The Core Problem with the Church | Church Off the Map | Lenten Series

Transcript

00:00:00:25 – 00:00:25:51
Clint Loveall
So tonight we’re going to I’ll be honest. But some of this sort of has come together. Some of it was based on some other things we’ve done. And then there are a couple of sessions that we had to invent. Tonight is one of them that we had to invent. And so we are having a conversation about what is the bridge to where we want to end up and where we’ve been.

00:00:25:51 – 00:00:53:25
Clint Loveall
And tonight is sort of a bridge. And the idea is the last couple of weeks we’ve been talking about realities for the church. Some of them are new realities. Some of them have changed. Some of them we have not. Maybe welcome. Some of them are not positive. The church is. And again, when I say church, in our context, the Presbyterian Church is struggling to some extent.

00:00:53:25 – 00:01:31:36
Clint Loveall
And, you know, to be clear, I do think the church is different, that the church of my children’s childhood is fundamentally different in in some ways than the church of my childhood or the church of your childhood. What we listed some of those things, you know, I think in general, churches are maybe a little less formal in this day and age, though, there are still some high liturgy churches, But in lots of churches, you’re going to go and you’re going to find people not in suits and you’re going to find a kind of relaxed liturgy.

00:01:32:04 – 00:01:52:30
Clint Loveall
You’re going to see a looser thing than you used to see. We mentioned a couple weeks ago the church does, for better or worse or or neutral. The church competes for time on Sundays now in a way that it didn’t in my childhood. I mean, lots of people didn’t go to church in my childhood, but they just didn’t go to church.

00:01:52:30 – 00:02:22:22
Clint Loveall
They didn’t go do something else necessarily. They they just didn’t go to church. There are differences of communication. There are online things. I’m struck sometimes when I am talking with somebody and they say, Oh, yeah, we we watch your church while we’re getting ready to go to our church. And then afterwards I watch this program on TV and I’m like, Whoa, that’s a lot of it’s a lot of church, somebody getting on a Sunday.

00:02:22:25 – 00:02:44:15
Clint Loveall
But but those things are out there and it does mean sort of competition. And then I don’t know if this is I’m not sure, Michael, if we’d call this from a non cultural standpoint, I think I could make the case. So culture has changed some things for the church, but the church has also changed some things for the church.

00:02:44:15 – 00:03:12:57
Clint Loveall
And I think I could make a case that one of the biggest impacts has been the there is a model of church that really effectively didn’t exist in your childhood and most of my childhood, and that’s the idea of the community model. There was a TV model, but the mega church, the Willow Creek and the Saddleback and those large sort of shopping mall type places, they really did change things.

00:03:13:22 – 00:03:38:52
Clint Loveall
They changed some assumptions, they changed some programs. They had a significant influence. And I think, you know, one of the ways they did that, Michael, it’s probably in your wheelhouse. They utilized technology at first sound and lighting, but in the aftermath of that computer in a way that the mainline church really hadn’t thought of.

00:03:39:37 – 00:04:10:53
Michael Gewecke
I would that I would add to that, actually. So communication technology would all be part of that. I think some of the more fundamental shifts that those bodies made in the church was they saw themselves not as continuing the practice and tradition of worship. They saw themselves as being particularly geared to achieve an outcome. And generally that outcome was a specific group of people that we are we’re looking at.

00:04:11:00 – 00:04:32:36
Michael Gewecke
If you do some research and you learn about the Saddleback and the Willow Creek to the world, you learn that the place where they planted churches were carefully selected out of major cities. They were looking at, Should we go to Chicago or should we go to San Francisco or should we? They were looking for what’s the right suburb that people are driving by that they’ll come to this church?

00:04:32:36 – 00:04:55:34
Michael Gewecke
And those shifts, you know, we won’t bore you more than we have to. But I think the point being in the mainline church, we historically thought of ourselves as being the place where if you lived relatively nearby, you will come and be church with us. We thought in that geographic type frame, these larger community model churches, they turned that on its head.

00:04:55:36 – 00:05:19:13
Michael Gewecke
They said, We don’t care where you come from. We know that you commute to work, so you should commute to church. And when they did that, they began to try to convince people, you’re going to like it here more than what you would like it over there. You see that distinction if you allow that, then what began to happen is churches began to compete for people’s interest.

00:05:19:13 – 00:05:36:27
Michael Gewecke
And if you compete for people’s interest in an entertainment media driven culture, it shouldn’t be a surprise that those churches became very media heavy and very entertaining in their delivery, which is not necessarily an insult, but is to say that’s a difference in emphasis.

00:05:36:45 – 00:06:04:44
Clint Loveall
I think they also presented themselves really for the first time, the idea that they were innovative, that they were doing new things, and part of the part of the community church appeal or advertising was we’re reaching people that no one else is reaching. We’re not the boring church that, you know. We’re doing something new. And the implication was, guess who we are?

00:06:05:24 – 00:06:35:56
Clint Loveall
We are the boring church. You know, that people don’t go to. Right. And so it they they never at their best, they really never set themselves up against the rest of the church. But functionally, they did. They sort of implied this idea that if you go to church and you have an organ and you have liturgy, that that’s not really faith, that it’s not there’s no depth there.

00:06:35:56 – 00:07:18:00
Clint Loveall
There’s no and and they did that really unattached from a specific tradition. So they changed a lot of stuff. And and one of the effects that had on the mainline church was in many cases, we we well, we were jealous. And because we were jealous, we tried to copy some of their function without copying their form. So we still wanted three year leadership teams instead of a tight leadership council.

00:07:18:00 – 00:07:49:28
Clint Loveall
But we thought, well, let’s get some drums and guitar, because if it works for them and we misunderstood, I think we misunderstood why people were going to those things. So we tried to copy some of the peripheral stuff without understanding that at the fundamental core, what was attractive about what they were doing. And so you ended up with and I, I want to be careful here.

00:07:49:28 – 00:08:28:22
Clint Loveall
You as a friend of mine says you ended up with grandmas in sweatpants singing praise songs. And we thought that was the same. We thought that was the same. And it wasn’t. It wasn’t the same. There was there were some differences. And in the middle of that, those churches also tended, I think, largely through where they came from and who pioneered them.

