In case you haven't read past posts, I was at the Blue Ocean Summit last week, a conference for church leaders seeking to recreate and rebuild our understanding of church and faith in order to have more impact on an increasingly secular, liberal culture. Dave Schmelzer, the pastor of the Greater Boston Vineyard and author of "Not the Religious Type: Confessions of a Turncoat Atheist", hosted the event. The conference is an incredible, multi-cultural gathering of brilliant minds...and me.
So, I got angry at Dave a bit. I even yelled at him for ruining my life. At his conference every year, I get a taste of what the Church could be, devoid of the trappings of religion. Then I am faced coming back to Green Bay, which may be the most religious place on earth.
If you live in Green Bay, and you have dinner with your whole family at a certain restaurant on an arbitrary date, like May 13, it is great and wonderful. Very quickly, a family member will pipe up and say something like, "Let's all meet next year on May 13 at this same restaurant!" Everyone wholeheartedly agrees, because this one was so wonderful. Why would we all not want to do it again?
Well, it sounds good at the time. However, no one foresees the fight over grandpa's inheritance that is coming. No one sees that cousin Bob is going to cheat on his wife, and she will kick him out. Bob is a blood relative, and she is not. However, Bob is kind of a tool, and we love her. Plus, she has the kids, and we want them to be a part of this family. Bob plans on bringing his girlfriend, the one he cheated with, to the big, May 13 dinner (which has now been officially named: "The VandenevenHoven Family Extravaganza") ("VFE" for short). The rest of the family is trying to decide what to do about Bob. He is, after all, Bob VandenevenHoven. Can we really exclude him?
Now, the family has officially set up this gathering as a real thing. They have named it. There are obviously some unspoken rules. They are using bonded set language around it. It has its first holiday (holy day of obligation) in the books. Oops! Joe and Suzy VandenevenHoven have scheduled a vacation for their immediate family for that date, forgetting that VFE was now written in stone. It is doctrine. They are now considering cancelling their vacation, because the backlash would be horrendous. Plus, they will be guilted by the rest of the family, their very blood loyalty questioned. So, no one dares miss the event, even though it will be painful and awkward. Sacrifices will be made for it, like unto a god. The VandenevenHovens have had one dinner together, and it has become a Religion. Thank God the Packers don't play in May, or this would be a Holy War of clashing religions. Years pass, and the next generation of VandenevenHovens maintain the May 13 tradition. Most of them have no idea why they are even doing this every year. They don't even question it. If you are a VandenevenHoven, this is what you do. A great family memory has been institutionalized and destroyed. It has become a heavy burden. The only way out is to change your last name. Your identity.
Green Bay, steeped heavily in blind tradition, is the place of my exile. I'm not saying it's not this way everywhere. It absolutely is this way everywhere, and it has been for all time. This area is just focused and intense in these attitudes. People who move here don't seem to stay long. Every family has 365 traditions every year. For a long time, our church was made up of only transplants to the area. We did not have a single Green Bay native. The people who came to us spoke of simply not being able to break in to any of the traditions of the area. They couldn't make friends, because the people here had every single day booked with something that they have "always done". Every year, they have 6 family reunions, 6 major birthday celebration, and 6 major holiday vacations. OH NO!! It is the number of the Beast, the Antichrist, and his One World Religion!! OK, that was a little tongue in cheek, but it is ridiculous. This past week, in my church of well over 100 people, I preached to a church service of 15. Everyone had vacations, trips, family reunions, weddings, etc.
So, I am struggling. I want and desire a stage 4, centered set faith. I am surrounded by Stage 2 and Stage 3 people, who cannot give up their devotion to the Religions that define them. I come home from the Blue Ocean to try to be upbeat about loving people into the fullness of life that Jesus offers. They are people who are far too busy with other devotions to care. I am not talking about the committed and growing people in my church. I am talking about reaching out to others. There is no real way to break in. I am tired of seeing what is possible, and then banging my head against the rock-hard walls of institution. I feel teased, like a carrot is being dangled in front of me. At the same time, the Blue Ocean Summit isn't church. We all went back to our churches of 30, 50, 100, 800, or whatever, and most of us have churches that are painfully homogenous and bounded set. We all face our exile surrounded by tradition.
I don't want to just rebel against it and be Stage 3. There is a lot of good in the traditions of the people here. At the same time, it's not Jesus. I want Jesus. I also know that everyone on this planet needs Jesus. I don't need to sell him to people. I don't need to defend him. How can I BE the Church for people? Can I even do that as a senior pastor? I can't guilt people into making gathering with the community a priority, because then I am institutionalizing. I would then be a hypocrite. I need to be moving people toward center.
As a pastor, I have never felt the need to defend, prove, package, or sell Jesus. I have felt some pressure to do all of that with Christianity. I can't do that anymore. I cannot defend tradition. I want to capture what is good and fruit bearing from it and reject the rest. But I need to be moving toward Jesus and leading others toward Jesus. That is my sole mission, vocation, and call. If I also, in my current office, have to defend Christianity, then I can't effectively fulfill my destiny.
