I, geekrevThe closest you want to get to looking inside the mind of Shawn Coons.

WARNING: This post talks about membership numbers of the PC(USA) and individual churches. If you are one of those people who has a fit anytime someone shows the slightest interest in numbers then I invite you to skip this post and check out this intriguing link.

Like most other mainline denominations, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has been losing members since the 1960s. We are down to about half the size that we once were. And this decline logically comes from many (most likely a majority) of churches losing members on a near-yearly basis.

But the average Presbyterian church seems indifferent to this reality. Sure, there is nervousness and some small lament of the declining number of “nickels and noses,” but how many churches actually acknowledge this reality and really wish to do the hard work of trying to reverse the decline? Acknowledging churches: few. Really working to reverse it: even fewer.

So here comes my question. Let’s put aside the notion that members and numbers may not be the best indicator of a faithful or successful church (duh). Doesn’t the average Presbyterian with kids/grandkids want the church to be around for their grown kids/grandkids? The writing is on the wall but most people seem interested in preserving the church they are used to, rather than helping to create one that will be there in the future.

I think we can certainly disagree about what changes need to be made, but I think it should be pretty obvious that if we make no changes the denomination will continue to shrink and individual churches will continue to die.

So do today’s Presbyterians care about leaving a church for their children? Or are we merely concerned with making sure it lasts just as long as we do?

I just finished giving a talk on “Communicating Faith in a Web 2.0 World”at the Presbyterian Communicators Conference. One of the participants has set up a live blog for the conference.  And as I just wrote on their, “I’ve never been live blogged.  It tingles.”

Luckily, no Twitter mobs.

I came to a realization this morning.  I don’t really buy software for my computer anymore.  I have several CD portfolios that hold software and video games that I’ve bought over the year, but I haven’t added a new CD to those portfolios in quite a number of months.  Best Buy is still a frequent hangout of mine, but I can’t remember the last time I bought an actual software package from there.

There are probably several reasons for this.

1) I’m content with the productivity software I have.  My copy of Microsoft Office is from 5 or 6 years ago, but it works just fine.    I’m guessing the newer versions have stuff that I might find helpful, but MS Office does everything I want it to, so I haven’t felt the need to buy the newer version.

2) Online Applications.  I used to use MS Outlook constantly.  It was how I checked my email and where I had my calendar.  But I got tired of having it only at work, or trying to keep it synced between home and work, so I switched to Gmail and Google Calendar.  Switching to Gmail was the best thing I ever did for a number of reasons.  Gmail is now my official file cabinet.  If I went to have something accessible I just email it to myself and archive it.  Now, I’ve got thousands of emails that are simply a Google search away.

I haven’t fully switched to online word processors or spreadsheets, but I do use them if I want to share data or need something that will be accessible to me from different places.  Mint is another website that is quickly replacing Quicken for me.
3) Open Source Software.  I use Firefox, OpenOffice, GIMP, Filezilla and a host of other open source (free) programs.  So many of the programs I would have bought before, now I can get an alternative that is free and just as good, if not better.

Switching to online applications or open source software isn’t just about saving money.  The spam control in Gmail is incredible.  I have 5-10 different email addresses that I route into my Gmail account, a couple of them very public and widespread.  I should be getting dozens of spam emails a day, but instead I get one a week.  Maybe.  Firefox is a web browser that is superior to Internet Explorer in so many ways, but especially in terms of security (viruses, trojan horses, keyloggers, etc.).

So what does all this have to do with the church?  Well, a number of people are no longer going to the big professional software establishments, and instead they are exploring small collaborative efforts, creative new ways of doing software, and sometimes creating their own without the benefit of the traditional ways of doing software.  Sound familiar?

We are moving into a time where church is not just going to come from one source in the traditional ways.  We can’t expect that people will automatically flock to the big church on the corner where helpful ministers are waiting to assist you with your life.  People are creating their own faith communities and house churches, other groups are forming larger churches that are very different from the old models.  Other people are forming networks of Christians that don’t appear to be church as we know it at all, but function as church in their lives.

