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Introduction

Why Do We Continue to Spend So Much Time Rearranging the Deck Chairs?

The Biblical Witness:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward.” (Exodus 14:15).

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live…. (Deuteronomy 30:19, NLT)

1 Contemporary Observations:Repair in the road is no longer helpful if we are headed in the wrong direction.7Resistance to change is a consistent reality in congregations.8Tacoma, age 9, in a letter to her Pastor: “I think more people would come to church if you moved it to Disneyland.”9

2 Living on the Basis of What IsThe title for this introduction comes from a popular adage (some have called it a parable) based on the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912, after striking an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. the night before. Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember (1955) remains the definitive work that would have been almost unbelievable if he had written it as a piece of fiction. One hundred years later, historians continue to probe the remaining mysteries of this disaster with its loss of over 1,500 lives. The discovery of the ship’s remains has changed some of the diagnoses but a few things remain the same.For almost everyone on board that night, it was unthinkable that the Titanic could sink. The general consensus was that it was unsinkable. That is one of the major reasons there were not enough lifeboats for the 2,207 people on board. The first messages the crew and passengers received after the incident were reassuring.“Why have we stopped?” Lawrence Beesley asked a passing steward. “I don’t know, sir,” he was told, “but I don’t suppose it’s much.” Mrs. Arthur Ryerson, of the steel family, had somewhat better results. “There’s talk of an iceberg, ma’am,” explained Steward Bishop, “and they have stopped, not to run over it.”10Most believed that in a few hours the voyage would resume. At least one passenger quipped, “Looks like we’ve lost a propeller, but it’ll give us more time for bridge.”11 The truth is frightening: the Titanic struck the iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on Sunday night; Monday morning at 2:20 a.m. she foundered. The passengers had only two hours and twenty minutes to abandon ship. It was the only thing to be done; once the truth got out, nobody would have suggested deck chair arrangement.An inadequate number of lifeboats, partially filled boats, no lifeboat drill, inadequate wireless communication, excessive speed, the question of binoculars, theories of human arrogance, etc. were all secondary considerations once it was learned that the ship was going to sink.The great question of life is: Can we choose life instead of death and then bring our choice to an effective conclusion? Here methods, techniques, ideas and spiritualities of themselves are of little use. We must not stand in the burning house with a dictionary thinking we are safe because we are frantically looking up the definition of a fire extinguisher.12After 11:40 p.m. it didn’t matter what had led to the unthinkable. It had happened and it was the single reality that had to shape everything from that moment on. The only question was: in the light of this single truth what will be our response? It was no longer possible to live on the assumption of what could never happen; it was now time to live on the basis of what had happened. Churches often find themselves in deep denial about the reality of their situation and the degree of anxiety and conflict present in the congregation. They resemble the frequently quoted, “All hope is gone. Let us pray!” When the church cries “Help!” to some outside resource, it is usually when things have reached crisis proportions. The time to seek help is when the news comes that there are icebergs in the water. When conflict reaches its highest level, it often means that the church has struck the iceberg.Illusions Are Comforting But Not RealisticAny person on the Titanic that fateful night eventually knew one important fact: the one necessary thing was to get off the ship as quickly as possible. Nothing else mattered. Making certain your attire was color coordinated, being certain you hadn’t left any valuables in your stateroom, making certain you were in the lifeboat with people “of the right kind,” getting an outside seat with a better view of the ship going down – none of these were up for consideration once the obvious issue was literally a matter of life and death.If an auto mechanic told us, “We can’t repair your brakes right now, so we just made the horn louder,” would we reply, “That’s fine. I’ll come back next month for the brake repair”? As a piece of humor it might bring a smile, but such a suggestion is no laughing matter in the real world of motoring. It is living in the “real” world that is so problematic; we too often find ourselves residing in one that is highly illusionary. Words from our friends: “Get real!” “Hello!” “Did you just get off the boat?” “What are you thinking?” “Who gave you that advice?” “Have you checked that out with anyone?” “What makes you think that will work?” are wake-up calls.When Stephen asks, “Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute?” (Acts 7:52), he was asking a question for every generation. Contrary to popular belief, biblical prophets did not major on predicting the future. The primary role of the prophet was to announce the purpose and will of God for the present moment in history. The message was simple: “This is what God is doing in our midst right now and this is what you ought to be doing.” The message was both revelation and judgment. It was usually unpopular because it called for repentance – a change of direction, a change of mind, a change of attitude – on the part of the people. Prophets made people uncomfortable.When King Ahab greeted the prophet Elijah with the words, “Is it you, you troubler of Israel?” (I Kings 18:17), in a sense, he was right on target. That was the prophet’s role – to challenge and confront those in power. The prophet stood over against the monarchy as God’s corrective. Even those who don’t know much of the story are aware that the name of Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, represents everything you don’t want to see in a ruler (or in another human being). Prophets shattered the illusions by which rulers and people lived. They often used shocking and provocative words to get the attention of those living in a dream world. When Amos addressed the wealthy women of Samaria as “You cows of Bashan who are on Mount Samaria, who oppress the poor and crush the needy, who say to their husbands, ‘Bring me something to drink!’” (Amos 4:1), the response was not, “Let’s invite this man to be our next Women’s Club speaker.” Amos was ordered out of town.The preceding examples appear extreme because we can’t imagine ourselves being like “those” people. I often say that the only time Bible study is truly effective is when we can picture ourselves in the stories, not as the heroes, but as the “villains.” Our situations and our actions may not be quite as flagrant, but the prophets’ message for our time is the challenge to make as honest an appraisal of our situation as we can and ask if we are responding in healthy and redemptive ways. Or, to return to the analogy, are we content to simply keep rearranging the deck chairs? Are we insistent on doing only those things that are within our comfort zones? Do we believe that things will get better without our having to do anything? Does time really heal all wounds or is it what we do in and with that time that facilitates healing? If we keep doing church business as usual will anything be different?The time to discuss the characteristics of a healthy church, the ways and means of good communication, the best methods for dealing with conflict (in its beginning stages), et cetera, is before impending catastrophe. After a lengthy pastorate, some churches will say, “Things have gone well for thirty years. We really don’t have any problems. We’re ready to call another pastor.” This is never the case. The time to grieve the pastor’s leaving, the time to assess what has occurred during the past thirty years, the time to look at changes in the make-up of the church and the community, the time to look at the way decisions are made and leadership is exercised, the time to begin to think about this is who we are, these are the gifts we have, and this is where we think we would like to go – is before a new pastor is on the scene. The worst thing I have ever heard a search committee say to a candidate was, “Tell us what your program for our church would be?” That is the recipe for an iceberg strike early on!

