Remembering 2008

The SEC is 2 and 0 in bowl games (more to come!), and New Year’s Day is here. That means it’s time to reflect just a little on last year — not that there’s been nearly enough time to gain any true perspective. But it’s what people do, and who am I to be non-traditional?

We start with the weirdness.

2008 is the year I was quoted by the Village Voice, a very left-wing publication out of New York. My response is posted here.

And 2008 was the year when Paris Hilton posted a comment. Now I’m confident that you doubt that Paris and I are pen pals, but I checked her email address. It’s out of Calabasas, California, which is a high-rent part of Los Angeles that she frequents. If this was a gag, it was a very well done gag. Oh, and I have her email address, and it seems unlikely that that particular address would have been available to a hoaxer.

(If this was a joke from a reader, it’s time to confess, because I’m impressed!)

Anyway, Paris has a sense of humor, while the Village Voice does not. Who knew?

2008 was a significant year in Church of Christ history

Quail Springs

Quail Springs Church of Christ added an instrumental service, and some small-church preachers in Texas and Oklahoma thought it would be a good idea to publish a series of fullpage ads in the Daily Oklahoman, the largest paper in Oklahoma, declaring Quail Springs disfellowshipped.

The local Churches of Christ in Oklahoma City either supported the effort, took no position, or announced that they weren’t the ones who bought the ad. I don’t think a single congregation actually declared the ads sinful. (I hope I’m wrong.)

It was all very tragic and brought shame to the Churches of Christ that will last for a generation. 

Meanwhile, the Quail Springs church lost a bunch of members (to other Churches of Christ — they weren’t lost to Jesus) and gained a bunch more. And the wife of one of the preachers who published the ad posted here repeatedly to defend their conduct.

Good News and Bad News

Flavil Yeakley published the results of studies on Church of Christ growth. The “good news” is that the bad news could have been even worse! There is no good news. 

The statistics show that the Churches of Christ have been in numerical decline for the years from 2000 to 2006, with the numbers falling the most in the states where we are the strongest (numerically strongest, that is). Oklahoma and Tennessee are losing congregations in droves.

And yet the report itself manages to say nothing of our numerical decline (it’s in the raw numbers but not the text), while trying to paint a rosey picture. The Gospel Advocate and many other conservative publications and blogs emphasized the “good news” element, claiming we’re doing just fine — some even blaming the more progressive churches for the bad news.

We should be very thankful for the information, and we should recognize the data for what it says: the way we’re doing church today isn’t working. We’re in slight numerical decline (which may well indicate that things will be getting worse), but we are in dramatic, horrific decline relative to the overall population. We aren’t even keeping up with our own biological growth — we aren’t keeping enough of our own children to replace those of us who die. 

This is bad news. And it calls for change. We can (and should) debate what the change needs to be. But nothing would be more foolish than arguing for the status quo.

Church planting

Meanwhile, there are good things happening. The church planting movement is taking deep root among us. Kairos, Mission Alive, and Stadia are all active among Churches of Christ and planting congregations across the country — and enjoying success.

Missionality

And more and more churches are maturing away from the church growth model of doing church toward greater missionality. We are still very new at this, but it’s easy to see the change taking hold of our churches.

Progressive

It seems clear that the progressive movement gained strength in 2008. It’s not reflected in the literature so much as in the steady transition of church leadership away from the legalism of the past.

On the other hand, Yeakley’s report makes two very important observations. While, tragically, the conservative churches are losing their children to Satan — they often leave Christianity altogether, he reports, the progressive churches are losing their children to mainstream evangelicalism, community churches and the like. And while they aren’t leaving Jesus, neither are they supporting the Restoration Movement or its congregations.

Perhaps this means we’re finally teaching a truly nondenominational Christianity, but what are the long-term implications for our congregations? And who is talking about this?

Division

On the other hand, I have mixed feelings about the many congregations that are leaving the Churches of Christ altogether. In one sense, they are being truly non-denominational — which is truer to our ideals than many of the rest of us. But I’m concerned that our most precious institutions will lose essential support if the trend continues. I mean, there’s a real need for our more progressive Christian colleges and many organizations that help plant churches, support missionaries, and do other good works.

On the truly bad-news front, the Churches of Christ are more divided today than we were a year ago. And the impact is being felt in our ability to do ministry.  We have far fewer campus ministries today than a year ago, because so many have been supported as joint efforts of local congregations. As churches have split and as congregations have disfellowshipped each other, neither the conservative nor the progressive churches in town are big enough to support the ministry.

Just so, many of our colleges and other institutions struggle to operate. Cascade College in the northwest US is closing its doors. Many other institutions are on the brink of insolvency — and the recession will likely push several over the edge. 

Going evangelical

Finally, I’d say the truly biggest change in the Churches of Christ is the decline in indigenous publications and their replacement with evangelical and emerging literature. I mean, I’m far more likely to find a fellow church member reading Rick Warren or Brian McLaren than Rubel Shelly or Randy Harris. Why?

Well, I can think of three reasons.

First, Americans in general don’t read as much as they used to. Magazines and newspapers of all sorts are failing. Therefore, the market is contracting even as our numbers are in only slight decline.

Second, progressive Church of Christ writers have little means to advertise their books, as there’s no print magazine for our members and no website that has captured a large part of the movement.

Third, the progressive churches are moving ever more toward evangelicalism — that is, the progressive churches find more useful, meaningful insight in evangelical and emerging literature than in the work of our own authors.

Is it good for the progressive churches to be going mainstream? Well, yes and no. It’s good that we are no longer provincial and that we are willing to learn from others. It’s bad in that we quickly moving so far from our roots that we’re losing all contact with the more conservative churches — making it harder and harder to persuade them to join us. 

And, of course, there are parts of mainstream evangelicalism that are not so good. I’m dreading hearing a Church of Christ preacher invite visitors to pray “the believer’s prayer” and other such silliness. We desperately need to find a path that preserves the good of the Restoration Movement while rejecting the bad. I’m afraid we’re going  to so rebel against our legalistic roots that, as Campbell once wrote, in our haste to leave Babylon, we run past Jerusalem only to land in Rome.

We do have some things worth preserving. I’m not sure we have the institutions or leadership we need to do so. I mean, we have lots of great books (and blogs) explaining what was wrong with how we used to be. But who is articulating a vision for where we need to go? 

Good new and bad news

It’s the nature of transition. We in the progressive churches know what we want to leave, but we aren’t so sure where we want to go. And in this sense we reflect much of American Christianity, which is struggling with many of the same issues, as their own denominational structures are decaying and their own old ways no longer work either.

And so it really is good news and bad news.