There Are No Sacraments on the Internet

There are no sacraments on the internet.

Monty Black

Two competing perceptions of how individuals should form and shape their spiritual lives are currently talking past each other. First there is the traditional view, long sustained by Christianity in the West, which believes that the most effective way to develop the spiritual life of the individual, is to evaluate one’s life according to a set of roles, duties and obligations. Typically this is a life lived in common with others, in community, and that community might be family, tribe, nation or a religious community. The obligations an individual will have to any one, or more of these communities, requires that the participants set aside at least some of their own desires, for the benefit of some higher ideal, or simply to live in harmony with other members of their community. This usually entails some measure of self-discipline and even sacrifice. In the second approach to personal spiritual development, the ‘good life’ is more likely to be achieved by shaping an individual’s inner life, according to how the world is experienced by that individual, and according to what ‘feels good’. The key to enriching their life revolves around what will best help them to reach their potential, what will help them to become sensitive enough, and aware enough, to be the person they are called to be. This is a much more personal journey, where the needs of the individual are paramount, more important than all other social responsibilities, and these may include the needs of spouse, family, tribe, nation or religious community. This latter view of the world now shapes so many different fields of human endeavour; in education we talk of child or student-centred learning, in the health sector of patient-centred outcomes, and in good work places there is an emphasis upon the personal development of the individual employee. Deeply embedded in contemporary Western culture is the understanding that every human being is unique, and the rights and freedoms of the individual are paramount.

It is in the clash between these two very different world-views of how to live a rich and fulfilled life, which lies at the heart of the difficulties faced by the church in the West today, and is exemplified by the increasing number of people who refuse to state any religious beliefs when asked to complete national census forms, but who would describe themselves as being ‘spiritual but not religious.’ By this is meant that the person is pursuing their own unique and individual path to inner fulfillment, and feels free to choose from the supermarket of religious ideas and practices that are on offer, from across the whole spectrum of products available from any number of different cultures or religious traditions, picking and choosing what best suits their perceived needs. I make my own choices and take responsibility for my own life, rather than adhering to a mass-produced system offered by an organized group, and especially not one promulgated by an institution like the church

This is also the era of conspiracy theories, so that any speculative treatment which claims to uncover the story that the institutional church did not want you to know, is quickly absorbed by a willing public, (including church members), as the new truth about Christianity. This is illustrated by

The enthusiastic public reception of a poorly researched novel, The Da Vinci Code which questioned the master narrative and proposed an alternative story.[1]

There is a general impression that the church is not, and has not been, honest and open with the people. There is a basic sense of distrust in church leaders and their pronouncements. Revelations of the gross immoral behavior of clergy, and subsequent attempts at cover-ups, especially in the CatholicChurch add fuel to the fires of suspicion.

This is the context in which the contemporary church struggles to operate successfully. There appear to be two options for those who believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ still has relevance for people living in the 21st century, namely, either to embrace the prevalent culture – meet it, use it, adapt to it, - or adopt a counter-cultural stance, as the earliest followers of Jesus did in the first centuries, to seek to recover the Christian roots and to weed out and discard the unhelpful accretions that belong to another age and time. Salvation is best discovered outside the church.

At first glance a return to an innocent, simpler age, appears very attractive, let us try and recreate the New Testament Church in our own era. On the surface the conditions appear to be very similar, Christianity is once again becoming a minority religion in the West, and if not persecuted, its views are ignored, mocked or misrepresented. This is an era in which the churches’ outdated and high maintenance buildings threaten to cripple its life, and so meeting in the home of some wealthy patron sounds very attractive, while the cost of maintaining a professional team of stipended clergy is outstripping the churches ability to pay. In my own denomination (Anglican) the authority of the diocese is constantly challenged by an increasingly congregational attitude to being church, with congregations believing that they must be relevant and therefore free to follow their own paths. If only we could return to the pre-Constantinian church! But of course this is a romantic view, that world no longer exists and we have no clear picture of what the life of that church was like, other than it was probably very varied, and that is its attraction for 21st century Christians who seek precedence for doing what seems good to them. The contemporary post-modern culture dominated by consumerism with its high technology base, and the rise of international corporations, and the decline of the nation states, makes a return to a simpler, purer first century model of Christianity an impossible and undesirable dream.

