Live the Trinity

From one of the coordinators for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in Louisiana I received by email a link to a recent opinion piece published through the Associated Baptist Press: “Why 20- and 30-year-olds are leaving the Baptist church” by Carra Hughes Greer who is minister to families with youth at a Baptist church in Georgia.

You can read the whole thing at Associated Baptist Press.

(Let me begin with a couple disclaimers[?]. First – I assume Carra Hughes Greer is an outstanding Christian minister and is a better Christian and minister than I am. Second – I do not disagree with everything she writes.)

Why do we see fewer young Baptists in our churches? (The editor erred when s/he assigned the title “Baptist church”. There is no Baptist church. There are Baptist churches. Which may cooperate to form associations denominations networks and so on.) Not just because they had enough of the Southern Baptist Convention controversies of the 1970’s and 1980’s. But because they are tired of both “harsh” churches and “watered-down” churches.

Her definitions of each are interesting. “Harsh” churches loudly rail against problems in our culture. Greer outlines what one might identify as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell style Baptist Christianity.

“Watered-down” churches care more about maintaining the institution than about engaging the various burning issues of the day. Which issues? Greer offers a sample list:

[H]omosexuality, social justice issues, women in ministry, poverty, environmental concerns, human rights issues, health-care issues, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, orphans in China, monks in Burma, etc. They are eager to have open, honest, almost jaw-dropping, conversations balancing current issues with their faith.

I understand and do not dispute that young Baptists want to discuss such issues in light of their Christian faith.

What troubles me is the apparent dichotomy. If your church takes “conservative” positions on certain theological social and cultural issues then it is harsh. (And note how the article lumps together more extreme with more reasonable “conservative” Christian concerns.) But if your church does not openly discuss certain – pay attention now – other theological social and cultural issues then it is “watered-down”.

Do you see the subtle dichotomy? Discussing education health-care marriage and female pastors is harsh. Discussing social justice women in ministry poverty and the environment is not. Perhaps I misunderstand and the article merely distinguishes between “railing against” and “openly discussing”.

Dichotomies real or imagined aside – so if we do not discuss openly this second list of issues then we are not being missional?

I am trying to imagine what would happen if the congregations I serve – Church of the Nations and University Baptist Church – started talking about abortion homosexuality social justice women in (ordained? vocational?) ministry poverty environmentalism health-care.

I know we have congregants who are much more conservative on theological social cultural political issues. I know we have congregants who are much more liberal. And of course we have congregants who are a mixture of both. Whatever one means by “conservative” and “liberal” in this context.

I know from experience that social cultural and political issues can be far more divisive than theological issues. The Baptistlife.com forum in which I used to participate is hard cold proof of this.

There is some irony here. My views on sexuality are generally “conservative”. Sexual relations between a man and woman who are married to each other is the biblical theological and Christian ideal. And yet in something like sixteen years of ordained ministry not once have I preached against “homosexuality”.

I prefer to focus more on theology. Who is God? Who is Jesus? Who are we? What about our relationship to the creator? What about our relationship to the rest of creation? What about our relationship to other creatures including human beings? What about sin? What about salvation? What about worship? What about prayer?

And yet to be fair in my teaching and preaching sometimes I have touched on social cultural political issues. But I tend to focus on the biblical and theological framework and allow congregants to decide how that plays out in terms of policies and positions.

And perhaps Greer is right. Perhaps we should be “talking about these issues in our Sunday school classes, Bible studies and sermons”. Perhaps I am being a coward for not doing so more. And one might respond “well of course we talk about God and theology and so on – but people will naturally want to balance their faith with these other issues”.

(I remember what happened once when we had a discussion about abortion during Sunday school. Got to the point where one couple said to another couple “you are the kind of people we protect our children from”. I am not making that up. It was not pretty.)

Is the underlying assumption that the purpose of Christian faith is to address these issues? (By the way that right there is a critical question and may be the question we need to ask concerning Greer’s article.) That there is no Christian consensus on how to address these issues? Or that there is a Christian consensus?

Please note these are questions that I have rather than criticisms.

Do we in fact see young Baptists flocking to churches that practice what Greer recommends? How are liberal and moderate Baptist churches doing? Perhaps we should ask how are Episcopal churches doing? Because boy do they ever talk about social cultural political issues.

How are more traditional churches doing? Orthodox Christianity is growing quite nicely in the United States. And although yes they do engage these issues – sometimes taking a “conservative” and sometimes taking a “liberal” stand – they tend to focus much more on worship prayer and theology.

If we focus on God (and our relationship with him and with each other) then do these other issues take care of themselves? Perhaps that is naive and simplistic.

Let me wrap up by addressing a few other points.

She makes fine points about what 20- and 30-year-olds are like. “Not all of them expect loud, Christian rock music, want to wear torn jeans and a T-shirt to church, seek a coffee bar in the worship space or the biggest and brightest LCD screens”. Word.

And this paragraph was especially powerful:

Instead of church politics, they want churches to become missional. They understand the institutional church but desire the simplicity of the early church. They grow weary of time and money spent maintaining the large church grounds, renovating empty Sunday school rooms, installing the latest technology and managing growing numbers of committees. When the church becomes too distracted to be a church on mission, young Christ-followers focus on serving through a para-church or nonprofit organization that is directly meeting the needs of others.

Although again I must ask what do these people think the purpose (mission) of the church is exactly?

I had some difficulty understanding her recommendation that:

[O]ur churches must begin to reflect our changing communities. The ministerial staff must diversify to include people of all ages, races and genders as leaders.

Well sure I suppose if you have a large enough ministerial staff. And how many staff would one need in order to include people of all ages races and genders?

(How many ages?) x (How many races?) x (How many genders?) = (How many staff?)

My last comment is not directed so much to Greer’s article as to Protestantism in general:

For younger generations, what’s at stake is our ability to find ways to relate, engage and work side-by-side with older generations finding common ground on issues of social justice, faith development, worship experiences, etc.

What kind of Christian tradition has to struggle with this at all? In what kind of Christianity do different generations even have to find “common ground” on these issues?

Do you see the problem?

But Greer does raise some legitimate questions and make fine points about 20- and 30-year-old Christians and how we may better relate to and include them in the life and work of the Christian church.

Addendum: Asked my wife what she thought about the article. She thinks I am reading it far too critically.