3 It’s too cold and too dark and too late.Of course, this was not the time of night or the balmy conditions for a pleasant ocean trip in a small boat. But this was not a matter of convenience or comfort; this was a matter of survival. Would anything else be a matter for consideration? The challenge Choose life! (Deuteronomy 30:19) seems unnecessary. Would anyone deliberately choose anything that would mean less than life? The answer is all around us and that answer is “Yes.”The Hebrew slaves appear quickly to have forgotten their bitter bondage and harsh treatment in Egypt. After what for us would have been unbelievable acts of Divine intervention, they find themselves facing a literal sea of difficulty and Pharaoh’s advancing army over the horizon. The command to go forward was probably the most challenging one Moses ever gave to the people. It remains our basic challenge. “Back to the future” is still the dream for many. If only it were possible! But it’s not. Period. The fifties are not coming back and the fastest growing group (the SBNR – the Spiritual but Not Religious) will continue to grow. In its June 5, 2012 edition, the Louisville Courier Journal featured a front page story titled “A Break from Tradition.” The subtitle is “More Funerals Focusing on Memories, Rather Than Religion.” A couple of quotes from that article:According to the American Religious Identification Survey, conducted by researchers at Trinity College of Hartford, Conn., the proportion of Americans with no religious affiliation nearly doubled to 15 percent between 1990 and 2008, and more than a quarter of U.S. adults expect a non-religious funeral.“I always invite people to go to the God of their understanding,” and if God isn’t part of their belief, then “the place where they connect with the love that binds us all.” (Diana Walker, an interfaith minister).This is the world in which the church now finds itself. In the same issue of the newspaper, one of letters in the Reader’s Forum was titled “Advocating Atheism.” It contains this sentence: “Religious institutions and the people therein are the best evidence for atheism to date.” The writer, no doubt, has his focus on the worst examples of faith but, alas, in this information age, you don’t have to wait long or look far to find fodder for his accusation. It’s time for those of us who are church and believe in church to prove the writer wrong. We need to be better examples and healthier demonstrations of what being the people of God is all about. My prayer is that this book will aid us in doing just that.If we are facing forward, we are facing in the right direction. There is no other optional direction. Facing what lies immediately in front of us often means we, too, are confronting a literal sea of difficulty. We see no possibility for getting to the other side and yet there is no reverse in life’s transmission gears. Just when we think things cannot get worse, they do. The wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz movie speaks for too many of us when, as she melts away, she laments, “What a world! What a world! What a world!” She assumed she could have the world on her terms at the expense of nearly everyone else. The witch’s cry parallels the laments the Hebrew people poured out while keeping one eye on Moses and the other on Pharaoh’s troops.The cliché, “It is what it is,” cannot be sounded often enough. Whatever our situation, it IS our situation. Whatever shape our world is in, it IS our world. For us, it may seem just as cold, appear just as dark, and seem logically the time for retiring rather than action, just as it did for those on the Titanic. But things were not going to remain as they were. Remaining on board was no longer a safe possibility. A first-time lifeboat journey was the only option. The issues were no longer comfort, convenience, the familiar, and the reassuring. Facing our present reality may not be pleasant but refusing to face it will in the long run be more unpleasant.

