State Of The Church – A Sermon
Sunday, May 19, 2024 – Pentecost
Isaiah 56:1–9; 1 Corinthians 3:6-7; Revelation 21:1-5
“Idolizing The Moment Or Imagining The Future?”
The Rev. Allen V. Harris, Regional Minister
Christian Church (Disciples Of Christ) in Ohio
Thank you, so very much, for taking time to watch this State of the Church address, whether you have joined me via livestream or are watching the recording later on. I offer it in two parts: as a sermon, which you are now watching, and a little longer presentation, which will happen at 5 p.m. today, also livestream and recorded. I am preaching this sermon on Pentecost, which is the 33rd anniversary of my ordination to ministry, and I’m sharing it from the beautiful sanctuary of Franklin Circle Christian Church in Cleveland where I was Senior Pastor for 14 years. Thanks to their current Pastor, the Rev. Richard Hinkleman, for helping to make this happen. All of this makes for a perfect day to explore the current state of the Church as we prepare for and live into its future.
Please turn to your Bibles and mark three passages. In the interest of time I will not read them to you but will reference them in my sermon: Isaiah 56:1–9; 1 Corinthians 3:6-7; Revelation 21:1-5
My final introductory note is to encourage you to also check out the State of the Church address which the Rev. Teresa Hord Owens gave in February. Is it available on YouTube and Rev. Owens offers an extraordinarily helpful look at the larger picture from her unique vantage point as our denomination’s General Minister & President.
So without further ado, let us pray: “O God, we pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts might not simply be acceptable to you, but might give you great delight, you who are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.”
Let me start with the ultimate conclusion for any exploration of the church: God is in charge!
In that conclusion I celebrate two truths:
Faith in God and Jesus Christ is alive and well in our day… it just isn’t always lived by the people or in the places we expect or lived out in the ways that are familiar to us.
And…
The Church, which is the very Body of Christ, will exist as long as God needs it to, it just will not be expressed in forms that we can yet even imagine.
Faith is alive. The Church will survive. This is both exciting and humbling.
When it comes to the basics of faith, our early founders in the Christian Church (Disciples Of Christ) really were on to something. What they got right was an attempt to focus on the essentials of the Christian faith rather than on our understandable but misguided attempts to complicate the essentials into a myriad of humanly focused interpretations bound to time and place. They also were spot on when it came to looking at humanity as one, perhaps even as the divine might understand us. Likewise, they gifted us with a simplicity of structure and one of the most egalitarian understandings of church polity around. These were translated into mottos that, while not original to us, seemed to capture the spirit of who we were trying to be, in Christ’s name: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity.” “No creed but Christ, no book but the Bible, no law but love.” “Christian unity is our polar star.” “The priesthood of all believers.” In its simplicity it was compelling, and thousands joined the movement and were touched by the Spirit in powerful ways.
What they got wrong, of course, was that our founders wrapped these great truths in the sins of their day and failed to recognize and integrate the prophetic nature of Jesus Christ to the mix. Thus many of our founders participated in the enslavement of other human beings and most failed to even speak out against America’s greatest sin. We enjoyed the excitement of western expansion, but never named that it resulted in the genocide of those who had lived on this land thousands of years before we ever set sail from Scotland and the theft of lands we had no right to “own.” And while we certainly can be proud to have ordained one of the first women in ministry in the 1800s, we cannot get past the fact that the primary reason we did so was purely practical, and that so she could get a cheaper ticket on the railroad to do the ministry she was called to do. From the very beginning our movement, as innovative and compelling as it was, failed to be as humble, introspective, or prophetic as it needed to be in order to live fully into the faith it proclaimed.
And yet I still believe that the spirit of what inspired our founders and has motivated generations to claim the name Christian Church (Disciples Of Christ) can still inspire faith today, if we reimagine it with deep humility, constant reassessment, and a commitment to justice, equity, and inclusion. Maybe our movement was meant to be revived and revised especially for such a time as this!
I don’t mean to imply we have never sought to refashion our tradition in positive ways for a new day. Our original unique and compelling understanding of church has undergone incredible transformation in recent years, with the inspiration of the Reverend Dick Hamm‘s bold 2020 vision, Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins description of us as a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world, and especially now with Reverend Teresa Hord Owens invitation for us imagine God‘s limitless love. These are the wonderful efforts I know in my adult life to make the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) fresh and relevant for a new day. Thanks be to God!
But from my vantage point as a Regional Minister for the last nine years in two Regional Church settings it is clear something else is yet needed. Our lay leaders are exhausted, our clergy feel embattled, and our buildings that were so aspirational when the cornerstones were laid feel like albatrosses around our necks. Fewer people are called or even curious about ministry, so pastoral transitions are longer and harder. Congregations get angry and leave at the slightest difference in perspective they have with the Regional or General Minister, and others find closing easier than being transformed. So I would like to humbly offer from my limited perspective three critiques of where we and so many other people of faith go wrong, but also pair them with three possibilities for new life, resurrection hope, and renewal.
I would make the case that our current state of affairs is the result of committing three theological sins and can be redeemed only if we address them honestly and hopefully. Our downfall, from the dawn of our faith, has been that we consistently and unquestionably align our faith with
Our identity in the moment
How we do things in the moment
Who is in power in the moment
Identity, Practice, Power – let’s explore these one at a time.
