Formal Does Not Suck

People tend not to like anything formal nowadays. They prefer “authentic things,” by which they mean spontaneous and unplanned things. Describing a meeting as “rather formal” is usually a mild insult, and implies that the meeting was boring, pompous, cold, lifeless, and so on.

The word formal is particularly bad when used to describe a religion event. After all, region is a word already twice damned. So adding the word formal to this repulsive word makes a belief or practice sound at least useless; perhaps even demonic.

Both words -- formal and religion – suffer from post traumatic stress due to the repeated rape of our language somewhere around the middle of the twentieth century. Since then, English has staggered and drooled, trying its best to keep carrying meaning from one person (and from one part of the culture) to another. But unfortunately, some of its old words and phrases have not survived the ravage.

Religion is one of those.

Religion implies a binding of oneself to a set of beliefs and practices. Since the thugs beat up our language, all binding must be resisted; otherwise one cannot be spontaneous or authentically spiritual. One cannot, evidently, be both spiritual and religious in this new era. So mention the old word “religion” now and even religious people will shutter at your indecency.

The word formal is not as provocative as the word religion. People will be surprised that you have said it but will just smile or sneer. Formal is to our language like a senile uncle is to a family reunion; no one wishes him any ill but what are  do we to do with him when it comes time to talk?

The problem is, the entire structure of Western Civilization is tied to the notion of formality. Even the New Testament is barely recognizable without understanding the doctrine of forms.

Take, for example, St. Paul’s words in Romans, chapter twelve.

Don’t be conformed to this world. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

The underlying root of both words is “form.”

Form was a loaded word in the ancient world and deeply connected to the way people viewed reality. They thought everything in the visible world was a manifestation of eternal things in an invisible world.They called those invisible things forms. Forms were what made things down here on earth what they are. Dogs are manifestations of dogginess. Chairs are manifestations of chairness. You get the idea (which is funny because idea is the word the Greeks used to refer to forms. I’m sorry. That pun brought out my inner nerd.)

Anyway, ancient Greco-Romans described material things that had lost their form as “deformed.” They thought such things might be reformed with some work but they were definitely not themselves. To remain what something was supposed to be required someone to work on retaining its form.

But that brings us to the heart of today’s rant: to rediscover the form of something requires a person or group to occasionally become formal, as in a ritual or ceremony. These occasions make it possible for a society to remember and recover its form, that is to say the ideas and beliefs that structure its unique nature.

That is why the Passover, for example, is done a certain way.

Or why the flag is folded in a certain way.

Or why weddings, not so long ago, were done in a certain way.

The reasons a group performs – that is to say ‘sets into motion a particular form’ a ceremony, is to teach its children and newcomers the underlying structure that makes it what it is. If a society fails to perform these lessons from time to time, its essential form will soon be lost. It will become deformed.

This language is found throughout the New Testament, as in the phrase a “form of godliness.” In that case, Paul warns Christians that one can adhere to the “form of godliness” without partaking of its power. He is not insulting people for having acquired the “form of godliness.” He is merely warning them that there is much more to our faith than its form. He would be aghast that we have understood him to mean that our faith was formless. Nonetheless, the warning about the limits of formality is terribly important.

I mean, what wife would want her husband to keep repeating the vows he uttered during the wedding? If every time he wanted to make love to her he would begin with “I, Sam, do take thee Julia, to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold ….”

That husband would have the form of marriage down pat but would seriously misunderstand what makes a marriage live.

But does that mean that bridegrooms should wear ball caps to their wedding? Should we just not plan weddings at all? Should we just let everyone offer whatever words come to mind at the moment? So we need ceremony for anything?

Now think about St. Paul’s reminder in Romans chapter twelve about the differences between conform and transform.

In Latin-based languages, the three letters “c-o-n” means “with.” To be conformed to something means to bring one form into unity with something else. In this case, we are to resist any automatic participation in the form that structures the world around us.

“Don’t form yourself according to the values of your culture,” Paul is saying. Instead, be transformed by intentionally renewing your mind.

The suffix trans means, “across.” Flying transatlantic means moving across the Atlantic Ocean to an entirely different continent.