4 At Least We Are Doing Something!There was a man who always woreA saucepan on his head.I asked him what he did it for –“I don’t know why,” he said.“It always makes my ears so sore,I am a foolish man.I think I’ll have to take it off,And wear a frying pan.”13It is much easier to see the nonsense in a children’s limerick than it is to see it in our own lives. Our solutions to problem situations in times of high anxiety are often as foolish as substituting a frying pan for a saucepan. (I speak from personal experience.) “Don’t just stand there, do something” may not be the best advice we can receive. In C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, a piece of advice from senior devil, Screwtape, to his apprentice devil is all too familiar: “The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood.”When the prophet Jeremiah denounces the people for their idolatry and warns about God’s coming judgment, they respond:As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you. Instead, we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out our libations to her, just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. We used to have plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no misfortune. But from the time we stopped making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her, we have lacked everything and have perished by the sword and famine. (Jeremiah 44:16-18).The people choose to do what does not call for repentance (change of direction, mind, and attitude) and transformation. It is something that can be done without drastic change. It has been said that change is the most feared word in our language and yet it remains the most prevalent. I believe that what most of us fear is that we will have to change. The unstated motto continues to be the classic: “Come weal or come woe, my status is quo.” It has been said that you cannot live the twilight years by the rules of the morning years. My life in the seventies is not the same as it was in the twenties; to live as though it were is simply the refusal to live with reality. We cannot be the church of the fifties in the new twenty-first century.

