Article from Epistle to the Presbyterians, March 2011
by Thomas A. Sweet
Return to the Articles by Thomas A. Sweet
Most of the people I know who love
Chautauqua have a difficult time “explaining” it to someone who never has
been there. They try.
They talk with fervor about its various programs and highlights.
They attempt to describe it. But
usually they end up shrugging their shoulders and saying with equal parts pride
and gratitude, “You have to experience it.”
I feel the same way about “church.”
How does one explain “church”? How
does one describe “our” church? We
can talk with pride and gratitude about worship and the various programs and
facets of First Pres but, for those who hold it dear, we know we cannot capture
its “essence” in simple descriptors, knowing that something deeper is
happening here in us and among us even if we do not exactly have the words for
it. It has to be experienced over a
span of time and through the assorted seasons of our lives.
There is a depth to church that is best discernible over the long haul.
I think St. Paul had it right when he said that we do well not to look
too hard and long at the things we can see but to those things we cannot see
for, he says, the things we can see are temporary while the things we cannot see
are eternal.
Churches are engaged in a ministry of
formation, shaping souls and lives in the configurations and contours of
God-with-us. Formation requires “a
long obedience in the same direction” (to use a Nietzche quotation out of
context). How tempting it is for
churches to abandon their demanding commission to listen for and to respond to
God in favor of an entertaining panoply of programs and projects that keeps its
members busy and distracted (like keeping a child occupied instead of doing the
harder work of teaching him or her to grow up).
Eugene Peterson, in his recent memoir
entitled The Pastor, writes about a
paradigm shift that is needed within many congregations, one I do believe we are
making in ours. Eugene says we need
to shift from understanding church as what we
do to continue the work of Jesus in his absence to understanding church as the
creation and continuing work of the
Holy Spirit. It is a shift from
understanding the church in terms of what we plan and accomplish and take
responsibility for to understanding church as what God plans and accomplishes
and takes responsibility for. The
first paradigm is oriented around what we can observe and understand by
naked-eye observation. The better
paradigm is oriented to a great deal that we cannot understand and for which we
cannot account by naked-eye observation.
The first paradigm is adopted by
churches that are geared toward measurable “progress” that looks like
“success” as the world accounts it. It
is not as easy to calculate or quantify growth in compassion, prayer,
equanimity, grace, wisdom, freedom, and joy.
But that is the life into which
God’s Spirit is leading God’s church. Being
formed and shaped in such may sometimes lead us to a cross but, even there, God
is faithful. (TAS)