How are we going to move our human form from where it is today into an entirely different place? How can we be transformed? Well, Paul claims, it involves resisting the pull of the world around us. We are not to be conformed to the world. We cannot become transformed if we allow ourselves to be conformed to this world.

Form is structure, a skeleton. As in the case of a human skeleton, we don’t usually want to see it. That is why too much formality makes us uncomfortable.

But without a skeleton, a body is a blob.

If some alien force were to suddenly suck all of our skeletons out of our bodies, we would be gelatinous gobs of undifferentiated matter. We would have no form.

Not having a form would be even worse than religion! It would be like, gosh, sucky like.

If those horrible aliens kept sucking out all skeletons, they would eventually remove the grammar from our language.

Word the order matter wouldn’t.

Punctuation? What; ! # ... (:)

“Meaninglessness sucketh,” we would shout.

“Understanding you I cannot,” we would whine.

But then an alien professor from Yale could reassure us.

“Meaning is a personal construct, “ he would remind us. “The issue is what does it all mean to you?”

"Whatever!" we might shout back, lacking by that time any more intelligent word or phrase which had not already been deconstructed. 

A post form-sucking world doesn’t sound like a very nice place to live.

On the other hand, we would be utterly authentic -- at long last!

God's Economy and Church Renewal : The Acton Institute Series

This is the final blog in the Acton series, which were based on my presentation to Acton University, 2012. Acton's website contains countless opportunities to educate oneself in economic life. 

( http://university.acton.org/ )

The Acton Institute asked me to speak today about some of the opportunities and challenges faced by America's mega churches. I have tried to do that.

I have also listed what I believe are crucial principles that orthodox Christianity offers to the art and science of economics. I hope I have made it clear that Christian spirituality is not a detachment from the world; it is rather a deep engagement with the world on behalf of Christ, the incarnate God, who came to save us both as individuals and as nations.

St. John called this Christ the Eternal Logos, by which he meant that Christ is that which holds all reality together. This implies that the Church, which is Christ's body, exists to offer to all humanity those things already tacitly known by the people of God through revelation. As the church goes about this work, the life of Christ within the church works to draw all creation Godward that it may be redeemed and transformed. This includes the economic structures of nations and households.

St. Paul calls this process the economia theu: that is to say, the economy of God. In other words, the deep structures that uphold creation are revealed through the Word made Flesh, through the principles of Holy Scripture, and through the living enactments of those structures by believers through sacrament, habits of piety and the vocations that God’s people live out within human culture. That is what God's economy looks like.

Because God's economy is based upon how reality really works -- designed as it is by the very One who created everything -- it causes individuals and nations to flourish. When we meet a people whose God is the Lord, we ought to see in that people an increase inscience, art, medicine and so forth. And, we ought to see in them the means by which these advances of human life are made possible -- healthy financial management and growth. 

The church is not directly responsible for all of this, of course. A church exists to lead the people of God in worship, provide community through which they may learn His ways , and care for the soul as we journey through life toward eternity. As a part of this soul care however, the church helps God's people discover their vocation. It teaches them to see themselves as stewards of the resources around them. The church does not regulate or control the vocation of its people. That is the responsibility of other divinely sanctioned spheres of human authority. However, it does offer guidance about how to discover the values, purpose and means through which individuals flourish in God.

This is what St. Paul means by his striking phrase, economia theu. He means that the church offers divine insight for a fallen world; wisdom from above that reveals the way life really works. It does not exist to entertain people nor even merely to comfort them. It exists to teach people "those things you have heard from me."

A mega church plays a critical part in this work of grace.  It deserves our concern and care for that reason. Because the mega church must maintain its spiritual health if it is to play the part it has been called to play in these challenging times, we must do what we can to maintain its health and focus.

In the end though, no church, however large, exists as an isolated unit. All churches, regardless of denomination or location, find their reason and means of existence in the communion of saints. Churches exists to be witnesses of that which has at all times and in all places been believed by the whole people of God. They make God’s presence known in the communities around them. They lead unbelievers to God. They train believers in God's ways. They prepare the next generations to perpetuate the eternal mysteries of God. They prepare the soul for eternity. They enrich the soil of the human heart to grow fruit that enriches human society.

