“EMBODYING OUR FAITH“
(Part 1)

After Pastor Bruce retired earlier this spring, I picked up Covenant church planter Tim Morey’s book, “Embodying Our Faith.”

I was interested in what he has to say about “church” today because if anyone has the pulse on what is going on in our culture and how to effectively reach out to people with the gospel, Tim’s the man! As founding and lead pastor of Life Covenant Church, Tim has very real, practical experience, awareness, and understanding about the challenges all churches are facing today. I was sure that his insight and expertise would be valuable for us here at Hilmar Covenant as we are in this time of transition, seeking how best to move forward and truly be a church that can communicate well and respond to the community we are in.

Tim did not disappoint either! Almost every paragraph had nuggets of wisdom and clearly articulated things that describe the situation the Church in America finds itself in today, and ways to make Jesus known, accessible, and desirable to people all around us. I underlined practically the entire book! And because I believe that what Tim has to share is so profound and timely for us here at HCC, I would like to share in my next three blogs some highlights of Tim’s book.

Also, Hilmar Covenant had a part in birthing Life Covenant! Tim’s congregation was the first one to receive the funds we set aside for church planting from our Family Center building project in 2002.

This first blog will recap Tim’s information about “the lay of the land;” the who, what, where, and why of Christianity and the Church in America today. Hopefully, many of you who are reading this are already well acquainted with these realities. However, I know that too many of us within the Church are not aware of what we are facing. Maybe what I have to share this time will finally open the eyes, hearts, and minds of those who, for whatever reason, just haven’t grasped the severity of the situation we’re in as Christians today or, perhaps, have simply resisted it. My next two postings will offer some helpful, positive information about how to better respond to those we want to reach with the gospel of Christ, and what Tim and his church have found to be most effective. First some background:

Life Covenant Church was planted in 2003, but has already daughtered two churches--and only twelve months apart! The way they raised the funds in order to do this is almost miraculous ($40,000 in six weeks for the first church plant, and the same amount in just three weeks for the second). They also have an ongoing partnership with an orphanage in Mexico and a special burden and call toward Africa. Through Opportunity International, Life Covenant is working to establish microenterprise in Mozambique. This work has expanded to include a seminary and another orphanage, especially for children at risk. The conclusion of their vision page states: “We dream of being used of the Lord to bring change locally and globally, and pray that He will make us the kind of church that if it ever closed its doors, the city would rise up in protest.” Under Tim’s leadership, Life Covenant is commited to reaching those under age 35, a group whose numbers are shrinking the fastest in the churches of North America.

Now the news from Tim that we probably wish was not true. As you read his words, apply them to our congregation and what his perceptions might imply for us:

• I was midway through college when the love of Jesus recaptured me, and I was anxious for my friends to experience what I was experiencing. But what I quickly found was that my church, which was a truly wonderful place, was not a good cultural fit for me and my peers.

The church prided itself in being contemporary...but it felt foreign, out of place. It wasn’t just the programs and the style of music; it was the posture, the place the church seemed to occupy in the world. So much about the church felt foreign, as if it had been plucked from another time or place. It was hard to picture the church as a place you would go if you were really looking to find answers about life, God, and reality.

• For a long time the church in the U.S. has enjoyed a sort of “home-court” advantage. The nation was culturally Christian, and the language we used to describe God, salvation, heaven, hell, Scripture, etc. was understood by the vast majority of Americans. All this is changing. As our culture moves deeper into the 21st century, none of these assumptions holds true. America might be best described as post-Christian, and tenets of postmodern thinking which once were fringe have trickled into our culture and become normal. If the church is to impact our society today, it must recognize that it no longer enjoys a “home court” advantage” but must gain a hearing among a cacophony of conflicting messages. It must be able to demonstrate convincingly the impact of its message, as well as declare its content with accuracy and clarity. A postmodern generation will judge the truth of a message by whether or not it is seen to be working.

• In looking at the religious landscape of emerging generations, there are three terms our church finds helpful in describing those who are outsiders to the church: unreached, unchurched, and dechurched. It is sobering to look at the number of people who fall into these categories. Church allegiance in America is in serious decline, even as interest in spirituality is on the rise. When actual head counts (as opposed to self-reporting) are used, the percentage of [adults attending church on a typical weekend is] 17.5%. What’s more, this number is steadily declining, even as the U.S. population grows. Beyond this, approximately 3700 churches close their doors permanently every year (71 per week). The situation is even more serious when considering young people in the U.S. Indeed, a large portion of the decline seen in these numbers is the result of the postmodern generation’s non-participation in the church.