00:08:28:22 – 00:09:07:42
Clint Loveall
But to some extent also because it worked, those churches tended to be middle to right on the theological spectrum. Not all of them were full on evangelical, but most of them were right of mainline. And when I say mainline, I mean us. And what that kind of does is not only does do we have then some polarization in worship style, which becomes a huge battle, we began to see an increased polarization along theological lines.

00:09:08:11 – 00:09:16:37
Clint Loveall
And we would make the case we’re going to make the case that that has only gotten worse.

00:09:17:16 – 00:09:37:39
Michael Gewecke
I want just contribute one last thing to this, and hopefully this helps not just in this conversation, but in the larger. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, if you’ve had any exposure, maybe you have kids or grandkids that go to one of these larger churches. One one of the major themes that’s consistent, whether it’s one of those big newsworthy churches or some of those that we have in Iowa, you know, those big, big churches, Right.

00:09:38:04 – 00:10:08:15
Michael Gewecke
There’s always two things that are true. They always have large pastoral staffs, and only one of them ever preaches statistically. I mean, they’re not to say that an associate doesn’t preach occasionally, but what these churches assume is a kind of cultural celebrity that the mainline church is generally very uncomfortable with. In other words, if you’re a really gifted preacher, if you are charismatic, you’re good in front of people.

00:10:08:29 – 00:10:28:48
Michael Gewecke
Those churches are going to put you in as many satellite sites simultaneously as they possibly can, and they’re going to drive you in nice cars and they’re going to fly you places. And it has the trappings of celebrity we have built into our culture. And they embrace it and they try to use it for the gospel. And it’s not surprising when there’s massive meltdowns in those systems.

00:10:29:00 – 00:10:50:42
Michael Gewecke
It makes the front page of the newspaper. And that has had a way because they speak the cultural language of celebrity. It has a way of going viral when it breaks down. You can see how that ladder happens. Then it’s not surprising when you have people who don’t go to church, who don’t know the language of church, who don’t know a pew from a chair.

00:10:50:52 – 00:11:15:48
Michael Gewecke
But those folks see that and they are naturally moved by it. And they over time begin to believe that’s what church is. That church is a place of making celebrities who get rich and high on their power and then they abuse it and then they collapse. And then it all goes, you know, to destruction like that. That’s the cultural narrative that forms.

00:11:15:48 – 00:11:46:47
Michael Gewecke
And I think that’s maybe the most dangerous implication that that form of church has had for the larger churches. Because Presbyterians, we we have some excuse me, we have some good preachers, don’t get me wrong, but we don’t have Presbyterian churches with 50 satellite sites that that doesn’t exist. And so for us, when when that critique is in essentially embodied in our culture, it we don’t know what to do with it because it doesn’t apply.

00:11:46:48 – 00:11:57:10
Michael Gewecke
That’s why we look at folk and say, well, yeah, but we don’t really do that. But they don’t know it because that’s not the thing that really has prevailed in our cultural understanding of Christianity.

00:11:57:57 – 00:12:36:55
Clint Loveall
Right. So where the mainline church, the Presbyterian church, sought to be consistent in our ideas and market, our thinking to people, the community church sought to market experience for people. They they did it really well. And as they did it an interesting thing happened. Some of it is natural and some of it’s backlash as that model of church begins to really carry the ball increasingly on conservativism.

00:12:37:21 – 00:13:07:13
Clint Loveall
And keep in mind, this is happening in the aftermath of the eighties through the nineties, when also the the evangelical right is becoming increasingly political. And what I mean by that is they’re taking an increasing role in politics. So you have the movement of the conservative church on a very high upward trend. You also have the conservative church going more and more all in on the in the political realm.

00:13:07:53 – 00:13:37:28
Clint Loveall
And so whether it happens naturally, whether it has a pushback, the liberal church begins sort of experimenting, fighting back and begins pushing boundaries the other way. So in the nineties and 2000 and they we continue you know, it just happened through the Methodists Lutherans were not long ago Presbyterians were one of the first to get there. It’s it’s basically in process right now for the Reformed Church.

00:13:37:46 – 00:14:01:00
Clint Loveall
The mainline churches are now experiencing continuing to experience those theological separations. The idea that somebody is saying we need to we need to do this, we need to be more this, and somebody saying no and shoving back on that, we need to hold the standard or even we need to go further right and or left, whatever it is.

00:14:01:01 – 00:14:28:48
Clint Loveall
So we have this very weird, divisive, volatile mix in which people who have been the church for a long time are trying to be the church in a new arena. And we have we talked the first week, we talked a little bit last week, some of the trends. And again, I go back to our Presbyterian family. We’ve we’ve struggled budgets, bodies and buildings.

00:14:28:48 – 00:14:57:34
Clint Loveall
There’s less of them. But as we describe those things, we don’t want to leave you with the idea that those are the core problems. I think by and large, Michael and I are convinced that if you look at those things, they are really symptoms of something else. They’re serious, they’re real struggles, but they’re not core struggles. So when you get to the question then what is the fundamental issue?

00:14:58:30 – 00:15:24:30
Clint Loveall
There are two main camps that people have said this is the reason the church is struggling. And the first is that we are under attack from the world. There are people who believe that the church is under attack and we can talk about why some of the people think that that we’re being pushed aside, that we’re being ignored.

00:15:25:04 – 00:15:55:25
Clint Loveall
We have seen some loss of privilege. We have seen some loss of status. We have seen some loss of authority. We could all point to things for the most part, little things. You know, schools don’t have Christmas concerts. They have winter concerts. And the land tivity said isn’t up at the courthouse. Those kind of things. The idea that that the world is sort of trying to silence the church and that narrative is pretty prevalent.

00:15:55:27 – 00:16:28:13
Clint Loveall
We’re going to go back to that. But I help me, Michael, I don’t think it’s probably overstated to say that I hear that weekly, but I hear it more than twice a month from someone. It’s a regular. There is a lot of that idea out there, the idea that the church is really suffering because we’re being attacked.

00:16:28:13 – 00:16:59:56
Michael Gewecke
Yes, I think we need to be up front in this conversation. I think one of the core things we’re asking you to do with us tonight is we’re asking you to to sit in the soup for a little while and marinate, because it would be easy to look at the world around us and to come up with very short, succinct soundbite explanations as to the church’s fundamental struggles.

