Gordon MacDonald’s new, all-too-true novel is about a group of Christians in their fifties and sixties who feel as if someone stole their church. The only real characters in the book Who Stole My Church? (Nelson, 2007) are Gordon and his wife, Gail, but you’ll recognize others, once at the center of church life, whose influence is now replaced by younger folks’. In this excerpt, the pastor has gathered some of these older members for a weekly discussion.
I asked Clayton Reid privately if he would pray at the beginning of our next Discovery group meeting. At first he said he didn’t do “out-loud praying.” I asked if he would consider writing a prayer ahead of time and simply reading it for us. After a bit of hesitancy, Clayton said he’d give it a try. When Tuesday night came, I outlined my hopes for the evening, and then turned to Clayton.
He pulled an index card from his shirt pocket, said, “Shall we pray?” and began reading. Two or three around the table were startled when they realized he was reading from a card and “praying” with his eyes opened. Like me, they’d been raised to believe that prayer was supposed to be “from the heart” and that only “liberals” and Catholics read prayers and pray with open eyes.
His prayer: “Heavenly father, your Son, Jesus, once said, ‘Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.’ All of us are weary from a day of work. And some of us are burdened with great cares. So we come to you asking for Jesus’ rest. We pray that you will guide our pastor and give him great wisdom in leading us. May we have open minds and hearts to learn from him. And I thank you for all my friends around this table. I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.”
I thought Clayton’s prayer was terrific. It was a tiny, tiny step out of the box—for Clayton and others. And I knew he was serious when he read that many of us are weary and burdened. Clayton lost his wife, Teresa, about a year ago. Cancer. I suspected that he was referring to himself when he spoke of those needing Jesus’ kind of rest.
Clayton’s prayer finished, I picked up on the subject of great changes in history that we had covered last week. I said I’d like to talk about the era of change we were living in. We talked about automobiles, mass communication, and the digital revolution.
There may be new ways to evangelize and to do church. The old way is becoming obsolete and ineffective.
“In the nineties, Peter Drucker wrote: ‘Every few hundred years throughout western history, a sharp transformation has occurred. In a matter of a decade, society altogether rearranges itself—its worldview, its basic values, its society and political structures, its arts, its key institutions. Fifty years later, a new world exists. And the people born into that world cannot even imagine the world in which their grandparents lived and into which their parents were born. Our age is such a period of transformation, signaled by the introduction of the knowledge society.’
“Drucker probably had only limited knowledge about the Internet or what it would become when he wrote this,” I said. “There’s no way even he could have imagined how our lives would be changed since then.”
Clayton, a real estate agent, said, “There’s a new world in my business. My clients get on their computers and take virtual tours of one house after another and never leave wherever they are. Today I talked with a couple who live in California about three houses they’ve studied in detail … on the Internet. It’s as if they’ve been in the house itself. I’ve been able to show them—remember, 3,000 miles away!—what each of those rooms could look like if she painted them in different colors.”
Russ, who owns a fast food franchise, chimed in. “Our whole business is computerized. As soon as anyone buys a cheeseburger, the people in Chicago know about it, and our supplier automatically knows that his truck should have one more piece of meat, a bun, a pickle, and ketchup for tomorrow’s delivery—all done over a satellite hookup.”
Others told stories about how computers and the Internet were affecting their lives. Ernie mentioned that his daughter and her children talked to him and his wife regularly on computers were equipped with cameras. Winn said that he could swear that the airline reservation agent he talked to this afternoon was somewhere in India. Everyone tried to trump the last story with one of their own.
Finally, I spoke up. “A man by the name of Joel Barker makes presentations to businesspeople about how businesses have to reinvent themselves in a time of furious change. He uses the term paradigm shift. It’s similar to the word worldview, a way of seeing and organizing things. Barker said when a paradigm shifts, ‘everything goes back to zero.'”
Mary Ann leaned forward. “What’s that mean?”
“It means that an organization, a church let’s say, that was considered to be the best of the best at one point in time is likely to lose most of its advantage when there’s a massive historical change or, as Barker puts it, paradigm shift. If that organization doesn’t take the changes seriously and ask what they mean and make suitable adjustments, it will find itself losing ground, maybe going out of existence. In fact, it’s not just suitable adjustments, it may mean total reinvention.”
“What do you mean by total reinvention?” she asked.
