So I'm recovering from a little surgical procedure and I’m sitting with my feet up not trying to stress my mind too much (doctors orders) …so I watched American Idol 2009 Season 8.
I’m realizing that this recession is pretty vast – its hit American Idol. This must have been the poorest bunch of singers to grace their stage – and these were the finalists out of over 100,000 people who auditioned! They were dreadful (with maybe the exception of Danny Gokey the Milwaukee church choir director and Anoop Desai) this viewing did not aid my recovery ….it would have been less stressful if I had been doing my taxes or reading Joel Osteen – and normally these two rank at the top of my stress inducers!!
Recession.
I’m noticing pretty much a silence coming out of Christian blogs, e-newsletters and magazine/journals on the recession. A little in Sojourners (thanks guys – read a very insightful blog http://blog.sojo.net/2009/02/10/two-kinds-of-recovery by Brian McLaren) but nothing like the noise I thought might have surfaced by now.
Quite interesting - the demise of the Christian influence in my homeland (UK) was when the church stayed silent on the relevant issues and made noise on all the irrelevant issues. That was 25/30 years ago and the UK slipped from 25% evangelical to maybe around 5-6% now. I have always argued that the US is but 25 years behind the UK in the demise of the Evangelical voice and influence. Is our silence on this global recession further evidence I am a prophet of doom!!
So what should Christian leaders be doing or saying in this global economic meltdown and why silence?
Rather strange that the evangelical church has shouted loudly about the morality meltdown in our nation; shouted pretty loudly about religious meltdown in our institutions; shouted pretty loudly when they sniff a possible theological meltdown among their own; some are trying to shout loudly about our environmental meltdown – but astounding silence on this global economic meltdown.
Why?
Is the Western Church as guilty as any in bad spending and living beyond its means, relying on the green-back for our strength, influence and even our success?
Is the American Church – its churches and its congregation members - as much about the dollar as their neighbors?
Is our silence due to our own dependence upon the Benjamin’s?
Maybe we can’t speak into this meltdown because we’ve lost the moral ground to speak from?
Yet – we need to speak into the reality we all find ourselves in. Any church leader removed from reality is not leading.
So where do we start and what do we say?
If we follow the lead of President Obama we need bold and big moves. The money that the US Government is injecting into our economy is money with mindboggling zeros and ordinary person can’t get their heads around. Big and bold.
Maybe the big and bold is to close shop on how we are doing church and rush to a remake of the house-church movement. It could seem that for the latest church guru’s this is highly attractive i.e. Total Church: A Radical Reshaping of the Church around Gospel and Community @ Tim Chester & Steve Timmis (a good book – worth reading).
But reality says the big and the bold is improbable (size and substance has always been a part of US Christianity) and maybe it is unnecessary. Maybe multiple small steps could mean more; maybe more small steps would accomplish more in this economic recession.
Here’s some small steps every church, every pastor, every congregation member could take – these are steps we’re taking as we don’t remain silent about the economic meltdown:
1. Place the present reality within the spiritual teaching of the church. We’re using the wisdom of the Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) to help us. A new series called Spent: When Life’s Got You Max’d. (Helpful graphic and title from Pursuit Resources out of Central Christian in Henderson NV- http://www.pursuit.org/
2. Give real practical teaching and training on getting out of debt – the bottom line reason of most peoples financial issues. We are launching Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University Course – 13 weeks, on brand new evening, with full child care. Senior staff and leaders all involved modeling that this is serious and for everybody. Check out www.daveramsey.com/fpu/home. FPU will see them cut up credit cards, focus on getting out of debt and will keep that focus for long enough that it becomes a habit and they truly do change their financial situation.
3. Model financial changes and modification at the corporate level for all to see. We’ve put our staff on a 50 day no spend; we’ve cut out Sunday refreshments for a few weeks; we’ve put a moratorium on courses and training; we’ve reduced our spending to a minimum – not because we’re broke, but to demonstrate sound fiscal policy making sure we end the first and second quarter ahead not behind. We’re helping every church member see that when you’re in a jam or a crash you can’t keep doing the same thing and except a different outcome – classic leadership motto “in drastic times you have to take drastic action.” This is the big and the bold but it comes in small steady steps.
4. We’re talking about it at leadership level every time we meet; we’re discussing and praying about it at every staff time together; it is staying clearly on the radar screen of our church.
