Last Sunday Via Meadia featured the first part of an essay by my father, Loren B. Mead, in which he reflected on the state of the American church. Today I am happy to bring you the conclusion. Please feel free to comment; the Venerable One stands ready to reflect and respond.
PART III: MINISTERING IN AN OUT-GOING TIDE
I am using the metaphor of an incoming and outgoing tide to make the point that enormous surges were going on, unseen by us. We were swept this way and that by things we could not control. Too often we clergy took the working of the incoming tide as evidence of our success. And it made us uncomfortable when we began to get blamed for the cultural changes of the outgoing tide. And, too often, we became depressed. We cared so much, many of us began to feel we might have been to blame. What had we done wrong?
Clergy like those who joined the Academy were schooled in methods of Bible study that questioned many of the very things parish members had learned from pastors and leaders in Sunday schools of the 20’s and 30’s. While those clergy had been in their seminaries, many of those same clergy — me and my colleagues — had gone through the same shock that so upset members of their churches. We had had help and time to digest the new learning, but when we tried to unpack those same Bible stories in sermons and teaching, we found our members shocked and upset rather than enlightened.
As the baby boom growth diminished, many lay leaders blamed the lack of growth on their pastors, Or their denomination or its seminaries.
The years of the 60’s and 70’s found lessened loyalty of many members of their congregations, but that trend of eroded loyalty was even stronger toward their denominations. The disruptions of the society – about race relations, about women’s ‘lib,’ about war and peace – often was blamed on religious leaders, Church members often felt that all the values they had counted on were eroding right in front of them – and many felt their religious leaders bore some of the blame for their discomfort. Leaders also found themselves on the defensive because of actions of national or state religious bodies that conflicted with deep beliefs of members.
My generation of pastors came into our work in the midst of a flood tide of growth and expansion. Church leadership was rarely easy even then, but it tended to be rewarded, affirmed, and often was successful. But even those leaders – I am one of them – found the new world confusing. It was not the world of church life that we expected or that we experienced in our early years. Ours was the difficult task of unlearning some of what we had learned, of having to try new, unfamiliar things with very little support and with very little guidance. We needed re-tooling, but denominational offices were as overwhelmed as the clergy, and our educational institutions were as deep in the woods as we were.
In those years of the Academy’s founding came into being, most of us believed we were in that incoming tide, but we soon began to suspect that the tide might have changed while we weren’t looking.
As each new generation of pastors was launched, we found ourselves more and more clearly in an outgoing tide, without knowing what was going on. Characteristically, in such uncomfortable circumstances, not really knowing what was happening, the churches and we clergy tended to try several things – first, scapegoating (trying to find somebody to blame – the seminary, the lay people, the denomination). Second, we became suckers for any fad that came along (convinced that we could find, invent, or buy a gimmick that would fix whatever was wrong). More worrying to me, the reaction of many clergy was depression and retreat (many clergy, overwhelmed and unclear what to do, simply hid in their office or in activism). Gil Rendle’s new book, Journey in the Wilderness explores many of the paths different people took to try to get through this difficult time. To ‘fix’ whatever it was that was ‘broken.’
The tide is still going out. There is no nice way to say this. The tide is still going out.
Yes, there are places that seem to go against the tide. Indeed, in some places what’s being tried seems to work miraculously. There are stories of remarkable growth here or there. Congregations that seem to have found ‘the answer.’ My own reading of the data makes me skeptical of the long-term viability of many of today’s successes, although I keep hoping the changes WILL stick and will prove to be contagious.
The fact is that nobody knows how to turn the tide around.
The child on the beach sees the tide come in, and, then, after a time, it goes out. At first they don’t know that if they wait long enough, it will come back in. What that child does on the shore – how many sandcastles he builds, how carefully he watches the creatures and shells brought up or pulled back – he has little effect on the flow of the tide. He cannot speed it up or slow it down. It’s not his success that the tide comes in, nor is it his fault that it goes out.
Clergy have, now, the hard job of learning to lead in a world where the tide is going out. It is my hunch that the outgoing tide has many years to go. How do we lead the church during the time of an outgoing tide?
No one knows for sure. But as one who has enjoyed a time when the tide came in, and as one who has struggled to understand how to cope with the change of tides, and as one who has worked alongside the present generation of courageous pastors to hold steady during the outgoing tide, I have some thoughts about leadership in such times.
First. It’s not your fault. Something big is going on. It’s not you who made the tide come in and it’s not because of you that it’s going our.
