Transforming Church

What I learned that morning was that I was not a good chaplain. Perhaps this is a good thing to know, but after all I was sitting in a class called “Pastoral Leadership” and not “Chaplaincy 101.” Certainly these two realities are not always severely distinct, and I do not even want to suggest that they need be. However, what happened that morning was this: this class full of senior seminarians with thoughts of hospital hallways and ten weeks of summer Clinical Pastoral Education and Internships dusted off their best understandings of “pastoral leadership” which were in fact attitudes and practices that better reflected “chaplaincy 101.”

So the discussion immediately moved to concepts such as “unconditional positive regard,” “the ministry of presence,” and things that are significantly similar to attitudes and practices that my wife has learned as a therapist. These things are not in and of themselves a bad thing. Both “unconditional positive regard” and a “ministry of presence” can be healing and transformative things. To be in the shadow of a cross is incredibly lonely. Human community and the basic communication, “You are not alone!” can mean the difference between getting through the day and abject despair.

But something was missing. I was taught in my own unit of CPE not to have a witness. The rationale for this had to do with the reality that patients and families in a hospital can be Buddhist, Sikh, atheist, Baptist, agnostic, or Roman Catholic, and I was taught that a posture of non-interference is best.

This attitude is of course what is at issue: it is the issue of posture. It is the supposition that I can be a Christian leader, ordained into the body of Christ and somehow not have a witness. It is the assumption that in these dire stations of life, the only story that counts is one of presence that is not grounded in the story that we tell, the story of Jesus Christ and him crucified and risen.

The Old Paradigm

The reality is that we live in a culture that is confused about the identity and calling of the Church. In a culture that is confused about the Church’s very purpose, and confusion that permeates the Church itself, it stands to reason that those who are raised up to lead in the Church would be confused as well, not only because the confusion permeates our cultural air and water, but also because the confusion permeates our pastoral training. So to further expand on the classroom illustration above, no doubt we were all convinced that in some way we could help the young Muslim woman.

But the reality was that there were at least two paradigms operative in that room in the midst of the discussion. One understood itself to be a dispenser of “spiritual presence,” something that in the end is functionally indistinguishable from something that could be provided by a social worker, doctor, or nurse. The other paradigm was interested in catalyzing perception, or if you will, a transposition of story. The story that was operative in the case study in that hospital room was the story of death, loss, grief, sorrow, and sadness. The story of the faith that we serve affirms that story because all of these things are very real. But the second story says in the midst of that death and sorrow, “Yes. But see that shadow that surrounds this death and sorrow? There’s a story, a more powerful story that frames this moment and this life.”

Pastor Rick Barger explains that from the earliest moments of the church, the church understood itself to be a contrast society.1 To be sure the manifestation of this sense was not monolithic, and the reality is that there were many groups who sought to remove themselves from the world altogether. But most early Christians lived as citizens of the empire in lives and vocations that called them to engage the larger culture around them.2 Early on this relationship in and among was as a religious minority. When you are a minority, it is easy to live in contrast to the world around you. There is simply a great deal to help you differentiate yourself.

This all changed however in 313 CE with the (assumed) Christian conversion of Emperor Constantine. The Roman Empire effectively became Christian overnight and the church’s position moved from that of a minority contrast society to that of the state-sanctioned religion of empire. Monumental shifts in Christian identity ensued.3 Barger writes,

…the Christianization of the Empire under Constantine meant a reinvention of the church’s identity and calling. This reinvention would ultimately prove to be disastrous for the integrity and spiritual power of Christianity. The hostile boundary between the church and the culture disappeared. The church became a partner in the culture. This new partnership meant that the sacred narrative of the church merged with the narrative of Empire. There was no longer “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:5-6) that defined a church in tension with the culture. There was now one empire and one story. The stories were so intertwined with one another that emperors and political leaders would take a full role in the development of the church, and church leaders could often engage in political and military leadership.4

This merging of stories has shaped the nature and expression of the church for nearly two millennia. At the time of Martin Luther, almost 1200 years after the Constantinianization of the church, to be a citizen of the empire was to be synonymously a baptized member of the church.

As many of our US American forebears fled their native homelands and the theocratically-enmeshed governments that held them, they brought their own, albeit new, versions of theocratic governments across the Atlantic. In fact, many of the earliest colonies played with these governmental forms. Though the United States government that followed provided for separation of church and state, the reality is that Constantine’s grip still held sway and even today “In God We Trust” is inscribed on our currency, the United States Congress still funds a full time chaplain who begins their opening sessions with prayer, and the church still enjoys fiscal privileges and some level of deference in our society.

