Abuse By Negligence

The emergent conversation often returns to the theme of churches' abuse of souls. In a post earlier this week, Len at NextReformation gave me another angle on soul-abuse, namely that the damage can come not only from aggression but also from neglect. Soul-abuse is repeatedly injuring a person's heart-and-mind -- doing so without seeking forgiveness or showing repentance, and while substituting slogans for integrity. Betrayal, guilt manipulation, and over-reach of spiritual authority are common types of soul-abuse.

The phrase is my expression for what many people feel they've experienced in churches. I think the phrase is problematic. Soul-abuse seems to want membership in the victimization lexicon, and that's a major turn-off for me. Individuals are responsible for their souls, including their reactions to injury. But, unfortunate connotations aside, I think the phrase is accurate. Many churches are injuring people's souls, injuring them repeatedly, and are not doing anything to repent.

Anger at the aggressive forms of this abuse abounds. A substantial proportion of American believers have had enough of churches run as businesses, of scandalous pastoral behavior, and of manipulative fundraising. Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna seems to tap into this anger, and has been much debated around the web over the last fortnight. (A hilariously negative review here; a judiciously positive review here.) My novel Fallen was written to dramatize crimes that have become all too common.

But soul-abuse by negligence is harder to pin down. Which brings us back to Len at NextReformation.

He comments that "we don't 'do fathering' very well." Len quotes Paul Fromont about churches' lack of parenting skills. "They’re not all that good at nourishing, accompanying, encouraging, and resourcing growth and increasing levels of Christian maturity." Len suggests that "the system [of churches] became rational more than relational and involved authority in offices rather than connecting it to wisdom."

I think Len is right. Many churches have become malls rather than gatherings, and the work of discipleship has tended to be done in classrooms. The results I have seen are dismal: busy people yearning to know who they are, unable to find a sense of kinship.

Churches used to operate in strong organic systems -- families, schools, volunteer associations, neighborhoods, charities, government. Local cultures in America used to be vibrant -- if far from perfect -- which meant that the impact of fathering was felt everywhere. A child not only had parents, but vigilant neighbors and teachers who reinforced shared values. The role of churches was to focus the spiritual priorities of people who already knew their own identities.

But in most of the nation now, localities are cultural wastelands of anonymity.

Churches, in my view, have done worse than ignore relationships. They have ignored fathering relationships -- the authoritative bonds that pass on ways of life and provide continuity from one generation to the next. Every church needs a core of strong, loving men -- every church. But few have such a core. We can't teach the Christian life in a class. Information is only helpful in the context of strong fathers who model application.

If this is true, then the most serious soul-abuse has been that of neglect. Churches have not built godly men, and as a result most new believers have not had models. Churches have injured people's hearts-and-minds by a failure to nurture.

This is certainly a criticism of the "religious activity" model of discipleship favored by traditional churches. But I don't see emergents making any progress on this issue either. Listening to the hurting is good and right. So is a missional approach to church structure and organization. Spiritual formation is a needed emphasis.

But, ultimately, loving fathers confront and do not yield. Is there an emergent model for this?

Christianity, churches, emergent, FallenMatthew Raley Comments
The Conundrum of Authority

Eight women in Florida have given sworn depositions charging that a megachurch pastor coerced them into sex. The pastor, Earl Paulk, is being charged with perjury because he told investigators that he'd only had sex with one. (Local coverage here.) So here we are again, back in the zone of abusive spiritual authority. When a pastor's personal agenda is blatantly sinful, as Paulk's allegedly was, believers are devastated. But they also feel manipulated when the agenda is mixed -- when in the midst of pursuing godly goals a pastor doesn't seem to notice his own vanity.

There is almost a sense now that any exercise of authority is abusive, and many believers question the legitimacy of pastoral leadership. The issue was featured in a couple of blogs this past week (unrelated to the Paulk story).

Robbymac offered a rich portrayal of servant leadership and its implications in a tale of two men in dialog about spiritual authority in a pub. The gruff barkeep becomes their model. Says one, "I’d like to suggest that real 'apostles' don't need to trumpet their status or try to get people to agree to be 'under' their authority. They just serve and people recognize their authority based on character and not on their need to have people 'submit' to them." Robbymac's post gave me good ideas to feast on, and it was so evocative that I could almost smell the hops.