“It means you start all over again, in effect. You examine everything you do to see if it still works and ask what you should change to work better under the new conditions.”
“I heard that Xerox could have dominated the market on the personal computer years ago,” said Kenneth. “But it sold its patents because it didn’t believe that there would ever be enough popular demand for computers. So it stayed in the photocopying business.”
A revival in progress
“This kind of thing can also happen in the Christian movement,” I said. “Let’s talk about the Jewish temple again for a moment. We’ve talked about how the temple was a powerful religious institution at the peak of its importance when Jesus came on the scene. Then, three years after Jesus went public, you have this Pentecost event where common people surged out into the street speaking the biblical faith in a fresh new way. The first day thousands were converted to Jesus. In a matter of days there were thousands more. And the temple leaders had nothing to do with it. In fact they felt threatened. Instead of asking, ‘What are we missing here?’ they tried to keep doing business as usual.
“Within a short period of time—for example, between 12 and 20 years—the Christian movement scattered all over the world. And it couldn’t be stopped. The temple paradigm was over when the Romans destroyed it. The Christian way began to spread. It was decentralized, in the hands of common people. In a few decades it grew strong enough to subvert the Roman Empire. The power of a paradigm shift.”
“And you’re saying the same thing can happen today, to a church.” This was John. The way he said it made me realize that this was not going down easily for him.
“Yeah, just like the changes in Acts passed the temple by.”
Connie spoke: “So let’s say we’re in one of these paradigm shifts. What will be different when this one is over?”
“Let’s start with what’s different already, the stuff we already know. You think for a moment and tell me what’s changed in the world since … let’s say … 1960.”
After a moment or two of silence, the ideas began to flow.
Lillian: “Thinking back to the sixties, we have to remember the madness that swept the country. Many of us grew long hair, demonstrated against the Viet Nam War. So I guess our generation started rebelling.”
“That’s when the Civil Rights movement gained momentum,” Ted said. “The marches, the demonstrations, the riots. I’ll never forget when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were killed. We’re a pretty different country today.”
“There was the women’s movement,” Lillian said. “Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan. Women demanded equal rights.”
John added, “Don’t forget Watergate. It shook us to the core. I can still see Nixon standing at the door of his helicopter when he left the White House.”
“There was the gas crisis in the early seventies, and Detroit never recovered from the stupidity of making big cars,” said Ernie. “There was real change in the air—people wanted cars that didn’t guzzle gas, and Detroit kept turning out big cars. Advantage—the Japanese.”
Kenneth: “What about the Berlin wall and the defeat of communism?”
Yvonne: “You add to that what’s going on in China—”
I jumped in: “If we’re going to talk about the global situation, just remember that America is the first single superpower the world has really had since the Roman Empire, and that’s not as healthy a situation as one might first imagine. In a sense it means the whole world finds creative ways to keep nipping at our edges. Little alliances crop up here and there—all testing American power. And Americans aren’t necessarily handling this very well.”
“I want to get back to changes that we’re feeling, right here where we live,” Stan said. “Sometimes I feel as if my whole world is in a state of shock. I can’t turn on the television without being bombarded with profanity, sex, and violence. Families are falling apart, marriages ending. Even right here in our church.”
Clayton: “They’re all too busy. Everybody’s into sports. Kids doing e-mail. Everybody’s got a cell phone, and they’re sending messages to each other all day long.”
“Children don’t know the Bible anymore,” Yvonne (a former Sunday school teacher) said. “No one memorizes Scripture anymore, knows the books of the Bible, the stories—”
An avalanche of complaints and observations followed.
Ted: “Who prays anymore? Prayer meetings have dwindled.”
Ernie: “Can’t believe how few people care about missions any more. Hard time getting people to come out to hear visiting missionaries.”
Finally, I broke in: “Now stop and listen to what you’re saying. You’re all finding ways to describe this period of highly charged change we’ve been talking about. You’re feeling the pinch of it. Remember, I suggested that when there is one of these massive changes, everybody begins to think differently, organize differently, and, as a result, begin to live differently. I’m going to keep on using those same words over and over again. All of these things you’re frustrated about—some of it is actually good news and some of it is bad.”
“Let’s hear some good news,” Connie said.
“Well, would you be surprised if I suggested that there’s a revival going on across North America?”
