Posts

Futuristic Traditionalism: Small Congregations and NEXT Church

/in

medium_3276672612

By Andrew Taylor-Troutman

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox! Now we have some hope of making progress.

~Niels Bohr

Recently I came across an essay by Don Share, the new editor of Poetry, in which he cited a quote from the composer, Van Dyke Parks, as that of a “futuristic traditionalist.” This notion is a paradox by which two opposite notions, when thrown together, are somehow complementary. If the one holy catholic and apostolic church is engaged and invested in today’s world for the next generations, this paradox stems from a certain peripatetic Jew in ancient Palestine who was connected to his religious tradition, including its own cherished past; and yet likewise insisted that the basileia tou theou is an up-to-the-moment fulfillment of that tradition in each and every believer’s breath.

How then can we, as his disciples in next church, be futuristic traditionalists?

This month, our blog posts – though very different – will each engage this paradox through the lens of the “small church.” I place quotations around this term because it seems to me that, when used, it actually designates a characteristic spirit as manifested in beliefs and aspirations, not only pertaining to literal size. I think you know what I mean. Perhaps you have heard a wistful, elaborate description of someone’s memory of his or her “small church” from long ago, often uttered with a far-off gleam in the speaker’s eyes. Maybe you’ve heard stories of Dr. So-and-So preaching a loved one’s funeral, and Mrs. Saint teaching rambunctious children the Ten Commandments, and Mr. Rock quietly maintaining the building and grounds.

You can trust the voices gathered here this month to honor and respect such traditions. In her or his own way, our authors devout the majority of working hours, efforts, hopes, and prayers working side-by-side with such people and their living memories. And yet, with God’s grace, they labor with their communities as forces in our broken and badly battered world. Yes, “forces” – perhaps this strength-giving, mind-altering, soul-inspiring, heart-touching, life-giving ministry is greatest paradox of today’s small church, an unlikely power that is not ours but from the one who promised, For wherever two or three are gathered, there I will be also. I think that notion might be a paradox as well, and I hope and pray that, as we “meet” this month by encountering a wide range of voices, therein lies our hope.

Author photoAndrew Taylor-Troutman serves as teaching elder of New Dublin Presbyterian Church. His memoir about this experience, Take My Hand, is published by Wipf & Stock and can be ordered here: www.takemyhandmemoir.com  

Image: fusion-of-horizons via photopin cc

From Generation to Generation

/in

by Steve Willis

My sister works in a high rise building overlooking Rockefeller Square in New York City and her husband works in the city as well.  They live north of the city among the posh suburbs in a beautiful home that my family enjoys visiting and having the opportunity to drive into the city and see the sights as complete tourists.  But my family lives in a small town at the base of the Appalachian Mountains looking up to the Peaks of Otter in southwestern Virginia.  It is a bewildering, wonderful, often confusing mix of cultures when my family visits their aunt and uncle in the big city.

worship 280x100My sister and brother-in-law  do not have children of their own, but often talk about their employees as the unruly, sometimes exasperating, sometimes gifted next generation.  When they speak of their work companions it is always in the language of generational battles – Boomers, X’ers and Millenials.  They are the last edge of the Boomer generation, but it is clear that they are caught up in the latest cultural battle fad – not ideological this time but generational.

I can’t tell you in a short piece like this how different a way this is of talking about older and younger generations than the rural intergenerational culture in which I live and pastor.  In the mountains of Virginia, I never hear the older or younger generations talk about Boomers, Xers and Millenials.  Oh, they do talk about younger and older folks in the church, but they talk as people who share the same joys and struggles that younger and older people have always experienced from generation to generation.  They roll their eyes when the other generation presses its claims too hard, but they also show great empathy for the struggles that the other generation is experiencing.  I think this is because they are so closely and intimately a part of the life of all the generations including the disappearing Builder generation.  These relationships are too up close and personal to fit into battle categories.  These are people we are talking about; people from family, church family and neighbors.  Why label them Builders, Boomers, Xers or Millenials?  They are simply Mabel, Margaret, Mandy and Madison.

More and more these are the latest dividing lines that I hear people in the larger church articulating.  Isn’t this a cultural battle that the church should take a pass on?  How well did conservative, moderate, liberal do for us?  There is simply too much work to do during this era of church marginalization to divert ourselves with yet another battle created by a bored, stimulate-seeking American culture.

Can we simply see people?  Can we call them by name like the Gospels do?  Anna, Simeon, Zebedee, Mary, Joseph, Peter, James, John, Mary, Martha.  When the risen Christ appeared at the empty tomb and saw a grief stricken disciple, what did he call her?  Boomer?  Xer?  Conservative?  Liberal?  I believe he just said, “Mary!”

Steve Willis is pastor of the Virginia Presbyterian Church in the Appalachian Mountains and author of Imagining the Small Church, Celebrating a Simpler Path (Alban Institute).