North American culture is changing. So is church culture(s). Some have suggested that culture is reinventing itself at a faster pace than ever before… while none of us have lived at another time something inside me senses that this may be accurate. Styles change. Language is mutating. Memes come and go. The values pendulum seems to swing at an unprecedented rate.
Our faith community desires to discover a faithful way of being present to these changes together. Part of how we understand our life together is as a community of collective discernment. Here are some of the transitions we are consciously seeking to navigate at the moment. BTW, we’re using the word “transition” with a measure of intention; mindful of the modernist tendency to operate with “either/or” binaries. Our hope is that the word “transition” can honor both the prior emphasis and to the emerging emphasis, while still helping describe something of the important shift underway.
Inspiration to Identification
The church has often been a place to go to get your pep talk for the next week/month/year (depending on your regularity). A place to hear an expert explain the three steps to happiness or the five ingredients of a good marriage. In recent years the church has added peppier music to make the whole experience a happy positive one.
At Quest our hope will not be primarily to inspire (though that might happen at times). Our hope is better imagined as identification or belonging. To authenticate bear witness to the struggle of living in the real neighborhoods, with real neighbors, and in our real bodies… to be honest about our personal and communal failures and successes, and own up to the struggle of following Christ in a world that for the most part doesn’t value that pursuit.
Classroom Atmosphere to Living Room Atmosphere
As a community we sense an intentional shift from being a church where one person (usually a man) has the answers and lectures while the church sit in their rows taking notes or filing in blanks in the sermon outline to a living room atmosphere. The atmosphere will be warm and could be characterized as a conversation over a coffee table dialogue speaking and listening, a feeling that we are together in conversation and that everyone’s presence, voice, and perspective matters.
Dogma (Delivery) to Dialogue (Stories)
Often churches have defined themselves through theological doctrines, moral stances, or distinctive values; dispensing the dogma in tightly, well orchestrated services. The presentation of the facts was everything. For us we sense that the evidence of believe is faithful presence seen in the everyday activities, and relationships of life. I.e., “I don’t care if you tell me Christ can forgive me if I see you living out of guilt and shame.” Since our lives are stories it seems, dialogue and story telling seem like a way forward for us. We’re experimenting with how to do this.
Dualistic Christianity to Holistic Spirituality
In Quest we’re desiring to pursue a holistic faith… a real relationship God permeates and transforms every facet and relationship within the ecosystem of things that sustains us. It seems to make sense to us, that all of life is spiritual. If a person can only be “Christian” at church then a fragmented life seems inevitable. How might a follower of the Jesus Way work at Microsoft, hang out at the bar after work with friends, argue with their partner, discipline their kids, watch TV, surf the web, tend the soil, go to the grocery store, imagine their economics, live with the rest of creation, etc. It seems like everything we do, everyone we meet, every corner of our own hearts, and every system that operates is an invitation to discover a way of love.
Traditional Discipleship to Friendship & Collaboration
When I was younger I was given the basics of the faith by sitting in church sponsored classes, filling in the blanks of a booklet to earn a certificate. When I filled in the booklet I actually got a certificate, proving that knew what was “necessary” . . . I was mature. Without a doubt there is a need for teaching and the imparting of information, but mentoring by doing life together will be our aim. Let’s see each other in multiple life situations and learn together how to incarnate our beliefs.
Confrontational Apologetics to Bodied Faithful Presence
The church used to use reason and evidence that “demanded a verdict” to defend its faith claims. Times have changed. Today not only hear phrases like, “If it works for you that’s great,” “Its all good,” “Every road leads to God, many of us resonate with these statements. Arguing and debate don’t seem the the way forward for us. Rather who we are as people and as a community seems like our witness. And we don’t expect to be right or have it all figured out, that’s part of the reason we call community “Quest.” We’re on a journey. We imagine our movement toward one another after we fail them will be part of faithfulness to one another.
Individual Presentation Evangelism to Loving God & Neighbor as Oneself
In the modern past many evangelical churches focused exclusively on one on one faith sharing interactions. Personally, I have been spoon fed dozens of canned presentations of the gospel that were to be used. That feels like the worst of salesmanship. We sense that the Way of Jesus is good news. It is liberation, and freedom. It is healing and wholeness. It is hope, and light, it is joy, and love. And courage. It is a dare to live. We’re not selling vacuum cleaners, we’re nudging one another to become participants live into and out of God’s shalomic imagination.
Think of the show “Friends.” Imagine just one of them making the decision to follow Christ. It’s almost unimaginable. Why? Because people are deeply connected to their primary communities. We sense an invitation to discover ways that we can serve our natural groupings – like Friends – to seek freedom together, what would be truly good news for them. Ultimately there is still a personal decision, but we must recognize the collective process.
Passive Attendance to Active Participation
We don’t ever want to be a “come and sit” spectator church, we can not forget that the church is people united in place, gathering around stostory, and people are not static.
We as Quest want to be a hands on kind of church. We don’t talk to simply talk about the plight of the poor or create a program to serve ‘them.’ We sense an invitation to listen, join in solidarity, to lament systems oppression, to protest and change what which we can, until there is no us and them.
Simplistic Religion to Authentic Spirituality
Pat answers like “just have faith,” don’t cut it for us. Those responses contain a seed of truth, but need to be interrogated. In the past the church has over systematized life, and God. We have a systematic theology of pretty much everything, and the church has felt the need to solve every problem. The reality is that God is too big to fit in our created systems. We want to foster an openness to the mystery of God to be real, transcendent and even more imminent then we ever realized. The truth is that no one has ALL of life figured out. In fact some tension is good. We sense that God is, and the the Way of Jesus resonates with our experience of the Divine… that seems like enough of a starting place.
Church Mindset to Kingdom Imagination
Quest is about discovering and participating in God’s dream for us and our neighborhood, and our world. We want to be looking for common ground with all followers of Christ to build a loving community, to draw people to Christ. We will not focus energy on that which separates, and will pour energy into building up all peoples seeking the common good. We will look for partners in the vineyard (to use one of Jesus’ metaphors).
Corporate Approach to Collaborative Partnership
In the past churches have often been very top down, with lots of bureaucracy, and quite territorial. With national offices giving directives to district offices who then give directives to churches. We feel an invitation to discover a different way of being; one that emerges from within the particularity of our context. We hope Quest will foster a grass roots, organic feel marked by the unmistakable sense that we are in this mission together. We actually need each other.
These shifts represent some of what it we hope it means for Quest to be the missional church God we are being invited to become. There is a lot of overlap in these transition points. Generally characterized by living ones beliefs in a cultural context and being honest with about ones struggles.
Peace, dwight