Kingdomgrace sparked some lively exchanges about pastoral authority with her usual clarity of expression. Reviewing a chapter in Pagan Christianity (Viola and Barna) about the history of the clerical tradition, Grace surveys the dubious mixture of contemporary ideas of pastoring with the ancient priesthood. She writes,

I don’t believe that one person should be responsible for the equipping of the body, but rather that you will find those equipping gifts among the body. The same is true with discipling, teaching, and mentoring. None of these things should be taken on solely by the leader.

Even if this is clear in your heart as the leader, as long as there is a full-time pastor, it will be an uphill battle to prevent passivity among the congregation regarding who is responsible for ministry.

An uphill battle indeed. In fighting the consumer mentality, a pastor will always face the question, "Why are you trying to get me to do your work?"

The intensity of the comments in response to Grace's post shows how dire the collapse of spiritual authority has become. Participants were not so much questioning the character of pastors, as the legitimacy of having a paid pastor at all. Commenting on the aging evangelical base, one participant named Jerry expressed a sense of crisis many share:

I don’t think people realize how desperate a state the American church is really in. We’re less than 10 years from being exactly in the same state as Europe (barring a medical miracle).

We need Frank Viola’s and George Barna’s (and many others) to really shake this thing up. There’s a disaster pending the likes of which the church world has never seen. All we have to do to get there is hang on to the status quo.

No question, we've got trouble.

Believers have lost a sense of how authority is supposed to work biblically. Those who remember when pastors had a recognized civic role fantasize about the recovery of Christendom, while emergents at times seem frantic in their search for an egalitarian church structure. There are those who want to trust their pastors, many of whom end up getting burned like the eight women in Florida. But there are others who long ago resolved never to trust another pastor again.

We witness a bitter scattering. The question is how to return to the Shepherd.

For me, a purely egalitarian church structure -- no leaders, no followers -- is fast-acting conformism. The herd never tolerates dissent from its stampedes. Furthermore, I believe egalitarian promises are fraudulent: all groups have leaders. The informal ones who lead from charisma tend to be the least accountable.

But the old institutional hierarchies assume a cultural consensus that no longer exists. Christendom, as a cultural force, is on life-support in the U.S. In Europe, it's dead. Pastors are not authority figures anymore. But they're still acting like it.

I am trying to implement several principles as a pastor:

  • Model submission for other believers: submission to the Lord, to the scriptures, and to the other leaders of the church.
  • Lead only from the trust gained by modeling submission. This practice is empowered by the Holy Spirit (e.g. Ephesians 5.15-21).
  • Lead not by casting visions, but by applying narrowly defined biblical principles to the next decision on the congregation's horizon. Put another way, there's no grand plan, just point-to-point navigation.

These principles help me eschew the power game and nurture unity. They do not bring hyper-growth. They do not empower a great career path. They don't even eliminate conflict. But they do harness the forces of relationship, truth, and love to the work of change.

And in the bargain I will see my own soul saved -- an end I pray for the eight women in Florida and for Earl Paulk.

Christianity, emergent, evangelicals, pastorsMatthew Raley Comments
On the Sinfulness of Church Buildings

The storm that slammed California last Friday swept some shingles off our church's roof, leaving the women's restroom drenched. The carpet bubbled and the plaster ceiling wept. This, in addition to the usual leakage. Our building has a tower-like structure on the southeast corner, with a neon cross perched uneasily on top. The neon no longer lights. The tower can be relied upon to leak every year -- a tradition spanning eight decades. At some point, church leaders stopped trying to fix it. Someone just put buckets in the attic that catch most of the water, and no one remembers who.

Confession: The foregoing is bait to tempt readers into tired metaphors of churches' pomposity and ineffectiveness -- especially my emergent readers. (Cue crickets.)

Emergents and evangelicals generally have been disgusted with their churches -- the congregations, not necessarily the buildings. They've been disgusted for years, and have been hunting for the cause of all the dysfunction. From several emergent blogs I've seen, many blame the buildings for the sad condition of the people. Apparently the buildings' very existence is heinous.

This issue came up on a great blog I've been following, kingdomgrace. For a week or so, Grace has been writing intelligently about a book by Frank Viola and George Barna called Pagan Christianity, one of many books analyzing the evangelical mess. Their thesis is “that the church in its contemporary, institutional form has neither a biblical nor a historical right to exist.”

The chapter she treated yesterday (here) dealt with "the history of the church building from the first century through modern times."

Viola and Barna are not positive in their overview. Grace quotes them as saying,

"Somehow we have been taught to feel holier when we are in 'the house of God' and have inherited a pathological dependency upon an edifice to carry out our worship of God. The church building has taught us badly about what church is and what it does."

