The Renewal, the Need of the Mainline

Our fearless leader led the Presbytery of Elizabeth through a book study about not leading a dying church.  Cheryl Galan, our Transitional Leader, gave us that book.  And although I am not what one might call a faithful Presbytery-Meeting attender, that book gave me pause.  It started a train of thought.

We have been limping along for far too long.  I am in Perth Amboy since 2001, I was there for the Christmas after the attack that redefined who we are.  I have done too many pledge campaigns, wandered through too many 'vision quests', looking for the magic bullet that would change the church.

Let me say it out loud.  Right now, my church is fading into oblivion.  My Presbytery is fading into oblivion.  MY DENOMINATION is fading into oblivion.  If it were dying, we could bury it with honors, but it is fading to nothing.

For a couple of years, I thought the church growth movement was the answer.  Entrepreneurial in spirit, it had practical measures of growth, money in the plate and backsides in the pews.  By their measures, our PCUSA is the ideal reverse of all they measure.

So what else is out there?  There are two areas of thought in American Christendom that, quite frankly, scare me.  The first is prosperity theology, what I understand to be preachers daring to share from the pulpit that the more we believe, the more wealth God will shower on us in this life.  The second is the fear-threat response to evangelism.  I have read the gospels, I am just about through the book of Acts, nowhere can I find a place where Peter or Paul or the others told listeners that they best accept Jesus as Lord and Savior or they were bound for the barbecues of hell.  But I hear that a lot in American evangelism.

Wealth is the new idolatry.  More and more is being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer, and what happens to the rest?

Love and justice and generosity, all the fruits of the Spirit, where have they gone?

The Christian faith, how often has it been co-opted into the politics of the nation?  What answer is there to how it has been changed from its origins?

What else can we point to?  How else had the voice of Jesus been twisted, suppressed, and recast into things that are not even recognizable?

The vision is not the small, not the community changing, but nothing less than changing the face of the church for the coming age.