I’ve noticed over the last couple years that software sections in stores seem to be shrinking.  It looks like the stores are noticing the trends and adjusting accordingly.

I wonder if the church will do the same.

I’m on a quest. A quest to figure out what office or person at the denominational level is responsible for resourcing young adult ministry in the PC(USA).

So far, my quest is in vain.

We used to have a staff person for young adult ministry, but she was cut in one of the recent round of layoffs. So I called Presbytel this morning to try and find out what overworked person/office in Louisville had young adults folded into their responsibilities. But I was told that when a staff person is cut there area of ministry is gone and not given to someone else. So apparently there is no one at the denominational level that is responsible (even nominally or just on paper) for young adult ministry.

Great.

Ok, how about some irony to cheer you up? Check out this page from the outdated young adult section of the PC(USA) website where it states how many youth and young adults leave the denomination and never come back. Hmmm…maybe it’s because we don’t think young adults are important enough to devote significant (any?) denominational resources to.

It’s not that I think that we can do a 180 degree turn with young adults simply by having someone behind a desk in Louisville who is “responsible” for young adult ministry. But it’d be great to have an official connection or person to help resource those of us locally who are young adults and/or care about reaching young adults.

People like me!

Earlier this year I had an idea that we should resurrect the clergy-under-40 conference that the PC(USA) used to do. A couple of months later we’ve got a planning team, space reserved at Montreat for June 7-13 2009, and our first planing meeting is in three weeks! So, I thought it’d be nice to talk to someone in Louisville and say, “Remember all that work and money you put into the old 7% events? Guess what! A group of us are doing that for you with no paid staff and no budget, and we thought you might be interested in partnering with us some how.”

If only there were someone to talk to.

Theolog, the blog of the Christian Century (wasn’t that last century?), has a post by Jason Byassee about the practice of serving communion while speaking the recipient’s name. i.e. “John, the body of Christ, broken* for you.”  Jason argues that this is unnecessary and merely inserts human interaction into what is supposed to be a meeting just between Jesus and those who partake in communion.  He writes:

“In short, such emotive, sentimental quasi-rituals betray a lack of trust in the presence of Christ in the sacrament itself. People come forward to meet Jesus, not the server. We shouldn’t get in the way.  Many of the commenters on the article agree.”

Several of the commenters agree:

“It takes what should be vertical and transcendent and makes it horizontal and immanent.”

“I’ve had some conversations with persons in my church in recent weeks about this very matter and it is a revelation to many (and one that some just flat out resist) that our feelings at the Lord’s Table are immaterial.”

Here’s what bothers me about this.  There is this assumption that we know exactly what the Lord’s Supper is supposed to be, as if it was some controlled science experiment where every variable and outcome were measurable and measured.  But the last time I checked, Jesus didn’t articulate a checklist for his Table, what is allowed and is not allowed, how everyone should feel (or not feel).  Let’s remember that the original Lord’s Supper was a meal, laden with emotion in remembering the Passover and in anticipating Jesus’ death.  There Jesus used mundane elements like bread, wine and people,and I’m sure there was conversation and connection among those people gathered there.

So I take issue with this idea that communion is just me and Jesus in a snapshot of transcendence, which is  somehow best served if we forget anyone else around us.  And I won’t even get into whether or not we should say that Jesus’ body was “broken” or not (if you don’t know why this is an issue go look for the word broken in this context in your NRSV).

Carol Howard Merritt wrote a post about focus groups and organizations that seek to get the input of young adults.  Her main point is that organizations don’t need focus groups if they want to serve young adults, what they need is young adults in positions of power.  Here is some of what Carol wrote,

[Our generation does]…”everything differently. We are wired differently. We communicate differently. We raise money differently. We protest differently. We do missions differently. While you were excited about German modernists in seminary, we were excited about French deconstructionists…

…My generation is different. If we’re not included on your board or organization, we don’t care. We’ll just walk off and start our own thing. If you really want to work with a new generation, you need to get over yourselves. Quickly. You don’t have much time. You’re not the country club that we’re dying to get into. If you’re waiting for a person to turn fifty before you begin listening to what they have to say, or before you consider them to be an expert, it will be far too late. You can’t wait for the younger generations to kick down the door to break into the leadership of your organization. We won’t do it. We don’t need to. We’ll simply walk away. If you’re interested in sustaining through a new generation, please understand, as much as I believe that my generation needs the denominational church, my peers don’t. But one thing is clear: you need us.”

