445 - Whither the Church?

Whither the Church?
By Patrick D. Miller

The church in North America, if not elsewhere, exists today in a strange kind of tension-precarious, anxious, and uncertain about its future, on the one hand, and assertive, thriving, and active, on the other. Perhaps it has always been that way. But the more obvious features of church life in this part of the world suggest why this manner of being should be the case. The changing character of the church in our culture evokes various kinds of response. A few indicators of that change will illustrate.

The energy and loyalty of church members are shifting-or have shifted-away from the denominational structures that have for so long been the visible representations of church life in the public eye and toward congregational life and local mission. Thus, supportive and missional structures that have been dependable and central are no longer either. The financial implications of that fact have been felt in distressing ways in virtually every mainline denomination. The latest headline in a denominational paper on my desk reads: "Unrestricted mission giving continues to decline."

This shift, however, is precisely a shift of energy not simply a decline. The investment of people-convictional, financial, and personal invest­ment-in the work of the church as represented in their local congregation and its mission, is, in many cases, amazingly diverse and significant. Our congregation began its stewardship season with two lay members reading, in rapid-fire fashion, a two-minute rehearsal of all that goes on in that congregation for its own life and the life of the world. The effect was both formally and substantively breathtaking.

New congregational structures and experimentation with various styles of worship suggest a kind of uncertainty and laissez faire attitude toward the visible marks of the church as discerned in liturgy and congregational life. Familiar liturgical orders are being replaced by new official versions in the denominations and by all sorts of contemporary forms of worship in the congregations themselves. Neither at the denominational level where the worship resources are developed nor at the local level where worship is carried out can one assume that what the church has done is what it is going to do. Is this a major erosion or a sign of powerful renewal? It is probably both.

446 - Whither the Church?

So also the powerful educational impetus that denominations. have found in the development of major curricular resources seems now to have evaporated. The excitement generated by a church-wide engagement in biblical and theological study around a common core of-educational materials is not likely to occur again. There is neither the financial base nor the interest of the membership that such an enterprise requires. Yet, educational programs in local churches are varied and lively. Theology and the Bible have not disappeared from the church. Indeed, the spate of Bible translations and commentary series is itself an indicator of our situation. The church can no longer count on a normative and thus familiar and reliable version of the Bible as a base for its pastoral, preaching, educational, and devotional life, but the multitude and variety of translations and resources, seen in their best light, testify, among other things, to some kind of commitment to the Word of God in the church's life.

In the theological realm, the church is fraught with conflict over various issues, some of which threaten to create major splits. Indeed, division, both formal and informal, has already taken place in some denominations. The Re-Imagining Conference and the debates over the church's stance on sexual ethics, particularly same-sex relationships, are the most obvious and immediate examples of these theological controversies. How such conflict will shake out or shake the church remains to be seen. Many of us wish that we could get past such theological problems. Yet, the debates have forced church bodies, individual theologians, and anxious and troubled laypeople to a kind of theological and moral discussion that might not be going on if we had more theological harmony. The church may not look very pretty when it engages in vigorous theological debate, but any therapist knows that anger is a sign of life. Theological anger that precipitates theological argument is at the same time a sign of a church troubled and a sign of a church alive. Indifference and lassitude may be the symptoms to be feared the most.

Whither, then, the church? It may not be self-evident to the reader who first picks up this issue and glances at the table of contents that its focus is the church and that we have asked our writers to speak about the church in this changing context. The very different angles they take is indicative of our situation. In one case, the focus may be theological; in another it may be cultural. For one, the need may be theological; for another, practice; for another, vision. Is this an issue on the church or on the culture? I am not sure which, but then that is in some sense the issue of the issue.

Since the editors have a self-granted permission-if not indeed a job requirement-to wade into the discussion, let me suggest two or three things that ought to belong to the church's directional search.

Attention to ecclesiology as a primary topic of theological conversation, teaching, and writing is a prime desideratum. It is symptomatic of our time that we have a continuing spate of sociological and historical studies on the church but not as much theological study. In the early 1960s, two

447 - Whither the Church?

significant and influential works appeared that sought to look closely at the church as a social institution, Peter Berger's The Noise of Solemn Assemblies and James Gustafson's Treasure in Earthen Vessels. I particu­larly remember reading the latter and being refreshed and delighted by a study that took so seriously the social and human dimensions of the church without forgetting its theological character. As a sociologist, Berger addressed the cultural establishment of American religion in powerful terms. Since that time, we seem to have given far more attention to the social and sociological study of the church than to developing a theology of the church that is fully aware of its "earthen" character but takes its starting point from what the church was called and called out to be. The study of the church as a social institution is inevitable and necessary. But when "voluntary association" governs our thinking about the church more than does "body of Christ," then something is askew. There is a crying need for the church and its ministry-both pastors and teachers-to ask as sharply as possible about who and what we are and what we are about in a way that expects to be informed by the voices of Scripture as well as and as much as by cultural analysis.

The church is constituted by the grace of God. In practice and in theory, therefore, the church is a community of grace. This means the congregation knows itself to be redeemed sinners who join their lives together in the service and obedience of the Lord of the church. Its gospel is truly good news. The purpose of its preaching, in the words of George Buttrick, is to share a joy. The church is open and welcoming. In the tension between tightly defining its borders for the sake of faithfulness or clarity of identity and opening wide its arms at the risk of fuzzy self-consciousness, the church needs to remember there is one criterion for participation, and that is the awareness of the redemptive grace of God. We are in a time when the language and the notion of inclusion are increasingly criticized and dismissed. There may be grounds for qualifying inclusiveness in other institutions and arenas of public life-though it is difficult for me to conceive where that could be significantly so-but the openness of the church in all its facets is finally and simply an indication of the power of God's grace in our midst, or of our resistance to it.

Even as it is a community of grace, the church is also a community of conviction and commitment. Its shaky status in the contemporary world may have much to do with its failure to declare itself-as a corporate entity and as individuals-clearly as the people of God. That rubric, somewhat in disrepute in our time, is worth recovering. For it was originally used in order to identify the community's ultimate commitment, its binding obligation to live in this world as a people that is in every way tagged with the name of the Lord of Israel-in praise, worship, and obedience, in the quotidian and mundane as well as in those deep and transcendent moments when there is the profoundest awareness of a larger dimension to our lives than we ever dreamed. The church was first called the Way (Acts 9:2; 18:25-26). In our time, that image also bears recovering as a means of identifying a particular reality that is not simply

448 - Whither the Church?

consonant with the culture. The people of the Way is not a bad handle for the church unless our common life makes it meaningless. It is probably a telling sign of the church's contemporary plight in North America that such a rubric would seem more applicable, in the minds of some, to the political right of this country than to the church.

The church may not find it easy to be at the same time fully open and fully committed. We have tended to stress either one or the other, either to be very welcoming, unrestricting, and undemanding, or to require specific modes of conduct and tests of devotion for both members and leaders. The tension between the two is real, but there is where the church lives-graced and commanded.

Such a mode of existence may be possible as the church lives also between memory and hope, remembering the story and stories of its saints and sinners and anticipating without doubt the power of God to vindicate the divine purpose. There is a powerful New Testament image that bears witness to the memory and hope of the church. It is the picture of the "cloud of witnesses" who surround us, reminding us of God's enduring work in the church through the ages and instilling in us the energetic hope that the future requires. The reality of the church has no surer ground than this cloud of witnesses. They encircle us as our past and as our future. They tell us where we have been, and they make it clear we have a long way to go.