March 19, 2009
by Eva Stimson

LOUISVILLE – Today's church is in the midst of a "hurricane of change," popular speaker and author the Rev. Brian D. McLaren told a sellout crowd at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary on the opening night of a four-day theological symposium. But there are signs of hope, he said, for out of this stormy period is emerging a new and more authentic kind of Christianity.

McLaren, a leader in the "emergent church" movement, joined influential scholars Marcus J. Borg and Diana Butler Bass in discussing the theme "New Ways of Being Church" at the seminary's annual Festival of Theology, March 15-18.

Borg, a professor of religion and culture at Oregon State University, is the author of 16 books, including the bestseller Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. Bass, an independent scholar specializing in American religion and culture, is the author of Christianity for the Rest of Us and a new book, A People's History of Christianity.

All three speakers agreed on the need for radical changes in the church to meet the challenges of the 21st century. And each of them had ideas about what some of those changes might look like.

Bass cited new research indicating the United States is growing less religious. The number of people who call themselves Christians has dropped by 10 percent – from 86 percent to 76 percent – in the last two decades, according to the American Religious Identification Survey released March 9.

At the same time, the number of "nondenominational Christians" has surged from less than 200,000 to more than 8 million. And the number of people with no religion – atheists, agnostics and other secularists – has almost doubled, from 8.2 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008.

These figures show "a decline of interest in parties and labels," Bass said. "People don't even like the label ‘Christian' anymore." They especially don't identify with labels such as Methodist or Presbyterian, and are increasingly put off by all the competing subgroups within denominations (conservatives, liberals, evangelicals, progressives, etc.).

Christians need to come up with new language to describe themselves, she said. "We simply must have the language that carries the deepest sense of our passion to the world, so those who are busy rejecting us might give us another hearing."

Bass suggested looking for ways of telling the story of Jesus so that Christianity doesn't come across as an "us versus them" religion. "What if the Christian story doesn't start with the Great Commission?" she asked, referring to the command to "go and make disciples of all the nations."

Beginning instead with Jesus' words about loving God and neighbor would "ground us in humility, in a profound sense of our own limitations."

Borg pointed to a positive development he has observed in mainline denominations over the last 40 years: the movement to a more intentional form of Christianity.

"Until the 1960s there was a cultural expectation that people would be part of a church," he explained. "Mainline denominations gave you a respectable and safe way of being Christian. They weren't going to ask you to do anything too weird."

But now those conventional reasons for joining a church have disappeared, he said. "Very soon the only people left in mainline denominations will be those who are there with intentionality.

"We will never be as large as we were before, but this can also be very exciting," said Borg. It's an opportunity for the church to redefine itself, he explained.

McLaren compared the situation facing the church today with the chaotic transition from medievalism to the modern world about 500 years ago. The discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo called into question traditional church teachings about the universe, shaking the very foundations of Western Christianity.

But eventually the scientist Sir Isaac Newton and the theologian John Calvin helped create a new world view that laid the foundations for modern science, governments and religious institutions.

"It takes courage in a religious community to speak up and begin imagining a new paradigm," McLaren observed, but this is what needs to happen today. He suggested three "new ways of being church" to replace the outdated model of the church as an institution:

• A spiritual movement to join God in healing the world (This would be an "underground" movement, he explained, because "nobody owns it.")

• A disciple-forming community that helps all interested people learn, be, live, love and serve in the way of Jesus.

• A liturgical/mystical network that practices receptivity to the Holy Spirit, with group spiritual practices that open our souls to experience the living God.

Borg also stressed spiritual practices, insisting that for Christians contemplative prayer is "the single most important individual practice ... the primary way that we pay attention to our relationship with God."

Another essential practice is worship, said Borg, because "it opens us up" and "draws us out of ourselves." In addition, he said, "Praise of God affirms that God alone is Lord and culture is not."

In a panel discussion later, Borg described many Protestant worship services as "too rushed. They're crammed into an hour."

Protestant worship would also benefit from fewer words and more silence, he said, noting that "words are actually the least effective way to open the heart."

McLaren stressed that the "new ways of being church" will not be imposed by leaders in a top-down manner. "I hope it happens through widely disseminated, locally rooted conversations," he said, noting that electronic communication has empowered people all over the world and at all levels of society to participate in the discussion.

To help church members make the transition to the church that is emerging, Bass called for new kinds of leaders. These leaders would function more like rabbis than CEOs – listening, gathering wisdom, building connections rather than making pronouncements. "Leaders need to ask questions that turn people's expectations around," she said.

Pastors need to help their flock move away from a gospel that emphasizes "how to get the soul into heaven," McLaren said. This individualistic understanding of the gospel is one reason people in today's world "are nervous about evangelism."

A more fruitful approach would be to see evangelism as God's way of "recruiting people to join in the healing of the world," McLaren said. "I bet a lot of people would get up and knock on doors for that."

Presbyterian News Service
Eva Stimson is editor of Presbyterians Today.