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Earthquakes, tsunami's, political corruption, exploitation, economic fallout, civil unrest, intolerable human suffering, loss of life. Over the last couple of weeks my kids have thrown many questions in my direction, not all of them easy to answer. Kids have a certain way of knocking you off your perch when you think you've delivered an incredibly articulate answer with that simple but searching word, "Why."
it is in this context of being asked deep, searching questions from my children, that I also happened to be reading a couple of chapters (in a book by McKnight, Corcoran, & Clark called, Church in the Present Tense. The chapters were written by my course director, Jason Clark.
Clark writes provocatively about the place of faith in his life and the journey of brokenness he has experienced. But he also invites you into the conversation he is having where he is refreshingly transparent about his own life and his experience of church and its inability to come to terms with relating to a consumerist culture with mounting implications for not only a person's faith, but the communities in which we interact every day.
We all know how much easier it is to criticise something. To Clark's credit, he doesn't use every opportunity to attack the Church, rather he asks a great question. Instead of asking how do we do church better so that people don't leave, he asks,
How do we recover church for our context?
In the West, critical to understanding that context, is acknowledging the pervasive reality of consumerism, and how unwittingly, we allow our experience of it to alter our consciousness (our social and political awareness of what is happening around us). Experience has shown that better marketing techniques, use of the latest technological gadgets, and trendy music may for a time result in larger numbers attending church and attracting new people, but not always in deeper, longer lasting fruit that transforms individuals and communities over a sustainable period of time. As Clark points out, people are inclined very much to adopting a "take it or leave it" response.
It is at this point that Clark introduces a surprising twist. Rather than discuss how fickle consumerism can be, and how our lives can easily be overtaken and run by our desire for instant fulfilment and gratification, he says,
That the issue is not to deny consumerism, but to deepen it. Stop it from being so shallow.
Simply, this approach is critical to Clark's response to the question. How do we recover church for our context? He is not saying that we need to go out and consume more. Instead, that we deepen our understanding of why people consume? What innate desires do they fulfill? How does it make people feel, and why do people sometimes feel better about themselves and their world when they are consuming?
What Clark has discovered, is that all people are deeply religious. Not in the traditional ways that our parents or grandparents might have been, but where they interact in a religious system of consumerist values that deliver it a smorgasboard of choices, of which 'church' is but one, and for many, a distant and uninviting one at that. In practice, 'consumerism' answers the elusive question of "what is the good life?" And as Clark says, "it offers to save us from the worst fate of all human fates - boredom."
The significance of this book, and particularly Clark's contribution, is that he is not comfortable finding nice, comfortable solutions or merely interested in intellectual banter. He truly wants for people to discover that they are not free to be whatever they want to be, but to discover "that human nature and the purpose of life are not self-creating and self-authenticating but find their rule, organisation and fulfilfilment in the humanity of Jesus Christ with others.
That still leaves us with a critical question. How do we present the intrinsic value of our faith to consumers who have so many options wresting for their attention, and a religious system in which they are deeply embedded?
Recently, I have begun to appreciate the importance of story.
It can be the profound way in which which my story interacts with another person's story. It is not to say that my story is better, or that I desire to pass judgement on another person's story. Instead, it is demonstrating the interplay between my story, the story of our culture and the narrative of Scripture where God's redemptive activity includes me. Bryant Myers in his book, Walking with the Poor, talks about this as the convergence of stories woven together. Just as my life has been enriched by another person's story entering my own, I should carefully consider how my story can help to write a new chapter in someone else's story.
Confused? Want to dig deeper? Consume the book, Church in the Present Tense.
