Flipping the question

The major issue facing mainline Christianity in our time is the flip side of the ancient statement, “There is no salvation outside the church.” The major question for many people today is, can members assert with any confidence that there is “Salvation within the Church.” The general trend within our society, made clear by numerous recent studies, is that people are concluding that the church, often referred to as the Body of Christ, is not necessary for salvation. In the ten-year Gallup study of church-going America released in 1988, the percentage of non-church-going American adults rose from 41% to 44% which equates to seven million more unchurched Americans in a ten-year period. That does not mean there was a great loss of belief in Jesus as the Christ. On the contrary, the same study revealed that the number of Americans who affirm Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior rose from 78% to 84% during that same period. Numerous other more recent studies confirm the same reality. The fact is that an increasing number of Americans do not believe there is any necessary connection between acceptance of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and active participation in the continuing Body of Christ.

INDIVIDUALISM

The emphasis of much theology of the ’60s was to take the church outside the walls and let the world set the agenda. What we discovered in the ’70s and the ’80s is that when the world sets the agenda in an affluent culture such as the United States, it is an individualistic and self-centered agenda. Unless we are committed to a corporate community which regularly reminds us of our inter-connectedness, there is little corrective to this movement. Even many of those who remain connected with the church question the necessity of the church. In the same Gallup study, 76% of Americans believed you could be a good Christian or Jew without attending a church or synagogue. Eighty percent believed that “one should arrive at one’s religious beliefs independent of any church or synagogue.” If increasing numbers of Americans believe that belief in Jesus Christ does not carry any basic responsibility to participate in the church and church members don’t believe it is necessary either, then the church is reduced to a society that only attracts people if its programs “please” people. The church becomes one more commodity in a consumer-oriented society.

Most of the loss of membership in mainline churches is not to other churches but to secular society. The people who are most in contact with these people and have the most natural opportunity to speak to the importance of the church are not the clergy but our members who live and work in that society. To address this trend, it is important that we enable our members to become comfortable in speaking about the saving nature of the church.

RAISING MEMBERS CONSCIOUSNESS

It is far more comfortable for our lay people to talk about the value of church life than it is to debate the necessity of accepting Jesus as your Savior. For most people, the talking about being saved has an uncomfortable association with high-pressured salespeople while talking about their church experience is seen as offering to share something with someone which they have experienced to be of value.

Clergy have the task of helping to bring to members’ consciousness the experience of salvation/healing which takes place in the church. We need to help members articulate what they continually experience but often don’t reflect on in their regular church experience. Each week as they enter the church, they are reminded by the very architecture that there is more to life than can be measured and quantified. Each week they have an opportunity to be reconnected with the truth that the salvation of the world does not depend entirely on us but that we are invited to be co-workers in the ongoing healing of creation.