The Lutheran World Federation’s Study Team on Worship and Culture gathering in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1996, in addressing the question of public worship, (rather than private spirituality), identified four ways in which Christian worship relates to culture.

Worship as Transcultural

The resurrected Christ whom we worship, and through whom by the power of the Holy Spirit we know the grace of the Triune God, transcends and indeed is beyond all cultures.[2]

This is the faith that is the same everywhere and in all times e.g. baptism with water and in the name of the Trinity.

Worship as Contextual

Jesus whom we worship was born into a specific culture of the world. In the mystery of his incarnation are (sic) the model and mandate for the contextualization of Christian worship.[3]

The culture in which we are set will shape the way we express our faith, this is evident in the buildings and art we use to house and express the faith of our community.

Worship as Counter-cultural

Jesus Christ came to transform all people and all cultures, and calls us not to conform to the world, but to be transformed with it (Romans 12:2). In the mystery of his passage from death to eternal life is the model for transformation, and thus for the counter-cultural nature of Christian worship.[4]

The values of the Gospel come up against the prevailing beliefs and practices of the culture in which it is embedded, and so Christians have come to oppose slavery and the death penalty, believing these to be at odds with Christian values.

Worship as Cross-cultural

Jesus came to be the Savior of all people. He welcomes the treasures of earthly cultures into the city of God by virtue of Baptism, there is one Church; and one means of living in faithful response to Baptism is to manifest ever more deeply the unity of the Church.[5]

The sharing of insights and experience gained by the church in different cultures is vital especially when ministering to multicultural congregations. International discussion of theological issues

often brings new life to difficult issues e.g. liberation theology and homosexuality, because our different cultural experiences of being church can enrich our understanding and help us to resolve contentious issues, and may open the eyes of one group of Christians to the different needs of others.

These four ways in which worship relates to culture are constantly in tension and maintaining the balance between them in a manner that not only witnesses to the faith handed down by our forbears, but also allows it to be expressed in our contemporary cultural setting will continue to be a major challenge for the 21st century church. Inevitably the emphases will be different for each national church, let alone our individual congregations, however, it is in the creative tension between all four approaches that we will be most likely to find the way ahead, at least in the arena of public worship.

Phyllis Tickle believes that the church of God has undergone a profound revolution and total readjustment of its life every five hundred years or so, and believes that following the last major upheaval at the Reformation, we have now entered another period of profound transition.[6] The shape of the future church in the West is unclear. There are competing views as to how the church of the 21st century should adapt, or change, to meet this challenge successfully. These include the injunctions for the church to become mission-focused, to embrace fresh expressions of being, to leave aside old standards of belief (creeds), patterns of worship(liturgies), pastoral care, leadership and spiritual formation. As more and more people opt to take responsibility for their own spirituality, so numbers attending Sunday services of worship, or seeking the help of the church to bless their new born children and their marriages, or assist in the final farewells of their dead, declines, and this puts increasing pressure on the financial viability of traditional parishes. Faced with this pressure, church leaders turn increasingly to the corporate world of international business to find solutions to their pressing problems, and so restructuring, revisioning, amalgamations, redundancies, are increasingly part of ecclesiastical language as well. Faithful clergy, who were trained for one sort of ministry and struggle to readjust, now find they are past their use-by-date, and need to be moved on or out, as are loyal and long serving lay leaders. Treasured buildings which have served some communities for centuries are abandoned, because the community can no longer meet the cost of their upkeep, or, in our New Zealand situation have been destroyed by earthquakes, and are no longer considered safe for people to worship in without significant retro-fitting for which there is no money.

Faithful pastors caught up in this maelstrom find themselves negotiating a difficult pathway between what the customer wants, and what the church has to offer, and it is establishing this balance between the two which is at the heart of our current difficulties. Extremes are to be found at both ends of this spectrum, which may then drive individual pastors to make choices on behalf of their

congregations, often with little consultation, and frequently without any concept of what the implications will be for their people, or, alternatively to behave like possums caught in a car headlights who simply freeze, unable to make any suggestions as to how their congregation may move forward. Increasingly desperate pastors look for successful models of ministry or church, which appear to be working well elsewhere and adopt these brand models, without any real consideration as to their suitability for their own setting, but are desperate to be seen to be doing something.