Second. Work on your own faith. We KNOW how to keep spirits up when things go well. We DON’T know how to thrive when things blow up on us. Find the things that feed your spirit – what are they? Study? Periods of quiet? Hard exercise or strenuous games? Deep conversation with colleagues or friends? Special spiritual exercises or worship? Carpentry or Gardening? Going on retreat or to conferences? Music – listening to it or making it –whichever is right for you. Remember the Psalms? — they are obviously what Jesus turned to when things went badly for him. Try them. Whatever it is, be sure to make time for it. And do it. Find. If you haven’t already, what feeds your soul and do it. Don’t let ANYTHING get in the way of your own renewal.
Third. Pay attention to the institutional infrastructure – the things like the building, the training of leaders including yourself, the nurture of the organization, learning how to raise and manage funds. Those are the things that tend to get overlooked when things tighten up – but they are the very things you’ll need when the tide turns. The blessing for you is that this is something you can DO. DO, while you have to wait, wait, wait, for the tide to change. Get busy with some stuff you can do. It will make a difference for the next generation.
Fourth. Stand steady, no matter what happens. Everybody is scared of the changes going on. Nobody knows what to do or how it’s coming out. (Remember Jackson at Manassas? “There stands Jackson like a stone wall” it was said of him. He didn’t know for sure any more than anybody else, and I’m sure he was as tempted to anxiety and fear as everybody else – but he stood, and the men around him found they could stand, too. So, pastors, you must stand. If you can stand, others will be able to also.
Fifth. Remember our story. It’s not your denomination or your congregation. It’s a story that begins with Abraham and Moses. It’s a story of a God who promises and keeps his promises, even though his answers often carry surprises. It’s a story that’s seen a lot of tides come in and go out. Hold onto that story. Preach that story. Live that story. So the tide’s going out? So what?
Sixth. You are not alone. Remember Elijah, cowering in fear, sure everyone had deserted him. A voice told him that 8,000 had not bowed to Baal. You have far more than 8,000. Some of them you know. Many you don’t know. But they are out there, working their tails off, often not sure exactly what to do. You are not alone. When you DO feel alone, it’s your depression that’s getting you.
Seventh. You may not win. We did not sign papers when we came on board, papers that said “You will never face losses or failure!” As a matter of fact, the name on your ordination (not necessarily the papers) is the name of somebody who ended up on a cross.
Eighth. Prepare for the long run. Tides change when tides change. We are likely to have to lead for a long time in hard times. Don’t expect anything to be quick or easy. It doesn’t work that way. You’ve been called into a marathon, not a sprint. You may have to pass the baton to another before the race is over.
Advice. That’s the best I have to offer. But let me say one thing straight and clear: over the past 50 years, we and many church leaders have gradually begun dodging reality.
Let me put it more directly and personally:
I came on board when the tide was coming in. I did not come in because the tide was coming in, but because I was convinced that there was no more important institution in the world than the local religious congregation.
THAT was the place I wanted to be, believing that was what God was calling me to be.
In the half century since then I have seen the tide turn around in spite of heroic efforts of a bunch of fine clergy and laity who, have given it their best shot. In the trying, we built up knowledge and skill. We now know things we didn’t know – about how groups, congregations, institutions work and change, what kinds of interventions can be more helpful than others, about the complexity and diversity we didn’t know about a generation or two ago. We have learned new skills for the leaders – clergy and lay – who are called to lead congregations.
We’ve learned new questions, too. And we’ve learned some of the mistakes we’ve made. About the models we’ve used for training our leaders. About how regional and national church bodies go astray. About how we have burned up the church’s financial resources in expensive systems that we can no longer afford – denominational structures that do not work or make any difference, systems of clergy stipends and pensions that are beyond the resources of the majority of congregations – in short – we have kept building larger and larger barns for the church, not realizing that our time is up for that kind of living.
IV. SO WHAT?
The local congregation is where the rubber hits the road. It is there that ordinary people are helped to find the courage to face their personal challenges and also to give themselves to the needs of the world around them.
It is there that the contagious good news of Jesus Christ is spoken in word and deed.
Everybody who reads this article is, I believe, among those who have known very deeply the conviction that the one who called Abraham, and who called Peter from his fishing boat, has called you to serve that good news, and to do so in that strange, wonderful human community we call a congregation.
The call has never been issued with a guarantee that it will be easy or short, this task we have.
Those who follow that call today have daunting challenges. More so than many in earlier generations.
But, I think, for us, for you and me, there is no other way.
May God bless you.