Until it doesn’t…

A second trend I observe is a whole lot of people wanting to know for sure that their theology is right on point or that their tribe has the bottom line on the truth. So… if you want to grow a church preach & cultivate certainty.

Whether it is your commitment to a specific brand of theology, or a passionate conviction that your causer / expression of worship/faith is the right way, most people during their life are looking for clarity and certainty – at least for a time.

Certainty is attractive in that it eliminates the fear of being wrong. “My pastor knows the Bible like no one else and teaches it faithfully!” That’s great… kind of… It’s good while he or she is keeping to the core stuff, but simple, dogmatic certainty on contentious or complicated issues is sooner or later going to come undone.

Perhaps a good example of this is eschatology. There are people out there who are absolutely convinced that they have the read on Revelation like no one else does. While I believe we can hold opinions on this stuff and possibly even convictions, I worry about those who simply can’t humbly acknowledge that many, many well educated people disagree with them. I have never preached thru the book of Revelation in 35 years of pastoring. I began to open it up a few years back, but realised that I was going to have to explain the various positions people had arrived at and then let them know that I didn’t have a hard theology on this stuff. It got messy real fast. I remember watching a Youtube video of 3 academics debating their opposing positions and simply thinking, ‘if these guys all disagree – and they are smarter than me – then what makes me think I make better sense of this text?’ I left it for another time…

As a year 12 school student studying poetry and observing the many ways a poem could be interpreted, I went to my pastor at the time and asked if the Bible was like that. Can we all read the same text, arrive at different conclusions and then all be ‘right’. He told me clearly that the Bible was not like that and there was one correct way of interpreting everything. I liked his confidence so I decided to throw my hand in with him and it formed me into something of a zealot for a time – that’s what happens when you are young and convinced you have a corner on truth. By the time I was 20 I had nailed down every scrappy corner of theology and I was your man if you wanted answers to difficult theological questions because I had asked them and got the answers from my omniscient pastor.

However I think he fed some bad advice that day. Maybe it was after church, he was hungry and just wanted to go home, but I wish he had said something like ‘well Andrew – that’s a good question – and its a little more complex than simple ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ Why don’t we explore that idea another time – and let me know what you think…’

Had he pushed me to think and had he sent me away curious, I sense I would benefited far more, but I was young and willing to take him at his word. For every verse there is a correct (and therefore incorrect) way of reading it. Nice. That works at 17. It works less at 27, much less at 37 and at 61 it feels absurd.

Unfortunately, a lot of faith is not crystal clear and is not certain. A lot of what it means to be a follower of Jesus is at times ambiguous and contextual. Dogmatic faith statements are wonderful for giving people confidence, but they don’t give room for the inevitable mystery and complexity. My hunch is that in times such as we are in at the moment which are tense and difficult, the churches that appeal to certainty and that offer clarity will be more popular with the masses than those who walk a middle ground and embrace complexity.

I heard recently of a fundamentalist church in our region that is growing rapidly. And it made me wonder… WHY?… When the King James Bible is your sword of choice and there is no room in the Christian gospel for social action, it already tells a tale. I grew up in one of these and much of my adult life has been a conscious decision to try and form churches that welcome thinking and disagreement. In this church you can disagree – but you’d be wrong…

I see people gravitating more readily to either the large, inspiring and often politically right leaning pentecostal churches as well as the articulate and well thought out reformed type churches where the Sunday diet can at times feel like a class in systematic theology. There is tribal energy in the former and intellectual cred in the latter. While I am not in the reformed camp I take time to tune in to some of their podcasts from time to time and there are a few speakers who do an excellent job of unfolding scripture and theology in a way that appeals to more rational thinking types. For some folks, having their theological ducks in a row is very comforting so this kind of church will warm their cockles.

However my observation is that churches that choose the middle line or that choose to even allow for ambiguities do not seem to grow at the same rate. When churches consciously allow for ambiguity and mystery they are appealing to a smaller segment of the church going population. To use Fowler’s stages of faith as a guide, the more rapidly growing churches appeal to levels 2-3 where there is conformity and aquiescence to the church line on theology, politics or behaviour. Whereas the less defined churches invite those who have entered deconstruction, or have recovered from deconstruction to come and be welcome – to not know the answers, to challenge the party line on what constitutes Christian behaviour, and to express reservations that any political group could possibly embrace all of what Jesus is on about.

I don’t think I could ever pastor in a church that was too sure of itself. Part of my own make-up is questioning the status quo, so I imagine I would be a stone in the shoe of those who just want to get on with the next big thing, or with nailing atonement theory, or some other complicated aspect of doctrine.

I have also been interested in the journey of some older leaders and theologians into the higher more liturgical expressions of worship. I am aware of some folks who grew up Baptist, Charismatic etc, but who now find themselves committed to their local Anglican church where the focus is the weekly eucharist and the worship & teaching are of lesser importance.

So that’s an observation – but again – it comes from the distant sideline. I’d be interested to know if anyone else sees similar patterns taking shape.