A number of people have tagged me with this meme, so here we go with my take on where I feel we are (when I look out my window on a glum day!)...
“We need to see our church grow” – the Church has bought into the language and mindset of consumerism far, far too much. At this moment that the wisest heads and hearts – and authentic Christian tradition – are telling us that untrammelled consumerism, instant gratification and the culture of endless growth (fuelled by easy credit) are devilish deceptions, why in God’s name are we spouting nonsense about ‘church growth’? The Church is called to be faithful, to work and to serve – growth is a terrible, tyrannical idol.
“We hope you enjoy our worship” – related to the last observation, why have we promulgated the idea that we should ‘enjoy’ church worship? The liturgy is the ‘work of the people’ – it is a shared endeavour and should require participation and bloodsweat’n’tears. Entertainment is the enemy of authentic Christian discipleship.
“You should be able to say all you need to in a sermon within five minutes” – what?!? I am still banging on about the same thing as before, you realise? It is but a short hop from individual consumerism and the ‘entertain-me’-mentality, to a sense that it is unreasonable that teaching should be complex, demanding, intellectually-rigorous, or require any kind of effort at all. We serve TV-dinner teaching, we make obese, pallid disciples.
‘Family values’ – the witness of scripture in most periods is firmly suspicious of what we now laud as the nuclear family. Our Lord Jesus was no great fan, and reserved some of his most cutting remarks for the purpose of radically-redrawing the boundaries of our interrelationships. Add to that the shrinking of households even further – from the extended family to the nuclear and now to a preponderance of single-person households and those who ‘choose’ to have just one or two children, and we drift ever further from a vision of the open, Christian oikos.
‘Christian Britain’ – to be fair, there maybe are not so many church-going Christians who buy this one, but let’s be clear that we are pretty poor at refuting the BNP-type/nominal Christian Brit who touts this kind of phrase as a cipher for narrow-minded, nationalistic cant. Where is our teaching about Jesus the Jew, or our vision of the Church as a communion of saints across the ages and cultures? Do we even reference the Fathers, writing from North Africa and the deserts? Or any church history, full stop?!?
OK, I shouldn’t have accepted the meme tag, maybe! You just knew I would rant, didn’t you!?...
…It is out of my system, now. Until tomorrow!...
