With a week to go before the General Convention convenes in Indianapolis
Here is what I believe, at the very core, is wrong with our Church and the real issue facing our faith community. Watch the video featuring the Reverend Tom Brackett, who serves as the Officer for Church Planting and Ministry Redevelopment at the National Church Center
Anything strike you in Tom’s piece from the Day1 ministry in
Answer: ‘God’ was mentioned six times.
Jesus?..... Jesus?...... Jesus?.....
The answer is zero.
There in lies the heart of the issue for this Church which I have loved for over thirty years. I am confident that Tom Brackett is a good guy but in five minutes of ‘spiritual babble’ he told me absolutely nothing about how Jesus is making a difference in our Church, in Tom’s life, and more importantly in the world. May I remind you that the video was entitled: New Life In The Church.
Where is there new life in our Church?
How is this new life coming to fruition?
How does this new life in our Church reflect the life and ministry of Jesus?
Where is there new life in our Church?
How is this new life coming to fruition?
How does this new life in our Church reflect the life and ministry of Jesus?
Tom was correct when he said that “it feels like the sky is falling.” It is indeed because the leaders of the Church have decided that structure and governance, issues and agendas are more important than the mission of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Instead of engaging the world about the story of Jesus, we spend all of our time “navel gazing” about what is happening all around us in our ever quickening world. Leaders in the Church seem to believe that to stay relevant we need to use words like “molting” or phrases such as “casting off of a shell” or “vulnerable acts of emerging”. Question: What do any of those images have to do with the Gospel?
Bill Easum, the Methodist preacher, church planter and consultant, said at the Bowen Conference at the Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, North Carolina in the year 2000 that the Christian Church was entering into what he called a “wormhole”: a scientific term dealing with a ‘shortcut’ through space - taking us from one age to the next at a speed we have never experienced before. Everything we have known about the Church is changing all around us. But then Bill said something I will never forget: “The only constant in the Wormhole will be Jesus. Jesus will be our North Star.”
The Episcopal Church is not “caught in an elevator between the fourth and fifth floor” trying to get out. Our Church is “trapped” by our narcissism, our selfish need for individual or group rule, our addiction to money and the idolatry that comes with it, and most importantly, our unwillingness to speak with truth and integrity about the experience of Jesus in our own lives. I would like Father Brackett to return to the Day1 Studios and ask for additional airtime. Actually I wish that the entire National Church Staff (The Presiding Bishop, Mary Brennan, Ruth Ann-Collins, Abigail Nelson, Peter Ng, Robert Radtke, Stacey Sauls, and the like) go on record and answer the following question: What is it about your relationship, your experience, with Jesus that the world cannot live without knowing?
Tom spoke of the “Kairos moment of God’s unique intervention”. Our Church needs an intervention alright from the pious theological and philosophical “babble” that is all the rage these days. Keep it simple - stay focused on Jesus who lived fully, loved wastefully, and whose presence of being showed to all the reality that underlies eveything that is.
Love One Another - Brian
While I find the absence of any mention of Jesus in sermons troubling, I am not convinced that the world needs to know much about our relationship with Jesus. Paul certainly did not give much space in his letters to his relationship with Jesus. Not "me and Jesus" but Christ crucified. There is a place for personal witness, and I heard the PB tell her faith story at Chautauqua last summer, but the Gospel is much bigger than what Jesus has done for me. Proclaiming the reign of God and inviting others to follow Jesus on the Way is precisely what the world needs to hear, but sadly may not want to hear, as the Way is the Way of the Cross. As someone once said, the question for all Christians is "How do you look on wood?"
ReplyDeleteI disagree so strongly. We need to proclaim, "Jesus is Lord!" and not just tell people what they want to hear. Blessed is the one who doesn't find me a stumbling block, said Jesus.
DeleteHi Brian,
ReplyDeleteI think you would have liked yesterday's "summit on evangelism" in the diocese of Arizona. It was a day of "stop forgetting that we are here and will only remain here if we remember that the love of Christ is what compels us and that the world needs more Jesus and less of itself." It was a great day and well led by Andy Doyle, Bishop of Texas and Kirk Smith, our bishop.
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