The Future Of The Church
May 31, 2009
1When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
5Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” 12All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
14But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o”clock in the morning. 16No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. 21Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
Acts 2:1-21
Can you imagine what it must have been like to have been there on that first Pentecost? To have witnessed the tongues of fire coming from heaven and feel the Holy Spirit rushing like a mighty wind? It must have been an incredible experience. And we can only imagine what it must have felt like, knowing it was a moment which would forever change all that was to come.
Today, my sermon topic as advertised is the future of the church. But as I often do, I find it helpful when talking about the future to start by talking about the past. I firmly believe that we cannot understand where we are going unless we understand where we have been. And the story of Pentecost is a great place for us to start because it really was the beginning of something new.
Here in Acts, Chapter 2, we read about the birth of the church. It’s true that Jesus had followers before the day of Pentecost. But it wasn’t until the coming of the Holy Spirit that those first disciples were bound together as one body. No longer was Jesus just one man walking around Galilee telling stories. Now, instead of one person, it was up to the church as the body of Christ to proclaim that message.
That’s a key point and it’s one I’m gonna keep coming back to over and over again today. Over the years, the basic message of our faith has remained the same—Christ was crucified and resurrected. What has changed is the way we tell that story. And the way we tell it makes all the difference in the world. For example, one of the first great crises of the church was how to tell a primarily Jewish story to a bunch of Gentiles. Could the message about Jesus be reinterpreted and understood differently in a new time and place? That has always been the challenge and the promise of our work in the church. Can we take the message, that same message about Jesus that is still true and still needs to be heard, and find ways to share it in a new time and place?
That is the question for us this morning at Park View Baptist Church. But it is also the question for the capital-C church. And this morning, when I talk the future of the church, I’m talking about both. One of the things I‘m going to try and help us understand today is that those two things are intricately connected. The way we think about the capital-C church affects what we do here at the lowercase-C church.
And it is clear that the way people think about the capital-C church, at least in our society, has dramatically changed over the last 40 years. The institutional church was once one of the dominant forces in American life. We can debate whether or not people actually attended church more frequently in those days, but what is certain is that whether or not you went, you had to have your name on the roll somewhere. Because anybody who was anybody was a member of a church. It was impossible to be a good American without belonging to a local church. That’s why, 12 days after his inauguration, President Dwight Eisenhower joined the Presbyterian Church. He said it didn’t really matter which denomination he belonged to, just as long as he belonged.
In the 1950s and 60s, that’s the way many people thought about church. In those days, church was a civic institution. It was the center of our social lives; it’s where we met our spouses; it’s where we made our friends. Y’all get what I’m saying because you were a part of all that. You remember the days when church was important to everybody, and even the ones who didn’t come had to pretend like it was important.
But obviously, along the way, things changed. We could talk about how and why they changed, and we could debate the pros and cons, but that’s beyond the scope of our time this morning. Suffice it to say that in the year 2009, the capital-C church in the United States no longer holds the same kind of sway it once did. Statistics tell us that every year, more than 4,000 churches in the United States will close their doors. By a three to one margin, American adults claim that they are more likely to develop their own set of religious beliefs than to accept a comprehensive set of beliefs taught by a particular church. In the year 2009, only 21% of people in the United States attend church at least once a week. And of that number, among Baptists, 1 in 5 is over the age of 70.
I know that’s a lot of numbers to throw at you, and I’m sure it’s hard to process it all, but the bottom line is that the capital-C church in America is no longer as important as it once was. It no longer has the same kind of cultural status. And we can cry about that all we want, but it won’t change the facts. This is the new reality in which we live. And it is this reality in which we are called to be the church. We may miss the good old days, but we cannot be a 21st century church if we operate like we did in the 1950s and 60s. Change has come, and it has come whether or not we like it. So, the question for us is—How will we respond?
For starters, I believe we have to make the connection between how people think about church in the larger society and how they perceive our particular church. One of the big reasons that folks don’t come to Park View anymore is because they don’t go to church anywhere anymore. So, I don’t think the solution to our problems is to just tinker with the worship service or to build some new buildings. Those may be good things to do, but ultimately they’re just band-aids. What we’ve really got to deal with is the root disease. And the root disease is that Park View Baptist Church is still operating with a 20th century mindset even though it’s the year 2009.
