The church you dream of serving is one you’ll probably have to build yourself.

(Bill McKinney to seminary students)

A Conversation with Outgoing President of Pacific School of Religion,

Bill McKinney

How can we equip faith communities to play a vital role in public life?

This question has driven Dr. McKinney’s research and education efforts in Protestant churches for more than two decades, and has informed his work as president at PSR. His focus is on leadership patterns in American Protestantism, congregational studies and issues in progressive Christianity. He is a sociologist and ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. His publications include American Mainline Religion: Its Changing Shape and Future (1987), The Responsibility People (1994), and Studying Congregations (1998).

Q: How would you describe the shifting ecclesial landscape in North America today?

Bill: One reality that’s often overlooked in sweeping generalizations is that there is often more than one social dynamic happening at a time. For example, in some parts of the country, we see a steady increase in secularization, while in other parts of the country there’s a rise in fundamentalism. “Christendom” is alive and well in the South, still recognizable in the Mid-West, but is lagging on the eastern seaboard and the northwest, often called the “none-zone,” as 30-40% of the population describe themselves as not religious.

A baseball analogy might help capture the sociological shift we’ve seen from the 20th to the 21st century: In the early 1900’s, the game, the players, the coaches, the umpires and the stadium owners were all Protestants. In the 1920’s, the game was still owned by Protestants, but some of the players were Catholics and Jews. In the 60’s, some of the teams were owned by different religious groups, but Protestants still provided the umpires and called the balls and strikes. Now, there are few rules and the stadium, teams, players and umpires are of different religious backgrounds or none at all.

DC: Lenard Sweet has said, “It used to be that Christians had the home court advantage with the crowd always cheering their side. Now, they’re all away games.”

Bill: Not a bad description. It captures the sense of Christianity in the 21st century, especially here in the west. If church is counter-cultural, which I believe it is, religious leaders have an important role to play: to help people live faithfully in the world. How can we help people be thoroughly in the world but not consumed by the world? More proactively, how can our faith help us authentically engage the world?

Q: What do you see as the direction of the church for the future?

Bill: Some years ago colleagues and I tried to “map” the ways congregations interact with their environment. We found that most congregations were living out one of four “mission orientations.” In our book, Varieties of Religious Presence, we tried to describe those orientations:

(1)  The Activist Church understands its mission as a call to change the world and help usher in the kingdom on earth.

(2)  The Citizen Church has a mission to change people into better citizens. To be a good Christian is to be a good citizen. The church is concerned for the world around it through the individual actions of its members.

(3)  The Evangelistic Church has a mission to convert souls to Christ. The goal is not to change society, but to change human hearts within it.

(4)  The Sanctuary Church has a mission to protect people from the vicissitudes of public life.

Most seminarians in the 1950’s had a pretty clear sense of the church they wanted serve. Many hoped to eventually find themselves in “tall steeple” churches at the center of town. That’s changed. Now, as I tell students, it’s likely you will need to build the church you dream of serving. It’s not there in ready-made form. Even the established churches need to be reinvented. The map of the past will not work for a map into the future.

Q: Is there hope for the church of today and tomorrow, and if so, how have you seen hope take shape?

Bill: Absolutely there’s hope. I know nothing of despair. The Church is in Eastertide. Resurrection is all around us. Hope comes to us anew.

Institutions come and go. These are hard times for seminaries and for national denominations. The economy is down and costs at the local level continue to increase. Desperate missional needs arrive everyday on our doorstep. It’s no longer possible to support the complex bureaucracies and practices that have grown up over many decades. The question for us all today is this: what kind of expression of Church will develop from old structures that no longer work or are unsustainable?

I find hope in the quality of people who are drawn to theological education today. God still keeps them awake at night. Lives have been changed by ministers and lay leaders in the church. I hear stories of how the church was “there” for people in the darkest moments of their life. Through all the challenges the church faces today, it is still a place that has made God accessible to people, and that has made all the difference.

