Who’s discipling the church these days?
Ask sociologists about what words best characterize our moment, and you’ll frequently hear suspicion and polarization near the top of the list. Our differences aren’t breeding curiosity, so much as contempt; and whole industries have sprung up around building tribes fueled by that contempt — driving their language toward fear and scarcity and making sure the “us vs. them” dynamic puts weight on everything from where you consume your news to where you buy your coffee.
It would be nice if this force was only present “out there” on the underbelly of social media, but “us vs. them” has made its way into the church’s discourse, too. Fear and scarcity are a strange look for those who live under the truth that “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18, NRSV), and that “because the Lord is our shepherd, we have all we need” (Psalm 23, NLT).
Disciples are to be known for our love, Jesus says — but it’s easy for us to be known by our defensiveness instead. Congregations can easily be just as laden with echo chambers as the rest of our community spaces: separated based on generation, ethnicity, economic class, or political views. But they don’t have to be. At their best, our churches are one of the few places where we come together with neighbors of different generations, vocations and political persuasions as brothers and sisters, not competitors or strangers.
I’ve seen the church do both. I’m a Millennial; I’ve seen hundreds of my peers (from childhood and young adulthood) walk away from the church — not because they didn’t have deep commitment to Jesus, but because they wondered if their church still did. They walked into their congregation hoping to hear something that sounded like Jesus’ words; they walked out because it felt like other agendas prevailed. “The kingdom of God must feel too intangible,” one young adult said. “Perhaps that’s why many churches end up preaching another one.”
But I also serve as a local church pastor — working in a context that spans five generations and has an uncommon concentration of young and senior adults. I’ve seen the rifts of polarization and misunderstanding heal as people see, hear and understand each other. They don’t end up agreeing; but they end up committing to each other’s well-being. That certainly seems like the Spirit’s work to me. Sometimes, the greatest gifts we get in congregational life isn’t content; it’s each other.
Here are a few movements that I’ve observed take place as people shift from polarization to partnership:
From silos to teams
Often, the groups within our church exist parallel to one another; senior adults huddle with fellow senior adults, young parents huddle around the children’s ministry pickup line, while teens gravitate toward youth group, and young adults (if indeed there are any) exist in a middle space, having graduated from youth group, but uncertain of how to engage with their middle-aged pewmates. The good news is they’re longing to.
“I attend church because it’s the only place in my community that calls me back to the central witness of Jesus Christ,” said one young adult in my congregation. “I need to think through how to be a student, a parent, an employee — through the lens of how to be a good neighbor in the kingdom of God. There are lots of places with good advice on specific skills — but the church is the only place all of us come together to focus on the person of Jesus.”
There’s a power in people who are different from each other being committed to the same Person over time and then also committing to a project over time. Some of my favorite partnership stories come from very different people who worked together to solve the church’s big challenges or dream of new ways to live into the kingdom of God in their context.
From assuming to listening
One of the harshest things we can do in polarization is to make assumptions: to believe that we know what another person thinks, feels and believes based on our false pre-judgment. The problem is (as leadership professor Scott Cormode says), “We cannot minister to stereotypes in Jesus’ name … we can only minister to people.”1
Moving away from seeing people as stereotypes requires listening — and listening requires connection. I’ve seen people from across the political spectrum grow toward understanding by coming around the table and asking questions.
Congregations can create space — from fellowship dinners to purposefully-paired intergenerational small groups, lunch groups or service teams — to pair people together, and invite them to talk about their beliefs, ideas, experiences and opinions.
One middle-aged adult in my congregation shared, “I realized a few years ago that my opinions on immigration were prolific; but I’d never had an immigrant in my home … and then I heard a sermon where Steve (our senior pastor) said, ‘How can you have such strong convictions when you don’t know anyone involved? Don’t have an opinion without a relationship.’ And my world changed. I started getting to know immigrants in our city and was amazed at how wrong I was about both my policy opinions and my beliefs — not just because I had my facts wrong, but because I was making my opinions divorced from any relationships, and that is almost always a bad way to go.”
Change happens when we know people who force us to think differently about things we thought were settled. Even if we have the same opinion at the end: the relationships themselves change the way we carry them — and that’s an important start.
From zooming in to zooming out
As our world feels increasingly tribal, it can be easy to lend most of our focus to keeping the gate. This is the wrong time for that. The kingdom of God is the wrong place for that: here, love is both a means and an end. It’s our way of doing things, and it’s our final destination. It’s a steadfast commitment to the good of others (even those with whom we disagree).
One of the things our churches can do for us is to “zoom us out” — to remind us that though the issues of our day are consequential, we rest in the context of salvation history which is longer, deeper and wider than us, and we’re carried by a God who is faithful to deliver us home. As one of my mentors, Former General Superintendent Reverend Dr. Harry Wood, says, “There is never an excuse for acting outside the fruit of the Holy Spirit.”
That kind of life — one of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control — will help us open ourselves to the Spirit, and to relationships with all kinds of people God will send us. Because God has called us together, we who are generationally, politically, racially and economically diverse can work together so things are “on earth as they are in heaven.” As it turns out: a good means is a good end. Thanks be to God.
Rev. Ethan Linder is the pastor of discipleship at College Wesleyan Church in Marion, Indiana, and contributing editor at The Wesleyan Church’s Education and Clergy Development Division.
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
_______
- Scott Cormode, “Listening,” a talk delivered in Hartford City, Indiana.
