Pastor Scott's Thoughts

American Church in Crisis (Ch 2): Population Growth

I got through chapter two of The American Church in Crisis. This chapter dealt with the disparity between US church growth and population growth.

In just 40 years, the US population expanded by 100 million people - from 200 million in 1967 to 300 million in 2006. It is believed that the US will add another 100 million over the next forty years.

In 1990 52 million people attended church on any given weekend, in 2006 the number was exactly the same. (Ironically, 52 million is approximately the net gain in overall US population growth between 1990 and 2006). Which means that although the number of people attending church stayed the same the percentage of Americans who attended a Christian church on any given weekend declined from 20.4% in 1990 to 17.5% in 2006. In no single state did church attendance keep up with the population growth.

If the church were to merely maintain again during this next 40 year period, by 2046 the church would make up approximately 13% of the population. Obviously part of the increase in population is due to the increase in life-expectancy but if one combines from 1990-2006 the birth rate (68.5 million) and the immigrant population (22.8 million) and then do not subtract out the death total (39.6 million), rather than an increase of just 52 million you get 91 million "new" Americans. Of those 91 million new Americans over 70 million are under the age of 17.

If all of these stats are kosher we church leaders ought to be up all night praying and trying to figure out how we are going to reach this generation.

Small "c" catholic

I am currently in a sermon series on what Christians believe and am using the Apostle's Creed each week as a basis for our common beliefs. Along that line, I've been asked by a few folk about the inclusion of the word "catholic" in the line that says, "I believe in the holy catholic church."

I was planning on giving an explanation for that in a couple of weeks when I preach on what Christians believe about the church, but I've had enough questions about it that I will likely say something this Sunday, but I thought I'd blog about it also.

First let me say that although there are certainly significant historical, theological, liturgical, and structural differences between Roman Catholicism and my own Protestant difference, I do believe that we are brothers and sisters in Christ and that we ought to work together as much as possible for the furthering of God's Kingdom. Whatever our differences, we share the common core belief that Jesus Christ is Lord.

That being said, the word "catholic" in the Apostle's Creed is not a reference to the Roman Catholic Church it is a reference to all people who are followers of Jesus Christ. The word catholic (with a small case "c") simlply means universal. Thus when we recite the creed we are saying that we believe in the universal church of Jesus Christ that crosses all denominational lines and embraces all who proclaim Jesus as Lord.

Thank you for those who called or emailed me to ask this question, I hope this explanation was helpful. Not so much thanks for those who used your confusion to spend time being critical on the patio or in the hallway, but I hope this explanation helped you too. :) Blessings.

American Church in Crisis: Church Attendance

I have started reading The American Church in Crisis by David T. Olson. It is a new book that was recommended to me by a Fuller professor friend and is based upon research done on over 200,000 churches.

I thought I would blog a bit as I go chapter by chapter since there is probably too much to reflect upon as a whole.

Chapter 1 deals with church attendance. Olson acknowledges what most pastors have been suspicious of - namely that many polls regarding church attendance greatly over estimate the reality of American church attendance. Olson blames the high number of people that say "yes" to church attendance on what is called the "halo effect." According to the halo effect people generally over estimate in poll questions the number of "good" things they do and under estimate the number of "bad" or unhealthy things they do. Thus, most polls results greatly over-estimate church attendance.

Studying actual church attendance numbers rather than poll results, Olson estimates that any given weekend in America 9.1% attend an evangelical church, 3% attend a mainline church, and 5.3% attend a Catholic church (an additional 2% attend what he calls "non-orthodox" churches). That is a total regular Christian church attendance of 17.5%.

He estimates that another 5.5% of the population attends church semi-regularly (3 out of 8 weeks) and gives money on occasion. An additional 14% have some connection to a church and another 15% claim church membership but rarely if ever attend. (Around the church we would tend to call this last 29% C and E's - people who say they have a church but attend only on Christmas and/or Easter).

So the main result is that although about 50% of the American population would claim some affiliation with a church - 77% of the population is just simply not there on any given week.

For those of us on either coast the numbers are usually two-thirds to half of what they are in the midwest, so it's probably not inaccurate to estimate that 88 to 84% of the population is not worshiping anywhere on any given Sunday (weekend). What an overwhelming challenge - but what a mission field!

