:: [Guest Post by Michael McCord] ::
NOTE: As you read this I will be walking the streets of Nassau while introducing other campus ministers to the mission possibilities there. I wrote this blog post several months ago after returning from a mission trip with eleven students. It is mostly in response to a deep conversation we had about what will happen when the students leave college. See, they get it – they’re tired of churches that are more concerned with creating their own world rather than changing THE world for the sake of The Kingdom.
So as our students walk across their stages and receive their long expected degrees, will there be a church they can be part of? Will there be a movement of Jesus followers who actually pray as Jesus taught us… and believe it?
9 "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.
I was recently walking through the straw market in Nassau, Bahamas. I’ve been there close to a dozen times on mission trips through our Wesley Foundation. It’s a familiar experience to me. What struck me during my most recent visit was the likeness that I found between the current church models and this collection of traders.
When you are new to the scene, you instantly become overwhelmed by the shear size of the venue and the number of traders packed into the space. At times, you may be pressed against the musky cigar trader who’s covered in sweat and whispering, “green, mon, want some green” (note: green is marijuana, for those who don’t know) while a little old lady from one of the cruise ships elbows her way through the crowd. That’s just another typical day in the straw market. What one realizes once they have been to the market several times is that most of the merchants are all selling the same thing. In fact, they actually work for the same boss.
The trick to the market is working it as though each table is a separate vendor who is situating themselves as the best priced. To do this, they come up with catchy little phrases that draw the average tourist into their little niche. One of my favorite lines, that always seems to work, is “hey mon, come here, today’s my birthday, let me give you a special price.” The idea seems to be based upon personalizing themselves to the tourists and making their booth look special or better than all the others. It works. The rich fun-filled tourists look down with pity on “this poor woman” who must work on her birthday – and they buy.
Now let’s think about the church as we find it today.* How similar is our church setting to this straw market experience? It seems that our market is saturated with churches and each is pushing itself as the most personable, the most creative, the largest, the church with the most “programs,” the church that is the most “real,” and the list goes on. Churches, it seems, are desperate to get people in their doors. And, like any good corporation, they identify their market and then create an image that sells themselves to their particular culture. If you don’t believe this, just take a second and visit some church websites, yellow page ads, or, my personal favorite, newspaper advertisements. It is rather poignant.
There is a church on one of the main highways out of Macon that is named “The Real Church” as if all the others are not. What does this mean? What were its founders thinking when they named the church? There ads are fitting of the image that they are striving to create. They each include an image of this super-cool looking pastor and his wife. They are snazzy dressers who communicate this coolness of being “real” – whatever that is.
I have spent some time thinking about this scenario and my own drive to create a ministry that reaches the multitudes. After all, I am a capitalist. I have a Protestant work ethic that is only matched by my drive to be prosperous, successful, and important. Seriously, in all honestly, is that not what most of us are pursuing in this life? It’s so deeply engrained in the fabric of our lives. In this, our greatest fear is not failure but insignificance. And so, it is appropriate that our churches model this sort of identity.
The end result is a Christian movement that is marked by groups shuffling to look the coolest and best-valued church experience. We have become a straw market of churches, complete with catchy little phrases and games to catch the attention of those tourists that cross our paths.
One of the most concerning attributes of this movement is the propensity to use eternal life or salvation as the catchy phrase to get people in our doors. In many ways, this sort of theological manipulation is not all that new, but it seems to have become far more pervasive over the past few years. It is as if we have turned God’s salvivic covenant into a commodity that is openly traded on the floors of society. It is as if the church has fully grasped the “filling station” persona from cheesy Christian slogans of ole. Each church is selling the same thing – relationship with God – and yet they are each positioning themselves as the better source (i.e. the warrantied faith, the faith with Techron, or maybe a faith that comes with a savings card). You get my point.
What this has created, beyond a cheesy superficial gaze upon society, is a theology that has missed the boat. Instead of seeing faith a relational covenant with a creative, loving God, the church has created a theology based upon avoiding hell, getting into heaven, or as one church put it on their sign “Jesus is FIRE insurance.” Is this what faith has become? Are we simply savvy life investors who sacrifice a little now so that we can enjoy our final retirement in the Atlantis of heaven? Do we believe that building a powerful mega-church will somehow improve the end game?
I am worried about us… about myself. I bite on some of this. My life is shaped by this. I almost feel as though this sort of hermeneutic is inescapable.
Let’s return to the passage above. This is a fairly common and often recited passage commonly known as “The Lord’s Prayer.” I have prayed it since I was a kid. It holds deeply powerful imagery and meaning for me. At the same time, much of that meaning is less related to the words that trickle off my tongue as it does to the church and familial experiences associated with it. This is probably true for many people. This is one of the dangers of allowing Scripture or ritual to become common. We often miss the point.
Let’s think about this passage. It is actually stacked with pretty significant thoughts about how God relates to us and how God would like for us to relate to Him. For the sake of space and for its relation to my current argument, let us examine this verse: “10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
I am convinced this single verse challenges our current model of church development. Maybe our main thrust should be less about getting “in” and waiting for the “end” as much as it is about ushering in a new way of thinking and living... right now. More specifically, perhaps our task as the church is to represent the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven rather than hocking eternal life to the highest or coolest bidder. If so, I am not sure that the straw market is a sufficient model. In fact, I am almost certain that it is not.
I am not an anti-denominational person. I don’t believe that we should all be part of one Church even though we are all part of the same movement. This is even evidenced in the early church formation as certain regions followed the teachings of a particular Apostle. I am absolutely convinced denominational traditions provide for a breadth of faith experience that enriches the fabric of the Christian faith. We do not all think or act alike. I almost think that this is actually planned. However, we should be mindful of how we shape our message and the motives behind them.
In short, eternal life begins now, with you and me. How are we shaping that experience for others? How are we communicating its message to the parts of the world that has yet to experience it without devaluing the One who has “made real” the message in us?
* I come to this conversation from the perspective of the “Bible Belt” and from a city with more churches per-capita than anywhere else in the States. I suppose this sort of climate may create its own sense of the church experience. However, I am fairly convinced that no matter your location in the States, this observation is fairly common.
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Rev. Michael D. McCord is the Director of Campus Ministry Resources and Training for the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry for The United Methodist Church in Nashville, TN.