Local churches, like individual Christians, manifest these unique gifts in different ways and to various degrees of capacity. However, some measure of the glory of God is always revealed through the symphony performed by these instruments when they are in harmony one with the other. The theme of this divine symphony is human redemption from the effects of sin and evil. We are called to manifest the first fruits of a universe that one day will, as a whole and in all its parts, reflect the manifest wisdom of God. We do this together; as individuals, as denominations, and as local churches of all different kinds and sizes.

So I thank you for this opportunity to give witness to the power of the economia theu -- the economy of God. I am grateful for the opportunity because I truly believe this to be the source of life, the origin and aim of human flourishing, and the central meaning of all economia everywhere, a word which means, after all, the ways of the household.

Mega churches are large households which, like all individuals and institutions claiming to represent Jesus Christ, are obligated to keep the economia theu as their actual, and not merely their professed core of existence. To the extend they do, they are partners in grace and reflections of God's charitable care for humankind.

Can Mega Churches Survive Their First Generation? : The Acton Series

This is the forth of a series of blogs based upon my prevention at Acton University, 2012. Visit the website to learn more about Acton and its role in American life. Their faculty works hard to teach economics in reasonable easy-to-understand language and interesting lectures they make available online. ( http://university.acton.org/ )


Mega churches have a number of positive features.

For starters, they allow seekers to enter and exit church anonymously. That allows people to decide for themselves if and when they are ready to take their spiritual quest to a new level.

Mega churches offer quality expressions of faith to the world through drama, music and media. Less well-funded institutions often find such expressions difficult to produce.

Mega churches make the Christian presence visible in their communities. Due to their large structures if nothing else, a mega church forces people to recognize the vibrant Christian community in their midst.

The leaders of mega churches have a large platform. It is difficult for a community to ignore their words when they address its ethical and spiritual issues.

These mega church strengths can support the witness of the smaller Christian groups near them. If the mega church is even moderately healthy it's existence is thus a blessing to the Christian community among which which it operates.

Mega churches do not tend to perform well in every category of spiritual life however.

They often find it difficult to maintain an authentic sense of community among their attendees, for example. Without authentic community, it is challenging to provide the type of spiritual direction that develops a deeply rooted Christian faith. Nor do mega churches always provide quality theological instruction or personal discipleship. They may not offer transcendent and biblically faithful worship either. The lack of these important ingredients of Christian life results in a weak and uninformed Christian commitment over time.

Unfortunately, these challenges are not merely the result of the size of the mega church but of its culture. The attitudes, drives and techniques that create a large congregation tend to push spiritual matters to the back-burner. Mega church leaders usually focus on immediately pressing and practical issues. It is easy in such a climate for spiritual concerns to disappear altogether, except as window dressing to hide the hustle and bustle of the true enterprise. Like all great companies, the mega church succeeds by understanding and adapting to the realities of a consumer market. However, that reality is the source of many of its spiritual vulnerabilities.

Because of such challenges, many predict the demise of the mega church. The reasons for this pessimistic forecast can be persuasive. For example, many young people seem drawn to smaller and more intimate communities now. Many of them grew up without a stable family. They hunger for life-long friends. This often leads them to choose a small church or even a house church. Mega churches face a host of other serious challenges, not the least of which is simply surviving their first pastoral succession.

Despite these challenges, mega churches will not disappear any time soon. What is more likely is that some will successfully face these and other challenges e and rebound, though perhaps with a somewhat different purpose than before.

Mega churches will survive in part because, like all institutions, they desire to survive. They are filled with creative and trained people who diligently search to help them survive. However, like any large business, mega churches often grow myopic over time, which makes it difficult for them to renew themselves.

And, renewing a mega church requires a different approach than building one.

When building a mega church, visionaries attract the gifted people and finances that gradually create organizational and physical structures to serve the founder’s vision. The vision gets implemented piece by piece. Each level of accomplishment reveals a new horizon toward which the growing community can reach.

When renewing a mega church, leaders begin with an existing culture and existing structures. Whether or not those structures are helpful by the time they are inherited, they must be used, modified for new uses, or dismantled. This is often a challenge because organizations become sentimentally attached to all such things and will usually protect them whether or not they remain useful. The maintenance of structure can thus become the end rather than the means, which of course destroys vision.

