Mediocrity Has a Remarkable Shelf-Life

[This is an article I wrote because it needed to get out. I submitted it somewhere but haven't heard back which is fine. in the meantime, though, you get to read it. Go you]

Last Sunday we sang a hymn that addresses what has been on my heart and mind quite a bit recently. In the blue hymnal, selection 421 begins:

The church of Christ in every age,
Beset by change but Spirit-led,
Must claim and test its heritage
And keep on rising from the dead.

-Fred Pratt Green

Everybody seems to be talking about how irrelevant the church is. How not only we as Presbyterians but mainline Protestant denominations are just not important anymore. We have lost so many members. We have lost so much influence. No one listens to us anymore. There is just no place in the world for us now, and we are so close to being dead that you might as well start the morphine drip already.

Now I don’t know about you, but I haven’t experienced sanctification and justification in a church that is going down the drain. Without people telling me the numbers, I haven’t noticed a whole lot of change in the pews, and growing up, the stuff everyone else is crying about I didn’t see. What I do remember is my Sunday school teacher giving me glitter for Christmas, drawing pictures during the sermon of horses with lipstick and pillbox hats with veils, and feeling kinda sorry for all the kids at General Assembly who had to stay in daycare for 15+ hours a day while I got to go play with my papa. I especially feel sorry for that kid who lost his supper of spaghetti - poor guy.

Now I’m not an unobservant idiot. I know our role in the world is different. I still don’t fully understand why we moved out of the God Box in New York, and I wish we had more of a voice in political affairs at the state, national and international levels. Even Papa’s prediction that I would pray for the state legislature has surely not come true, though he himself had the opportunity at a similar age. I do recognize that things are different, but just because we are being viewed differently by others doesn’t mean that we are no longer Spirit-filled and full of life.

My response to this feeling of irrelevance? Keep talking. Keep stating where we stand. Keep being a prophetic voice out there and presume that we are being listened to because what we are saying is important. If people aren’t jumping to attention the way they used to... well, we just had a really good thing going for a while there, didn’t we? Being ignored isn’t the end of the world. Remember feeling left out in junior high and high school? Yeah, it’s totally survivable.

But there are more even more ominous emotions floating around. At the recent General Assembly I was greatly dismayed with the rational behind so many arguments. I do not understand fear-based faith. If someone says to me that the church is going to die, I wonder how lacking in trust the speaker is, since Christ is the head of the church and the only one really in charge here. When people were arguing that if certain decisions were made then people would leave the church and churches would leave the denomination, I wondered why we were apparently working so hard to keep fickle participants involved. I have indeed said to people “If this isn’t the right place for you, I hope you find a community that does feed you.” Neither the congregation nor I continued to be held hostage, and whether or not the fearmonger stayed around, the church was a healthier place.

I fully realize that my response is harsh, but the church is not called to niceties and complacency. When people insist that the church is going to die, I do not usually respond as I want to by saying “No we’re not. We are not important enough to die.” Mediocrity can live on for an amazingly long time, but we as the church are called to be, among other things, a powerfully prophetic voice working for justice and righteousness and the furthering of God’s Kingdom here on earth. If we are not doing that, then we don’t deserve to die.

Have you recently read G-3.0400? After a telling of the nature of God, God’s relationship with creation in scripture and since, and sharing what the church is called to do, it declares:

Called to Risk and Trust

The Church is called to undertake this mission even at the

risk of losing its life, trusting in God alone as the author and

giver of life, sharing the gospel, and doing those deeds in the

world that point beyond themselves to the new reality in Christ.

Are we doing this? Do we as faithful Presbyterians - the ones still around - have enough faith to risk listening to and following as the Spirit leads us, and do we trust that Christ will carry us into the future? I want to. I have devoted my life to the church because I believe our mission is important enough to continue even in the face of our faults and weaknesses. Instead of mediocrity I choose possible death but only because of too fervently participating in Christ's sacrifice.