So, in order for us to live, we must completely reinvent the way we do church. In my mind, I’m thinking about it as if we were restarting the church. It’s that big of a switch. The message is still the same. And the name Park View Baptist Church may be the same. But the time has come for us to develop a definition of church that works in the 21st century.
And here’s the place I think we must start—we have to move from an idea of church that is based around membership to one that is based around transformation. You’ve heard me talk about this before, but I’m going to do it again today because I think it’s crucial in understanding our future. For many years, this church, along with most other churches, counted as many members as we could. It didn’t matter if they were spouses of members who never came and it didn’t matter if they hadn’t shown up in 20 years. The important thing was counting them. Because then we could point to our membership rolls and we could say, “Look, how big we are.” It’s that old Dwight Eisenhower approach to church—It doesn’t matter where you belong, the important thing is just belonging. And for a long time, that was the model for doing church. A church was successful because of its size and its prominence and its status in the community. And each individual church equated success with the number of members they had.
Many of us in this room are still living with that 20th century model of church. But hear me say this morning—It’s time to give it up. Because in Acts, Chapter 2, I don’t read about membership. I read about transformation. I read about people’s lives being changed because they encountered the Holy Spirit. And I think that is what we are called to do. Yes, we will always need a core group here at the church to carry out certain tasks. But the realities of our society and our location suggest that we are unlikely to get many new members. Period. And that goes for every church, everywhere. Even the huge churches that are growing, which by the way represent less than 10% of churches in the United States, are growing at a far slower rate than they used to grow. So, we need to understand that no matter what we may do here at Park View, we’re probably not going to be getting a lot of new members.
Everybody take a deep breath and let that sink in. Guess what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. The number of members we have is incidental to the real work of the church. Whether we have 4000 members, 400 members, or 40 members, we are called to bring transformation to people’s lives. That is why I do not consider it to be a failure when we do things like feeding the hungry or housing the homeless. It’s true that those folks will never join our church as members. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t feed them or house them. I’ve heard members here at Park View talk about the things we’ve done in the past like the parking lot health fair or Vacation Bible School or when we had a lot of the neighborhood kids coming on Wednesday nights and they say things like, “Yeah, we did all that stuff, but their parents never came. And nobody ever joined the church. So, it was a failure.”
Really? Because I believe that if we helped people, and if we taught anyone anything about Christ or showed them his love, those endeavors were successful. No, they did not grow the church numerically. But they were still good things to do. And I believe the time has come for us to accept that. The time has come for us to change our focus of ministry. If all we’re concerned about is getting new members, I’m sorry Park View, but it’s over. We might as well close tomorrow. I mean, we may get a few new members here or there, but it’s never going to be very many. So, the challenge for us is to imagine a different kind of church, a church that is all about serving others, without worrying about who becomes a member. And if we can do that, then we may really have an important purpose here in this community.
Because I believe that all around us, there are people who need help. There are single parents in this neighborhood who need help finding affordable daycare. There are military families, living in these apartments for two years, who need a home away from home. There are unemployed folks, who need help with resumes or job training skills. And while these people may come in and out of our doors, and may even participate for a while in the life of our church, it is highly unlikely that many of them will become long-term members of our church in the same way folks from this neighborhood once did. So, we have to ask ourselves—Is that okay? Can we be content as a church knowing we are helping folks, even if we never get much bigger in membership? These are rhetorical questions only in the sense that I don’t want you to speak out loud right now. But every person in this room needs to answer these questions for themselves because that, more than any other factor, will determine the future of this church. If the answer is no, it’s time to consign ourselves to death. And it will come sooner than we think.
But if the answer is yes, if we can be content and satisfied serving others without growing numerically, we’ve got a lot of work to do. And the rest of what I’m going to say this morning is geared towards those of you who join me in saying yes. David Hoover often talks about leadership by expectation. He says that if you clearly state what is expected, people are more likely to do it. And I agree. So, this morning, let me state my expectations for our future. And I want to make it clear that these expectations apply just as much to me as they do to everybody else.
