“But she’s your family”

I don’t know Chuck DeGroat, but I think I like him. Here’s what he calls his “rant against change.”

Call me a hypocrite.  I’m about to rant against the new.  People who know me and have read what I’ve written, even recently, will laugh at my hypocrisy.  They know my adoration for the iPad and the iPhone 4, and my belief that technology (from the Roman roads, to the printing press, to Twitter) is the way God gets his message out.  I’m also  convinced that God was so excited about the newness of the world he created that he had to sit down for a day and take it all in.  And God clearly doesn’t have a problem (re)newing all sorts of things, because the “New” Testament is chock-full of new things – new creation, new law, a new ‘Moses’, a new song, a new heart, and…not least…a New Exodus.

That said, I’ve got to rant against the tragic American penchant for the new, particularly is it relates to commitments. Let me give you an example.  When a child is baptized, the people stand to recite a portion of the liturgy expressing something sacred and deeply meaningful:

The Pastor asks:

Do you promise to love, encourage, and support
these brothers and sisters
by teaching the gospel of God’s love,
by being an example of Christian faith and character, and
by giving the strong support of God’s family
in fellowship, prayer, and service?

The liturgy is even more expansive and beautiful than that, but here’s what I love:  there is a promise of commitment, family commitment.  It resists the whole “I’ll take the next bus to the newest-and-latest” mentality.  It resists it because of a family bond, a bond formed in common prayers, common struggles, common confessions, common meals (the Eucharist), and common joys.

Now, here’s the deal.  Families (=churches) are difficult.  They are, more often than not, dysfunctional.  Some families  are so dysfunctional that it would be a sin not to leave.  You leave abusive families.  But, you stay and honestly engage in the rest.  It may be difficult, but your own growth depends on it.

I’ve seen this marriages, too.  I’ve (too often) seen people quit because quitting was easy and convenient.  We’ve become habituated to holding the remote control in our hand and switching channels at our convenience.  But, the tragedy is that we do this in relationships, forgetting that in a relationship we sign up for messy.

… Eugene Peterson A Long Obedience in the Same Direction writes:

“…I am quite sure that for a pastor in Western culture at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the aspect of the world that makes the work of leading Christians in the way of faith most difficult is what Gore Vidal has analyzed as ‘today’s passion for the immediate and the casual.’ Everyone is in a hurry. The persons whom I lead in worship… want shortcuts. They want me to help them fill out the form that will get them instant credit (in eternity). They are impatient for results.”

I love that I work for a pastor here in San Francisco who has continually told people who have tried to leave really good churches to attend City Church San Francisco to STAY.  He has told wealthy folks who could impact the bottom line to stay in their own churches even if they want to leave and come to City Church, resisting the urge to switch the channel.  I respect that.  He believes God is bigger than cheap substitutes.  I left Orlando to serve here because I lived in a suburban culture addicted to the newest, latest, coolest, switchiest version of Christianity, and I watched as churches battled every week to stay the newest, latest, and coolest.  I counseled exhausted pastors who couldn’t keep up.  I watched as small churches dwindled in number because the big ones played the most recent contemporary Christian music songs.  And it made my heart break.

What I love about liturgical worship is that it doesn’t demand that we (the pastors) think up the newest and coolest worship order, drama, and light show each week.  In the midst of the steady hand of a common liturgy, used almost everywhere (in Asia, Africa, and all over the world), we unite in a common life together.  In it are our unique expressions.  At City Church San Francisco, you’ll hear the unique voice of Fred Harrell, a gifted group of musical artists, and the voices of our church leadership in various capacities.  But it will all take place in a liturgy that has worked for the church for almost 2000 years, and which finds its root in the Jewish liturgy of old.  It is an ancient-future irony, a commitment to bringing fresh life through traditions that have served the church well.

But even more, it is a family language.  In it are commitments to one another in good times and in bad.  We confess together.  We praise together.  We lament together.  We pledge ourselves in a time-honored rite of commitment to raise our children in community.  It is a resistance against American individualism, which in its addiction to the language of rights makes us forget that we have duties, chiefly to one another.

Finally, the liturgy I quoted above is from the Reformed Church in America, our denomination, the oldest Protestant denomination in America.  It’s not a split from another denomination.  It’s not the newest and latest.  It’s old, older than your Grandma, and your Grandma’s Grandma.  I grew up in it.  And let me tell you…it’s not old and stodgy.  Infused in its wisdom, tradition, and rootedness is life, vitality, and progressive thinking.  I’ve been in rooms with people who couldn’t be further from each other in belief, but who sit with one another, pray with one another, forgive one another, and support one another.  And in the end, they agree to approve a confession like the Belhar Confession, a strong statement for racial reconciliation which many denominations would laugh at as too progressive.  So much for old and stodgy.

St. Augustine once said, “The Church is a Bride and a Whore.”  He’s right.  She’ll let you down over and over again.  Bad sermon.  Disagreeable decision.  Boring Sunday.

But she’s your family.

Stick to it, friends.