Church and society: unreality

August 16, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

I’ve come back from the ELCA’s Churchwide Assembly to the reality of my local parish and to my own everyday life (meals and dishes, dogs and laundry, mail and bills). That is to say, the church convention had something of an unreality to it.

For one thing, so many long-time friends of ours were all in one place for the entire week. And, we met so many more amazing people and had the time to get to know them. But the most unreal for me was the sense of triumphalism in the whole event. Mind you, triumphalism for Lutherans is still pretty low-key. Hey, we have a cultural legacy of Mrs. Olson’s coffee and lime Jello salad. We sit quietly. We live nondescript lives. We put small donations in the offering plate to help pay for the modest goals set by careful and cautious church councils.

But there is feeling of contrived triumph when 1,100 people gather in one space and congratulate themselves on all their mission accomplishments and world-wide Christian relationships, vote electronically, web cast their proceedings, adopt seven figure budgets, and (more than anything) debate huge public issues as if the general public will pay any attention to what they say.

I live in California, where Christians are an endangered species and Lutherans are rarer than a green-breasted gnat-catcher. The Los Angeles Times has no religion editor any longer; it has reduced it’s “Beliefs” coverage to a half page once a week, and it’s not interested in what Lutherans do or say.  Some people must think we are a sect.  To most people we are wholly invisible.

In my congregation, we have a small group of life-long Lutherans. And a group of life-long Christians who have come to the Lutheran church at a later point in their lives. We have recent converts. There are people who have been at risk of being, or actually were, homeless. We have seekers, who come for a while to see if there’s anything of value to be found. Above all we have diversity — ethnic, sexual, socio-economic and cultural. I don’t know exactly how to lead in this diverse reality, but I can assure the larger church that in California we cannot be your grandmother’s Lutheran church.

So I tell myself, back here on the “left coast” of America, that I must invent, create, take risks, listen to the Spirit, cry out for guidance, be patient, sing new songs, and give my quality time to people who are not members of the congregation and may never join, but are people whom God has brought to me here and now. As we name the names in our community prayers of those individuals who have needs, fears, challenges, needs, health problems, little triumphs, and needs I remind myself this is reality. This is church. This is what it means to be the body of Christ alive in the world today.

Being a Christian is demanding, impossible, heart-breaking, frustrating, filled with sorrow and with joy, costly, confusing. At times it seems pointless and at times the only way one can live with integrity. This 21^st century world is enough to make me cringe and hide from almost everything that goes on out there, from economic trends to governmental ineptitude to pop culture. Were it not for my faith in God, I could not face the unreality of the world as it now exists, nor could I even get out of bed in the morning.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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