• [A 1998 report found] that only 12% of the 31 million young people in the U.S. go to church, and 88% of those who attended as teens dropped out of the church by their sophomore year of college. Some in established churches would characterize this nonparticipation as youthful rebellion. However...rebellion presupposes some level of intimacy with what they are rebelling against. On the whole, this is not the case with this generation, as fewer of them have been raised in the familiarity of the traditions and rituals of the church, and, even among those who have, there has been an ever-widening disconnect between the church and the world they live in. While there are some large emerging churches, most are 30 to 100 people which, on the one hand, reflects a preference many younger evangelicals have for smaller communities of faith. Yet I believe it is a reflection of the difficulty of evangelism with this population as well.

• ...another sobering trend among Christians: many of those leaving the church are doing so not because they have lost their faith but to preserve it. Their contention is that the church no longer contributes to their faith, but instead has become a detriment to it.

• The response of many churches to the absence of the postmodern generation is denial. Most have downplayed the cultural changes that have occurred, while others have consciously written off any attempt at reaching postmoderns and hope or assume that they will return when they have children themselves or otherwise “grow up” (an ironic statement [since these individuals] are approaching their forties). These churches see little need for change on their part and instead wait for their prodigal children to return, and for those who were never part of the church in the first place to come to them.

• Another approach I think is both realistic and honorable: Some churches, looking at the reality of the situation, see the need for change in bringing the gospel to this culture, but must honestly admit that, for whatever reasons, they are not capable of making the needed changes. Instead, they choose to serve as parents or grandparents, using their financial resources and wisdom to empower others to reach those they cannot. Life Covenant Church is the recipient of this kind of blessing. Much of our startup cost was covered by a hundred year old church in a small farming town 300 miles from Torrence. < THIS IS US, HILMAR COVENANT! >

• All of these approaches (responding to the loss of young postmoderns in churches) run the danger of missing the point. Many, if not most, churches hold an underlying assumption that if only they “did church” better, people would come. This is not the real issue. The culture around us does not wake up each day thinking they would go to church if only there was a good one to attend. Church leaders seem unable to grasp this simple implication of the new world: people outside the church think church is for church people, not for them.

We may have saturated the market of people who want church the way we do it in North America. In response to this reality WE MUST BECOME MISSIONARIES IN OUR CULTURE! We need to apply ourselves to the hard work of understanding the culture God has placed us in, while prayerfully bringing the gospel to that place in a language and manner understandable to those we seek to reach.

• Christianity has lost the cultural position of privilege it has enjoyed since Constantine. As a faith with very particular truth claims, Christianity is seen as synonymous with intolerance, exclusivism, condemnation, bigotry, and oppression.

• How do we bring the message of Jesus to a culture that is deeply skeptical about truth claims, rejects metanarratives (such as the gospel), considers the church a suspect institution, takes offense at moral judgments and believes any religion will lead them to God?

There is a sense in which this is familiar territory. In many ways our missionary situation is more like the world of the New Testament and early centuries of the church than the subsequent eras. From the beginning, Christ’s church has lived in cultures with differing systems of morality, religious pluralism, syncretism, and deep skepticism over the claims made by Christians. Only in the West, and only in recent centuries, has the church ministered primarily within a predominantly Christian culture. < SO WHY DO WE LIVE SO DEFENSIVELY AND CRITICALLY AS CHRISTIANS TODAY (RE. THE DEMISE OF FAITH AROUND US)? OUR SITUATION NOW HAS BEEN COMMON TO CHRISTIANS THROUGHOUT MOST OF HISTORY. >

• Even as these cultural shifts present new challenges, they present tremendous opportunities as well. This is a great moment for the church. The church, now relegated to a marginalized role in society, has the opportunity to recover its vocation as God’s missionary people. This situation will require churches to study the Scriptures and our culture, lean heavily on the Holy Spirit’s guidance and power, and relearn how to think like missionaries. The “containers” in which the church brings the gospel will look different for those brought up with a more postmodern world view.

• Many have wondered what the new model will be for churches in the coming generation (in the way Willow Creek and Saddleback were the model for many baby boomer churches). I do not believe there will be one model. Rather, the new model will be to create one’s own model, to live as highly inquisitive missionaries who exegete the culture, understand both the believers and nonbelievers living in it, and build the church to function effectively in that context.

• My position is that as we move deeper into a post-Christian 21st century, the people of God will need to rediscover the power of an embodied apologetic. By this I mean an apologetic (defense; justification) that is based more on the weight of our actions than the strength of our arguments.

This is an apologetic that is high-touch, engages people relationally, ordinarily takes place in the context of an ongoing friendship, and addresses the needs inquirers have and the questions they pose. It provides the weight to our answers that reason by itself cannot.

• If we aren’t living like a church, are we a church? If we don’t care about being transformed into the image of Christ or about the world God loves, can we call ourselves a church? Is a church a church if it exists only for itself?

Well, that’s a lot to chew on and digest! But I hope you have found it challenging, intriguing, even exciting, as you have considered Tim’s experienced perspectives. Will we let ourselves be informed by his insights? Can we glean important instruction for our congregation here in Hilmar from the wisdom Tim has shared?

More to come - have a wonderful two weeks...