I am aware of a small number of religious franchises dominating the marketplace. The mega churches of Willow Creek and Saddleback in the USA have considerable influence with their books, addresses and podcasts of advice to pastors which are eagerly awaited; and likewise from the United Kingdom, Holy Trinity, Brompton (HTP), and Fresh Expressions (Fx), are most influential. This is not the place to describe the merits or otherwise of each of these franchises, suffice it to say that each brings insights which bear careful consideration by those who have responsibility for leading congregations. All except Fresh Expressions have been developed and led by entrepreneurial pastors, and are clearly focused on their understanding of what their target group want in the way of spiritual support. Naturally this will differ according to their contexts, a point not always appreciated by their ardent followers, who may be puzzled why a programme developed for one group of religious customers, does not necessarily transfer successfully to a different context. Unfortunately instead of trying to understand this, the easier option is to try something else from the shelf, in a continuing search for the answer to the present dilemma. However, the underlying principle is, if we give the people what they want, they will come back for more. But even Willow Creek has discovered that what worked very well with one group in the same setting does have a limited lifespan. They were shocked to find that following a professional survey of the needs of their people, those most at risk of leaving were their key lay leaders who had experienced all that they had to offer but wanted more, and were not finding it in that context.[7] While being focused on a target group is an undoubted help in tailoring congregational programmes to meet their needs, the down side is that such a congregation is more likely to attract people of a similar age, social class, ethnicity and even unintentionally, rejecting those not of this group, including the more vulnerable members of our society – the elderly, the sick and the socially deprived. Nevertheless, these religious franchises have done some serious reflecting upon what they believe makes for a successful congregation, and have systematically set about building such communities, in which many people have been led to the discipleship of Jesus Christ. They have learned important lessons from the corporate world about analyzing one’s target group, and providing what they want in the most attractive package. They have not felt constrained by the tradition of the church, and in the case of some of the North American churches have simply established their own denomination.

By contrast some of those ministering in traditional parish congregations have made no real attempt to adjust to the changed circumstances in which they are ministering, believing that if they

faithfully provide what they have always provided, God will reward their faithfulness, and their people will come to their senses and return to church. In the meantime their congregations are becoming older, and the numbers attending worship are declining, and the costs of providing this style of ministry are increasing. These congregations are simply collapsing from inertia.

There are those who believe that we need a radically new ecclesiology. In its most extreme form advocates of the new way of being Christian accuse traditional Christians of being more interested in “churchianity” than Christianity, and believe that like Jesus, we should be more concerned about the Kingdom of God than the church. Pete Ward in his provocative book, Liquid Church says:

To get the imaginative juices flowing I suggest that we need to shift from seeing church as a gathering of people meeting in one place at one time – that is, a congregation – to a notion of church as a series of relationships and communications. This image implies something like a network or a web rather than an assembly of people.[8]

And

Liquid church involves a radical change in attitude for the church. Church leaders will need a fundamental change of heart if they are to start to take consumer culture seriously. Instead of opposing materialism and treating consumer culture as evil, we need to begin to embrace the sensibilities of consumption. This means that we must develop a church life that connects with what people want, and one vital ingredient will make this change possible. The church must change its emphasis from meeting people’s spiritual needs to stimulating their desires. Solid church is set up to convince people of their need of God and then deliver salvation in response to this need. Liquid church replaces need with desire.[9]

Pete Ward’s thesis completely gainsays not only traditional models of church, but also the mega church and HTB models, but maybe they are part of the Fx understanding of church. The heart of the matter remains. What does it mean to be church? What does church look like? As I have already suggested the impetus for looking for a new model of church arises from the religion versus spirituality debate nicely summarized by a Kendal Unitarian Christian.

Religion asks you to learn from the experience of others. Spirituality urges you to seek your own.[10]

Somehow the contemporary church needs to meld these two approaches attempting to meet the deepest personal and spiritual needs of people today. Christianity can no longer peddle a fixed menu