In the last couple of months I was visiting with a staff member at my alma mater, Union-PSCE, who was trying to tel me all the wonderful things happening at the seminary.  A bright and rosy picture was being painted for the seminary’s future and eventually we came to talk about the age of the trustees on the board at Union-PSCE.  When I asked how many younger people were on the board I was met by blank look that didn’t seem to understand why anyone would ask that question.

As Carol wrote above, it is a dangerous thing to leave young people out of power in an organization, because they will leave and do their own thing.  This is why mainline protestant churches are dying and emerging churches are growing.  Emerging churches typically enact the belief that “every member is a minister” through dialogical sermons, worship teams,  and flat leadership.  While mainline churches have Youth Advisory Delegates, token youth elders, and create special groups for young adults so that the main structures of the church (i.e. worship) don’t have to change.

This is how the next quasi-7% Event is going to happen.  This was an event created, promoted and funded by the PC(USA) for clergy under 40.  But for some reason, the denomination let it quietly fade away.  Well, there’s a group of us who aren’t content for it to go gently into the good night, and we are planning on partnering with Montreat Conference Center  to host this event during the week of June 7-13, 2009.

“If we’re not included on your board or organization, we don’t care. We’ll just walk off and start our own thing.”

I did an Ash Wednesday service at a retirement community this morning.  The imposition of ashes is near the top of the list of cool/weird/disturbing things that I do as a minister.  It’s odd to look in the eyes of 20 people who are anywhere from 70-90 years old and tell each of them to “Remember you are dust and to dust you will return.”  I would imagine a number of them don’t need any such reminder.  So maybe this ritual is more of a moment of making holy or blessing.  If your body is failing and your death seems closer than it used to, then maybe it is comforting (not quite the right word) to have your mortality ritualized and acknowledged in the context of worship.

Ash Wednesday is interesting.  It’s humbling and a little scary to put ashes on the forehead of a ten year old one moment and then the next moment put them on the forehead of someone who will most likely die from cancer within two months.

What is your experience with Ash Wednesday?

As if to illustrate my point in my earlier post I came across the video below on the Spirited Chat blog. It’s from the Youtube Republican Presidential Nominee debate and the candidates are asked “What Would Jesus Do?” in regards to the death penalty. Huckabee refuses to answer the question while he extols his own record of sentencing people to death (to the applause of the crowd). I believe he refused to answer the question because he knew that Jesus answer was different than his own.

Dear Readers,

I need your help to disprove something. Here is my hypothesis: Christians are no different than anyone else.

If this is true, this is a bad thing. When people encountered Jesus in the Bible, their lives were dramatically changed. They changed jobs, left their homes, said goodbye to family, gave away their money, were healed, moved into a different part of society, were persecuted, became sad because Jesus demanded too much, were moved to violence (against Jesus), were threatened, and so on.

What about today? Look at yourself and look at your fellow Christians. Are our lives different because of Jesus? Unfortunately, my answer is a resounding “no.” Both for my own life and for the people I see. Sure, I’m a minister so it may appear that Jesus has made a dramatic difference in my life. But drop my profession for a second and you’ll see my lifestyle looks remarkable similar to lots of other MALPs (Middle-class Academic Liberal Parents). I can tell you about the evils of global warming, multi-national corporations, and No Child Left Behind. I can talk at length about our need for universal health care, withdrawing troops from Iraq, and affirmative action. But if you look at my lifestyle - where my money is spent, what I speak out against or for, who I spend my time with, where I live, what I buy, and so on, you wouldn’t be able to pick me out of a room of non-Christians.

