Sustainable Faith: Defining the Term (2)
March 2, 2008
I’ll be staying on the topic of “bigness” for a while, because I think much of the discussion of and search for this thing called “sustainable faith” is based in a belief that big church isn’t the way to go and we’ve got to come up with something better. And before I go a step further, I should state that I’ve never been the A-type personality, I’m not an extrovert, and I’m not a charismatic CEO kind of figure. I’m also now squarely in the second half of life, so the idea of building something large immediately sounds exhausting to me. I’m looking for something simple and feasible, not complex and daunting.
So I write with a bias, I suppose, but I also write (I think) from the perspective of a generation (not the boomers, whom, strangely, I’ve never ever felt a part of) that finds it increasingly difficult to connect to the normal mode of evangelical church life. There’s a push for something other. As Phyllis Tickle has said repeatedly — and please know that I’m paraphrasing her comments — this yet-to-be-defined group, an blend of desires for (1) social justice; (2) stewardship of earth; (3) a meaningful liturgy that speaks to the present while honoring the past; (4) mystery; (5) participation in the power of the Spirit; (6) and a bracing engagement of scripture that’s thoroughly christocentric is currently very messy in its expression. It’s an inchoate soul in search of a beautiful body. It’s like galaxy starting to form, the dust collecting and swirling around some core that’s gaining mass and density.
But galaxies and stars don’t coalesce unless there’s a amply strong gravitational core, and I think it remains to be seen whether there’s enough “matter” to unify these many voices. I used to think there was, but a comment that appeared recently in a New York Times article regarding Pattern and Decoration (P&D), thoroughly arrested my attention. P&D was the last significant, fine art movement in western culture. It has been the only art movement of the post-modern era, and maybe the last art movement ever:
“We don’t do art movements anymore.” Mr. Cotter continues, “We do brand names (Neo-Geo); we do promotional drives (’Painting is Back!’); we do industry trends (art fairs … etc.). But now the market is too large, its mechanism too corporate, its dependence on instant stars and products too strong to support the kind of collective thinking and sustained application of thought that have defined movements as such.” [italics mine]
Think long and hard about this quotation, because what may be true of the art world may also, unfortunately, be true of the thing awaiting birth. I now wonder if the new reformation we long to see will be stillborn (i.e., thoroughly fragmented) for some of the same reasons. In a world that spawns iPods and i-This and i-That, how possible is collective thinking and sustained application of thought? Not very. But we can pray: may your kingdom come. After all, with God all things are possible. A broken and contrite heart God will not despise. With many others, I’m looking for The Rose.
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