If the email traffic that I experienced after last week's post about sports was a fair indication, I was correct in assuming that the contribution was unpopular. Assessing the world of sport, and finding it destructive, assaulted one of our culture's sacred cows. I am not sorry, however, because I am continually more convinced that we need to take a closer look at our love of sport.
But, if last week's post was unpopular, this week's will be an outright powder keg of potential disagreement. For, this week, we examine one of the sacred cows of the traditional church and its long-embraced theological and practical life.
Progressive Church theology places the accent of congregational life on reflecting the light of Christ in ministry and mission. The church is best when it works to meet the needs of the community, with emphasis on the poor, the rejected, the ignored, the victimized and the suffering. The basic notion says that we, as culture, society and people are better when we each share in the care of those who are least benefited by the systems under which we live.
The church is called to serve as Christ to those who struggle and suffer. This was once a tremendously controversial statement. It rocked the traditional boat of our sanctuaries, where the good people gathered to unify, to share, to care for one another, and to secure the right ways of life, protecting them from the bad influences around us. We sang the right hymns, in the right congregations, reciting the right liturgies, praying the right prayers, caring for the right people, protecting ourselves and our ways from the outside and outsiders. It made little sense that the church was here for others.
That change in theology has been widely achieved. Persons now more widely acknowledge that we are the church when we serve others in Christ's stead. We are the church when we break the self-serving attitudes and approaches through which most of us earlier experienced the church. The church is not a closed, cloistered, safe community of same believers and practitioners. It is an open, welcoming community of diverse persons, beliefs and practices who join together in order to do for and with those who had been left outside.
There are practical remnants of the church of the past that keep us from more vibrantly shining in our communities, however. There are still many who demand right ways, right liturgies, right hymns, right sacraments, right people in right places, doing right things. There are many who demand that the church be there to attend to them and their needs, even more so than the church attends to the needs of those who struggle and suffer in the wider community.
Ecclesiology has changed in advance of practical ministries. Servant theology is more widely embraced than its practical implications. The mission and ministry of our churches are now incarnational. That is, we are the body of Christ, the hope of those who have been victimized by our culture, society and systems. But practical matters of emphasis have not yet made that same transition. Church members still tend to see themselves as those who are to be served instead of those who render the service. They continue to demand that their needs, desires and beliefs be honored over and above the needs of the disenfranchised, poor and hungry.
It is likely that practical ministry and mission will catch up to progressive theology. It is certainly likely that church participants will begin to see themselves as empowered, equipped, called and sent persons, upon whom the struggling and suffering rely for change. In the meantime, pastoral leaders will simply have to serve with a foot in both theological camps.
One additional thought occurs to me. Many in the church are called to care for the needs of the community, to feed the sheep and protect them from the wolves around and about. If that is all the church does, however, then, in progressive terms, it is minimizing its potential. It could do so much more for its neighbors, its community and the global village. It could do much more to shine with the light of Christ in the lives of those who desperately search for assistance. The evolution of the church gleams brightly, then, promising a time when the church shall genuinely shine with Christ's light.
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