Headlines love to herald dramatic numbers -- either positive or negative. The issue here is not the current numbers but the trend overall and the reality is that things are pretty bad in Rome, along with much of Christianity. So bad that even slight increases can cause us to celebrate. We should not be watching the numbers like some sort of stock market ticker but concentrating on what is happening in the pews. The health of any church is not defined by its leadership or even its clergy but by the numbers and faithfulness of those in the pews. They are not unrelated, to be sure, but they are not the same. Rome could have a wonderful pope and still be tanking in the pews. We Lutherans could have great national leaders and still be closing the doors on too many small congregations. The investment in the renewal of the Church is made not by buying leaders but by nurturing the parish where people gather around the Word and Table of the Lord. That is the barometer to which we ought to be paying attention.
There are all sorts of things going against us -- demographics, location of churches, a powerful secular society, the decrease in marriage and birth rates, etc... All of these are addressed not by national programs but by the work that happens with pastor and people in the parish. Can you imagine a national campaign for more babies to be born? How would that look? Can you imagine a local congregation in which the families there are encouraged and supported and live as role models to those not yet married? We know what that looks like. For all the good talk from national leaders -- and there has been much good talk -- the reality is that success in the Church trickles up from the individual parish to the union of many parishes. The barometer of our success has always been the health of the congregation, the relationship between faithful pastor and faithful people, and the witness to the faith that is given on the local level.
It is great to be supported by national leaders and national programs but sometimes we confuse those with the place where the real work is to be found. Rome can have great bishops and lousy congregations. Missouri Lutherans can have great national leaders and crumby parishes. Our investment needs to be on the ground and in the local congregation. That is where the future of the Church lies. We are filled with voices insisting to know how to merge congregations or close them or decentralize seminaries or put them online or to offer dozens of ideas about everything else. The talking heads on social media distract us from the real issue. We need vibrant communities of faith in which the focus is on the Word preached and the Supper distributed to baptized people who understand they have a vocation to live out in home and at work. The boom of our past did not happen because our leaders knew what to say or what to do but because their was great confidence in our Lutheran confessions, great conviction in the abiding and eternal truth of the Scriptures of which those confessions testify, and great commitment to their local community where this faith was lived out, catechized, nurtured, and accountable. We have plenty of great print resources and online resources but what we seem to be struggling with today is the focus on the local congregation, on the sense of beauty that is manifest with the people of God gathered around the Table of the Lord and their pastor distributing God's gifts of Word and Sacrament every week. Where this happens, fruits will abound. When it does not, no national program or leader can save us.
1 comment:
Fluctuations in the growth of the faith have been recorded throughout the history of the church, and it is sometimes a result of demographics and cultural flux. I feel that the evidence shows Christianity often declines in prosperous societies. Where prideful people feel particularly self sufficient, and begin to credit themselves instead of Divine Providence for the blessings they have experienced, and they will start to draw away from God. It is indifference and dangerously blasphemous to regard the Lord as merely the benefactor of common grace, and one need only call upon Him in time of trouble. It may be at some future time in America there may be suffering, severe testing, conflicts of a type never previously felt. At that time, you will see the growth of the church, and an increase in preachers. It is a lesson found in the Old Testament when Israel experienced spiritual malaise, then judgment, then restoration. The Biblical warnings foretell the future based on the past. Soli Deo Gloria
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