“A revival?” several said all at once, with some surprise.
“Yes, a revival in the largest sense. People are finding it easier to talk about spirituality, about evil, about powers and believing. You wouldn’t have heard these words in polite company thirty years ago. But now you hear it all the time. Many of Oprah Winfrey’s shows center on spiritual matters. Think about all the TV shows featuring angels, stories about miracles, even the programs that feature New Age stuff such as witches and psychics. If there is a revival, let’s just agree that a lot of it isn’t Christian, but there is, nevertheless, a new openness to spiritual issues.”
“I’ve never thought of that as a revival,” Connie observed. “A lot of that stuff is off-the-wall, creating terrible confusion.”
“I hear you, Connie,” I said. “But people are asking questions about realities beyond the purely materialistic. They are feeling disillusioned about the promises that science and technology have made and not delivered on. They’re feeling the growing inability of once dependable institutions and systems to protect us and guarantee the good life. So they’re turning to the world of the spiritual. Not unlike Bible times.”
“What do you mean by that?” Ernie asked.
“In Bible times people had a strong conviction that what you couldn’t see, the invisible things, was, maybe, more real than what you could actually see. They really believed in powers and magic. That’s what Paul was saying when he said to the Ephesians: our battle is not with visible things (like human beings); it’s with things we cannot see, powers in the air and systems that are bigger than us. It was Paul’s contention that if you didn’t have the power of the stronger Spirit, the Holy Spirit, you wouldn’t be able to survive a world full of spiritual influences that had evil intentions.
“Our civilization has just come through a period of about 250 years where non-Christian people largely rejected notions of spiritual reality. Most ‘smart’ people said religion was a leftover of prescientific times. We now refer to this period as modernity, a time when many rejected the idea of faith and became convinced of the importance of the individual making his own way in the world. There was, they said, a scientific explanation for everything. Given enough time and research we would find a solution to every problem. It was really an arrogant view of life. And it had powerful implications for the Christian movement.”
“How would it have affected Christians?” Ernie asked.
“Well, you can see the effects of modernity in Christian teaching. The emphasis upon the individual became reflected in the heavy emphasis upon a so- called ‘personal relationship’ to Christ. Our Christian vocabulary has tended to be all about Jesus and me rather than Jesus and us.
“Even Bible teaching and preaching began to sound as if you can figure out every little mystery in the Bible. Different theological systems tried to pretend that they can explain everything. You heard little emphasis on the idea that there may be some great realities that God has no intention of explaining to us. He wants us to worship and serve and stop trying to figure out every little thing.”
“You’re saying individualism is wrong?” Russ asked.
“Not wrong, Russ, but individualism only a part of a bigger reality. You are not totally an individual, Russ; a large part of who you are has to do with your community, the people with whom you live. They are influencing you all the time—know it or not. And you’re influencing them. No, we’re not merely individuals. We’re that plus a lot more.
“And you see signs that people are struggling with the effects of individualism. Young people running in groups and gangs, people finding all kinds of ways to connect in chat rooms, at places like Starbucks, in a thousand different interest groups such as motorcycle clubs and sports.”
Hard truths, soft answers
“Some of you are familiar with the term postmodernism. That’s the word people tend to use when they describe the collapse of modernism and whatever is taking its place.”
Lillian, whose day job was teaching school said, “Postmodernism gets kicked around school quite a lot, but I am never fully sure any of us knows what it really means.”
“I’m not sure I’m your guy when it comes to explaining it like a scholar,” I said. “I can give you some pretty good book titles on the subject, but I’m not confident that I can clear away the fog. I can say this much: postmodernism begins with the idea that there are no fixed, stand-alone truths. Rather than this thing called truth coming from beyond ourselves—as Christians believe about God’s revelation—the postmodernist claims that truth is really only what we see or experience from our perspective. And when a big enough number of us see or experience something in a similar way, then whatever that is becomes truth for us.
“So whatever truth is, it’s personal and social, according to the postmodernist. It’s not something revealed and binding and universal.
“This is a scary thing for Christians, because we believe that there are certain things God has said to us in creation, through the writers of Scripture, and through Christ that comprise truth. And a lot of us were trained in the so-called modern era when the accepted theory was that if you could explain the truth about Christ clearly enough, people would abandon whatever they believed and embrace what you preached. In a strange way we became guilty of a kind of a conceit. We said to the larger world, ‘We’ve got the truth; you don’t. And the sooner you hear what we’ve got to say, the better off you’ll be.’
