Call Me Minister X

I love the church. It’s the relational community in which I have grown in my faith. It’s the community in which I have grown as a human being, as a man, and as a person of faith. It’s the community in which I have been given to and asked to give. But I also hate the church. In an age in which decisions are increasingly being made organically and synergistically through the resources of web communities, blackberries, open-sourcing, off shoring, virtual conferencing, and relational dialogues over coffee, the church seems to be going the opposite direction. The world in which we live is moving increasingly faster in its decision-making (not that speed in itself or even efficacy is the deciding-factor) with increased fluidity, leaving room for emergent ambiguity in order to adapt and respond to the changing world and context in which we live and more and have our being. The larger church in which I practice and serve seems to remain firmly footed in the modernistic everything-is-quantifiable mode of the past, while the cultural-social-and economic context in which I find myself is moving more and more towards the emerging worldview (aka postmodernism) in which relativity, the impossibility of total objectivity, pluralism, community and experience are the quantifiers for what we live, experience and seek to understand. The church seems to be increasingly (maybe that's just my cynical observation) interested and focused upon rigid rules, codifying our beliefs, and articulating in snappy formats our essential beliefs. Yet I find myself (and I know I'm not alone) more interested in opening up the community to hear and experience more diverse perspectives, dialoguing about my beliefs and seeking to grasp how belief is essential to my daily life. Can we even live together when we have such divergent worldviews? Is consensus or agreement in such a worldview-ish diversity even possible?

When the 'modern' world view was emerging in Europe could those of the 'pre-modern' world view be in agreement or communion with them? I think of the lives, experience, and judgments of Galileo, Copernicus, Diderot, Hume or Descartes. From our vantage point they seem to have been remarkable thinkers, articulating what seems logical and reasonable. Yet in their world they were radicals advocating the overthrow - not of the status quo - but of the major way in which the world was understood and the way in which that experience was articulated. Maybe there comes a time when we either have to draw a line in the sand or start throwing the sand at each other? What did they think? Is there any other reason was so often such great thinkers seem to become recluses? Maybe withdrawing is the only option?; or maybe just distance on a regular, but limited, level?

At a contentious church meeting the other night I began to have some of these thoughts. Each time someone “called for the question,” I felt isolated. All those that stood to vote, articulating an opinion diverging from my own, seemed to be grey-haired Anglos twice or thrice my age. Now I'm not seeking to bad mouth or slander boomers, builders, and their forerunners, nor grey haired folks (I'm an emergent one myself), nor am I seeking to be a hypocrictal guilted-by-historical-white-privelege Anglo middle class male. But I felt unwelcomed as we talked, debated, and deliberated, as I do often in our poliarized-overly-political and clergy-focused reformed church community (at least that which is the majority church culture issues from the dominant culture of North America in the mid 190os) which wants to reaffirm optimistically that we should flee pluralism for the safe, familiar confines of a black-n-white world view. Our church councils vote about sexuality - who gets it and with whom - yet those who seem most irate over the issue seem to be possibly those the most in need of get'in some. It's a crass cynical over-simplification, yet the most accurate way I can articulate my thoughts and wonderings at this moment and time.

"Why can't we just get along?" some might ask. Or others might assert that I'm a relativist in my Biblically based and experientially enhanced essential belief that God calls both heterosexual and gay and lesbian people to love God, to serve God by loving our neighbors in a Christ-ly way, and to be continually open to the guidance and movement of the Holy Spirit in the ways in which we seek God's Word in our world.

Maybe I'm a blasphemer, a relativist, laxest, or an opportunistically optimistic Gen X-er. Maybe not. Yet what I'm seeking to do in life, faith, personal world view expansion and spiritual maturity is to be open to change (not for change's sake) but rather because I can't believe that our understanding of knowledge (whether scientific, social, philosophical or theological) can be firmly and irrefutably built upon some epistemological foundation that can be codified in a book, measured in a test tube, or analyzed through "objective" statistical analysis.

So will I burn in hell alone? I don’t think so. Yet that’s what some say indirectly to me through their actions, words and judgments. You can just call me Minister X.