John 15.1-8
+ I read
an article this past week that really hit home for me. Actually James posted it
on his Facebook page. It was entitled
“Want
millennials back in the pews? Stop trying to make church ‘cool.”
It was
very good article. The
article said this:
Recent research from Barna
Group and the Cornerstone Knowledge Network found that 67 percent of
millennials prefer a “classic” church over a “trendy” one, and 77 percent would
choose a “sanctuary” over an “auditorium.” While we have yet to warm to the
word “traditional” (only 40 percent favor it over “modern”), millennials
exhibit an increasing aversion to exclusive, closed-minded religious
communities masquerading as the hip new places in town. For a generation
bombarded with advertising and sales pitches, and for whom the charge of
“inauthentic” is as cutting an insult as any, church rebranding efforts can
actually backfire, especially when young people sense that there is more
emphasis on marketing Jesus than actually following Him. Millennials “are not
disillusioned with tradition; they are frustrated with slick or shallow
expressions of religion,” argues David Kinnaman, who interviewed hundreds of
them for Barna Group and compiled his research in “You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church . . . and
Rethinking Faith.”
I found
the article fascinating. And, dare I say, encouraging for us, here at St.
Stephen’s. Certainly the forms of church
the article is mentioning are not my forms of church. I’ve been very vocal that
I have always been wary of trends that tend to be flash in the pan. In my many
years in the Church, I have trends come and I have seen trends go. As many of
us have. And every ten years or so there
is something new and hip and “happening” that comes along, promising it will
somehow “revive” the Church.
But, for
me, the tried and true method always works best. Consistency sometimes is not a
bad thing.
Still, we
do need to be honest. These trends are happening because changes are happening.
And we still need to be open to change. Let’s face it, the Church is changing. And it should be changing. Obviously it’s not changing into some hip,
trendy church. Because that doesn’t last. Hipsters grow up and eventually stop
being hip. Consistency in that sense is
good.
But the
Church is changing in other ways. It is
not the Church we knew thirty years ago or forty years ago. Or even twenty-five years ago. We are
changing. And we need to change as the Church. And, if you really pay
attention, if you really pause and just put your ear to the pulse of all that’s
happening, you can feel it too. The old
ways of “doing Church” are passing away—and by this I mean the governing of the
Church. Those old ways of “doing Church” are not effective anymore. Those ways
of close-mindedness and exclusivity are behind us.
Now,
before we rage about the fact, before we panic, just remember that our ways of
“doing medicine” are not the same as they were twenty-five or fifty years ago. Our ways of “doing” education are not what
they were twenty-five or fifty years ago. We have learned much in our recent past And we are learning new ways about the way we
govern our church. The way we do
ministry. The way we see ourselves and
the world around us are all changing. And
let me tell you, that’s a very good thing.
Yes, it’s
hard to shift our way of thinking around these changes. Yes, it’s hard to realize sometimes that the
church we once thought we knew is sometimes a bit unrecognizable to us. But, it’s the truth. And we need to change. Because the old ways of
governing the Church and leading the Church and of doing ministry just
sometimes don’t work anymore—not in this society, not in this world in which we
live.
Now, this
might be frightening to us. We might be
sitting here on this Sunday morning feeling a bit of anxiety over these
changes. We might be saying to
ourselves, “But, I like the way things we before.”
Before we
despair over the changes, we need to remember one very important thing: As long
as we follow Jesus—and that is what we do as Christians—we know that whatever
changes might happen, it’s all for the ultimate good.
In
today’s Gospel, we find Jesus giving us a glimpse of what it means to follow
him.
“I am the
vine, you are the branches,” Jesus tells us.
The
effective branch bears fruit. Our job as
Christians is do just that. It is to
bear fruit. Bearing fruit does not mean
being frozen in the old way of doing things. Bearing does not bearing grudges. Bearing
fruit does not mean being frozen in place, unwilling to move. We can’t bear fruit when we are worried about
maintaining the museum of the Church. Bearing
fruit means, growing and changing and flourishing.
But we do
it here at St. Stephen’s by doing something that might not seem trendy. We do
it with our ancient form of worship. We do it with the Eucharist. We do it with
taking what we do here, breaking bread and sharing bread with each other, on
Sundays, and then going out doing just that in the world. And in doing that, we
make a difference in the world. That is
what it means to is to be effective as Christians.
Being a
Christian doesn’t mean just feeling warm and fuzzy all the time. Being a Christian isn’t only about following
private devotions, and reading the Bible by ourselves. Being a Christian isn’t about coming to church
to be entertained. Or to feel the Church owes me something.
Being a
Christian isn’t only about our own private faith. And let me tell you, it certainly has nothing
to do with feeling safe and complacent. Being a Christian means living out our
faith—fully and completely, in every aspect of our life. And living out our faith as followers of Jesus
means that we must be pliable to some extent. And we must be fertile. We must go with change as it comes along. We must remain relevant.
Now that
doesn’t mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater. In fact it means embracing and holding tightly
to what we have do well. We celebrate our Holy Eucharist. We celebrate and
remember our baptisms. I will still be wearing these vestments at Mass. We cling and hold to the Book of Common Prayer
We respect and honor and celebrate our
tradition, his history, our past.
But it
also means that we sometimes have to take a good, hard new look at why we do
these things and how we do these things.
And what
these things mean to us and to the world around us. Being a Christian means
following Jesus—not just believing in Jesus. And following Jesus means letting
Jesus lead the way.
It means
allowing the vine to sustain us, to nourish us, to encourage growth within us,
so we in turn can bear fruit. As baptized followers of Jesus, as Christians and
Episcopalians who are striving to live out the Baptismal Covenant in our lives,
we know that to be relevant, to be vital, we must be fruitful. Following Jesus means that we will follow him
through radical times of change. And by being fruitful and growing and
flourishing, we are making a difference in the world.
We are
doing positive and effective things in the world. We are transforming the world, bit by bit,
increment by increment, baby step by baby step. We are being the conduits through which God
works in our lives and in the lives of those around us. This is what it means to follow Jesus. That is what it means to be reflectors of
God’s Light on those around us. This is
what means to be a positive Christian example in the world.
And when
we do this, we realize that we are really doing is evangelizing. We are sharing
our faith, not only with what we say, but in what we do. That is what it means to be a Christian—to be
a true follower of Jesus in this constantly changing world. That is what it
means to bear good fruit.
So, let
us do just that. Let us bear fruit. Let us flourish and grow and be vital fruit to
those who need this fruit. Let us be
nourished by that Vine—by the One we follow—so that we can nourish others. And let not be afraid of these “new ways” of
“doing” Church.
Rather,
let us be rejuvenated and excited by these changes. There is a bright and glorious future awaiting
us. There is certainly a bright and glorious future awaiting us here at St.
Stephen’s. And there is a bright and
glorious future awaiting all of us who are following Jesus as his Church.
We should
rejoice in that. And we should continue to live out that faith with meaning and
purpose. Let us, in the words of our
collect for today, always recognize Jesus “to be the way, the truth and the
life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal
life…”
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