First story: A few years ago, we got a flat screen TV. That meant our old entertainment unit, with its deep, square TV opening had to go.
At first, we thought we'd sell it. We
quickly found out there was no market for old entertainment units.
In fact, you couldn’t
give them away. (We tried.) Even thrift stores didn’t want them.
So out
into the backyard it went. A few swings of an axe and it was nothing but pieces of wood on
the ground.
Second story:
We have a buffet and hutch. (It was the kind of thing every newly married
couple needed after the wedding.)
It
contains our china, wine glasses, special dinner plates, some awards and
mementos.
We asked
our kids if they wanted it when we move. Their answer (paraphrased): “Are you kidding?
No way.”
Why not? Not because it isn’t a nice piece of furniture. It just doesn’t fit their
lifestyle.
Like others of their generation, they will likely move a lot and live in smaller places. Plus, they
likely won’t be collecting china or knickknacks.
What does
this have to do with faith?
Organized
religion today is like our old entertainment unit and buffet and hutch.
Like the
entertainment unit, parts of organized religion are becoming outmoded and unnecessary today.
For a long time, it served well. But it no longer meets current needs.
This
could include things like traditional forms of membership, Sunday morning
services, putting money in an offering plate, and sermons (long expository
ones, at least).
It’s also different ways of accessing information about faith.
As John Seel noted
in his book the New Copernicans, which talks about the ways millennials are changing
Christianity in North America, many younger people today reject analytical and propositional
ways of seeing faith.
Instead, they are more intuitive and imaginative, preferring story over exposition.
They also reject a binary approach where things are true/false or right/wrong. In it's playce they have a more exploratory, non-judgmental and inclusive approach to faith.
Like our buffet and hutch, the way church is done today represents a heavy, bulky
and hard-to-move form of faith.
Intellectually
and spiritually, younger people are more mobile, venturesome and lighter on their feet.
An old type of faith that is fixed in place (spiritually, doctrinally and physically in
church buildings) just doesn’t suit their lifestyle.
To be
clear: this doesn’t mean there is anything inherently wrong with the way faith
has been done for so long—just as there was nothing wrong with the entertainment
unit or buffet and hutch.
In their
time and place, they served useful purposes. Those purposes just aren’t needed
any more.
All this reminds me of what Phyllis Tickle wrote about in her book The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why.
In it, she wondered if the time hadn’t come for reform in western Christianity,
similar to what happened during the Great Reformation of 1517.
Tickle posited that every 500 years the church has a garage sale—a
time of upheaval and transition when it gets rid of things it no longer needs.
The last garage sale, she said, was the Great Reformation. If her idea
is true, we are due for another reformation today.
Just like out old entertainment unit and buffet and hutch have come to the end of their usefulness, maybe the same can be said of organized religion.
Time, as they say, will tell.
