Pandemic frees people from church

According to this article in Christianity Today, the rate of people leaving and joining churches has increased since the pandemic - with the first increasing more than the second.

Online worship was a great opportunity to explore a different church - they were all there at your fingertips. And your normal church wouldn't even notice your absence.

Then there were a bunch of people who decided not to return. Even once all churches were open only three-quarters of people had returned.

Of course, it turns out that the active attenders ("active" in the sense of sitting in a pew) are attending even more, and the "back row" not-so-much.

"We’re seeing that the people who came 8 or 12 times a year have stopped attending"

The mix of people switching churches and worshiping online has created mystery around the true number of members who have exited church permanently.

One interviewee said, “Maybe God is placing people where they need to be for his kingdom to grow in post-pandemic times.”

For some, it seems, that ideal place is outside the church.

Q&A with Father Rod

In my previous article I mentioned the Father Rod, the famous priest from Gosford Anglican, did a Q&A session at the end of his talk.

Here's some more highlights from that:

The current refugee situation

He was asked about the current refugee situation. As coincidence would have it, he has written his view in an article for The Saturday Paper.

LGBT and Christian

He was asked by an LGBT person about the difficulty of being a Christian when church people tell you how bad you are for being LGBT - and LGBT people think you're crazy to hang out with church people (and get told how bad you are). She asked for Bible verses to counter the ones thrown at her by Christians.

Father Rod says the best thing you can do (in both situations) is be the loving kind person that you are. The kind of Christians that use cherry-picked Bible verses to back their point of view are generally not interested in a scholarly interpretation of the context of those Bible verses nor in hearing other Bible passages that might lead to a different conclusion.

Whether it's people inside the church accepting who she is, or people outside the church accepting her Christian faith, the best thing is to be a loving and kind person.

His famous signs

Father Rod was asked how he got started with his famous church signs. He had been asked to carry out a funeral service for a gay person, and the family were worried about negative reactions from the church.

It's a longer story but afterwards he put up the sign "Dear Christians. Some ppl are gay. Get over it. Love God" just for the local community and passers-by. It went a bit crazy on facebook and since then he has been putting up loving, but sometimes-controversial, messages on the church sign.

Did people leave? "Yeah a few left." (At this point I could imagine church treasurers vowing to stick with boring, forgettable messages lest they lose even one member).

But Father Rod hadn't finished. "A few left. Some don't like it, but stayed. But many more came."

To be blunt, he said "there's not much competition for churches that welcome everyone".

In a way that's really sad, but on the positive side, it's an opportunity for a church that's willing to live out a love-based faith.

Father Rod Bower on "Religious Freedom"

Father Rod Bower is in Brisbane this week/weekend and I saw him speak last night. The topic was religious freedom but afterwards he fielded questions on refugees, LGBT issues, faith struggles and his infamous church signs.

I urge Brisbane people to get along to his Friday night or Saturday. But be warned - just as Jesus was inclusive of people shunned by the society of his day, Father Rod has a reputation for being that way in today's world.

As a result, the people attending his events include people of other faiths (or none) and a variety of sexualities. If this would be too much for you, then perhaps you're not ready for these events. Otherwise, by all means go.

Father Rod's talk on religious freedoms

He began with a childhood anecdote. Whenever one parent would drive him and sister somewhere, there would be a race to see who could 'bags' the front seat - to be in the privileged position. He sees the religious freedom debate as Christians trying to bags the front seat of society.

Teaching of Jesus are inconvenient

Of course the teachings of Jesus are that we should give up the position of privilege and instead adopt a position of service. He referenced Jesus' parable about humility.

Freedom of speech?

Father Rod's opinion is that speech is not free. Someone always has to pay. Normally it's the voiceless, the vulnerable, the marginalised, the minority, the poor and the powerless. The interesting thing about the Folau case is that for once it is the speaker who had to pay the price.

What's the ICCPR?

The International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights allows people the right to their beliefs (ie religious freedom). Actions, however, are still constrained by law. In simple terms, Father Rod says it gives a person the right to believe in the Aztec religion if they want, but not to sacrifice virgins.

Religious exemptions

Already the church has certain exemptions which allow for it to discriminate. Catholics ordain only male priests because that's their religious belief - fair enough says Father Rod (though that's not his belief). But as for teachers in religious schools, he thinks it's OK that a teacher of religion should be required to have a certain faith but perhaps not for teachers of maths etc.

New laws?

Father Rod sees the proposed "protection" of religious freedom to be mostly protecting the worst of our religion (the hatred and bigotry) rather than the good. His view is that this will lead to catastrophic abuse. He says we're in jeopardy not because of persecution, but because of how we sometimes live out our faith in not-so-good ways.

Q&A with Father Rod

In the Q&A session, Father Rod used the analogy of being on a train. If you're on a train at the platform, and another train pulls in on the track beside you it can appear like you're going backwards. but it's just an optical illusion. If you look out the other side you'll see that the platform and everything else is just where it was. You've got a better reference point.

In his view, Christians have been used to having a privileged position of others in society. Now that things are becoming more equal it appears to some parts of the Christian community that they are going backwards. In other words, equality feels like discrimination. But in reality, they need to look out another window to get a better reference point.

It reminds me of Tim Costello's article about Christians needing to "calm down" over alleged persecution.

More of Father Rod's Q&A session will be in my next post...

Shane Claiborne in Brisbane

I saw Shane Claiborne (author of irresistible Revolution) speak in Brisbane. Here's my summary of his talk - in italics. Words in brackets are my comments.

First he read from Luke 7:20-22.

If people came to us and asked us the same question would we have anything to point to - except ideology and doctrine. Ideology and doctrine are OK, but you can't love them.

