question and humility…

In my last post, I tried to point out that the changing of our paradigm will require convicted and repenting hearts. As much as theological wrestling, debate, points and counterpoints are needed, actually acting on the conclusions we come to will only happen out of convicted and repenting hearts. That is hardly a new concept, but even though we’ve heard it before, we often find ourselves with our heads buried in dogmatic discourse needing to find our way back to those deeper places inside ourselves. Those places that we live out of from time to time that actually have compassion and concern for the pain others and awareness and appreciation of beauty in life. Those places in our hearts where reasoning and feeling become partners. A friend of mine commented on the last post with this “…I can see a lot of people reading this and saying, "oh he's right." and then we all hop in our nice cars, connect our ipods, and rock out to the Zoe group on our way to the local "worship center" to get our weekly sermon podcast fix and then go on with our lives. My problem is that I have thought these same thoughts and gone down these same philosophical paths and yet I still haven’t done anything about it.”

It’s true. Some of us who are questioning everything and pointing fingers aren’t necessarily satisfied with what we are doing about it ourselves. We can point to instances or ideas, but overall we do a lot more verbalizing then acting. Some of us stay in our current churches working, talking and attempting to create “shift” or at least wishing and hoping, others of us have left church altogether, but aren’t sure what to with ourselves. There are some reasons for this lack of action. It would be easy to call these reasons excuses, but doing so simply to dismiss our point of view would be petty. To start, this “emerging” thought among groups and individuals is just that, “emerging.” If you have grown up or spent any amount of time in a particular church paradigm with guarded doctrines and set ways, moving from beginning to question your environment and its’ conclusions, to arriving at different conclusion and then to acting on those can be a lengthy process. That process would undoubtedly be quantified in years. So, on one hand, individually, it can help to identify where you are currently on that time-line. The reason you may not be sure of what to do and find yourself just going on with life is because you are still trying to draw new conclusions upon which to act.

In addition, you may not have much help. Maybe there is a book you can read, a blog, or a speaker you can listen to that really stirs things up within you, but day to day you are somewhat isolated without a mentor or a friend to help you find your way. Keep looking and keep praying for this person or group of people. We do need community to help us find our way in this. Give yourself time in this process of changing, but don’t let yourself off the hook when it comes to opportunities that present themselves.

This self evaluation leads me back to something else. In last weeks post, I wrote “Sometimes it seems like hardly anyone is asking themselves or their congregation hard questions.” What I meant by that was if your church is shrinking, has reached a plateau, or the average age is getting older it is past time to ask yourself why and the answer is not because of the godlessness of my generation or the young people today. I see so many Christians disengaging with a shake of the head followed by a disinterested comment of “I don’t get it.”

Taking cold hard looks at ourselves and our church groups is necessary. It isn’t being critical, bleak or arrogant although it can be done in an ugly and unhelpful way. So, we can’t just say affirming words and keep plugging away expecting our positivism to get us there. In fact, this questioning is the beginning of conviction and repentance. It is a questioning of our very purpose. I want to hear our current conclusions debated. I want to hear a sense of doubt in our voices about where we are. I want to hear that we are the problem and not just everyone else. I want to hear that we are searching. I want to hear silence in place of words that explain it all away. It is only in that humility of questioning ourselves that we can truly be brought to conviction and repentance. Before the changing of the paradigm comes conviction and repentance. Before conviction and repentance comes question and humility. What if we were willing to start over? What if we let go of heritage, prior conclusions and “the way things are” and did the hard work of pioneering? Maybe that is the journey that God is waiting to take us on…