What Kind of Church Does Our World Need Us To Be?
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Six years ago, I paid $750 to attend a thousands-strong conference hosted by superstar life coach Tony Robbins. If you know who Tony Robbins is, please don’t judge me. The event, best known for the night when everyone learns to fire-walk, was a pop psychology book with the energy and scale of a rock concert. The fire-walking was a bit gimmicky--not at all dangerous or life-changing--but a different exercise Tony led that weekend was a bit of game-changer for me.
Tony instructed us to close our eyes. “When you open your eyes,” he then said, “you’re going to have ten seconds to look for and remember as many brown things as possible before you close your eyes again. Ask yourself, ‘What’s brown? What’s brown?’ Now go!” And since Tony is charismatic and we were in crowd, we all obeyed on cue. Brown hair on the woman in front of me. That guy has a brown shirt. Oh! Brown trimming on the ceiling. Woman’s purse—no, that’s beige… eh, close enough. And so on until Tony told us to close our eyes again. “Now,” he said, “start listing everything you saw that was red.” And I couldn’t think of a single thing.
Tony’s point was that our minds and lives are oriented around the questions we ask. If we ask ourselves, “Why do bad things always happen to me?” our mind will find answers to dog our self-esteem. If we ask, “How can I far exceed expectations on my project at work?” we will eventually become rock star professionals. If we ask, “What needs does my romantic partner have today that I can help to meet?” we will--OK, I don’t really know what happens then because I haven’t tried it, but my girlfriend insists the outcome is positive.
Questions are powerful. So lately I have been wondering, what is a high-leverage question for a church like All Souls to ask?
This summer, many of our speakers will be exploring a question that we believe can inspire All Souls into our next chapter together: what kind of church does our world need us to be? Our plan is that each week will offer a different way to answer it. We’ll have a multiplicity of voices tackling a tough question—just the way we like it.
But we first have to face up to the huge problem baked into that question: it has to be answered by humans.
One of the features of Jungian psychology that I find very insightful is that our lives begin in a heavenly cocoon called the womb. There, all our needs are met and we feel safe and at peace. It’s paradise. Then, the most traumatic and definitive event of our lives occurs: we are ejected into an uncertain world where our needs may not be met right away (if ever!), where there are competing interests and strange, uncomfortable sensations. We then spend our lives trying to recreate the experience we had in the womb. We arrange our lives around the motivation of feeling comfortable and safe. Of course, we all understand that this is a “childish” way of navigating life, but still there exists that magnetic pull.
If we don’t make an internal shift to look beyond ourselves, we risk remaining spiritual infants. Which is why many great religious traditions focus on this inversion, this self-transcendence of stepping beyond our own needs and personal agendas.
Last month, I taught a two-part Adult Ed series on the work of James Fowler. For the past three decades his research into how an individual’s faith develops—or does not develop—has been the leading model in the field. Fowler explores how a child’s faith eventually takes the shape of the community they belong to. Some individuals' faith remains shaped by their communities for a lifetime, while some enter a period where they realize the limitations of what they have been taught to believe and choose to define their beliefs and values on their own. Some people move even further beyond individualism, acknowledging that there are many meaningful perspectives, that life is a mystery, and that they want to find deep connection with others. Individuals here can envision a transformed world defined by justice and inclusivity, but Fowler’s research uncovered a tension: for many at this stage—which appears to be marked by intellectual sophistication—their journey is still about them. Very few exhibit what he argues should be our common aspiration—recognizing that life is not about us but rather about making that vision of a transformed world a reality. We are living at our fullest, Fowler would say, when we’re more fixated on meeting others’ needs rather than our own.
Earlier, Carol read from David Brooks’ article, “The Moral Bucket List” in which he says, “Commencement speakers are always telling young people to follow their passions. Be true to yourself. This is a vision of life that begins with self and ends with self. But people on the road to inner light do not find their vocations by asking, what do I want from life? They ask, what is life asking of me? How can I match my intrinsic talent with one of the world’s deep needs?”
The outlook Brooks and Fowler speak about, though, does not come easily. We may aspire to it, but we are not pulled toward it. In most ways on most days, I know that I fall short. As Carol read, Brooks calls it a philosophy for stumblers. I can identify with that. It’s an arduous process of steps forward and steps backward; we need a lot of practice and a lot of support.
So where does church fit into this?
Church is the perfect place to make this challenging journey, and also the ideal place to go AWOL on it as well. Let’s think about the journey we go on in church.