00:17:00:16 – 00:17:23:54
Michael Gewecke
And the temptation of doing that is we close ourself off to a variety of explanations that may all be true, that may all have different emphasis that that help us. And I think to Clint’s point, I to hear this very often it’s slippery because of the question. They if they are out to get the church, who are they?

00:17:24:45 – 00:17:53:19
Michael Gewecke
And when I listen closely, there’s a thousand days like they could be a political party, they could be a political leader, they could be people of a particular theological persuasion. But you know, who never is the they interestingly, is the AEW sports club. Nobody’s ever thinking they though they are surely a part of it. And by the way, they include Presbyterians.

00:17:53:20 – 00:18:15:23
Michael Gewecke
I’m not that’s not I’m not trying to be insulting, you understand? I’m saying, like what the they has so many interlocked or interlocking inter. What’s the word I’m looking for anyways? They have all the layers and, and in the midst of that, I think it’s worth slowing down because we admitted at the start of this conversation and I think it needs repeated.

00:18:15:41 – 00:18:36:07
Michael Gewecke
Things are changing culturally in real ways and we shouldn’t pass by. That is as if it doesn’t matter, right? It does matter. And in fact, there are churches who are trying to serve that in their own places. Certainly that looks different in places like California and Arkansas than it does in Iowa. And we should be aware of those contexts.

00:18:36:07 – 00:19:03:43
Michael Gewecke
Right. On the other hand, though, I think when we just assume that those forces lie outside of our walls, we’ll begin to see them, whoever they are, as the explanation. And it will keep us from being reflective as to what part of that is inside the walls. And surely the case we’re making tonight is a holistic understanding of the church’s struggles, includes both.

00:19:04:33 – 00:19:05:07
Michael Gewecke
Is that fair?

00:19:05:27 – 00:19:41:07
Clint Loveall
Yeah, it is fair. And there are parts of the church family, though I would argue not generally Presbyterian, who believe that having seen us under attack, that the answer is to fight back. So there there are church traditions in places. This would be primarily in the south, trying to reestablish blue laws. Right. Close things. On Sunday, there are churches scattered throughout the country who are saying we got to we got to go back to the time that we didn’t have sports on Sunday.

00:19:41:07 – 00:20:14:54
Clint Loveall
We didn’t have kids activity on Sunday. And they’re trying to fight that battle now. They’re going to lose. But but they believe that the answer is to fight back on those cultural movements. On the other hand, there are there are voices who look at the situation that the church is in. And rather than say that those are caused by some external pressures, they would point to a more introspective look.

00:20:14:54 – 00:20:35:54
Clint Loveall
They’d say, well, the church has to take account of what it’s been and what it’s doing. So on the other hand, they would say that the church is to blame, that we are failing, that we’ve given up on evangelism, or that if we haven’t given up on it, we’re not doing it very well, that we are distracted by other things.

00:20:36:10 – 00:21:17:56
Clint Loveall
They would point to, as Michael mentioned, the hypocrisy and the scandals that every time a church seems to be making traction, something blows up and something bad happens that Christians aren’t really acting like Christians. They would point to a kind of lukewarm ness where the average Christian doesn’t spend a lot of time in prayer, doesn’t know their Bible very well, doesn’t think theologically much, and they would say that that gives a picture that the church is struggling because of things that are happening inside the family, not outside the family.

00:21:19:01 – 00:21:49:11
Clint Loveall
And this is really kind of a difficult balance for the church, this idea of individual faith versus corporate faith, this idea of tradition and preference, all these things come together. But this question sort of who’s at fault and what do we make of the congregational struggle, the denominational struggle, the corporate Christian struggle in America? And by the way, nobody is really immune.

00:21:49:12 – 00:22:15:01
Clint Loveall
Yes, there are some giant churches out there, but fewer of them than there were. And if you add up all the people who are going to the giant churches, it’s less people than used to. So they’re they’re at the top end of our pile. But it’s not they’re not unaffected by these trends. Michael and I had a professor.

00:22:15:01 – 00:22:37:21
Clint Loveall
We shared a professor. He was at Louisville when I was there, Princeton when Michael was there. And we’ve actually talked to him. If you go back in our podcast, we interviewed him, a professor named Darrell Gouda. Darrell spent his life studying mission or theology. What does it mean that we are called to be the church and those folks will talk about Christendom.

00:22:37:40 – 00:23:04:17
Clint Loveall
And I want to be careful here and I want to try and be brief because it’s a big topic. But Christendom, as they understand it, is the idea of a sort of cultural Christianity, a Christianity that has buildings and and churches and budgets and forms, but has sort of forgotten some of its missionary activity. And by that I don’t mean and they don’t mean sending people overseas.

00:23:04:17 – 00:23:34:08
Clint Loveall
It means the idea that every Christian is a missionary. And they would argue that in Christendom you’re sort of insulated from that idea and instead you just you go to church, but you don’t understand yourself to be kingdom people more. You understand yourself to be people who are, you know, in churches. And those mis geologists draw a pretty heavy distinction between Christianity and Christendom.

00:23:34:44 – 00:24:05:56
Clint Loveall
And we can there’ll be time for questions. So if the if the Christendom thing doesn’t make sense, the supreme example of it is in the three and 400 A.D., right. The church has been underground for centuries in 313. It’s been happening a little bit before that. But 313 it comes aboveground. 325 Council of Nicaea And you would think that’s great time for the church.

00:24:06:16 – 00:24:33:30
Clint Loveall
But his history shows the church actually began to flag. Now people were going, but the church lost its zeal. It wasn’t being persecuted. Instead of making disciples, it started making relics. It started making temples. It started making cathedrals. And it now had this whole list of things that it could do, and it forgot to do some of the things that were essential to who it was supposed to be.

00:24:33:48 – 00:24:41:07
Clint Loveall
And that’s basically the idea here. Michael anything you want, add anything on Christendom?

00:24:41:07 – 00:24:43:06
Michael Gewecke
No, no. You want me?

00:24:43:31 – 00:24:44:06
Clint Loveall
Yeah, go ahead.

00:24:44:24 – 00:25:06:37
Michael Gewecke
So the next aspect, I think the difficult balance for the church and we quite frankly, we in the mainline experience this in a way that other branches of Christianity do not. We believe that there’s something of great value that’s been given to us. We when we think about the faith, we think about that being handed off at our best, we value that.