All this to say that there are real challenges involved in transitioning a mega church. On the other hand, every significant work involves challenges. The question is whether one believes the potential of transitioning a mega church makes it worthwhile to face the challenges. That question in turn requires a leader to determine whether he has a calling to accept the responsibilities that come with the task.

In the long history of our faith, every generation has faced challenges to our continued witness as the Body of Christ. In each generation some have shrugged their shoulders when confronted with difficult problems. They have refused to risk their lives or livelihood to defend the faith. Others, often feeling utterly inadequate, have stepped forward and remained at their post. We owe our faith to such people.

The Holy Scriptures tells us that God calls his servants to different posts and equips them with different gifts. Not all prophesy. Not all do miracles. Not all sell everything to move to Borneo in order to reach lost people. Not all are called to lead large churches. Its not a matter of saintliness or even human ability. Being a missionary in Borneo may require a much higher level of intelligence than leading a mega church, for example. The question is one of vocation: what is one called to do?

I have been called to transition a mega church. I am called to lead it in such a way that it remains a  faithful witness of Christ and a blessing to our city.  This calling requires an appreciation for the economic reality that we face, which is sometimes daunting. That is why I need the help of those who are gifted and called by God to understand and manage money -- people like you. It is not your money I most need moreover, but your knowledge and wisdom.

My Pentecostal upbringing taught me to appreciate the way our Lord has chosen to manifest His presence through the various gifts of the Holy Spirit. According to Romans 12, administration is one of those gifts. Economics is a manifestation of that particular gift. It is unfortunately a gift I do not have, at least at the measure required to do what God called me to do. However, he has given me the responsibility for recognizing and acknowledging the gifts He has placed in the body.

All this to say that I must remain focused on pastoring, on helping midwife the spiritual gifts of the people of our congregation and teaching them the faith 'once and for all delivered to the saints.' If I try to be a CEO, marketer, or even an economist, I will not only fail personally, I will alter the nature of God's church by abdicating my guardianship of the church's core purpose.

I believe that is what has occurred in some mega churches. It must be avoided. Renewal of a mega church in the end requires a spiritual revival, which must be the pastor's central concern. Finding solutions for the structural, financial and pragmatic issues requires his humble and cooperative efforts with others the sovereign Lord has placed as leaders within the body.

It is difficult work on many levels, beginning with the pastor's need to  keep growing spiritually, intellectually and socially. However, as with all important kinds of enterprise, this one grows people in ways that releases the purpose for which God gave them life.

The Four Kinds of Knowledge and The American Mega Church: The Acton Institute Series

This is the third blog based on my lecture for Acton Institute 2012.

Institutions, like individuals, draw upon four different kinds of knowledge to carry out their vision and do their work. Let's call these types of knowledge theory, phronesis, technique and tacit.

The Greek word teoria refers to a formal structure of thought, an abstract intellectual system (such as geometry or physics.) Theories allow us to develop concepts, which we may or may not ever apply to concrete situations. For example, physicists speculate about such things as wormholes and multi-dimensional universes. Theologians also speculate about issues that may or may not ever arise in our everyday lives. Nonetheless, such speculation is valuable. It strengthens and refines the concepts of the discipline we seek to develop and sometimes helps us discover surprising applications in real life.

Seminaries specialize in theory.

Phronesis describes the process of mentoring and coaching. We usually see phronesis at work in vocational training. It is a type of knowledge gradually acquired by an apprentice as he or she copes the actions of a mentor. For example, construction workers usually learn their craft in this way. Pastoral life also requires phronesis. Knowing how to baptize someone or to do helpful hospital visitation are not things we can really learn from a text but are skills passed from a gifted mentor to a teachable apprentice.

Smaller churches tend to employ phronesis better than larger ones. That is the main reason why most mega church leaders come from smaller congregations.

Techne describes the knowledge of the proper medium, skill, or presentation required to perform or communicate something.

The church growth movement has very effectively employed techne to analyze cultural trends. Church growth technicians taught churches how to use research to make needed changes in their organization, technology, and marketing. The technique of church growth has helped many congregations learn how to attract new members and adapt their organizational structures to maintain, reach and serve larger congregations than we were often able to do in the past.

