Bad news/ Good news…

The church (“writ large”) has been the recipient of bad news recently.  It looks like we (a “broad we”) can’t catch a break.  Just a few examples: the never ending scandals involving priests, the famously converted Ann Rice who decides she must leave the church and Christianity (but not Christ, she said), and on Sunday an Op-Ed was published in the New York Times (8/8/10) in which the author said:

“THE American clergy is suffering from burnout, several new studies show. And part of the problem, as researchers have observed, is that pastors work too much… But there’s a more fundamental problem that no amount of rest and relaxation can help solve: congregational pressure to forsake one’s highest calling. The pastoral vocation is to help people grow spiritually, resist their lowest impulses and adopt higher, more compassionate ways. But churchgoers increasingly want pastors to soothe and entertain them. It’s apparent in the theater-style seating and giant projection screens in churches…

Jeffery MacDonald is right that the trend toward consumer-driven religion has been gaining momentum for half a century. In 1955 only 15 percent of Americans said they no longer adhered to the faith of their childhood. By 2008, 44 percent had switched their religious affiliation at least once, or dropped it altogether.

In the midst of all this bad news there is, it seems to me, some good news for churches like Kirkwood Baptist Church.  It’s not that we are immune to any of the cultural currents which result from all this bad news, but it is that our history stands as a counter example.  As I’ve said recently in other contexts we have a beautiful, if imperfect, heritage of adopting: love over literalism, moral integrity over empty moralism, science over superstition.  Whether in sending our youth to Kenya or caring for those who are dying or adhering to a non-entertainment participatory worship style, we serve as a counter example.

Included in the good news is the reality that we have work to do.  We live in a culture that often associates “Baptist” with “bigot” and “Christian” with “hypocrite.”  I watched some religious television the other day, and certainly got an understanding (again) as to why.  But there’s nothing to do but continue to live out our faith in imperfect, but real, lives in a way that lets our light shine.  We are not here to be paragons of perfection, or expositors of all truth, or a local theatre where you come for a show every Sunday.  We are a community of those seeking to follow in the ways of Jesus.  We serve God and hence each other in his name.  All else is noise.  In this bad news world this is our good news: work to do.