00:25:06:37 – 00:25:31:14
Michael Gewecke
We think that there’s something one generation to the next, the way that we worship, the theology that we have, we believe that matters. And so we try to preserve that. And at its heart, that is a great gift. The struggle is our culture doesn’t care at all about handing things off that we don’t. I mean, we literally make products that are designed to break in three years when the warranty is done.

00:25:31:30 – 00:25:59:31
Michael Gewecke
Like, that’s a whole field of study. And so in a world in which preference and entertainment and today’s novelty is the highest good. The church that believes there’s something valuable in how we’ve done it and the people that that honors and the ways that we have passed that from one generation to the next, we’re just in a very precarious position because we we want to be relevant.

00:25:59:52 – 00:26:18:48
Michael Gewecke
Every Presbyterian church wants to be relevant, that we want to matter for the folks who are in our circle. But we struggle with this. This thing that we’ve been handed, that we’ve been told this is how you do it. And so we stand here one hand with the thing of how you’re supposed to do it. And on the other hand, we’re thinking, but these folks don’t care.

00:26:18:48 – 00:26:41:07
Michael Gewecke
And how do we try to walk that that tightrope? And for the longest time, I think the mainline response and Clint may disagree with me on this, but I think the mainline response for the longest time was they will care eventually. If we just wait long enough, they’ll see the merit of it. And as time has gone on, it hasn’t come back.

00:26:41:16 – 00:27:00:03
Michael Gewecke
It’s gone farther to the extreme, where people have gone farther down the road of that not being a place, I think that we’ve tried to be a place of holding tension together while culture has simultaneously experienced this kind of diversion as opposed to coming together a conversion in again.

00:27:00:12 – 00:27:25:04
Clint Loveall
And I’m not I’m not laying blame at the feet of the community church. But the community church model really looked at success from the outside. At our best as mainline Christians, we looked at success in the church. If you said what is it? What is succeeding as a church look like? Well, it looks like inside the community being faithful, right?

00:27:25:04 – 00:27:47:33
Clint Loveall
It looks like growth. It looks like participate nation. It looks like study. The community church said it looks like bringing people in. Well, what do you do to bring people in? You give them what they want, so they really kind of change the focus of what do we have to do? We have to repackage the gospel in a way that is attractive to people.

00:27:48:10 – 00:28:10:51
Clint Loveall
Now, you could argue whether they repackaged or recreated gospel. There are people who would make that argument. I don’t I’m not one of them. I don’t I’m not going to do that here. But what we added was, okay, what do people outside the church expect the church to be? What do people outside of the church want the church to do?

00:28:11:13 – 00:28:34:33
Clint Loveall
Well, they want to be entertained, right? They want it to be enjoyable. They want some social services. You ask people, what should the church do? They’ll tell you, Well, the church is shut up and take care of people. Right? Okay. The church should do that. They want the church to be accommodating. They want the church to be supportive.

00:28:34:35 – 00:28:57:07
Clint Loveall
They want the church to be comforting. And this is Michael’s illustration, but it’s spot on. It. The expectation of the church. No place is this scene better than the wedding. When people come into the wedding and they say, this is what I want to do. And the church says and they go, But it’s my wedding. And you say, Yeah, but it’s not your church.

00:28:58:10 – 00:29:29:15
Clint Loveall
Well, I want my dog to be in the wedding. I want hay bales. I want this song. I want people swinging from the scene, you know? Yeah, I’m sure you do. But we’ve been doing this for a few thousand years. We thought about what belongs at weddings, but people want from the church a kind of experience of nice, accommodating, happy to have us and don’t ask much of us.

00:29:29:52 – 00:29:33:10
Clint Loveall
I think by and large there is some of that.

00:29:34:10 – 00:30:03:43
Michael Gewecke
I am going to let that stand on its own and not climb on my soapbox. May that be no, that. But I don’t want to make a straw man argument. I won’t make this clear that we’re not just trying to railing against the wind here. I don’t think we’re jousting windmills. I to give you an example of how maybe this is an extreme example, not of a wedding, but of the ways in which the church has some churches have responded to this cultural expectation.

00:30:03:43 – 00:30:22:49
Michael Gewecke
And I’m going to name the entertainment. People want the church to be interesting. Don’t bore me for an hour, right? I can go to a movie for an hour and a half and be entertained. Or I could go sit in that pew and fall asleep, so you better keep me awake. And Clinton, I came across this. I don’t remember what spurred this search, but we found a church.

00:30:23:07 – 00:30:30:43
Michael Gewecke
Do you know the movie Toy Story with the. It’s an animated movie with the toys. And it’s a it’s a well-told story. But there was a church.

00:30:31:03 – 00:30:33:00
Clint Loveall
I’ve been hearing about this for two years. Yeah.

00:30:33:15 – 00:30:57:16
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. You have there is a church who is trying to be entertaining. So they did a series on Toy Story, which apparently they tried to tell the gospel through that and what they did on their stage, because it’s not a chance. It’s a stage, a huge stage. They built about there had to be about 12 to 15 feet tall, a bed that looked like the bed from Toy Story.

00:30:58:08 – 00:31:25:10
Michael Gewecke
And then to introduce the sermon that day, two of the pastors came out and started jumping on the bed, which was a trampoline, and they were talking to each other while jumping. That’s ridiculous. Like, that’s psycho. But that is the extent I use legs. I know that there’s I hope there’s not a Presbyterian church who could be accused of that.

00:31:25:10 – 00:31:49:49
Michael Gewecke
But I realize that’s an example of the extreme. But what they’re responding to is not extreme. Did you see that point? Well, what they’re attempting to do, they’re doing at a level that the Presbyterians haven’t got to, but we feel that, too. We, too, are trying to find ways to engage people in a way that is entertaining and gripping and that that will bring them back.

00:31:50:06 – 00:32:09:05
Michael Gewecke
We just haven’t got to the point where we’re so shameless to make a trampoline and make our pastors jump on it. But if there is a Presbyterian church, as you told it would work, they would do it. And I’m not. There’s a difference between outreach and maybe that’s what they were doing. And maybe I’m not making a good faith argument.

00:32:09:05 – 00:32:37:35
Michael Gewecke
And if so, that’s on me. But I just want to illustrate. There is this pressing need that the church is in a position where we have to we have to get them at any cost. And there are some churches who have gone to any cost, and I think it should lead us to a position of asking some humble questions about or have we sacrifice some of our deeper values for what might be a quick, quicker road or what might appear to be a quicker road.