Tacit Knowledge is a type of knowing that is “caught better than taught.” It is most effectively transmitted through metaphor, symbol and spiritual experience. Gestures, emotional affect, and other non-formal (and often non-conscious or non-deliberate) actions transmit tacit knowledge from one person to another. An example might be of the way we dimly perceive a shape at the furthest reach of our headlights as we are driving at night. We must quickly decide if the shape is a deer, a tree, or something else. We may make a mistake in what we think we see at first, but prudence tells us to slow down or change lanes nonetheless.

Pentecostals, African-American believers, and Southern hemisphere Christians tend to make this form of knowledge a major part of their training and discipleship systems.

Businesses like Apple and Google are rare examples of corporate use of tacit knowledge.

One of the things that helps create mega church culture is that they focus on techne more than on other kinds of knowledge.

In fact, the first generation of many mega churches began with a conscious and deliberate shift away from theological theory. The leaders of a congregation usually makes this shift in order to avoid the doctrinal and hierarchical systems that their mobile constituency often regard as unhelpful for their spiritual needs. This is another way of saying that knowledge about “how to” replaces the old concern about “for what purpose.

When mega churches began to emerge in American culture last generation, management knowledge offered by the likes of Peter Drucker, became much more interesting to many church leaders than the works of Calvin, Aquinas or Tillich. The move away from theory and toward technique deeply affected the theology and spirituality of the following generations, so much so that many influential church leaders theory now widely view theology as a rather esoteric, or even useless kind of knowledge.

The likes of George Barna have called for an even more drastic change in the skill set we should expect of from our senior church leaders. For him, the teacher/pastor as senior leader has become an impediment to church growth and cripples the church in its quest to reach a world that has become radically secularized. Indeed, the entire church growth movement – led by technicians, for the most part – have seemed ill at ease with theoria, phronesis and certainly with tacit forms of knowledge. Church growth, they have insisted, is the result of scientific measurement, evaluation, organizational structure, business plans and marketing.

Church growth technicians have thus influenced many of our largest churches to put doctrinal training and spiritual direction on the back burner. They have advised the churches to focus on meeting the people's immediate and pragmatic needs. As a result, many mega churches have raised a generation of children largely isolated from adults and who consequently formed a spiritual sub-culture differing considerably from that of their parents. As these children became young adults, they had little understanding of doctrine or scripture. They also felt little loyalty toward the church in which they were raised. Different generations of people within the mega church often sang different songs, taught from different material and acted as though they were entirely different congregations. This programmed generational alienation would exacerbate the already complicated process of mega church succession.

The church growth principle of “homogeneity,” which makes a dictum of the common sense observation that people prefer to be with folk like themselves, is also breaking down. Older mega churches cannot thrive in the new melting pot culture of America’s great cities if the homogeneity principle is about race or social class. New churches can operate that way further out in the new suburbs, where society often remains relatively homogeneous. The mega churches of last generation however, are being forced to change the unsustainable model they embraced in past decades. Furthermore, they must do this as they continue to carry the weight of their aging facilities and, in some cases, aging congregations suspicious of their new neighbors.

Nevertheless, older mega churches are usually located in a veritable gold mine of opportunity. The people most likely to convert to Christianity in today’s world – the real seekers – are often immigrants. Since some immigrants are people of means, an outreach to the newly globalized neighborhoods is not necessarily an exercise in romantic idealism. Many large churches around the world now serve congregations of people who come from all parts of the globe. This is new for much our country and is uncomfortable for some people, especially in the most traditional parts of the nation. However, demographic change is increasingly an important part of the environment in which we build and sustain our churches.

Succession is another elephant in the room when mega church leaders meet to discuss the future. Mega churches are nearly always founded by a powerful and innovative leader. He gradually forms a church culture around his style, aims and personality. As the leader ages, a plan for succession becomes increasingly important. However, in practice, a plan for the founding pastor’s succession is rarely discussed, much less implemented, until very late in the game. This is one of the most vulnerable spots of mega church culture. It must be addressed in a much more serious way if we expect very many of our great congregations to thrive after their founders retirement or death.

