A few weeks ago, I added a religious blog, that belonging to Southern Baptist pastor Trevin Wax, to my daily reading. He has been very informative in my ongoing study of the debate between NT Wright – who is a cross between Luther and Marcion – and the orthodox reformers (Piper, Carson, etc) and at least three times a week posts something informative.
Today, it’s a book review. The Fall of the Evangelical Nation is a blunt attack on the modern evangelical church. The “evangelicals”, as labeled by the media, are the modern day boogie-man, here to spy out your freedoms with their enormous lobbying clout. While few of my standard issue friends actually know any evangelicals (other than, by some loose definition, me), they know that these pesky evangelicals have been dictating public policy since the Reagan years, and damnit, it’s time to move out of the stone age people, they whisper, looking over their shoulder hoping no mob of evangelicals is around to slay them in the Spirit.
I hope it’s not much of a shock that according to this book, the evangelical megachurch is a dying breed. She comes to a conclusion that I disagree with wholeheartedly. For me, the reasons of this statistical failure are different, though the results be the same. Hamstrung by its own free-form anti-theological/liturgical wishy-wash, many churches are finding that they are better at bringing out questions than providing answers. If I had a quarter for every time I’ve heard how someone feels like they should do something while not having the theological framework to understand what or why, I’d be a rich man. As mentioned in the review of the book, this is something that the Willow Creek people know, but something they don’t know how to fix…and these megalithic warehouses are withering in place, like a seed in rocky soil under a hot sun.
It’s a fine line. For instance, by many definitions, I am an evangelical. I, for instance, subscribe to the Evangelical Manifesto – by the way, “manifesto” is a scary word, isn’t it? The book seems to define it differently though, focusing more on the supposedly independent or non-denominational denominations. I call them that because there is a non-denominational culture and pseudo-orthodoxy. Just because they don’t write it down, officially, doesn’t mean that it is not a distinctive entity – this is why non-denominational churches always talk about who planted them: that is their denomination. In many cases, the cultural norms of such churches, without much historical or theological foundational background, can ebb and flow in such a way that it is hard for an evangelical to know what, exactly, it is that they stand for. It changes from one flash in the pan initiative to the next.
While I have issues with the concept of such churches, I have few, if any, issues with the people. These are good churches, latently Biblical (though without any real understanding of how exactly they are biblical – which lens is used to view the Bible?), full of great people, many of whom do, or would like to do, a lot of good. And yet this book contends, rightly as you know if you listen to your gut, that they are failing. How do you take a bunch of good things, right things, true things, mix them together and end up with a failed concept? It’s not the things fault. It’s the model’s fault.
I’m not going to harp on this as long as I had originally planned to, but the single most egregious fault of non-denominational churches, in my mind, is their unrelenting commitment to demographic segregation. The young people don’t associate with the old people. In many cases, there are no old people! So, you have no firm theological roots, and no real cultural ones either? Old people serve a purpose! They ground you in reality, through experience. And some churches hide away the disillusioned, wishy-washy, directionless youth away from the very people who have the life experience to help them know where they are going and why! It’s absurd, and it is doomed to continued disillusion and eventual failure. No age, race, sex demographic should be isolated away from the others – you can have a nice little segregated community, but you can’t have a Christian community, a real one as it’s supposed to be, when you do that.
This points toward a few of the other problems. There is little theological basis, and often times not much interest in developing one. In fact, there is an implicit revulsion to developing an understanding of theological orthodoxy, as though it would somehow enslave people to an ideal other than the free-form Spirit led life. People are thirsting for truth, but sometimes the churches are focusing more on spirituality and personal comfort. There is little distinctiveness, little difference between Christian society and the world at large. The prosperity gospel, for instance, embraces the same things the world does – and is impacted by recessions as heavily as investment banks. The world dictates the cultural norms of foundationless churches. I could go on for a while. It is not surprising that this trend is faltering – it is a broken system.
That said, the Christian church, at large, isn’t going anywhere. This has happened in the past, this will happen again in the future – and it keeps going, and it keeps going, and it keeps going till the day it stops. With each new iteration, important lessons are learned, but important lessons are also forgotten, assumed unnecessary. What we are finding now is that tradition is not bad. Roots are not wrong. They fix you by the spring of God’s love and truth, they don’t imprison you or restrict your spiritual freedom. The Spirit is bound – it’s bound by the truth, it’s bound by God’s character; who says we should be willy-nilly free-form? Time will tell. If you care to look at history, time has already told in the past. And those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
Addendum
I should clarify up front. It is possible for grass root type churches to NOT have the sort of problems that will eventually lead to their demise. New denominations are still possible today. We are not frozen in time with what we have. Always reforming, as they say. For whatever it’s worth, in the coming weeks I have two book reports that are going to explain arguments against standard reformed theology, as is espoused by the PCA. I am sympathetic to the New Perspectives on Paul (some of them)/NT Wright people, and think that this is the great theological debate of our time. Should it be ignored, with tradition holding serve just because it has roots in the past? Not at all. Just know what and why and how, and you’ve got potential as a church.
Addendum 2
The author, Christine Wicker, has responded to Wax’s review in the comments – an informative and interesting discussion has ensued. If you’re interested, you can find it here.