00:32:37:46 – 00:32:55:37
Michael Gewecke
And that’s a that’s a challenging conversation, I admit to you. But it feels to me we are at a juncture, the church, where we don’t ask questions like that. We might wake up doing our own version of it. And that’s that’s my perspective on that small section.

00:32:55:51 – 00:33:34:11
Clint Loveall
I, I don’t want to move us ahead because I think a lot of this will fall under next week’s outline. But one of the saddest realities that that’s created for Presbyterians is that we’ve sort of accepted the idea that we don’t have anything of value or interest for people. We don’t jump on a bed, we don’t have smoke machines, we don’t the pastor doesn’t ride a motorcycle down the aisle because he’s doing a series on on Rebellion.

00:33:34:12 – 00:33:39:54
Michael Gewecke
I was in a church that did that. I want to make it clear I did not make it past the holy in. Yes.

00:33:40:21 – 00:33:51:03
Clint Loveall
Yeah. Those are all real things. We don’t dress up in costume terms. I mean, some of the ideas were not right, but. But.

00:33:51:48 – 00:33:57:30
Michael Gewecke
But we do have our own costumes. But when it’s all right not to.

00:33:57:30 – 00:33:59:16
Clint Loveall
But not because they’re interesting.

00:33:59:38 – 00:33:59:51
Michael Gewecke
Yeah.

00:34:01:24 – 00:34:35:15
Clint Loveall
But. But when you can see how you get there, when you say we have to do what people find interesting, what they find entertaining and then we say, Well, we don’t really do that. It’s easy to then think, Well, we’re not interesting. We don’t have anything to offer those people. And and I think I know churches, I know pastors who believe that.

00:34:35:15 – 00:35:15:37
Clint Loveall
And that is such a that is such a woeful, sad appraisal of the gospel and what it means to be church. The idea that a bunch of people who are trying to live together under the name of Jesus Christ don’t have anything to offer the world. That is shockingly bad theology. I mean, horrendous. So so the question then it is it becomes, are we competing with that?

00:35:15:37 – 00:35:49:39
Clint Loveall
What what do we expect of ourselves? And I think, you know, Presbyterians, by and large, for better or worse, I think most Presbyterians don’t really expect to be entertained. They probably aren’t entertained. They might hope to be engaged. You know, your average Presbyterian is probably tolerant of the idea that their church is going to ask them for things, ask them for time, ask them for money, ask them for service, but hopefully not too much or twist arms.

00:35:50:06 – 00:36:10:40
Clint Loveall
I think most mainline churches are going to hope that in their community of faith they have a feeling of belonging, that there’s some sense of guidance and navigation for their life, that that’s a place where they can be with their family if if they have children and grandchildren, those kind of things that there’s something there for those kids.

00:36:10:40 – 00:36:54:32
Clint Loveall
And and I think increasingly, though, this is always been true. I think increasingly people, as we have access to a broader and louder range of moral and ethical voices, I think people are inclined to to want to know what their church thinks about moral issues. The difficulty is they’re also very usually very adamant that the church should agree with what their take on the moral issue is, so that gets a little tricky.

00:36:54:32 – 00:37:34:53
Clint Loveall
But I do think people think about church and morality generally together, and so you have the expectations from outside, you have the expectation from inside. Some of them, I would say we’re meeting some of them, perhaps we’re not meeting. I think under Michael’s argument, we could say that maybe some of them we shouldn’t try to meet. And that brings us back where we want to kind of begin and end is what is the core issue, What is happening to the church?

00:37:35:20 – 00:38:08:13
Clint Loveall
Why is the church facing the struggles that it is? Why is our church, the Presbyterian church, in the decline that it is? What is happening to us and with us? And so we want to start by circling back to this idea, this question, Are we being marginalized? You know, that language that in simple terms gets voiced as Christianity, The church, quote unquote, is under attack.

00:38:09:07 – 00:38:44:38
Clint Loveall
And I don’t know if you’ve that. Is that something that is familiar? Have you have you heard people say something like that? Maybe. Okay. I think a lot of people in this day and age voiced that idea. I think a lot of people believe that I get asked sometimes, you know, and generally by people outside the church, but they ask me like, well, could you can you preach what you want?

00:38:46:01 – 00:39:08:56
Clint Loveall
Yeah, generally I you know, but do you have to pay taxes? Do you you know, the can you get fined for something? Can you get in trouble if you preach this issue or that issue? I think people are very interested in the idea that the church lives under some threat or that the church is being persecuted in some sense.

00:39:09:12 – 00:39:34:12
Clint Loveall
I know a lot of Christians who would who would argue that we are being that Christians are being persecuted. And they would argue that in in the American context, I’m not talking about Turkey, I’m not talking about Africa. I’m not talking about places where Christians are afraid of that for their lives. I’m talking about small town Iowa. People say we’re being persecuted.

00:39:34:26 – 00:39:56:40
Clint Loveall
People believe that that they they voice that. They vocalize that. So that’s the question I think we we want to think about with you all for a while. Are we are Christians being marginalized? Are we being in some way pushed aside?

00:39:56:43 – 00:40:21:46
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. We want to have a conversation with you about this. I just want to only add in clarification. We’re not asking, is the church increasingly at the margin? That’s a different question. We could be at the margin and not have been marginal ized. Marginalized. Has the implication that there’s a force or people that are doing the pushing to get us there?

00:40:22:10 – 00:40:49:46
Michael Gewecke
We could find ourself at the margin because that’s the road that we’ve taken. Do you understand what I’m suggesting? So there may be more layers. We certainly do today have more margin than we had. I mean, when when politicians go to make votes, they don’t call the Presbyterians. You know, they used to, but we used to have public theologians who got phone calls about what they should do.

00:40:49:48 – 00:41:12:07
Michael Gewecke
That doesn’t happen now. So you could argue that’s a form of being at the margin. Right. But it’s another argument to say, if you say that we’ve been marginalized, does that mean that the politicians have done it or is that that the Presbyterians have no longer had a compelling voice and none of the politicians are Presbyterian anymore? Right.