Southeast Christian is a notable exception. Perhaps informed by their culture of independent local church government, which encouraged various levels of authority and accountability within the church, the weight of the church did not rest entirely upon its founding pastor. This allowed him to peacefully transition to the next generation. Unfortunately, this has proven to be very much the exception.

Perhaps the most important take away point of this blog is that mega churches that want to transition past their first generation need outside voices that represent different perspectives. However great the past, the structures and victories of yesterday will prove inadequate for meeting the challenges of today. The church's original vision must not be lost but it must be tweaked. To do that successfully requires what the Bible calls "a multitude of council,"which ideally should include people with the four different kinds of knowledge: theory, pronesis, technique and tacit.

Theologians, business people, IT experts. artists and saints are some examples that come to mind that can offer different perspectives to church leaders who wish to remain effective as well as faithful to the gospel.

Whats Going on In America's Mega Churches? : The Acton Institute Series

 

This blog is the second of a series based on a lecture I gave at the Acton Institute in 2012.

With few exceptions, mega churches enjoy their greatest success during their first generation. As they age, the mega church tends to plateau, enter an era of gradual decline, or implode as its founding era comes to an end. This presents a major crisis for mega churches. To transition from their founding generation, they must both maintain an infrastructure built to service the larger crowds of an earlier generation and adapt their programs and structures to serve people with different needs than those who preceded them. If they make these changes to their programming, they risk losing their seasoned members, who, after all, pay the bills. If they don’t make the changes, they risk the loss of younger adults and new converts. That can create an age wave, making the church’s long-term future unsustainable.

For these and other reasons, most of our older mega churches are in trouble.

But before we go on, perhaps we should stop to ask, what exactly is a mega church?

Glad you asked.

American mega churches are the result of a massive national migration that took place in the generation from immediately after the Second World War. This migration dislocated young adult believers from their family’s traditional denominations. As they moved from place to place, Baby Boomer Christians lost their loyalty for any specific branch of their faith. As a result, they tended to choose churches for the services they provided, or because those who attended them embraced social values similar to their own.

A generation later, we are experiencing a global migration. This has accelerated the demographic shift of our cities and towns. A generation ago, the members of churches in our large cities came from many different states. Since then, the dislocation, rootlessness and social transition that characterized the makeup of those first mega church congregations have intensified, so that today,  most mega churches consist of people from many countries.

Mega churches are also the result of a post-modern distrust of tightly arranged doctrinal and hierarchal systems. On the “liberal” side of the church, this has resulted in a syncretistic culture that openly relativizes religious and secular systems of thought. On the “conservative” side, the same attitude results in a verbal commitment to basic Christian orthodoxy (Mere Christianity) and an emotional alignment with social and political conservatism. Nonetheless, conservative Christians are as suspicious of authority, and of the institutional church, as their liberal counterparts.

As a result of this loss of confessional identity, the doctrinal content of many mega churches is seriously deficient. For liberals, this loss of doctrine has been intentional and deliberate. For many conservatives however, especially those in mega churches, the erosion is the result of a pragmatic decision to replace theology with self-help pep talks and good music. That is why many “conservative” mega churches have been getting better and better at saying less and less.

This lack of theological gravitas has led some Christian thinkers to judge the mega church as an aberrant form of the faith, utterly lacking in historical roots. Admittedly, the history of the mega church is brief. Unless, that is, we think of the cathedral as a type of mega church.

Thinking of the cathedral as a type of mega church (and the mega church as something like a cathedral) can serve as a thought experiment. It may help us imagine ways in which the mega church can play a constructive role in American spiritual life. It also roots the mega church to history in some helpful ways.

Thinking of churches like the Hagia Sofia, St. Peter’s or St. Paul’s as mega churches suggests that although mega churches may be something different than what Protestants have traditionally expected local congregations to be, they are not aberrant or alien to historical Christianity. In fact, they perform similar roles that some churches have played throughout Christian history.

Like cathedrals, mega churches serve a congregation. However, also like a cathedral, the mega church provides a common space and cultural buttress for smaller congregations around it. Thus, a member of a smaller church may be quite familiar with a neighboring mega church and may regularly use its facilities without having any intention of ever shifting his membership there. The cathedral has historically played a similar role. Although a cathedral has played an ecclesiastical and theological role that contemporary mega churches do not claim, the mega church shares with the cathedral the call to play a different role within the Christian community than its smaller counterparts.