I find hope in creative and courageous expressions of church. Here are a few examples:

* One minister was called to gather a new church here in Berkeley. She asked, “Whose spiritual needs are not being met here in this community?” From the first service, that congregation has incorporated worship with active outreach. Part of their Sunday morning service is to make sandwiches for the homeless and hand them out, because they understand the Gospel is about feeding body and soul.

* Another congregation in San Francisco asked, “Who are the most marginal people in this neighborhood?” and they moved their congregation to be with them. The congregation flourishes.

* Another congregation in Oakland had a proud history, a run-down but beautiful building, and was written off as dead. The new minister arrived and dedicated her time to get to know the neighborhood. She discovered there were a lot of jazz musicians in the wider community, some unemployed, others occasionally employed, many of whom struggled with addiction and many of whom appreciated a spiritual dimension to life, even if they were not drawn to church. You might say they were musical, spiritual, but not religious. She developed a worship service that brought jazz to the center. She invited the musicians she met to lead music. The congregation offered 12-step programs and support for those who struggled with a variety of addictions. It’s now a thriving, multi-cultural congregation that has re-established itself in the community.

In years past, the denominations set the pace for new initiatives. Today, religious leaders need to experiment in the context of the community where they are. We can’t look to the denomination for answers or formulas for success. Grassroots experimentation is the way ahead. Relationship building is key.

Q: It has been said that the surest way to fail is to try to do what we’ve always done except better. You have observed that the Church needs to hold on to its historic dimension while responding creatively to the challenges and directions of today. In your opinion, to what do we need to let go, and to what do we need to hold on in the church?

Bill: Practically speaking, churches ought to hold on to things that are meaningful to people, and break-up stereotypical images of church. There’s been a lot of attention in recent years to what some call the “emerging church.”

While there are a great variety of expressions of emerging church, the two things they all seem to have in common are sofas and coffee. When you enter the worship space you discover it doesn’t look like a church. You don’t expect to see parishioners sitting on couches and you expect coffee after the service or in a separate room. A sofa doesn’t look like a church. When you walk into a worship space and see a sofa instead of a pew, immediately your stereotypical image of church is blown away.

The challenge of church leaders is to recognize the power of images that people inside and outside the church carry with them. The word pastor is often associated with hierarchy. Pews fixed to the floor are associated with rigid theology. An organ and hymns are associated with boring services that are irrelevant to the needs of today.

Emerging expressions of church replace pews with couches set in a semi-circle; the minister wears street clothes; hierarchy is de-emphasized as worship is the work of the people; instruments replace an organ, contemporary music replaces 19th century hymns, and there’s coffee everywhere. Often, people are given a chance to live out their faith at the end of the service with a call to action -- writing a letter to a politician or to a prisoner, making sandwiches or a meal for those who are hungry -- to directly connect what happened in worship with how we live our life and the choices we make.

All that being said, there’s still no need to remake churches if church is working. There is no formula for success, and I believe there will always be a place for traditional congregations. Frankly, that’s where you will find me most Sundays!

One way or another, our challenge is to be bold. The United Church of Christ’s statement of faith speaks of a God who rescues us from lives of aimlessness and sin. There are lots of people lost in an aimless life that need a life-giving word. The tragedy of Mainline Protestants is our hesitancy to speak up when there are millions of people who need to hear what we have to say in matters of faith, not just politics. After all, gospel means good news! How can we do a better job reaching people who desperately need to hear from us about God’s love for them and for the world? We are challenged to use our imaginations to present a clear message to a society in need.

There is hope. It’s up to us to embody that hope and give it shape as we live forward in faith, guided by the light of Christ.

Dan Chambers graduated from PSR in 1993 with a Masters of Divinity and a Masters in Comparative Religion. He currently serves St. David’s United Church in West Vancouver, and has begun his second year as President of BC Conference. He and President McKinney were able to speak last April.

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