I can't relate to what Viola and Barna have written there. I was never taught "somehow" to feel holier when in a church building. Feeling holier has been impossible because most of the buildings where I've worshiped have been aggressively ugly.

Nor can I relate to their assertion that "we" have "inherited a pathological dependency upon an edifice." I feel sure that they liked how the phrase sounded, but didn't think about it too carefully. "Must . . . have . . . my . . . edifice!"

And I can't get into the ersatz liberal arts thing of saying, "The church building has taught us badly."

Grace gives more nuanced comments. Church buildings do contribute to such problems as "congregants as spectators," "lack of participation," "consumerist mentality," and "isolation." She writes, "The problem isn't necessarily the building, but rather our imagination and understanding of who we are and what we are called to be apart from the building."

I think she's right on. The design of large churches today deadens the acoustics, coerces the sight, blocks the world outside, and isolates the worshipper. It's a barrier to the restoration of community.

But how do we overcome such barriers?

I see two kinds of dialogue among emergents. One kind is epitomized by Grace. She is probing and measured. Her passion seems expressed by depth rather than bombast. Though I sense that she's seen the troubles of church life, she does not allow her experiences to embitter her writing. Many barriers can be overcome with this kind of dialogue.

The other kind is epitomized by Pagan Christianity. The rhetorical neon doesn't glow and the argumentation has continual leaks.

Christianity, emergent, evangelicalsMatthew Raley Comments
Evangelical Splinter Begins Today

The Iowa caucuses today will officially begin the end of social conservatism as a force in American politics. But this gives an opportunity for local churches to refocus their energies. There may be surprises in Republican results by the end of the evening. Consensus this week has been that Mike Huckabee has been hurt by Mitt Romney's assaults, and that Romney has retaken the lead. But John McCain once again has a field operation in the state, and he was there for a last burst of campaigning, feeling energized by positive news from New Hampshire. There was buzz about a "late-breaking surge" for Fred Thompson at National Review Online yesterday (here).

For the evangelical project of recovering traditional values through political activism, though, none of this matters. I see three basic reasons why the grass roots social conservatism of the last two decades is done.

First, a generational split has undermined evangelical political unity. Emergents are far more likely to take liberal/progressive stands on the war, the environment, and economic issues. They treat their elders' project of restoring America's Judeo-Christian heritage contemptuously. I've written on this here.

Second, those who live by biblical sexual morality are in the minority in the nation at large -- and there is some question in my mind whether they even command of a majority of evangelicals. The presupposition behind social conservative positions on family policy, gay marriage, abortion, and the role of public education is that monogamous married sex should be normative. The proportion of Americans who accept that presupposition has been shrinking for the better part of three decades.

Few voters are open to social conservative policy positions anymore.

Consider Britain in the 1990s. Prime Minister John Major made family values a significant part of the Conservative Party's message in the years before he faced Tony Blair in a general election. But Major's government was hit with one sex scandal after another. His successor as party leader, William Hague, tried to rehabilitate the party's image in a number of ways. He made his position on morality clear by touring the country with his live-in girlfriend.

There is no political expression of traditional sexual morality in British politics today. Nor will there be. The populace will not tolerate it.

I believe we face a similar dark moment in America now. The sex scandals afflicting Republicans for the past year or more need no repetition. I believe the demise of biblical sexuality in American culture is an unmitigated catastrophe. But its demise is a fact. The outcome in Iowa will do nothing to help restore it. Biblical sexuality is now countercultural.

Thirdly, evangelical conservatives do not have a top tier candidate for the Republican nomination. Rudy Giuliani is not a social conservative in any sense, nor has he made any effort to appease the pro-life part of the Republican base. With Sen. McCain, evangelicals might be able to make peace, but they would remain a small part of his coalition. They would not figure in a McCain administration the way they have in Bush's.

Gov. Huckabee is certainly an evangelical. But even a win in Iowa will not make him a top-tier candidate. He does not have the money, the organization, or, frankly, the depth.

Which leaves Gov. Romney. Too many evangelicals know too much about Mormonism to have any illusions about a spiritual, or even a moral, alliance. They may vote for him. They know well enough that they're not selecting the nation's Sunday school teacher. But he's not their guy.

Without a top-tier candidate, evangelicals are reduced to bargaining for specific policy priorities at a nominating convention they will not control. And they are ill-positioned to do this sort of bargaining because of their own divisions and because of the larger culture's hostility.

Which brings me to what I think is the evangelical opportunity.

