I am having a very difficult time right now. I need to vent. I have heard too many reports recently, and I have experienced too many incidents in classes, to believe this church has much of a future.
As much as I oppose the fundamentalists (be they conservative or liberal), they rule the day. Anglican comprehensiveness is practically gone.
Where are the people who still believe in the Via Media? Where are people who still believe in the Elizabethan Settlement? Where are the people who still believe in the Oxford Movement? Where are the people who still believe in the three-legged stool? Where are the people who still believe in the Nicene Creed? Where are the people who can still claim Christ without embarrassment? Where are the people who know that church growth means the hard work of prayer and hitting the pavement in evangelism? Where are the people who do not have defeatist attitudes and expectations of decline? Where are the people who believe that keeping the doors open means filling the pews with people who believe that this church has something worthwhile to believe in and experience rather than scheming and devising and attempting to change the church into a social services organization, psych-services, or community rental hall? Where are the people who believe that Jesus changes lives, and while psychotherapy, community counseling, and drugs certainly help, coming to Jesus is the first and most powerful means of new life? Where are the people who can stand and say that nationalism is not Christianity? Where are the people who can accept ambiguity and realize that we humans simply do not have the capacity to explain or understand everything about God? Where are the people who experience the mystery of God? Where are the people who experience the power of God? Where are the people who place the Gospel before their own prejudice, bigotry, and individualistic wants? Where are the people who realize that my own, their own, beliefs or inability for believe do not make Truth?
I am so frustrated. People in this church attempt to strategize their way out of decline, yet they do not realize that it is Jesus that causes the increase, not our beautiful plans. Yes, good programs and plans and vision are all important, but without the central figure of Jesus, Jesus, yes, there is that word, that name – Jesus – all those plans and programs and visions are nothing. Hear that – nothing. The social-gospel church has for more than thirty years attempted to remake central tenants and of Christianity, and all it has gotten them is absolutely decline and the very people they so wanted to help are not being helped because the money and the people have run out.
Taking care of the poor, the oppressed, the down trodden is a core element of the Christian faith and message, but without Jesus – there is that very embarrassing name again – there is nothing more that a social service organization. If we want to be social-workers, then be a social-worker. If we want to be a counselor, then be a counselor. If we want to be psychotherapists, than be a psychotherapist. All these things are good and important, but they are not the Church and the Church is not to be them! If the Church tries to be all those things, it is an affront to those professions and an affront to the mission of the Church of Jesus Christ.