At the Summit, many people affirmed me for my writing and communication about some deep and difficult issues. Here, I can only talk about the Packers or the weather, before I start clashing with the deep-seeded religious traditions of the people of this area. People simply find us to be uncomfortable. We challenge too much and question too much. My wife and I are very lonely and feel in exile, as I stated before. Not only that, but people believe strongly in saving and keeping resources in the family. This makes sense, when family is religion. Where our treasure lies, there is our heart. So, we have very little financial backing for our ministry. We have been continuously investing our own money in the church. Now, much of this goes hand in hand with having a call to ministry. I am not complaining about having to invest my own money. It is, however, a clear sign of a lack of real fruit-bearing. If we were having impact in people's lives, people would invest their hearts and their treasure in the vision of Adullam. That is not happening, which makes us question more.
So, there it is. I came home from a time of freedom, diversity, and affirmation of my gifting and calling, and I faced the opposite on all counts. I hate religion, but I love Jesus, and I see the Church as the way to Jesus, when it is free of the garbage of the institution. I am called to lead people to Jesus, but in my current role, I am feeling ineffective. I don't want to rebel against tradition, but I see it as a distraction from the true Way. I am questioning everything as a result.
I see pastoring as something akin to being president in a partisan system. No matter how strong your convictions, everything is compromised to ensure survival. My friend, Bill Hoard, commented on my last post that I still seem angry at Stage 2 conservatives and fundamentalists. I am not actually angry. I have nothing against these people, nor am I trying to convert them. I am disillusioned with a system that does not allow me to move in my gifts and calling. I cannot be true to what God wants me to say and do. If I am truly myself, all of the Stage 2 people get angry and leave. They are the only ones for whom tithing and financially backing a ministry is a core value. So, we go broke and cease to exist. If I toe the line, in order to keep the Stage 2 people happy - I kick out all of the visible sinners in my church, especially homosexual people - then I have all of the money I need, but all of the people who don't know Jesus or are Stage 3 people, rejecting traditional church, all leave. My church is then not reaching any of the lost. I have money, but I'm having no impact or forward motion in my mission. Just as Obama has done nothing but compromise, I feel I have to do the same. Church is a partisan system. We can try to be above it, but it is a bit like herding cats. We have modeled ourselves after government. The last time we did that was during the Roman Empire, and that didn't turn out too well. Now we are seeing how constant compromise is making it impossible to move forward in solving the financial crisis of our nation. Yet, in church, we aren't learning from our government's mistakes. Church, like government, is a battle of ideologies, the conservatives vs. the progressives.
There is no way to be above the fray, because both sides want to identify with you as their leader. Conservatives even imagine they know what I am "really" saying, when I seem to contradict their expectations of me. That works for a while, until they realize I am not like them at all, and they can no longer write off my contradictions with them. Then, they speak of the "straw that broke the camel's back", and they leave, telling their next pastor how much I hurt them. Usually, it involves a bait-and-switch accusation. I pretended to be conservative, to rope them in, then I showed my true, liberal colors. Actually, I have always been honest about not agreeing with a conservative, fundamentalist worldview. They just had their expectations of a pastor that they tried, unsuccessfully, to fit me in. In essence, they pulled a bait-and-switch on themselves.
Meanwhile, the liberals (stage 3 rebels) just don't want to be tied down by commitment, man. I mean, Jesus is everywhere, right? I mean, what is money, really? Why does the stupid church always talk about money? Can't we just all get along and go with the Spirit? This church doesn't have membership, does it? Because, existentially, I can't really "belong" to anything that is marketed or planned, I can't plan anything that is marketed or requires belonging, and I can't market anything that has a belonging requirement or planning. I don't really commit, dude. As soon as you say "commitment", I get a headache. I'll just be there when I am there. How's that, dude? Oh, yeah, and I need you to be available to meet me on a moment's notice, whenever I am sad. No, I can't contribute financially, because that would be kinda like commitment. I am a rebel, and I don't do commitment, remember? But, my friends and I will keep you far too busy to get another job to take care of your family. How does that sound?
As my identity is becoming more and more defined by Jesus, I am less willing to settle for Stage 2 or Stage 3. I am also no longer willing, after receiving lots of affirmation and confirmation of my gifts, to play small and accept mediocrity. I want to change hundreds of thousands of lives. I have seen, again this year, a glimpse that this is possible. I just wonder if it's possible with all of us on our own little islands, as pastors almost always are. I wonder if it's possible to effect such change in my current role as pastor in the first place. Maybe I'd be more effective doing only what I do best: teaching, speaking, directing conferences and retreats, and writing. That way, I would never, ever have to defend Christianity again. We need extreme voices, and God created me to be an extreme guy. How can I move in that created identity for the Kingdom of God? Can I do that as pastor of a church? When even our model churches for Blue Ocean Faith still struggle to get buy in from all of their people, maybe we all need to join together and start travelling, writing, and teaching this vision around the world. Maybe I'm being dumb, and I just need to pastor my church. I don't know. Help me, God, with some clarity.
I blame all of this on that damn Dave Schmelzer. ;)
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