00:41:12:43 – 00:41:24:14
Michael Gewecke
There are many layers to that conversation. And so that’s what we’re inviting you into, is that is that there’s not just one clear line that you’re going to draw there. So how do you draw it and how do you see it? Is that fair?

00:41:25:35 – 00:41:53:04
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think so. I think so. The question we want to put out in front of the group is in what ways as you think your experience in the church over however long it’s been. Have you experienced a kind of pressure from the world? Do you have you experienced what we could call persecution or abuse or negativity directed at the church?

00:41:54:12 – 00:42:22:33
Clint Loveall
Interestingly enough, I hear that kind of language, but increasingly I don’t hear it. Put on Satan. It has an actual name or people group associated with it. So it I think some of those traditions have been more upfront about who is the threat to the church and not maybe the underlying idea of of evil, quote unquote. They’ve been more willing to associate that with a particular label.

00:42:24:18 – 00:42:25:12
Clint Loveall
That’s interesting.

00:42:26:04 – 00:42:48:09
Michael Gewecke
I would only add to that and this is a force we could have a whole nother conversation about this, but I would encourage you to watch for this. I have seen my family remains very not Presbyterian. And so some of my connections in a very different branch of the Christian faith. There’s a lot of language happening to use that language of Satan.

00:42:48:28 – 00:43:22:52
Michael Gewecke
There are Christian families who are talking a lot about bondage and mental illness and emotional illnesses. There’s you know, that we live in a very psychologically minded time. Yeah, people are very much fixated on that, you know. And there are churches responding directly to that as well. So I think in a in a world which we can all admit, we’re all adults in this room, we know that the last the last decade has seen increasing politicization in substantial ways.

00:43:22:53 – 00:43:44:25
Michael Gewecke
We know that, right? The temptation in a climate like that is to attribute everything to politics. It’s that’s not the case. There are cultural forces underneath that that are really powerful. And I think that some Christians are beginning to take upon some of that that emotional, psychological language, which which may be a good thing. There may be some things that we should learn in that.

00:43:44:43 – 00:44:19:03
Michael Gewecke
But we’ve also got to be very careful in that to not make the church a psychotherapy session. Right. Because we’re not we’re not fundamentally a counselor’s office where the people who gather in the name of Jesus Christ transforms us. And that distinction really matters. So I think we actually Jan, to your point, I would go further. I’d say we we like to keep identifying new things and they might not even be people groups as the as that force outside the church and and we do it at different times and in different ways.

00:44:19:03 – 00:44:25:21
Michael Gewecke
And we need to be aware of what we’re doing it and it not just happen accidentally.

00:44:27:00 – 00:44:53:11
Clint Loveall
I think Jan So along with that, I think what I mean is I have and I’m I don’t know, I think maybe I’m a middle person. I don’t I have I have friends kind of around the whole circle, but I have friends who would who would come after Billy and confidently say, the liberals are trying to kill the church.

00:44:53:55 – 00:45:13:22
Clint Loveall
My friends, who would comfortably and confidently say the Conservatives are trying to kill the church and nobody’s trying to kill that. I mean, okay, there are a few rabid atheists out there. They actually are trying to kill the church. The conservatives and liberals are trying to make the church what they believe it should be. They’re not trying to kill it.

00:45:13:22 – 00:45:43:42
Clint Loveall
They think they’re trying to help. But whatever side of the fence they’re on. But they can’t be the day that are trying to kill it. Now, they might be trying to get rid of your version of it on either, you know. But again, my my point is that we’ve been more willing to label evil as and and less this idea that, yes, Satan is out there working against the church.

00:45:43:42 – 00:46:14:00
Clint Loveall
We now name Satan with a group or with a person and that feels that’s not new, that that’s happened historically. But it feels more common. It feels more prevalent, it feels more ingrained in how we talk in this particular moment. So to those to those who would hold this idea that Christianity is under attack, I think the follow up question is who is doing it?

00:46:14:00 – 00:46:46:26
Clint Loveall
Who? Who is they that are attacking us and to what end? And there, as Michael said earlier, we are finding ourselves move toward the margins. Is that being done to us is an important question. And to the extent that it is, the church’s mission is to then push back on it to the extent that it isn’t. The church’s mission is to then ask the question then what is happening to us?

00:46:47:25 – 00:47:16:40
Clint Loveall
If it’s not they that are doing it, the only answer left is it’s us. Right? So what are we doing that isn’t working? And the more painful question for the church, I think, is are we failing? And interestingly enough, we have been in. So I think the decline of the piece USA is one year older than I am.

00:47:17:34 – 00:47:32:15
Clint Loveall
I’ll be 54 in June. I think. I think the last year the Presbyterian said in that growth was the year before I was born. Might have even been before that. In fact. No, I’m sorry. It was way before that was when my mom was ten.

00:47:32:53 – 00:47:35:08
Michael Gewecke
She goes, Hey, are you accepting personal responsibility?

00:47:35:09 – 00:47:36:45
Clint Loveall
Yeah, maybe. Could be me.

00:47:36:46 – 00:47:37:53
Michael Gewecke
Okay, you heard it here.

00:47:38:09 – 00:47:46:33
Clint Loveall
Could be me. But but interestingly, in that 50 year span, 30 of them that I’ve been kind of paying attention, Right.

00:47:48:34 – 00:48:12:05
Clint Loveall
All the answers I’ve heard. I would go, Michael, when I go to press prayer meetings, we read the books, we get the stuff from General Assembly. You know what? Nobody says we’re failing. We always have some. Well, people don’t like theology. Well, people don’t like deep thought. Well, people don’t like real music. People don’t like like, well, maybe we’re just not doing very well.

00:48:12:32 – 00:48:35:29
Clint Loveall
Nobody ever says that. Nobody ever says, Hey, guys, maybe it’s us. Maybe for 50 straight years of decline. We might have something to do with it. When we look from the inside, it’s always them. People don’t want to come to church anymore. People are too busy. People would rather go play soccer. People would rather go play golf. Well, why is that?

00:48:36:19 – 00:49:08:49
Clint Loveall
We never ask whether it’s us. So the second question for you all. Are we failing? Is the church dropping the ball? And if so, in your experience, how what is the church not doing that it should be doing or doing that? It should not be doing that. That is hurting us and not helping us. Does that make sense?