Our identity in the moment:
While the great beauty of the Judeo Christian story is that it focuses on a specificity of people, places, and situations, these were never meant to be restrictive, but exemplary. Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. Paul preaching at the acropolis in Rome. Barton Stone and the revival at the Cane Ridge Meeting House. But the moment we begin to want to settle down into a particular identity forged from these people, places and experiences, the God of the Bible pries us loose and send us out again into uncharted territory. Those who are a part of Alcoholics Anonymous know this well: be well aware of people, places, and things that may affect your sobriety! Isaiah 56:1–9, where God through the prophet Isaiah demands that our places of worship be “A house of prayer for all people,” especially the faithful foreigner, the covenantal eunuch, as well as the lifelong believer, is a great example, but we could use so many others, including Galatians 3:28, and Acts 2:1-9 – the latter of which is so apropos for today!
I cannot tell you how many times I have had to remind congregational leaders who are angry about this General Assembly resolution, or that Pastoral Letter from the General Minister, or my own very identity as a gay man, that the beauty of our particular faith tradition is that we cling fast to one identity and one identity alone: that Jesus is the Christ and that we proclaim Christ our Savior. The rest is up for discussion – a good healthy rigorous but stay-at-the-table discussion!
I believe our church will experience the transforming power of the Holy Spirit once again, if we refuse to obsess about the details of other people’s human identity and certainly to stop making them requirements for membership in the church in order to be “legitimately” faithful to God, and rather embody the spirit of Christ, “who welcomed all to the table, just as Christ has welcomed us.”
So we must loosen our faith from our identity in the moment but also from:
How we do things in the moment:
While it is perfectly natural, and even helpful, to make our faith real in the tangible ways in which we do things, that’s the nature of being human, it becomes sinful when we interpret how we do things as the only way and the forever way to do things. In 1 Corinthians 3:6-7 Paul acknowledges that the work he does and other apostles do is both built on previous generations and will be carried on by future generations, all with their own particular approach and emphasis. I appreciate the fact that even the apostle Paul understood there was a before, a during, and an after to his ministry, and implies that others would do things differently than he himself would do. Ultimately, however, we must affirm it is “God who gives the growth!”
Any congregation that has gone through the New Beginnings process with Disciples Church Extension knows the familiar bell curve of organizational and congregational development. This illustration shows how it is natural and understandable for the original passion and excitement of a new community of faith to be translated into practical things like constitutions and bylaws, groups and committees, and ultimately buildings. But we also know that unless those things are seen as tools for the mission and not the mission of the church itself they will be the instruments of our own death.
I believe our church will experience the transforming power of the Holy Spirit when we finally understand that clarity, honesty, and regularly evaluation of the way we are doing things are not attacks on the church and church leaders, but a healthy requirement for the faith to survive and thrive in our congregations and communities. We will live with the Holy Spirit as our guide when we truly honor, nurture, celebrate and reward creativity, innovation, imagination, and yes, that all too tossed about concept: change!
We must unfasten our faith from our identity in the moment, from how we do things in the moment, but also from:
Who is in power in the moment:
From the very instant the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the year 312 our faith has risked the greatest endangerment of all: alignment with power rather than critique of and resistance to power. Quaker activist and architect of the 1963 march on Washington, Bayard Rustin, once famously said our primary task as people of faith is to speak truth to power. I think it is fair to say that in this moment in American history, we are at great risk of failing Christ in the same way by desperately trying to align the church with political power and personalities.
One of the things that angers me the most is when pastors or lay leaders are accused of being too “political” or of bringing political division into the church when all they are doing is trying to model what Jesus did, and the great prophets before him when they spoke truth to power. We should have always understood great preaching meant prophetic preaching as well as pastoral preaching. Those of you in the Black Church tradition know this well! In this regard I maintain that the greatest distortion and misinterpretation of scripture has taken place around the book of the Revelation when it was made apocalyptic rather than prophetic. Rather than recognizing it as a great mystical allegory contrasting faith with empire and specifically calling believers to engage spirituality against the destructive policies and violent actions of the power hungry and bloodthirsty Roman Empire, thus empowering us to “speak truth to power” in our own day, it was twisted into the heresy known as millennialism. Millennialism is what is driving much of Christian Nationalism today and should be named for the heresy it is and be rooted out of our congregations.
I believe our church will experience the transforming power of the Holy Spirit when we understand that vigorous theological, social, and political conversations not only can happen in church, but should be welcomed and nurtured in church in order for us to better understand how faith should be lived out in our daily lives and in the public sphere. Congregations that do the hard but rewarding work of becoming Pro-Reconciling and Anti-Racist, or Refugee Welcoming Congregations, Accessible Congregations, Open & Affirming Ministries, or Green Chalice ministries for example are modeling discipleship for the 21st century, and these efforts will ultimately save the church, or at least will restore the faith of and faith in Jesus Christ for new generations of followers.
My dear friends in the Christian Church in Ohio, and beyond, I regret to inform you that there is no magical potion that we can drink that will turn our churches around from the courses they are on. But I can tell you that if we step up to the table of Christ, stay at the table of Christ, and once again disengage our faith in Jesus from:
Our identity in the moment
How we do things in the moment
Who is in power in the moment.
And instead follow the winds of the Holy Spirit:
Welcome ALL to the table
Celebrate innovation and expect change
Normalize rigorous dialogue
we will at least have a chance. And we do this not to “save the church” – but to do what Christ called us to do when Jesus stood on that mountaintop and directed us to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”
May it be so. Amen.
And if you want more detailed information about the state of the Christian Church in Ohio, I invite you to join me for my second presentation at 5 p.m. today, “The State Of The Church – A Presentation.”
Thank you, and may God’s grace abound.