As a church planter, I am given frequent opportunities to reflect on the relationship between the Church, its liturgy, and the changing culture in which I live. Even in Charlotte, North Carolina, a booming city in the midst of the traditional “Bible Belt” of the southern United States, half of eighteen to thirty-four-year-olds recently surveyed don’t even belong to a house of worship. Only thirty percent report that they actually attend on any given week. I work in a portion of the city that has grown by 131% in the last decade, where families live in huge planned communities within the city limits. One such development, over 2000 acres in scope, includes space for two golf courses, multifamily and single-family residential communities, resort hotels, two million square feet of office space, and several posh shopping centers. The fact that no location was provided for any church in the master plan is anecdotal of a clear shift in our city’s religious landscape. In Charlotte, as well as in the rest of this post-modern and post-Christian world, it is clear that the gospel message is often viewed as either passé or just one of many possible viewpoints to choose from in a growing “marketplace” of ideas.
No generational group born since World War II has found American Anglicanism, in its current form, a preferred place to “shop.” Though the total membership of the Episcopal Church shows a very slight gain in the last few years, local congregational size continues to shrink. Seventy-seven percent of our congregations have fewer than 150 people in worship each Sunday. Only three percent of Episcopal congregations report average weekly Sunday attendance of 350 or more with only three of this number reporting attendance of over 1500. Of the approximately 9000 active presbyters in the Episcopal Church today, only about ten percent of this group are under the age of forty. Clearly, the church must respond. The only question is, “what will the Episcopal Church do?”
What many hope and pray that the church will not do is abandon its “core” as it attempts to reach out to our culture in new ways. We have customarily asserted that this core rests in the centuries of tradition passed on to us through the prayer book itself. This standard, however, is problematic because it does not take into account the fact that the ideologies of our Anglican founders, which were bound in the canonical structures and liturgical forms of the prayer book (in order to provide meaning to the unique Enlightenment world-view of their day), no longer are able to carry the same meaning in a post-modern and post-Christian world. It is also problematic because the prayer book continues to be substantially modified (“inculturated,” to use Lambeth Conference’s words) to meet the unique needs of Anglican worshipers on six continents– reflecting the fact that our brothers and sisters elsewhere have already recognized that the historical, liturgical, and canonical forms which “clothe” this core can no longer be meaningfully imposed on local peoples.
Anglican scholars struggle to define the essence of this core, as do Roman Catholic scholars in their attempt to discern what Vatican II meant by the “immutable elements” of the Mass. Certainly the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, the Baptismal Covenant, the pattern for the historic shape and structure of eucharistic worship, and the work of the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation V (1995) point toward it. What seems less of a struggle to me is a methodology for clothing this core, one that is found at the heart of the self-surrendering love of the incarnate God:
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death– even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11, NRSV)
St. Athanasius, in his work The Incarnation, does not mince words: “That which God did not assume God did not redeem.” If the Body of Christ is to reflect the selfsurrendering love of God, even in our worship, then it seems reasonable to conclude that in order to transform and redeem, we must first fully engage the culture. That is to say, if the baptized worship in a manner completely alien to our culture, then we cannot expect the Holy Spirit to productively use us as ministers of transformation. But if we recognize, as Lambeth asserts, that Christ is already present in the culture, and incarnate those cultural forms in our liturgy, then the Spirit can empower us to be a transforming new humanity, a sign of new life for the world. The simple question is, do we live such a call to liturgical servanthood?
In November of 1998, as part of my doctoral thesis project in congregational development, surveys were mailed to all Episcopal presbyters under the age of forty asking them to provide insight into their ministry attitudes and practices as they relate to our culture. The reasons for this subcategory are many. It provides a sampling of clergy: (1) who are from the generational groups most unlikely to be Episcopalians, (2) who have the potential to be in active ordained ministry well into the twenty-first century, (3) who will one day possess the reins of leadership for our church, and (4) whose voices are largely unheard due to their numerical minority status. Additionally, it is this collective group that is the most likely among our ordained leadership to have been largely, if not completely, formed by the theology and liturgies of the 1979 prayer book and its trial rites.
The primary danger of such a small pool is a small return rate. The national average rate of return is two percent. Response rates of twenty-five percent or larger can provide enough data to analyze. By the close of the data collection phase of the project, an unbelievable 402 responses (forty-three percent) had been returned.
The mean age of the respondents was thirty-six, with an average of six years of ordained ministry in the church and more than two decades remaining. Fifty-five percent served as rectors or vicars, forty percent as associates or assistants in congregations ranging in average Sunday attendance from 9 to 1400. Every seminary of the Episcopal Church was represented, with the larger class sizes of Virginia and General Seminaries resulting in an expected higher number of respondents. The twenty-nine percent female and seventy- one percent male group was spread broadly across all eight provinces of the church.
