church, and recently built a $12 million structure. Driving into the parking lot, I get the sense that I'm going to the mall. There are parking lot attendants directing traffic in between orange cones. Entering the building, I see a booth for Guest Services, and I see a Coffee Bar. There are restrooms for men and women almost every 500 yards, just like in an airport and even better than a mall. I see people seated at round tables like in food courts of shopping centers, and it feels like I'm not even at church. Then it hits me. That's the whole point! They wanted me to feel like I'm NOT in church, that I can be relaxed and comfortable, not like I'm in a stuffy cathedral or worship house. The greeter at the door to the worship center tells me we can bring in our coffees because the worship center has chairs with cupholders in the arms just like a theater.
It would be unfair and hypocritical for me to make disparaging comments about this particular church, because clearly thousands of Michigan residents love this church. They worship here, they actively participate, and they pledge to this church. This is where they come for a worship experience, and for community. They see this church as a "step up" from the old, empty, cavernous cathedrals (in fact, the preacher that day compared Cornerstone to a cathedral in England, noting how nobody worships in cathedrals, but Cornerstone was thriving and increasing in numbers.)
That Sunday, I felt like I walked into a $12 million phone booth. I did not even feel like I was entering a sacred space for worship. The service was over one hour long, and there was not one reading from scripture. As long as no one tells me this is the one place, the only way, the only option for me as a faithful Christian to practice my faith, then I can understand that there are others who appreciate this phone booth church.
Clearly, in regard to worship experiences, we all have our own preferences. We worship, we pray, we sing, we eat together, we break bread together, and we re-member who we are as God's children. And children like to play in different phone booths.
Although I'm unable to read Chinese (neither ancient nor contemporary Chinese), I still cherish this little red lucky money envelope that I received on my last Sunday at our church in Oakland Chinatown.