00:49:10:35 – 00:49:47:13
Clint Loveall
You mentioned urban church, that the urban church, I think has been a kind of ground for experimentation. Some of what’s happening in inner cities, in large cities has they’ve forced the issue a little bit faster for churches than the rural church. We the the rural church experience has been sort of and I’m using using sort of, I don’t know, maybe extravagant language, but the rural church experience is slow death.

00:49:48:25 – 00:50:12:18
Clint Loveall
But in in urban areas that can happen very quickly. And so consequently, many times those churches have been a little bit more on the cutting edge of trying new things and being forced to experiment and some really interesting things. You know it in in our part of the world. And this isn’t an insult. It’s just where we live in our part of the world.

00:50:12:28 – 00:50:34:35
Clint Loveall
We can do without being very multi-ethnic, multicultural. You can’t do that in the middle of a large urban area. If you just say it, we’re for these this brand of people that’s really hard to do. Just it’s tough to get away with that there. And so I do think we look to the inner cities and they’re helping us.

00:50:34:35 – 00:50:36:57
Clint Loveall
Some of those churches are are helping us.

00:50:37:24 – 00:51:01:04
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, some and actually some of those are Presbyterian. I know many of you. Do you remember when First Presbyterian Church of Jamaica was here? We we stood to learn a lot from them. And it’s incredible. They’re in the neighborhood that is currently being bought out by massive companies so that they can they can raise buildings and build apartments that no one can afford to live in in the neighborhood.

00:51:01:26 – 00:51:34:10
Michael Gewecke
So this congregation built affordable housing on the only part of their property that they had left so that people would have a place to live in their neighborhood. So there’s the when we have this conversation, next next topic that we’re going to engage, what we’re together next week is going to be about the nature of the church. Because the fundamental question that we’re asking you and we’re just a little bit too big to have that frank conversation all at this moment, I realize we’re asking you deep and challenging questions.

00:51:34:10 – 00:52:04:15
Michael Gewecke
Are we all want to be friends at the end of this? So that’s good. But I want to be clear what we are all looking at and what we all at our best are desiring is to talk about the true nature of the church, which is defined by Jesus Christ, the revelation of who He is. And so we’re going to talk about that next week, about what it looks like, because, by the way, Presbyterians have some great guiding fundamental core convictions about that, what that should look like.

00:52:04:55 – 00:52:25:12
Michael Gewecke
And I encourage you to read some of them. We’ll talk about them next week. But that said, these two questions are we being marginalized? Other words, are these external forces or are we failing? Which is another way of asking, is it an internal force? I think when we come to this point in the conversation, we need to be honest and say, yes, yes, this is true.

00:52:25:39 – 00:52:51:06
Michael Gewecke
And then we we I realize we can’t have this conversation and all get our voices out at the same time. But that’s why we do education, that that’s why we have these tables, that fellowship, the point is that we get around together as a body and we do the best that we can to shine the light in those dark places because you all have experiences that see things that we don’t see.

00:52:51:32 – 00:53:13:48
Michael Gewecke
And and we also are privy to conversations that you don’t have time or interest for. And that’s the that’s the way it’s built that we would come together. We would try our very best to be honest about where we’re at. That said, I think Clint’s point is strong. This is maybe a sharp example, but this will be my final word right now.

00:53:14:25 – 00:53:34:12
Michael Gewecke
By many, many metrics, it feels like we’re on a sinking ship just to be honest with you. And as a kid, one of my favorite things historically, I read books, I watched documentaries. I was interested in the Titanic. It was the thing that gripped my attention. And so for me, sometimes I think of the church as being the Titanic that we’re on the ship and it’s sinking.

00:53:34:37 – 00:54:03:05
Michael Gewecke
And I know that. Stark But bear with me. The thing that nobody talks about in my leadership circles is so. So now what cause do you know that a significant number of the lifeboats in the Titanic were not full? In fact, some of them only had a couple people. So we talk all the time. If you know the Titanic about you, there weren’t enough lifeboats for every 100% accurate.

00:54:03:19 – 00:54:23:00
Michael Gewecke
You know that the lifeboats that were there were not full. And what’s crazy is we’re in the moment in which there are these external forces and internal forces. And you know, what we’re not talking about is what are the lifeboats that we should be helping people get into? What are the things that churches should be trying? What are the places where the gospel strong that we can support?

00:54:23:10 – 00:54:43:58
Michael Gewecke
There’s good, even in the midst of struggle, right? And we get so fixated on either it outside of us, I think, less often than the inside, that we missed those opportunities. And that would be a shame if we couldn’t face the reality of the moment, listen to each other and do better.

00:54:44:47 – 00:54:58:31
Clint Loveall
I’ll push back on that just a little because this is one of those places, Michael and I don’t fundamentally disagree on a lot of things, but this is one of them. And I think the Titanic can be fixed.

00:54:58:41 – 00:55:02:15
Michael Gewecke
I know. Allow me. I want to be clear, though. I mean I mean.

00:55:02:15 – 00:55:06:18
Clint Loveall
I’m the guy who goes under last because I didn’t realize we were actually sinking.

00:55:06:19 – 00:55:26:31
Michael Gewecke
I won’t be very clear when I say church in that context. I do not mean the Church of Jesus Christ Capital. See what you mean? Yeah. No, I know you do. But I want. I want to be clear. Now, you. You say that. Well, I want to make it clear. I’m talking about the institutional church that has a logo and a name that we attribute to be that church.

00:55:26:33 – 00:55:35:04
Michael Gewecke
But that’s all I mean. And we also do have a very different emphasis on that. But I largely agree.

00:55:35:06 – 00:55:42:25
Clint Loveall
I also mean that I just am not I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet.

00:55:45:28 – 00:56:13:49
Clint Loveall
Well, no, I don’t. And again, I don’t mean here. I don’t mean one of the struggles, one of the you know, your strengths are often your weaknesses. One of the one of the struggles here is that so many of the other things don’t feel true. We are wonderfully blessed to be able to participate in first press and maybe not feel the weight of the conversations.

00:56:13:49 – 00:57:04:10
Clint Loveall
Michael and I have to have at the higher levels. And and, you know, that is that that is a beautiful, wonderful thing. I, I, I would struggle to enjoy my vocation in other places. From a reform perspective, it is one has to be cautious in the idea that what the Bible said then it doesn’t also say now we have we have tried to live under the idea that if we understood what the Bible said, then we’re better able to understand what it says now.