First, we show up. Think back to the first time you visited to All Souls. Try to feel what you felt then. Why were you here? Yup, that’s right—there was something really screwed up about you! Joking aside, we show up because we are looking for something. Could be community or comfort or meaning, perhaps intellectual stimulation or inspiration, probably multiple things. At first, as a curious passerby through a church, we’re thinking, “Is this a place where I could belong? Is there something in this place for me?” There’s nothing wrong with that—in fact, it’s a great thing. Most people don’t come back. If you’re a visitor today, you probably won’t be back! And that’s fine, because we choose a church that somehow fits us. To be clear, we do hope you come back, though.
After that, if we have found enough of what we want, we stick around… and eventually our pronouns change. Instead of, “I’m going to a concert at that All Souls place,” we say, “I’m going to a concert at my church.” We form friendships here and identify with the place. Over time, church becomes an integral part of our lives. It resonates with us. We grow because of it. We feel fulfilled by it at a very deep level… and we want to keep it that way.
Which leads to the next step—a fork-in-the-road—and this is the part that fascinates me. Once we have a stake at All Souls, we have moved beyond deciding what role All Souls plays in our lives, and we begin to influence the shape of All Souls in general.
We can take the path of trying to ensure that All Souls becomes our paradise, according to what we want All Souls to be for us. Or we can take the path of becoming part of what All Souls needs to be for others. We can attempt to curate our metaphorical womb, and fixate on the question of “What kind of church do I need this to be for me?”, or we can invert our focus and wrestle with the daunting question, “What kind of church does our world need us to be?”
A hot second for a word of caution. It’s possible we may need to recalibrate what we get upset about. I grew up in a very conservative Pentecostal church outside of Cleveland, Ohio, with a lot of black-and-white thinking. Interestingly, I have noticed that liberal obsessions can be as fundamentalist as conservatives’ beliefs about God. Just like Protestantism was birthed in a fierce reaction to the abuses of the Catholic Church, liberalism took shape in the hot emotion of rebellion against the absolute monarchies of Western Europe. As a result, we are fanatical about process and skeptical of authority. When we overreact in response to these triggers, our response is less about what the world needs and more about our own emotional baggage. Sometimes we need to be reminded that Louis XVI already got the guillotine. He’s not in power anymore. Of course we need to give attention to matters of process and leadership—they are critical. The trick is to give them no more and no less attention than they deserve.
Where then should we focus in creating the church our world needs? Though the challenge is big, we can start simple and start small by focusing regularly about bringing joy to others. The simplest thing you can do today to make that happen? Be welcoming. The world needs churches that are inclusive, so let’s make All Souls an oasis of hospitality for outsiders. Spend the first ten minutes of every Coffee Hour finding someone who's new and making them feel like this is their home, too.
The world needs churches where people can break out of their isolated lives and find connection. So join a small group and, even if you have a surplus of friends, add some new ones. Call or email them during the week to see how they’re doing. In an increasingly individualized society, the world needs churches who are thick networks of care. When one of your friends here has a crisis or a celebration, that’s the prime time window to show up with listening and empathy or emphatic high-fives. Make your cell number the first one that leaps to mind when people have a deep joy or concern they want to share.
The world needs churches who are not just keenly aware of their own internal political disagreements, but keenly engaged in fighting the high-stakes injustices beyond their walls. The world has a lot of chest-thumpers. It needs churches marked by humility, where we are free of the need to prove superiority, where we are deeply aware that there’s a ton we don’t know and that much of what we think we know may be skewed or totally wrong. Are we mature enough to be that unsure of ourselves—and therefore show our world that bold action and humility can and must coexist?
In a sermon a few weeks ago, Galen said, “Here at All Souls, we’re in the transformation business. We want to be better people – more faithful to people we care about, more committed to values we uphold, and more dedicated to our practice of faith. And we want our world to be a better place – more beautiful, more just, and more peaceful.” Galen then pointed out the challenge: “No matter what aspect of life on this planet you’re looking at, however, and no matter where you’re looking at it, transforming the world seems like a futile aspiration. The challenges are too many and the obstacles too great. Even so, as members of the great family of All Souls, that’s the commitment we have made. We resolve to transform ourselves and our world. It’s the work we’ve been called to do. The question is how.”
We live in a fairly liberal town. If we polled the folks walking by on Lexington, they would probably agree wholeheartedly with our values. Liberal principles alone are not our contribution to the world. Being open-minded and well-read does not make us a success in the business of transformation. Being liberal is largely a function of the surroundings we were dropped into. It’s not an ultimate achievement. Our uniqueness must be that we are committed to the “how” of being in the transformation business. That’s built on a recognition that life is not just about us—and then living like it. And that is hard. And that’s our focus for the summer. I hope you’re ready for a hard, hard summer.
That’s the exhilaration of being in the transformation business. As we near the beginning of our third century together as a church, can you imagine what would happen if All Souls was full of folks asking, “What kind of church does our world need us to be?” I can’t imagine a better journey for myself, All Souls, and the world we share.