This was not a group that could in any way be described as “removed” from the world. In their free time, over half listen to rock music or a blend of rock and other popular musical forms. They average seven hours of culturally popular television shows per week. In addition, eighty-eight percent have a personal e-mail address and spend an average of five hours on the Internet weekly. Almost three quarters have seen a movie in the theater in the last six months. In short, this is a population that appears to be both highly connected with and appropriately positioned to speak to the culture in which they live. Most compelling of all their responses were their insights about liturgy, the unchurched and the congregations in which they serve.
Young presbyters scored high in compassion, almost unanimously agreeing that they held this attitude toward unchurched individuals. Nine out of ten indicated that they value learning about pop culture trends. Yet these significant values stand in contrast to the respondents’ statements of concrete knowledge or action. Three quarters of young presbyters reported ignorance about the basic concerns of the unchurched in their area. Only about half reported possessing enough demographic information to know which population group in their communities contains the highest percentage of unchurched people. Six out of ten reported that they know nothing at all about population demographic breakdowns for their respective communities. This sobering glimpse of ignorance among young presbyters is mitigated by a slightly larger percentage (83%) of the pool which reported that they were working to understand the unchurched people in their respective communities. Even better, nine of ten stated that they are in relationship with unchurched people, though the nature of that relationship is unknown. Clearly this group had good intentions, though follow- through on those intentions was not yet present.
In spite of the prayer book’s statements that the mission of the church is “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” and that baptized Christians are called to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ,” problems seemed to exist for these presbyters on the local congregational level. Though eighty percent of the respondents reported that their parish has (or desires to have) a strategy for reaching unchurched people, half worked with parish leadership that they believed was more inwardly than outwardly focused. Less than a quarter worshiped in communities where the average Sunday attendance was greater than the total baptized membership. Only six percent served in congregations where the majority of parishioners claimed no previous connection with the church. The news about parish life was not entirely bleak, however. Eighty percent believed ministry in their parishes was characterized by an enthusiasm for quality. An equal percentage served in congregations with an average age below 55. Over half affirmed that their church functioned like a living organism rather than an institution.
Presbyter attitudes and practices were varied. Eighty-four percent believed that the church’s primary mission is contained in the Great Commission; slightly more believed that a crucial part of their ministry is to equip the parish to reach the unchurched population in their respective communities. Ninety-six percent believed that the church is called to be engaged in the culture, meeting people where they are. Paradoxically, almost all were unaware of unchurched people’s critiques of the institutional church.
Only half believed that their parish’s liturgy was indigenous or inculturated (expressed in the language and images of our culture). An equal number believed the language of the contemporary rites of our current prayer book connected with the experience and language of contemporary American culture. Sixty percent believed that when planning worship, unchurched people’s preferences about worship style aren’t as important as their congregation’s preferences. Most strictly followed the rubrics of the prayer book, while an equal percentage abandoned the singular use of the hymnal. Fifty-three percent stated that certain styles of music are inappropriate for eucharistic worship, while sixty percent believed that any style of music can be defined as “good church music” as long as its leads people to Jesus Christ. Ten percent reported they regularly use electronic media in worship. Most did not find ways for visitors and longtime parishioners to worship without books or bulletins. Three quarters acknowledged that traditional church buildings are not inviting to the unchurched. Even so, sixty-eight percent reported that their parishioners are excited about inviting people to parish worship.
This survey gathered information from only the youngest five percent of all presbyters representing about six percent of Episcopal congregations in the United States. Even though no sweeping conclusion can be made for the entire church from such a study, it is possible to see that the hope and beliefs of our youngest priests are conflicted in the area of liturgy and the unchurched. Perhaps most telling of all is the reality that a majority could not affirm this statement: “I love the unchurched in my community more than I love Anglican tradition.” Instead, a slight majority stated that they loved Anglican tradition more than they love the unchurched, even though they reported being willing to be flexible in order to reach people! The quantity of complaints and verbal attacks written on the survey instrument about having to answer this statement further revealed the anxiety that these complex issues brought to our church’s youngest presbyters.
The collective attitudes and practices represented by this presbyter pool, though moving toward a more outward and encouraging focus, still bear the centuriesold imprint of caring primarily for those within. The vitally important issues of knowing the unchurched, evangelization, ministering to the unchurched with “no strings attached,” and parallel development of inculturated worship opportunities are stuck in a quagmire of conflict for this group of respondents. I suspect they are for others as well.
Robert Logan, a Baptist church planter speaking in a lecture to Seabury Institute, stated that there is a whole segment of the “harvest” (see Matthew 9:37-38) that will never respond to conservative evangelicals. In his view, and in mine, the Episcopal Church has the treasure and the gifts to reap where others cannot. But we must be willing to learn from others very different from ourselves. Or, to use a different metaphor, we cannot count on others to catch and clean the fish on our behalf. We must be willing to move into the neighborhood. We must enflesh the Word in a contemporary form, so that we can be heard when we invite people to discover God’s friendship in Jesus Christ, to find their unity with all people. Are we willing to do that?