Evangelicals have an opportunity to see their role in America clearly. They are no longer mainstream. Their role is to build local churches that are countercultural in every way -- in their devotion to the Bible, in their demonstration of love, and in their vitality from the resurrected Jesus. Building more malls with good clean fun for the whole family is not going to be part of this role. Evangelicals are going to have to build a new, non-conformist way of life.

In order to take this opportunity to be countercultural, evangelicals will have to focus all their energies on the gospel -- the message that people's sin can be forgiven and their souls reborn. In the coming darkness, we will not have political strength. We will only have the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christianity, emergent, evangelicals, politicsMatthew Raley Comments
Two Voices On Rob Bell and Sin

Justin Buzzard heard Rob Bell on his "the gods aren't angry tour," and wrote a detailed review (here). He got a reaction. While Justin loved much of what he heard from Bell, Justin came away with a concern. "I began to see that Rob wasn't going to talk about a foundational biblical truth that runs from Genesis 3 straight through to the end of the Bible, the biblical truth which makes the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross both necessary and amazing, the biblical truth that makes the good news of the gospel so good: Sin."

Justin would ask Bell three questions. What does Bell believe the Bible teaches about sin? What exactly does Bell believe about Christ's atonement? What does he believe about salvation, heaven, and hell?

Justin's priorities tell me that he cares about the integrity of preaching, that he is committed to studying and expounding the Bible, and that he does not believe biblical doctrine is expendable. The questions he asks are reasonable - questions that all who teach about Christ are accountable to answer.

But a response to Justin's review came from Mauryn Kkira.

Mauryn's post is lengthy, but I think it's worth reading in full because of the emotional impact of the truth she communicates. She has also heard Bell, and what she took from his presentation was "the message of grace being spoken to a severely fallen world that has been bathed in condemnation from the church for as long as I can remember."

Two things in her sentence caught my attention.

First, Mauryn says the world is "severely fallen." Mauryn believes that God "should be angry" with us: "look at us, we are a mess, and don't seem to be getting better anytime soon." She felt that Bell presupposed sin in his message: Bell "would have to have a clear picture of the sin nature in order to even begin to understand the grace that God offers us." I think Mauryn is operating from a doctrine of depravity in her post; she makes no pretence that human beings are basically good. She may not articulate the sinfulness of sin with theological precision, but she gets it.

The second thing I noticed in Mauryn's quote was that the "severely fallen world" has been "bathed in condemnation from the church for as long as I can remember." A world so fallen needs to hear about grace. "I think Rob's point is that our sinfulness has never been greater than the goodness of God." Mauryn clings to God's goodness for dear life: "I have to say that the thought of a Holy and sinless God who loves me exactly the way I am in spite of my sin ... the thing he hates the most, that catches my attention and keeps it."

Mauryn's priorities tell me that she has experienced the grace of Jesus Christ, and wants other people to know his goodness. She presses the point that preachers need to bring out truth that edifies.

What I hear articulated by these two voices is a pastoral problem of the highest importance. It's one of the problems that frustrate me most. Both Justin and Mauryn believe in sin. Both yearn for the grace of God to be understood and received. But what Justin calls for, a direct confrontation of sin, is the very thing that drives Mauryn to despair. What Mauryn calls for, a proclamation of God's goodness, is the very thing that fills Justin with questions about the proclamation's integrity.

A pastor has to confront sin. He also has to comfort sinners with the promise of forgiveness. Different audiences will need different doses of confrontation and comfort. That's my problem: how do I determine dosage?

A preacher is required to make some determination of his audience's spiritual needs and aptitudes (e.g. John 16.4, 12). If his assessment is that the audience needs to hear more about sin, then he must give them more about sin. But if he believes his audience is already convicted of sin, he would be wiser to talk about grace.

For me, the Rob Bell case boils down to this. If Bell has made the assessment that today's unbelievers are convinced of the sinfulness of sin, and that they need a vision of God's goodness from the scriptures, then he has delivered his message in good conscience. I believe the Lord will bless it, and that the Lord's kindness will lead many to repentance (Romans 2.4). Some will say that Bell is mistaken, and that unbelievers need more teaching about sin. They may be right. But if they are wrong, then they would have us heap more sorrow on the grieving (2 Corinthians 7.10).

By contrast, if Bell thinks that unbelievers will never be convinced of the sinfulness of sin, and merely follows the path of least resistance, then we have another case entirely.

This side of the last trumpet, and lacking any definitive evidence, I choose to believe the former, which means I'm praising God for Bell's impact on Mauryn, sitting beside Justin and waiting to hear more.

Christianity, emergentMatthew Raley Comments