The Wrath of the Lamb

I've received a couple of questions coming out of yesterday's sermon on What Christians Believe about Jesus concering the nature of God's judgment. I made the point in the sermon yesterday that I think evangelical theology at times pushes the idea of Jesus as a substitute for our sins so strongly that we often risk creating two Gods in our theology. On the one side stands God the Father whose justice and wrath must be appeased and on the other side stands God the Son who full of grace and mercy becomes the appeasement for the Father's justice and wrath. (BTW - I've written fairly extensively about some of these issues in a book edited by John Sanders entitled Violence and Atonement: A Theological Conversation, published by Abingdon).

The kind of questions I've received are wonderful questions that go something like this: I understand that it is important not to have two Gods - the OT God of justice and the NT God of mercy - but what do we then do about the idea of judgment?

I do plan on preaching on what Christians believe about judgment in this series but let me just say a few things here. The Apostle's Creed does affirm about Jesus that "We believe... He will come again to judge the living and the dead." The two NT texts that inform this conviction are:

Romans 2:16 - "...on the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all."

2 Tim. 2:16 - "In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message..."

It seems apparent that Paul understands the judgment of God to be a judgment that is either done by Jesus Christ or through Jesus Christ. So, whatever we say about judgment it has to be consistent with what we believe about Jesus. Perhaps we have to ask questions like: "What would Jesus judge? And How would Jesus judge?" Certainly in the life of Jesus we see moments of judgment - tax collectors experience conviction, prostitutes leave their trade, Pharisees are exposed as hypocrites, etc. Even the Revelator gives us the phrase "the wrath of the Lamb" in 6:16, but I would still want to wrestle with what the wrath of the Lamb looks like as opposed to say the wrath of Zeus.

I believe deeply in the holiness (as otherness) of God and that the fear (or respect) of God is truly the beginning of wisdom, but I do struggle with and want to guard against a theology that divides the Trinity into rival characters with the Father becoming the angry judge whose wrath is averted and appeased by the merciful Son. I wish I had a nickel for everytime God the Father is described in the OT as "full of steadfast love and mercy."

In about 20 years of ministry now I have seen far too many people who love to talk about Jesus but then cannot talk about the Father. I've even seen people who get physically sick or become psychologically unstable when "the Father" is even mentioned because they have been so shaped by the fear of his judgment. Here is one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith: Jesus is God - but in a profound way God is also Jesus. So whatever we say about God, including his holiness, judgment, and wrath needs to be consistent with the fullness of the divine image that we see in Jesus.

What will the Church in North America look like in 25 Years?

I am back from a little post-Easter blog hiatus.

There are many prognosticators today who say things like, "The church looked very different after the Reformation than it did before the Reformation, and we are in a new period of Reformation. And like those who experienced the Reformation some will see the coming changes as a horrible loss and some will see them as a great blessing." Along those lines, I was at a strategic planning meeting at Fuller today where the topic was the future of theological education which involved all kinds of very interesting reflection about what the nature of the church will look like (primarily in North America) in the coming decades.

One of the pressing issues for all seminaries - not just Fuller - is the decline in students participating in the Master of Divinity program. Traditionally the MDiv was the standard degree for people going into ministry. It was considered alongside medicine and law as a professional degree and thus it has traditionally been a four-year master's degree (which makes it one of if not the longest master's degrees to attain). Some denominations (like the Presbyterians) still require someone to graduate with an MDiv from an approved seminary to qualify for ordination - but it is safe to say that the majority of evangelical denominations (like the Nazarenes) do not require any graduate education. Most seminaries started offering two-year Master of Arts programs in various areas of ministry some time ago, but they were usually add-ons to the staple MDiv degree. Now the roles are reversing.

This is a reality that seminaries have to deal with, but what interests me most is that I see the decline in MDiv programs as symptomatic of many changes taking place in and around the church. Cultural changes which are rapidly altering the way that Christians will think about and be the church in the future. Here are some of my observations:

1. Most students I know preparing for ministry want nothing to do with the institutional church. When I think about where the ministry students I had during my seven years at SNU (96-03) are today, very few of them are either senior pastors or on track to become senior pastors. Most went on to do PhD work and teach, went to work for parachurch and mission organizations, or went into some other form of staff ministry. Some who are in staff ministry may become senior pastors at some point but they will do so (most likely) without traditional forms of education preparation. I was recently on a panel of pastors that met with graduating ministry seniors at APU. It was fascinating to as a panel give advice to a group of ministry majors who overwhelmingly have no interest in replacing any of us on the panel someday.