5. We’re guiding people to our Celebrate Recovery ministry for support and help through habits and hang-ups that are characteristics of many peoples economic situation.
6. In pastoral situations we explain we can’t fix their financial crisis, we guide them to organizations that possibly can help them a little, and we help them see that in any meltdown situation – economic, relational, physiological God’s redemption through the door of repentance is the right road ahead.
Maybe these smaller steps by one local church are not loudly heard around the globe – but imagine if church after church after church began to speak, teach and train their people in how to handle finances differently, spend differently, and take the personal big and bold steps in the midst of this meltdown.
Historical Economists tell us there are economical cycles – and this too shall pass. But the wise Christian leader does all he or she can to make sure we learn the big lessons of our historical reality and teach and train people to not return to the cycle – but leave it for a new, biblical Kingdom of God guided economics – debt free and free to give.
So what’s your church doing to speak into this meltdown – speak up, there’s too much silence.
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2 comments:
Several blogs back, the idea was floated that maybe the church needs to detox.
I read McLaren's "recovery" piece. Here's a little of it:
"I just watched President Obama's Indiana speech and town hall meeting from my hotel room in San Diego. I was watching on MSNBC, with Chris Matthews hosting and Pat Buchanan commenting. Pat (predictably) panned the speech, saying that people in Elkhart make RV's, and Obama's speech failed to explain how we'd get Americans to buy RV's again. His comment, it seems to me, perfectly epitomizes an adventure in missing the point, and perfectly articulates two kinds of economic recovery.
For many people, economic recovery means "getting back to where we were a few months or years ago." That means recovering our consumptive, greedy, unrestrained, undisciplined, irresponsible, and ecologically and socially unsustainable way of life.
I'd like to suggest another kind of recovery ... drawing from the world of addiction. When an addict gets into recovery, he doesn't want to go back and recover the "high" he had before, or even to recover the conditions he had before he began using drugs and alcohol. Instead, he wants to move forward to a new way of life - a wiser way of life that takes into account his experience of addiction. He realizes that his addiction to drugs was a symptom of other deeper issues and diseases in his life ... unresolved pain or anger, the need to anesthetize painful emotions, lack of creativity in finding ways to feel happy and alive, unaddressed relational and spiritual deficits, lack of self-awareness, and so on.
"I'd like to suggest whenever we hear the word "recovery," we as a nation see it not as a call to get back our old addictive high, but rather as a call to face our corporate and personal addictions,"
He goes on to give several examples of Western addictions that need to be dealt with.
His list is incomplete, but a great start.
Anyway, I was thinking about this detox idea. It fits with recovery process.
I believe that the American church needs to detox from niceness, as well. Too many of us stop short because we feel the need to be nice.
Nice is nice, but not nearly relevant enough.
The truth needs to be leveraged with love, so detoxing from nice doesn't mean becoming the hard NYC brutal type.
I see myself and so many Christians I've watched growing up being nice without purpose. Being meek is different. Being gentle is not being nice.
It's wise to consider a person's disposition. I believe the church, the government, the business sector would all be well served by a strong shot of truth right between the eyes.
Speaking the truth in love seems to be such a difficult thing in the church today. I think your right, ed, when you say that detoxing from niceness is a must. Holding in resentments, hurts, or misunderstandings seems nice but it leads to bitterness of the soul. These harbored feelings fester and lead to greater division and avoidable pitfalls in our relationships. However, confronting each other in love and seeking to know the other person's true motives or intentions goes a long way in disarming the evil one's intention of fathering lies that he aims at keeping in the dark.
I feel, as I pray, that the church is entering into a new era of openness and honesty when it comes to confrontation within the church. Satan has had a foothold way too long within the church. He has caused division, suspicion, and enmity within the body of believers. Denominations harbor resentments against one another when, in reality, we are all supposed to be serving the same master. Jesus wants unity in the body. It's the unity in the body of Christ that will shout the loudest to a dying world. They will know we are Christians by our love means much more than being nice. It also has to do with working through differences in truthful confrontation and understanding rather than harboring perceptions in the darkness. I started blogging recently and touched on this in my latest blog entitled, "judgment is in forgiveness is out" and it would be interesting and much needed, in my opinion, to hear more dialogue on this issue.
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