And as I look at the Christians that I am friends with and at the churches I have served, the same thing applies. Only a few exceptions come immediately to mind (my friend Jim, who is actively trying to put economic spiritual disciplines in his life, and Saleem Ghubril founder of the Pittsburgh Project). But for most people I know, myself included, if we weren’t Christian I don’t know how different our lives would look. This cuts across the spectrum. The lifestyles of the liberal Christians are pretty indistinguishable from the lifestyles of their liberal non-Christian friends*, and the same thing for conservative Christians.

So what I am asking of you, dear Reader, is to prove me wrong. Give me examples - from your own life or someone you know personally - of people who have been changed by Jesus. How are they different from people around them? How do they visibly show Christ in their lives so that the way they live is different because of Jesus?

*Please note, I’m not trying to say that non-Christians can’t live different lifestyles from the norm, because they can and do, and I applaud them for it.

My wife and I had one vacation Sunday left that we hadn’t used this year. Due to a number of factors it wasn’t feasible for us to “get away,” so instead we decided to take a stay-at-home vacation. It started a little rocky when there was a last minute meeting at church that we needed to be at on our first day of vacation. But the rest of the time off was good - especially since it is a rarity for Carrie and I to go to church when we aren’t “the ministers.” This morning we went to Lakewood Church, home of Pastor Joel Osteen.

From what I knew about Lakewood and Joel, I realized that it wasn’t going to be our most worshipful experience. There’s no cross in Lakewood’s sanctuary (arena? stage?), although there is a big ol’ American Flag. And the messages that I’d heard from Joel in the past were basically “Ask not what you can do for God, but what God can do for you.” But I was really curious to experience Lakewood for myself and see who was there, what went on, and how they did what they did. So here are my observations and commentary.

As we made our way through the parking garage and tunnel into the “church” (which used to be where the NBA’s Houston Rockets used to play), I noticed two things about our fellow worshippers. It was a very diverse crowd, all colors of people, singles, families, younger, older (although more 30s-50s than 60s and up), different income levels, etc. And it seemed that the majoriaty of people where carrying their own Bibles into worship.

We were greeted warmly by a number of volunteers. They were friendly and seemed glad that we were there without pouncing on us hungrily as often happens at the average aging mainline Protestant church. We were also greeted by the sounds of Jingle Bells being played by a live rock band as we entered the building. We found our way to the wing of childcare that our son was going to go to, and then Carrie and I wandered around the bookstore a little bit. It was probably the biggest Christian bookstore that I’ve been in, but I couldn’t find an NRSV Bible anywhere. :)

As we waited for the service to begin I read about some of the programs in the brochures we had picked up and on the big screens in the auditorium. I was impressed with the variety and intentionality. Couples that get married there must take an 8 week pre-marital course. There were events for single parents, and some sort of tax preparation ministry. The worship started with music lead by a choir of about 100, a band of about 15, and about 10 lead singers. It was modern praise lyrics with some really good rock behind it. The music was interspersed with greetings, prayers and sermon by Joel and his wife Victoria.

One part of the service I thought was pretty cool was a time of prayer when people were invited to come forward to “prayer partners” around the stadium. The would come to the partners, who would pray for them. It looked to be pretty meaningful for both those offering prayer and receiving prayer. What a great way to share lives and to spread ministry and worship leadership among congregational leaders.

Joel is a pretty darn good speaker.  He is personable without being hokey, but what he says I just can’t get behind.  Most everything that was said by he or Victoria centered around results-oriented faith.  Do something for God because then God will do something for you.  The message this morning was basically that we should view any hardship in our life as “light adversity” when compared to things of eternal significance.  “Don’t magnify your problems, magnify your God.”  He talked a lot about putting God first, giving your problems to God, and a number of other generic “trust God” cliches but he never said what any of that looked like.

It was definitely a good experience.  Lakewood does some things really well.  They know about attention to detail and making people feel welcome, but I don’t think they offer the whole gospel.  Sure, God wants us to have life abundantly, but God wants us to live radically for others and not for ourselves.  After my morning at Lakewood I didn’t get any clue that as a Christian I need to live sacrificially for God and for others.  The message I received was that God wants me to live a primarily for my own happiness and then maybe that might trickle down to others.