There seem to be two other shifts that are sort of alike but also sort of in conflict but are taking place nonetheless:

2. Ministry specialization is taking place as churches become larger. In most denominations churches are getting larger and more specialized. In the Church of the Nazarene for example, we have relatively the same number of worshipers attending worship in North America each Sunday today as we did thirty years ago, but thirty years ago we only had a handful of churches over one thousand in attendance. Today, we have the same total number of people going to church but we have about sixty churches over or near 1,000 in attendance. Essentially middle-sized churches are disappearing. In large churches ministry is specialized. I am one of two traditionally trained (MDiv) pastors on a staff of eleven. The others are trained but in their specialty of ministry. I think that trend will at some level continue. I was with a very well known pastor recently who has just been officially made the "teaching pastor" at their church and another pastor has been hired as senior or "lead pastor." I'm seeing this happen more often as churches get really big. People are ministers but they are being trained in business, administration, education, music, counseling and other specializations - and are coming to the ministry from secular roles in those areas of specialization.

3. On the other side the house churches and emerging churches are almost going back to a non-professional lay-pastor model. There are many churches springing up that have a leader who has theological or biblical training but is usually bi-vocational and then other people in the congregation may also have some theological training and share the ministries of a smaller community of believers but also be essentially non-professional ministers. I not only don't find anything wrong with that, I find a lot that is admirable about it - Paul was a tent-maker. In some ways the idea of a professional clergy person is the by-product of the post-Constaninian state church culture. Now that the culture is increasingly post-Christian it makes one wonder what the post-Christian culture church will look like. Maybe it will look more like the church in Corinth than the First Church of Pasadena.

Having been raised by professional pastors and having been trained to be one, I probably should be more concerned than I am - especially since I have no other marketable skills - but I really trust that God is at work in his church and that the form of our polity and the location of our worship does not matter as much as whom we are worshiping and how we are reflecting his life in the world.

I'm excited to see how God is going to work next among us. It is going to be fascinating to see how my children and grandchildren choose to be the church in the world. What form do you think the church will take next?

Good Friday at Garfield Care Center

Good Friday was a great day. It was Noah's 12th birthday, we had an Easter dinner party for the folk at the Garfield Care center, and we had a wonderful Tenebrae service.

It is hard to believe that Noah is 12. I seems like yesterday that he was born weighing in at 9-7 and looked like he might eat the other children in the nursery. He got a guitar for his birthday so that the two of us can have father-son jam sessions.

We had our fourth party at the Garfield Care Center. Some of you know about this ministry that God opened up for Debbie and our family a couple of years ago. Garfield is a care facility across the street from our kids school (PCS) where people with some form of disability can qualify to live. It is in many ways a dreary place - one step above homelessness - which is where most of the residents were before qualifying to live at the GCC. Pasadena Christian School has gotten involved with us in the last year and donated all the gifts for Christmas and Easter this year. The Otts are simply wonderful and brought dinner from Claim Jumper again. I was missing some of the folk that we got to know originally who have either transitioned to better places to live (like Ralph the Mailman) or have just sort of disappeared in the system (like James). We have come to know some of the regulars like Sandy, Billy (Lucky), Gary, and Candy pretty well, but for so many of these folk life is a day-to-day challenge to find a "place" to call home.

There was something very moving for me yesterday in going from Garfield to our Tenebrae service at church. The Tenebrae service was a powerful reminder that God, in Christ, has entered into our shadows and darkness. One of my favorite ideas from Jurgen Moltmann comes from his book The Crucified God. Moltmann says that the cry of Jesus on the cross, "Why has thou forsaken me?" lets us know that God, in Christ, has gone to all the places called "God forsaken." In fact, there is now no place called God forsaken because God has gone to and identified with the forsaken.

I can't help but think that more often than not when people (including myself) drive by the Garfield Care Center or see the people who live there wandering around the streets they look the other way so that they don't have to look at a place or at these people who seem in so many ways neglected and forsaken. But the reason Crucifixion Friday is called Good Friday is because there is now no place or no person called God forsaken, because he is the God who has gone all the way to the God forsaken places.

Maundy Thursday Reflection

"For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" (1 Cor. 11:26).

This verse is part of the epistle reading for Maundy Thursday. The verse comes from Paul's discussion of the Lord's Supper to the Corinthian church. I think it is interesting that Paul writes that when we eat this meal we "proclaim" something significant.