First, I expect us, and by us I mean all those present and all those who are left at Park View, to rally around the church like we never have before. The days when we could just show up as much as we want, and do whatever we want, and give as much as we want are over. If things are going to change at Park View, it is going to take a renewed commitment to the church. There might have been a time in the past when we could just be casual churchgoers and still get by. But those days are long gone. And no matter how unpleasant this may be to hear, it’s time to give up all our excuses. I know some of you’ve got family stuff going on, you’ve got health problems, financial problems, work, or you’re just plain tired out. I’m not indifferent or insensitive to those things. But if we want to make a new go of it here at Park View, it’s going to mean making some difficult choices. Church can no longer be the last priority on our list. I believe it is possible to have a family, and work, and deal with unpleasant things in life, and still be part of a church. I believe that because my family did it, and I do it, and I see many of you doing it. But it’s a choice. And quite frankly, it bothers me when I seem to care more about the future of this place than folks who have been here their entire lives. I know it’s hard to be a part of Park View Baptist Church when you go to some of these other churches and never be asked to do the least little thing. Some of these megachurches you can slip in and out of and nobody will even know you’re there. So, if that’s what you’re looking for, if you don’t want to put forth any effort and if your idea of church is doing as much as you want when you want, I say good night and good luck. We wish you all the best in your search for a new church home. But if you’re interested in doing what is right even if it costs you something, I invite you to stay here. That’s my first expectation.
Secondly, I expect you to put forth effort without a great deal of begging from me. I don’t just want you to be here; I want you here and enthusiastic about what’s happening. My expectation is that you will come and work, not just because you’ve been coerced or guilted into it, but because you genuinely embrace this church’s future and you want to help. If we are really serious about restarting the church, it means that I’m going to have most of my attention focused on that. Now, of course, I’ll still be here to help in any way that I can. But you need to understand that I’m not going to be spending a lot of my time coddling folks and persuading them to do what they already know they should do. Y’all get me? Restarting the church is not a top down effort. I can stand up here and talk all day long, but it’s not going to make a hill of beans unless you all in the pews are ready to get serious.
Last expectation, and this goes back to what I said a moment ago—I expect us to be satisfied doing what is right because it is right. There’s a reason I haven’t talked much about the renovation proposal that will be presented next week. And that’s because, although I’m very excited about it, I don’t think it’s the solution to all our problems. In fact, I don’t think there is a solution to all our problems. And I want you to hear me say that this morning.
We could undertake some of these projects together. We could rally around the church, and get excited, and fix our buildings and do some new things, but at the end of the day, it may not increase our membership by one single solitary soul. I think it could, but I can’t say for certain. When I was talking to Wayne Brewer the other day, he said, “Well, all this sounds great, but I’ve heard these grandiose plans before. Every preacher in the last 20 years has tried to come up with something. So, what’s going to make this time any different?”
My answer to that question is—perhaps nothing. If by different, we mean that the church is going to be just like what it once was or if by different, we mean that we’ll suddenly get a lot of new members, what I am proposing is probably not going to be much different than what came before. But that’s not why we’re doing all this. The reason we are doing what we are doing is because it’s a good thing to do. If we want to use our facilities and make them accessible for ourselves and others, we have to renovate them. That’s a given.
But these renovations are not an end unto themselves. They are a means to an end. Meaning that what we think of as Park View Baptist Church today will probably not exist in 20 or 30 years. Park View may be a black church, or it may a community center, or it may be a non-traditional congregation that worships on Tuesday nights. I don’t know. Talking about the future of the church is always an exercise in humility, because it’s difficult to predict what will happen next.
But the decision for us and for our time is whether or not we want to make that future possible. I doubt very seriously if the people who were present on that first day of Pentecost could ever have imagined what the church would become. And I doubt that if we traveled back in time 110 years to talk to the founders of this church, that they would ever have imagined a congregation like the one we have today. But even though they didn’t have all the answers, those faithful Christians committed themselves in their own time and place to make our future possible. This morning, I don’t have all the answers and I don’t want to pretend like I do. And I’ll be honest, for a long time, I was pretty convinced that the story of Park View Baptist Church was over. I was ready to fold things up and go out as gracefully as we could.
But I will tell you that right now, I am more excited and more hopeful about the future of Park View than I have been for a long time. Because I realized that it’s not up to us to save the church. As I said in my sermon a few weeks ago, God is the one who does the saving. That is the same message that is been proclaimed from the very beginning. Our job is to do what is right, to step out on faith over and over again as we learn to retell our story. I said at the beginning of this sermon that we can only imagine what it must have felt like on the day of Pentecost, knowing it was a moment that would forever change what was to come. But I was wrong. We don’t really have to imagine it, because we are living in that same moment. And with the Holy Spirit moving in our midst, let us embrace this moment as we step out on faith and do what is right. AMEN