In church we often recite creeds. How about we recite the beatitudes.

Jesus never said to make believers, he said to make disciples.

"Oh I love Jesus I just wish the Christians would take him more seriously." - Ghandi

Research group Barna identified the top 3 perceptions of Christians as

1. AntiHomosexual
2. Judgemental
3. Hypocritical

(Hardly an accurate description of Jesus)

The current generation the least giving to church.
But the are also the most generous givers. (Just not to church)

1 in 6 people are dying because they don't have clean water - and we need a heater to get baptised. (Said in an astounded tone*)

Independence might be an American value but it's not a gospel value. When we ask God "Why didn't you do anything?" if we listen carefully we might hear him say "I did I made you".

-----------
(The heater was a real thing. A church Shane attended had a water pool in the church for full-body water immersion baptisms. As baptisms took place later in the church service the water was a bit cold for people's comfort. So the church was asking for money for a heated baptism pool.)

Why missional churches marry same-sex couples

From today, ministers in Australia's Uniting Church are permitted to marry same-gender couples - provided their congregation is OK with it.

This decision has a great theological basis and is great news for the church and for gay Christians, but that's not my focus here. This blog is mostly about how we (often unintentionally) block people from seeing Jesus - and ways to fix that.

For churches wanting to connect with people in their community, this is a fantastic opportunity - and here's why.

Unblock faith

McCrindle surveyed Australians about faith. Non-religious people were asked if they were open to faith - and asked to rate several issues as "blockers to Christianity".

"Homosexuality" (ie. the church's historical attitude towards it) was the biggest barrier between people and Christianity.

33% of people said it "completely blocked" them from the faith. A deal-breaker.

A third of people dismiss the church out-of-hand because of our historical attitude on this.

I would have expected issues like burn-in-hell preaching, hard-to-fathom miracles and faith v science to be more challenging - but apparently not. All those issues are further down the list.

It seems that for potential new Christians, it's easier to believe that Jesus walked on water than to believe that followers of a loving God would be so harsh towards gay people.

Anyway, my point for the local church is this; how much better could we reach people if we didn't alienate 1/3 of people before we even start?

The survey says...

For political reasons, Australia had a survey about same-sex marriage before it became law. The upside is that we now have stats on how the various parts of the country feel about this.

In my area it was 73% Yes, 27% No. Three-quarters of our community thinks this should happen.

The Uniting Church says there is no theological obstacle. So why would a local church that wants to connect with the community put up a barrier between itself and 3/4 of the community.

The counter-point to this is to ask "what about the other 27%?". I come at this from a Christian church perspective. People who can't stomach same-sex marriage can still connect with any number of other churches. If a Uniting Church congregation can be open to reach the 73%, then 100% of people have the potential to connect with the Christian church. Surely that's got to be an improvement on 27%.

Wedding witness

Figures from early June show how many same-sex marriages had taken place in Australia. In my home state it looks like about 900 same-sex marriages will occur each year. It's unclear how many couples will want a church wedding, but for accepting congregations there is an opportunity to show somewhat unexpected support.

Gay couples (even Christian ones) have been somewhat accustomed to either being lectured by the church, or having to hide their true identity from their church family.

Given that history, a church that provides a positive, loving and affirming environment would be a much-welcomed (and celebrated) change.

In an era when church is barely a blip on most people's radar, this is an opportunity for church to make a positive memorable impact in the lives of the new couple and their hundreds of guest who come to support them on their big day. They would be left with a memory of church being an accepting place - a place that is open to all as a practical demonstration of God's love that is open to all.

Not for everyone

Churches seem to exist on a spectrum between being inward and outward focussed. Our choices of ministries, worship format, and music selection are just some examples of whether we tend towards providing spiritual nourishment and a comfortable environment for long-time Christians, or whether we tend towards finding new ways of expressing our faith in ways that might help new people connect with the church or with God for the first time.

Churches that are more towards the first of these might find this new opportunity too difficult for the comfort of some members. But for churches that are more towards the second of these, this opportunity for the Uniting Church to connect with people can be truly a Godsend.

"Welcome to our judgemental church"

A church near me dropped calendars into neighbourhood mailboxes.

Here's July's picture:

And November's:

Their message:

The other months continued with that theme:

God's great. You're terrible. Stop being so evil because judgement is coming.

This is how they choose to introduce themselves to the neighbourhood. Basically saying "We're they negative judgmental church. Want to join us?"

Interesting outreach tactic. Perhaps not very effective and definite oblivious to the church already having a reputation for being judgmental and moralising.

At least they're up-front about it. They're as honest as they are totally unappealing.

Factcheck

I was going to stop writing here but then looked up that Hebrews quote. It's a classic case of a half-quote being the total opposite of the full one. Here's the whole thing:

Hebrews 9:27-28
And just as each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment, so also Christ was offered once for all time as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people. He will come again, not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to all who are eagerly waiting for him.

It's one thing to pick your harshest 'burn in hell' quotes from the bible. It's another to trim quotes about salvation to make them suit your mindset.

I take back what I said about them being honest.

Jesus turned water into ... what?

We're all familiar with the story. I'd remembered the bible to say Jesus turned water into wine.

But then came this kids book of bible stories (yes, it's a real book).

Isn't the whole point of the story that the hosts of the party were embarrassed to run out of wine at the party?

Now it seems we're too embarrassed to even admit that wine existed in the bible.

While some Christians advocate marriage "as the bible intended" it seems when the bible doesn't suit our values we just change it until it does.

It's probably not new news that we pick and choose which parts of the bible are important, but I think this is the first time I've seen the key part of the story re-written.