Whether or not they are in any sense “cathedrals,” mega churches are relatively new for Protestant Christianity. Already though, they provide services that traditional Protestant congregations have not. Were this not so, millions of believers would not have been leaving smaller congregations to attend them. This should be acknowledged before offering any critique of the mega church.

Critique is in order though and at least some of that critique should come from those who believe the mega church brings certain unique gifts to the cause of Christ and not merely from those who dismiss the mega church as automatically detrimental to authentic Christian life.

What Can Pastors Say to Economists? : The Acton Institute Series

This is the first of a series of blogs cannibalized from my presentation at Acton Institute, 2012. This year's address (which I cam giving tomorrow at Acton) is  a sequel to last year’s presentation, which is also available on request.

(The Acton Institute, by the way, is a foundation that networks people who wish to learn and share  economic ideas. It works closely with Calvin College in Grand Rapids. Michigan and offers tons of free material on the subject. http://m.acton.org/ This year there are about eight hundred attendees from twenty seven countries.)

Seeing that I am neither an economist nor a financial expert, I was pleasantly surprised to receive your second invitation to speak at the Acton Institute.

I am, as you know, a pastor. My primary responsibility is to attend to the spiritual health of Christ Church Nashville. Secondarily, I am called to offer whatever help I can to the larger body of Christ. Thirdly, I am called to serve humanity in general in Christ's name.

That is what brings me to this conference. I want to learn from you and to share with you from the knowledge and experience I have gained as a Christian pastor. I think that insight can be valuable to your line of work because ultimately secularism will not work, even in economics. Money, after all, is merely a manifestation of spiritual forces and what does a secular materialist do with spiritual forces? Since pastors are called to specialize in matters of spiritual life, they should offer instruction about how spiritual life impacts economics and contributes to human flourishing.

It may come as a shock now, even to Christians, to hear that spiritual life includes how one views and practices finance. Nonetheless, Christianity has much to say about finance, although what it says is sometimes difficult to express in the language of contemporary economics. Difficult or not, Christian theology must deal with it. Economics is, after all the discipline that describes and influences the way we exercise stewardship over the part of creation God has placed within our sphere of responsibility.

I realize that most Christian churches have not had much to say about economics (or many other serious parts of human culture) for some time. The reason for this is intellectual sloth, pure and simple. I have no apologies to offer about that. I will say only that Christians are supposed to learn about how the world works and apply themselves to make a contribution to the health of human society. Historically, pastors have been expected to teach believers to do this.

Believers of equal sincerity, holiness and intelligence will disagree with one another about economics, of course. That is bound to happen if we begin our discussion from a secular premise. That should not be surprising to anyone. A socialist may easily isolate a string of Biblical passages to support his position and a capitalist can do the same. However, that sort of disagreement occurs much less frequently, and will not be nearly as serious, when we begin from Christian precepts rather than from ones rooted in secular ideologies from the secular left and right.

What pastors are supposed to do is shine the light of scripture (and the light of sacred history) upon economics and all other subjects. They are supposed to equip Christians how to perceive and perform their work in a Christian way. It is slothful for a pastor to hide from this task behind a wall of neutrality or ignorance. It is also unethical for a pastor to uncritically present secular theories he has picked up along the way and pass those off as "Christian." What the pastor shares  ought to be the implications of Orthodox Christianity, which will always be “other than” any secular system of thought.

I assume then that there is such a thing as Christian economics. Therefore, there must be such a thing as a Christian economist.

I am not one, but I think I know what one looks like.

If we call a person a Christian economist, we may mean that he is a believer who represents a school of economics acknowledged by other economists, Christian or not. However, we may also mean that he represents an economic system consciously based upon Christian presuppositions. St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Abraham Kuyper are Christian economists in that second sense. Although economics was not their main focus, and this is especially true of the first two, each developed economic theories that resulted in economic experimentation. We can learn from those experiments and apply the lessons they offer to contemporary life. A Christian economist specializes in doing that.

