Things have changed.

In the early 1970s, a rural central-New-York history teacher could ask about religion and assume that most, if not all, of his students would be affiliated with the Christian church. That is not the case today. Contemporary Western culture is characterized by a religious diversity unknown in previous eras, but an even more dramatic change is an ever-increasing “unreligious diversity.” Numerous folk have intentionally opted out of religion and have done so for a wide variety of reasons. Few institutions are as affected by these changes as is the Christian church.

I have heard the laments of church folk, denominational leaders, and academics over the decline of Sunday school, the absence of commitment, churches closing, diminishing resources, and the church having been disenfranchised by the culture. As a Christian and a church professional, I share that sorrow and suffer those worries. Yet I find myself yearning to cry out, “This is not a time to indulge ourselves in whining and worry!”

This is a time for repentance.

Repentance begins when we admit that we’ve lost our bearings, veered off the path. The church today seems to see itself as a victim of the culture. We complain that the culture doesn’t give the church its proper place and that people have let the church down by not participating in church life. A victim mentality is crippling. It blinds us both to our role in our plight and to the possibilities that lie before us. Perhaps we need to ask “Does the culture hold more power than the God who called the church into being?”

My suspicion is that the church has been so dependent on its privileged place within Western culture that it has lost some of its essence, its lifeblood, which flows not from an accommodating society, but from the one who died on Calvary and rose again. I also suspect that the church is at least partially responsible for its current plight. My friend who has made the commitment to raise her children away from the church provides a vivid reminder that the church hasn’t always been faithful to its calling. I think it is possible that our privileged place made us complacent. If the church is a victim of anything, perhaps it is a victim of its own presumptions. We need to consider honestly our role in our current predicament if we are to be freed from the paralysis of a victim mentality and freed to embrace the possibilities that lie before us.

The second step of repentance is to take responsibility by turning from our old ways to embrace the hope that lies in a new beginning. I believe that this is a remarkable moment for the Christian faith, replete with possibilities. Within the former context of a church-friendly society, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish life-defining faith from comfortable religion. Against the backdrop of a “Christian” culture, it was challenging to live out Christianity as a phenomenon that creates radical community and transcends culture. Our current context provides a unique opportunity for us to shed the trappings of religion and “churchiness” and to dedicate ourselves to being communities of authentic disciples of Jesus.

A decade ago I attended a roundtable discussion about the future of the church. Responding to the question of where she saw hope for the future, Sara P. Little, distinguished professor of Christian education, explained that she imagined a future in which we would see arise small pockets of authentic, vibrant faith. Professor Little’s characterization reminded me of comments made by lay theologian William Stringfellow in the leadership tapes for his book An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. Stringfellow, an attorney who dedicated his life to serving poor blacks in Harlem, refers to the church as event rather than location. He calls us to consider honestly the history of the church in which we see not the static presence of the kingdom of God, but rather a transitory faithfulness, moments in which the church tangibly represents what the kingdom of God is like. He describes an institution of “here and there, and now and then authentic churchly character…not necessarily repeated in the same place or with the same people.”

I confess that I have often found the church to be a bitter disappointment, whether as a poor, “unchurched” child who experienced the judgment and scorn of church folk, or as the young pastor with naïve expectations whose days often ended in frustration and disillusionment. Borrowing the images of Little and Stringfellow and going in directions that likely exceed their intentions, I want to ask: Aren’t pockets and moments of faithfulness what we see in the church, historically and currently? As we review contemporary and historic church life, there is much to feel shame about; and yet, every once in a while, we see Christians acting in ways that make God’s kingdom real in the world, moments that say to us, “You can do this too!”

This is a time for hope.

The realization of that hope depends on how we respond to the day. Responses to the challenges of the current age seem to take one of three forms. One response is to reject all traditions and foundations of the past as hypocritical, restrictive, intolerant, and unsophisticated and to embrace instead a wide-open future that has tolerance for everything–except, of course, for the traditions of the former days. A second response seeks to retreat from the trappings, styles, language, and mores of the present and to return uncritically to the “good old days” of the recent past. A third response is one of recovering and reclaiming our foundations and reinterpreting them in light of present-day realities. This is the response that shapes my approach to discipleship, a perspective that was born out of my experiences in the church.

My calling to serve the church and my own repentance of a victim mentality require that I let go of my disappointments about the church. They require turning instead to embrace the lushness of opportunity that abounds in the present day. For me, as a Christian educator, that means wrestling with the question of how we can cultivate practices that nurture the emergence of pockets and moments of authentic discipleship within our communities of faith. The third response–that of recovery and reclamation–seems to me the most hopeful, the most connected to the essence of the faith while being open to a new day.

Before there was a religion called “Christianity,” there were people who staked their very lives on the life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ongoing presence of Jesus. Before sanctuaries and belfries, before organs and offering plates, before pew cushions and stained glass, these followers gathered to celebrate and remember, and to learn more fully what it means to follow Jesus. Before Sunday school and vacation Bible school, before memory verses and flannel boards and even before the existence of a New Testament, formation, nurture, and instruction of believers happened within communities of faith. It is my dream that by listening together to those communities of faith that lived and bred nascent Christian discipleship, we might begin to reclaim ministries of education that are vibrant, radical, formative, and transformative.

Looking back to those earliest communities, we see that the companions of Jesus were faced with a crisis when he died. Without their leader, th
eir community collapsed and its members succumbed to fear and hopelessness. That crisis was resolved through his resurrection and ongoing presence in the Spirit. A scattered and disheartened community of disciples was brought back to life by the risen Jesus, and with that renaissance came a commission. Jesus’s followers were called to live out, as Jesus had, a prophetic-symbolic presence through which others could catch a glimpse of God’s dream for the world. To fulfill that commission, those who had walked with Jesus resumed his ministry. They established communities of Jesus followers that were spontaneous, enlivened assemblies of believers who were figuring it out as they went along.