Today in our hyper-consumeristic culture people “church shop,” seeking communities to meet their spiritual needs. This of course goes to the point. The culture believes that the church exists to dispense spiritual goods and services. The point: the old paradigm of Christian ministry and the pastor’s role in it locate the pastor’s vocation as that of spiritual cultural prop. Houston, we have a problem!

Towards an OLDER Paradigm

You can hear a great deal of discussion about the ancient/future church these days. Loren Mead wrote The Once and Future Church over a decade and a half ago and it is still a fixture on the bookshelves of many pastors.5 Many assert that our current US American cultural conditions more closely approximate a pre-Christian cultural milieu than at any other point in history.6 They go on to assert that in the church’s 2000-year history there has never been a time more filled with opportunity for the spread of the gospel. I do not know how you can ascertain the veracity of this statement.

What I do know is this: the Constantinianization of the Church appears to be eroding. Our secular culture is increasingly hostile to the Church and her witness and story, and often shockingly ignorant of it. Cultural wars over prayer in schools and the display of the Ten Commandments in state courthouses demonstrate the cultural/religious differentiation that is spreading across our land. So while there are those who are decrying the slow erosion of the Church’s privileged status in the culture, the reality is that the Church is reclaiming its ability to be a contrast society once again. This is not a bad thing. For the Church, this is a differentiation that brings life.

There is danger and opportunity in this differentiation. On the one hand, we have the opportunity to apprehend and own the good news once again in such a way that the message and saving story of our faith are no longer subverted for the purposes and aims of the state. However, we might have also so sold our soul to a position of power and preference that as the culture’s need for the cultural chaplaincy services of the Church erodes, so will the very institutional body of the Church.

The News

The reality of this differentiation between the Church and culture might be the best gift it has received in 1700 years. Remember that the good news of Jesus Christ is not a theological or philosophical proposition on the justifying nature of God. No, the event of the news of Jesus Christ is that his tomb was empty. On the third day, there was simply no dead body. We can assume that most in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas knew of Jesus of Nazareth’s crucifixion. Had there been a “Jerusalem Times” in those days it would have certainly made the front page.

The saving message has never been that Jesus died on a cross. Not only did people know that Jesus was crucified, the Roman use of crosses was simply common in Jesus’ day and was not in and of itself cause for special notice. The event of Jesus’ crucifixion in and of itself would not have been enough to distinguish Jesus, even with Messianic claims. Remember, however, that Messiahs are not supposed to be crucified. The Jewish Messiah was supposed to come and conquer.

The news that spread by word of mouth was that the tomb was empty. Acts 2:23-24 reads, “…this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.”7

A God who can raise the dead is a God to contend with. This is a God who holds the future in her very hands. The witness and power of this proclamation in the real world is that it deconstructs so many of the fears and challenges our world throws our way. It is important to say that this witness is not triumphalistic. It takes very seriously the pain, suffering, sorrow, and real death in the world. But more importantly it names where it is that we can find God in the midst of these things. When the bullets fly in an Omaha mall, God takes the bullets. When the bombs explode in Palestine, it is God who is killed. When the space shuttle burns up upon re-entry, we as Christians know that Jesus was there, on that shuttle, with those astronauts.

God shows up in the crosses of life. But this is only half of the gospel. As Peter put it so eloquently in Acts 2:24, “But God…” God’s “but” changes everything. It changes the coercive posture of power of the world powers that use the threat of death and powerful weaponry as fear induced motivators. It moves us from postures of self-protection, self-preservation, and stinginess to postures of service and sacrifice and generosity. It motivates us through its very message to serve the God who has the last word rather than the powers and forces of this world whose word can only ever be penultimate.

I believe that it is in this witness that a life-bleeding world is deconstructed, and the life-giving reign of the Messiah is discerned. In the context of the church this witness gives us a new/ancient identity and calling. In this new identity and calling the role of the pastor in Christian community is recast and reshaped into something entirely new, and this new thing has entirely nothing to do with being a dispenser of religious goods and service.

Watch for Part Two and Part Three of this article which will together present the four transformational postures. Part Four will deal with conclusions and options that can be drawn from them.
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1 Rick Barger, A New and Right Spirit: Creating an Authentic Church in a Consumer Culture (Herndon, VA: Alban, 2005), 7.
2 Ibid., 7.
3 Ibid., 8.
4 Ibid., 9.
5 Loren B. Mead, The Once and Future Church: Reinventing the Congregation for a New Mission Frontier (Alban, 2001).
6 Such assertions are made by thinkers and authors such as Rick Barger, Len Sweet, Bill Easum, Loren Mead, Brian McLaren, Tony Jones and Diana Butler Bass. There are certainly others as well.
7 New Revised Standard Version Bible (Nashville: World Publishing, 1989).