Pastors are rarely economists. However, they should know enough about the history and thought structures of their faith to offer insights on such things as economics to the people of their congregation. We tend not to expect this now from our pastors. We have largely transformed pastoral work into a form of therapeutic labor that offers certain kinds of spiritual experience but which lacks the biblical component of intellectual formation. As a Charismatic Christian, I certainly do not say this to denigrate the value of spiritual experience. I say it to insist that pastoral work includes intellectual formation and that necessarily includes how to view economic theory and practice in the light of faith.

If our secularized Christian culture pushes back with the question about what gives a pastor the right to address such things as economics, the answer is simple: a pastor does not speak from his own authority. He speaks as a messenger and agent of something above and beyond himself. He gives witness to a body of truth that he is charged to study and to communicate to others. This is his unique responsibility. He takes vows to do it. It is insubordinate to his Lord not to do it.

As agent and witness of an authority beyond and above himself however, the pastor learns and applies the lessons of the “great cloud of witnesses,” the “communion of saints,” that have formed his way of viewing the world.

Although largely ignored and forgotten, Christianity has a deeply rooted and highly nuanced philosophical heritage which a pastor is responsible to study and make available to his flock. Some of history’s most brilliant and saintly people gave their lives defending and applying the principles of our faith in times of great challenge and change. Believers accumulated it as they met the challenges late Greco-Roman antiquity threw at the early church. Having met those challenges, Christians met new ones offered by the fall of civilization and its long recovery through the medieval ages. Then came Islam. After that, the Enlightenment. Orthodoxy is what we call the result of their work and offers, we believe, a unique perspective on economic life. Now it is our turn as we work through the issues raised by our globalized, post-modern culture and to add to this heritage of Christian orthodoxy where economic life is concerned.

That is the main reason we have come to Acton and why a pastor should be excited about what happens here.

This long introduction may, at first glance, have little to do with the question I have been asked to address: the nature and future of America’s mega churches. I suspect that I was given this topic based on the lecture I gave last year however and so felt that I should explain the reasons why we are talking about the mega church in this conference.

I spoke last year about the economic impact of mega churches upon their members. It was a relatively easy lecture to prepare. I simply told the story of how two men (Dave Ramsey and Dan Miller) affected the financial culture of our local church.

Dave Ramsey, I said, taught us how to resist the temptation of a consumer society and to live within our means. He said we should tithe, save, invest and grow our assets to the level our vocation and abilities allowed.

Dan Miller, I added, taught us how to discover and live out our chosen vocation with joy, and to do it regardless of how society views the status of our chosen vocation.

The central idea of that lecture was that economics is more about what Dad and Mom create in their house more than it is about what our leaders do in the White House. As Dave Ramsey and Dan Miller poured their ideas into our congregation, the Dads and Moms who heard them made fundamental changes in the way they ran aspects of their homes. This had an enormous impact on our church, and through our church, on our entire city.

That story is true. It is powerful. However, it is also old news because it happened a generation ago.

In a world that has substantially changed since -- locally, nationally and internationally -- our church, like many others, is dealing with new challenges. We face those challenges with physical, organizational and ideological structures we built in response to last generation’s needs. Also, to be truthful, we have drifted somewhat from the principles we propagated back then: curiosity about the world, faith that we had what it takes to meet the challenges, a commitment to continual learning, and a belief that our faith is central rather than peripheral to one’s personal life.

This year, I cannot coast on great stories from the 1980’s. I must address a contemporary situation still in process.

As for what this has to do with economics, I will say that the reason so few of us understand economics is because we think it is mostly about money. Money, however, is a fruit rather than a root of economic theory and practice. What we believe, teach and live affects our financial lives. It is this entire picture that concerns a real economist and not merely the money that results from the structures that produce it. The word “economia” means after all, having to do with one’s oikos, or house. The Christian Church is the household of faith. What we teach and practice in this household affects every part of every person in it.

The subject of this lecture is a particular type of Christian household called the mega church. Because of what they offer or fail to offer, these massive communities affect, for good or ill, all those who choose to attend them. Because so many American believers now attend them, their spiritual health ought to be a concern of all believers. Indeed, they ought to concern nonbelievers as well, influencing as they do a considerable part of American cultural and economic life.

So there is my justification for talking about theology and the management of a mega church at a conference on economics.

With that, I cast myself on your mercy and proceed.