When the disciples gathered around the traditional Passover meal they proclaimed the primary surprise found in the Old Testament - that God is on the side of the enslaved. Most of the world believed that god or the gods were obviously on the side of powerful rulers like Pharaoh. The Passover meal proclaims that God is the one who hears the cries of the broken and is symbolized most fully in the sacrificial lamb.

The Lord's Supper proclaims the great surpise of the Gospels - that the Lord and Messiah is a suffering servant. I'm not sure we are able to fully appreciate the power of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. When we eat this meal we are proclaiming that the love of the Lamb is the defining characteristic of the followers of Jesus.

But we proclaim this meal until he comes. I believe the third great surprise of the scripture is when the Revelator discovers that the Lion of Judah who is worthy to open the scroll of history is the Lamb that was slain. I am one who believes that Revelation teaches us that the Lion is forever the Lamb. It is difficult for us to imagine that love can and will ultimatey overcome evil with good, but we keep eating this meal as our way of proclaiming that self-giving love is the center of all things - until he comes and his kingdom is established on earth as it is in heaven.

"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:34-35).

WTS Days 2 & 3

I got so busy I missed blogging about the last couple of days at WTS. In the picture section I have lots of pics of friends who were there. Three quick reflections on the whole event.

1. I think I counted six PazNaz people who were presenting or responding to papers. It is very exciting - and at times a little humbling - to pastor a church with so many very thoughtful and refelctive believers.

2. The picture is of Jurgen Moltmann. It is always a rare treat to be with someone who has so greatly impacted Christian theology. The most terrifying moment - there isn't even a close second - was a few years ago when I was at a conference presenting a paper I had written on Moltmann, Worship, and Hope and about three paragraphs into the presentation he walked into the room. Afterwards in his wonderful German accent he said, "That was a vunderful paper. You are totally wrong about hope, but I still thought it vas interesting."

3. I love participating in the academic world, but now that I am in the church world most of the time, I'm always saddened by the divide between those two worlds.

WTS Duke Day 1

I had a really great day at Wesley Theological Society at Duke University. It is always great to see old friends and meet a few new ones. This is a really significant year because WTS is meeting together with the Society of Pentecostal Studies. They have 600 people registered which is incredible.

There are so many young scholars coming up through the academic ranks. On the one hand this is really wonderful because they are incredibly bright, gifted and prepared. On the other hand, the Church of the Nazarene has a really hard time hanging on to them for a variety of reasons.

It was wonderful to get to hear Stanley Hauerwas and Jurgen Moltmann speak today. Dr. Hauerwas was chosen by Time magazine a couple of years ago as America's best theologian and Moltmann has won several awards naming him the most significant theologian of the last half of the 20th century. Without question they have been the two most influential theologians for myself and many others. It's always a privilege to get to hear them.

Duke is incredibly beautiful. The chapel and divinity school are connected and amazing. The whole place makes me wish I was 18 again and could do it all over.

Book #6 - Practicing Greatness

Practicing Greatness: 7 Disciplines of Extraordinary Spiritual Leaders, Reggie McNeal (Jossey-Bass, 2006).

In my continued steep learning curve in leadership I'm trying to read books that will help me. Reggie is a great synthesizer of material and so I didn't find a lot that was new here, but I found it helpful in its focus.  The seven disciplines are:

1. Self-Awareness: it is so important that leaders know their strengths, weaknesses, what they bring with them from the family of origin, their touchy subjects, etc. I agree that this is crucial. I want to believe that I am pretty self-aware, but doesn't everybody sort of think they are? Isn't self-deceit a problem for everybody?

2. Self-Management: it is critical that leaders manage their emotions, expectations, health, time, and money. I'm learning...

3. Self-Development: leaders are always learning. Reggie always emphasizes working in your areas of strengths rather than putting too much emphasis on your weaknesses. I think that is true, but I find that hard to do in pastoring because you are forced to wear so many hats.

4. Mission: again with the picture on the top of the puzzle box.

5. Decision Making: leaders ask the right questions, get enough of the right kind of information, consider timing, involve the right people, operate with right motives, understand intended outcomes, and debrief decisions after they are made. Good advice.

6. Belonging: every great leader needs mentors, partners and friends. Amen.

7. Aloneness: great leaders needs wilderness experiences, sabbaths, and prayer moments with God. I could live without the wilderness, but I know its necessary.

Helpful stuff.