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Words 
Flash In The Pan
January 20, 2009 by E1st
A few weeks ago, I added a religious blog, that belonging to Southern Baptist pastor Trevin Wax, to my daily reading. He has been very informative in my ongoing study of the debate between NT Wright – who is a cross between Luther and Marcion – and the orthodox reformers (Piper, Carson, etc) and at least three times a week posts something informative.
Today, it’s a book review. The Fall of the Evangelical Nation is a blunt attack on the modern evangelical church. The “evangelicals”, as labeled by the media, are the modern day boogie-man, here to spy out your freedoms with their enormous lobbying clout. While few of my standard issue friends actually know any evangelicals (other than, by some loose definition, me), they know that these pesky evangelicals have been dictating public policy since the Reagan years, and damnit, it’s time to move out of the stone age people, they whisper, looking over their shoulder hoping no mob of evangelicals is around to slay them in the Spirit.
I hope it’s not much of a shock that according to this book, the evangelical megachurch is a dying breed. She comes to a conclusion that I disagree with wholeheartedly. For me, the reasons of this statistical failure are different, though the results be the same. Hamstrung by its own free-form anti-theological/liturgical wishy-wash, many churches are finding that they are better at bringing out questions than providing answers. If I had a quarter for every time I’ve heard how someone feels like they should do something while not having the theological framework to understand what or why, I’d be a rich man. As mentioned in the review of the book, this is something that the Willow Creek people know, but something they don’t know how to fix…and these megalithic warehouses are withering in place, like a seed in rocky soil under a hot sun.
It’s a fine line. For instance, by many definitions, I am an evangelical. I, for instance, subscribe to the Evangelical Manifesto – by the way, “manifesto” is a scary word, isn’t it? The book seems to define it differently though, focusing more on the supposedly independent or non-denominational denominations. I call them that because there is a non-denominational culture and pseudo-orthodoxy. Just because they don’t write it down, officially, doesn’t mean that it is not a distinctive entity – this is why non-denominational churches always talk about who planted them: that is their denomination. In many cases, the cultural norms of such churches, without much historical or theological foundational background, can ebb and flow in such a way that it is hard for an evangelical to know what, exactly, it is that they stand for. It changes from one flash in the pan initiative to the next.
While I have issues with the concept of such churches, I have few, if any, issues with the people. These are good churches, latently Biblical (though without any real understanding of how exactly they are biblical – which lens is used to view the Bible?), full of great people, many of whom do, or would like to do, a lot of good. And yet this book contends, rightly as you know if you listen to your gut, that they are failing. How do you take a bunch of good things, right things, true things, mix them together and end up with a failed concept? It’s not the things fault. It’s the model’s fault.
I’m not going to harp on this as long as I had originally planned to, but the single most egregious fault of non-denominational churches, in my mind, is their unrelenting commitment to demographic segregation. The young people don’t associate with the old people. In many cases, there are no old people! So, you have no firm theological roots, and no real cultural ones either? Old people serve a purpose! They ground you in reality, through experience. And some churches hide away the disillusioned, wishy-washy, directionless youth away from the very people who have the life experience to help them know where they are going and why! It’s absurd, and it is doomed to continued disillusion and eventual failure. No age, race, sex demographic should be isolated away from the others – you can have a nice little segregated community, but you can’t have a Christian community, a real one as it’s supposed to be, when you do that.
This points toward a few of the other problems. There is little theological basis, and often times not much interest in developing one. In fact, there is an implicit revulsion to developing an understanding of theological orthodoxy, as though it would somehow enslave people to an ideal other than the free-form Spirit led life. People are thirsting for truth, but sometimes the churches are focusing more on spirituality and personal comfort. There is little distinctiveness, little difference between Christian society and the world at large. The prosperity gospel, for instance, embraces the same things the world does – and is impacted by recessions as heavily as investment banks. The world dictates the cultural norms of foundationless churches. I could go on for a while. It is not surprising that this trend is faltering – it is a broken system.
That said, the Christian church, at large, isn’t going anywhere. This has happened in the past, this will happen again in the future – and it keeps going, and it keeps going, and it keeps going till the day it stops. With each new iteration, important lessons are learned, but important lessons are also forgotten, assumed unnecessary. What we are finding now is that tradition is not bad. Roots are not wrong. They fix you by the spring of God’s love and truth, they don’t imprison you or restrict your spiritual freedom. The Spirit is bound – it’s bound by the truth, it’s bound by God’s character; who says we should be willy-nilly free-form? Time will tell. If you care to look at history, time has already told in the past. And those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
Addendum
I should clarify up front. It is possible for grass root type churches to NOT have the sort of problems that will eventually lead to their demise. New denominations are still possible today. We are not frozen in time with what we have. Always reforming, as they say. For whatever it’s worth, in the coming weeks I have two book reports that are going to explain arguments against standard reformed theology, as is espoused by the PCA. I am sympathetic to the New Perspectives on Paul (some of them)/NT Wright people, and think that this is the great theological debate of our time. Should it be ignored, with tradition holding serve just because it has roots in the past? Not at all. Just know what and why and how, and you’ve got potential as a church.
Addendum 2
The author, Christine Wicker, has responded to Wax’s review in the comments – an informative and interesting discussion has ensued. If you’re interested, you can find it here.
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