00:57:04:10 – 00:57:49:17
Clint Loveall
And so I think we we do have to be a little bit careful in separating the idea that, well, they thought one thing and we think another thing, because what the the ultimate point is, is is not our opinion. But two to find in scripture guidance for whatever days in which we live. Having said that, I, I do think your point is well taken and well made, that it is a difficult time and the Bible seems increasingly distant from some of our cultural issues, some of our hot button issues.

00:57:50:54 – 00:58:27:14
Clint Loveall
We we have been we’ve tried to be intentional in first press, in not jumping on the latest bandwagon. And some of that is probably self-preservation. Some of it is it is just a very difficult time to have loaded conversations because those have to be on undergirded with relational commitment to respect one another and disagree at the same time.

00:58:27:14 – 00:58:41:40
Clint Loveall
And by and large, I’m not sure we live there, at least in this current moment in the world, that that’s a lot to ask for some folks. And so, yeah, I’ll think about that. Lynn That’s a that’s a helpful point.

00:58:42:16 – 00:59:09:45
Michael Gewecke
I just want to add something here. I need know that we need to be brief, but this this week on Thursday the is having a thing and they asked me if I would come and talk with kids about technology and and devices and things like that. And I’ve been preparing some thoughts on that for a while. And, you know, that was the the most common command in the New Testament is do not fear.

00:59:11:11 – 00:59:41:13
Michael Gewecke
And the CDC just released a report that says the fastest growing illness among adolescents is anxiety and depression disorders. And there’s real statistical evidence. It’s not firm yet. Scientifically, you can’t make this case 1 to 1 yet. But there’s a lot of reason to suspect that there will one day be scientific 1 to 1 relationship between device usage and these emotional psychological illnesses.

00:59:42:27 – 01:00:01:15
Michael Gewecke
I’m not predicting that’s the case, but that’s what they are. That’s what experts are saying at this point. My point is this. You know, the things that people in church want to talk about are the things that made the 24 hour news cycle yesterday. Those are the things that that get fixated in the publications and then the conversation.

01:00:01:57 – 01:00:29:36
Michael Gewecke
But you what parents need today is help figuring out what we do with all of our kids who we are really worried about anxiety and depression and fear, which doesn’t seem relevant. To be honest with you, because nobody talks about that in church, but when kids come to youth group here and we get to love on them and we and parents know that they’re coming to a place that’s talking about being created in the image of God and that you’re beautiful, right?

01:00:29:58 – 01:00:55:35
Michael Gewecke
That may seem small in a world that is obsessed with about six bullet point issues, but there are things I guarantee you everyone in this room agrees on. And unfortunately, we don’t live in a world that emphasizes those things and where else will we hear them? But the church and now I’ve turned away from the point I’m sorry that I moved from the point of this topic to next week possibly.

01:00:55:35 – 01:01:21:36
Michael Gewecke
But the response to your your point, Lynn, the question of how do we make sense of the Bible in our context? I would I would say that if we open the scriptures creatively and we look at the problems that we could all put on the table and say we care about our kids and the fact that they are in the moment, which is asking them to ask fundamental questions that are possibly beyond any person’s ability to ask at this stage of life.

01:01:21:36 – 01:01:47:34
Michael Gewecke
And we want to help them. When we bring that question to the text. I think it has words for us about community, about unity, about peace, about faith. I our scriptures are a rich storehouse. But unfortunately, if we come to them with very pointed, specific cultural questions and we allow those questions to dominate our communal life, we may miss the opportunities for the texts to, guide us to general directions.

01:01:48:07 – 01:02:07:44
Michael Gewecke
Seeing all of your eyes, I think I just totally with that. So I’m sorry, but I think the text I really truly believe that we could have a conversation about the text that is relevant. Lynn And it has a way of really forming and shaping us. And it goes back to our previous comment that happens in worship and preaching and scripture and prayer and study.

01:02:07:44 – 01:02:15:28
Michael Gewecke
I mean, we’re doing that weekly and I truly believe it’s relevant. I mean, it’s timely is what I mean.

01:02:15:28 – 01:02:47:56
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And to some extent, who you are is what you do. Right? And so, I mean, that group does that because that’s who’s there, but that’s who’s there because that’s what they do. And so there’s a partnership in that what we offer. So to kind of get to the point and I will wrap it up because I know we’re keeping you all the the danger in looking at the Loon stories for a first press would be, oh, we don’t have a lot of them.

01:02:48:45 – 01:03:15:41
Clint Loveall
So they they there’s nothing for them here, right. Where the reality is, okay, we don’t have a group of 30 year olds who’ve been married five years with two kids. But we’ve got a church full of people who know something about that stage of life and look back on it and think, here’s the hard parts of it, here’s the struggles of it, here’s the amazing blessings of it.

01:03:16:26 – 01:04:00:01
Clint Loveall
And if if we can connect those voices somehow in a real way, there is something to offer. It may not be the fun, entertaining, communal side of it. It may be the deeper, thoughtful, reflective side of it, or maybe both. If we could figure out how to get those things together. But and I think to try and combine your comment in Lyn’s comment, we live in an era where people are largely told that they are their opinion on a thing, that their opinion on whatever the latest thing is, determines what team they’re on.

01:04:01:10 – 01:04:38:51
Clint Loveall
And I think the church has to try the best it can to hold that at arm’s length so that rather than saying think this, think that we have to say, let us prayerfully engage our tradition, our scripture, our prayer life, our savior together and see where it takes us. And that is such a countercultural message. It is no body talks like that other than the church.

01:04:38:51 – 01:05:10:57
Clint Loveall
And I think that’s one of our great strengths. We’ll talk about that next week. But let me leave you with this. If you ask people outside the church to give you church labels, here’s the ones that come up worldly, political, outdated, boring, hypocritical, Right. If we live up to any of those, shame on us, right? That’s on us.

01:05:11:15 – 01:05:35:58
Clint Loveall
If they misunderstand who we are, okay, we can try to fix that. But if we deserve any of those, that’s on us. So next week we’ll talk about the what church looks like at its best from the inside. We’ve talked a little bit from the outside. Next week we’ll talk to you inside anyway. Thanks for your time. Sorry.

01:05:36:57 – 01:05:39:16
Clint Loveall
Yeah. Thank you for being here.