“So in the latter days of modernity we put our ‘truth’ into persuasive sales presentations like the Four Spiritual Laws, and we assumed that you could pull someone through those laws and when they got to the end of the fourth law, they would say, ‘That makes perfect sense; I’ll give my whole life to Christ.’ And this could happen in the space of 15 minutes. Think about that for a minute. We actually thought that you could get a person to reconsider their entire life organization in the space of a few minutes and make a decision that would redirect their entire life to the end of time. Incredible as it seems, it worked for a period in history—particularly in our generation.
“But what happens when people begin to say, ‘You’ve got Jesus? Well, I’m glad for you; you’re into something great for yourself.’ Yourself! Hear that? Yourself! And then they say, ‘I’m into Buddhism, and you know what? I’m just as happy as you are.’ Sooner or later (if you haven’t already) you’re going to run into someone who says they have the secret. And what you’re going to hear is a bundle of ideas that sounds awfully close to biblical faith attached to a bit of Hinduism and New Agey ideas. But it’s all about a basic faith in yourself rather than faith in Jesus. It comes very close to God-language, but which god? Now in postmodern times, you are God. Everybody has a customized ‘faith,’ and each individual version is considered as valid as someone else’s.”
Lillian interrupted me (which was good because I was talking too much anyway): “I hear this every day at school, from teachers and students. And I’m amazed at how quickly it can grow on you and affect your view of things. When I first became a Christian, I wanted to convince everyone to see what I’d seen. But now I find it easy to just shut up about Jesus and let each person find their own way.”
Two or three others agreed with Lillian. Each admitted thinking that he or she was the only one feeling that way.
“Well,” I said, “what do you do when no one wants to argue about or debate matters of faith and belief, but wants simply to enjoy a good discussion? We’re living in a period when many think that evangelism (persuading people to Jesus) is actually offensive and ought to be banned if possible—certainly in public places. They’re saying: ‘You have your truth, I have mine. Now let’s get on with figuring out how to solve the health-care problems in our country.'”
“How do you lead people to Christ, then?” Kenneth asked.
“Now there’s a good question, Kenneth. How do you do it? In fact, have you noticed how few people are coming to Christ these days in our church? In my opinion that’s because we’ve been trying to convert people the old way, a way that doesn’t work any longer. People aren’t feeling guilty about their sins, and they’re not interested in hearing about forgiveness because they don’t feel the need to be forgiven.”
“So what are you telling us? That there’s no more evangelism?” Ted asked.
“No, I’m not saying that at all. But there may be new ways to evangelize and to do church. The old way is becoming obsolete and ineffective.”
“That’s pretty depressing,” Mary Ann said.
“Not if you’re like Paul,” I said. “When he ventured out beyond the world of Jews and began mixing it up with Gentiles and pagan oriented people, he found new and fresh ways to explain who Jesus was and why people should organize their lives around him.”
“I can tell that you don’t think our church is doing that,” said Stan. “Am I correct?”
“The truth?” I said. “No, we’re not doing it very well. And I’m at fault as much as anyone else.”
It was time to end the meeting. I knew that the last several minutes of discussion had been very sobering. Some were thinking—perhaps more deeply than ever before—about these things and trying to sort out their deepest reactions. Others were struggling. And no one more than John. Everything about his body language told me that he wasn’t “buying.”
We prayed, cleaned up a bit, and left the building. Clayton walked with me to my car and said, “Thanks for getting me to pray tonight. First time I’ve ever done that. I know it was a short prayer. I can’t say all the nice words Ernie says. But it was a good experience for me to get quiet at home and put a prayer on paper.” I could have hugged him.
As I drove home I worried that I might have gone too far with my comments.
The next morning—after a restless night—I wrote in my journal: Discovery group last night. I may have said some things that people weren’t ready to hear. Lillian was into it with both feet. She’s in a world every day that forces her to think about these issues. On the other hand John seems to be hardening. Ernie is probably wondering where in the world I stand on some things. I think I’m beginning to understand why the younger guys prefer to start churches. Changing one is tough.
Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership and chair of World Relief and lives in Belmont, New Hampshire.
Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