5 Launching the Campaign against DelusionThomas Merton believed one of the primary roles of a good spiritual director to be that of conducting a “ruthless campaign against all forms of delusion arising out of spiritual ambition and self-complacency which aim to establish the ego in spiritual glory.”14 A ruthless campaign against all forms of delusion should be the number one priority in our personal spiritual journeys and in the life and ministry of our congregations. A major delusion that keeps popping up is that the basic requirement is sincerity. “He was so sincere.” It is possible to be sincerely wrong. In dealing with the idea that it doesn’t matter what one believes as long as one is sincere, I often challenge that idea by saying, “The devil’s on the level.” While much too simplistic and void of explanation, it usually makes my point. Many sincere people have done great harm to themselves and others. I do not doubt the sincerity of those who participated in the Inquisition or the Salem witch trials. “It is not sincerity, it is Truth which frees us, because it transforms us.”15It is easy to spot delusion in its most extreme forms:Texas tee shirt describing the Four Stages of Tequila: One drink: I’m rich. Two drinks: I’m good looking. Three drinks: I’m bulletproof. Four drinks: I’m invisible.16If only our own delusions were this quickly recognized! In a recent Dilbert cartoon, the boss addresses two of his employees: “I read a book about how to be a great leader and realized I don’t do any of those things. I’m surprised that a book with so many errors could get published.” It’s the repeat of those who could look through Galileo’s telescope and not see anything except what they wanted to see. Perhaps Frederick Buechner summarizes it best:The temptation is to settle for the lesser good, which is evil enough and maybe a worse one – to settle for niceness and usefulness and busyness instead of for holiness; to settle for plausibility and eloquence instead of for truth.17While I won’t go so far as to compare our time like being on board the sinking Titanic (although in many ways it seems just like that), I will say that it cannot be a time for business as usual, for living as usual, for tinkering rather than major overhaul, for courses about new designs in chair arranging. But perhaps these times are just what we need in order to persuade us to do what is necessary.When Randy Pausch faced the reality of his own mortality, he chose to deliver what he called his “Last Lecture.” Even though he lost his battle with cancer on July 25, 2008, his lecture and book are full of inspiration and challenge from one who did not hesitate to deal with his reality. In his book, he tells of a conversation with a student who thought he was doing okay being in the bottom 25 percent of his class. (He actually was dead last.) Among other things, Randy tells him, “I used to be just like you. I was in denial. But I had a professor who showed he cared about me by smacking the truth into my head. And here’s what makes me special: I listened.”18The times in which we live are smacking the truth into our heads. The only question is, “Will we listen?” This book is the challenge to listen to some truths that demand a hearing if we want to be somewhere other than dead last in our personal, family, church, and community lives. In this introduction, I have hinted at some of the things we will be exploring. These are not all the truths that are out there but these will provide sufficient fodder for reflection and discussion.Bill Adler’s letter from a child to her minister (“I think more people would come to church if you moved it to Disneyland”) is not really meant to be contemporary “wisdom” but it is much of contemporary thinking. The adage comes to mind, “A nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there.” Sadly, many are attempting to do just that. This book is not a call to live in Disneyland. It is the call to live in the real world as it is right now. It is the call to live out our faith and our calling (which we all have) so that when our obituaries and the histories of our churches are written they will be what we always wanted them to be. Mediocrity and complacency are not the answer. When we look at ourselves and our churches, Dr. Phil’s is the necessary question: “And how is that working for you?”

6 It’s Not the Titanic, However……

I propose to shorten the seven last words of the church (“We’ve never done it like that before”) by three words to: “It can’t happen here!” As it was in the beginning, so it is now, and so it shall ever be does NOT apply to a local congregation. It is the philosophy of entrenchment and of blinders remaining in place.

Too many congregations do not want to hear modern prophets announce the realities of the present situation. (Note: Biblical prophets were unpopular because their basic calling was to proclaim, “This is how things are.” Most pictures of the future were warnings of what would result if current behaviors did not change.) How comfortable are we in listening to these prophetic words :

 “I was shocked that the data also revealed the frustrations of young Christians. Millions of young Christians were also describing Christianity as hypocritical, judgmental, too political, and out of touch with reality.”

 “A generation of young Christians believes that the churches in which they were raised are not safe and hospitable places to express doubts. Many feel that they have been offered slick or half-baked answers to their thorny, honest questions, and they are rejecting the “talking heads” and “talking points” they see among the older generations….Their judgment (is) that the institutional church has failed them.”

 “I think this next generation is not just slightly different from the past. I believe they are discontinuously different than anything we have seen before.”

 “Christianity is no longer the ‘default setting’ of American society.”

The above quotations come from a book by David Kinnaman (president of the Barna Group) titled You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church…and Rethinking Faith.19 Even if we do not believe the first two reflect our congregations, all of these observations let us know something about the storm raging outside. I recommend this book for several reasons:

1 It is based on research over a period of four years with thousands of young people ages eighteen to twenty-nine. (This age represents the black hole of church attendance. Kinnaman calls this age segment the “missing in action” from most congregations.)

2 There are many charts throughout the book labeled “In Their Own Words.” Every congregation with which I have worked as an interim minister wants desperately to reach this group but most have done little or nothing to engage in meaningful conversation with them. My thesis in attempting to reach young people (or anyone, for that matter) is that we need first of all to listen to them (whether we agree or not is beside the point).

3 A section at the end of the book is called The Research and defines the basic terms used in the studies, has a lengthy discussion on Methodology (persons surveyed, data collected, sample size, and sampling error), and concludes with information about David Kiennaman and the Barna Group (whose research is frequently cited in national publications).Most will turn immediately to the last chapter in the book, Fifty Ideas to Find A Generation which is divided into ideas for (1) everyone; (2) the next generation; (3) parents; (4) pastors, church leaders, and Christian organizations; and (5) supporters of the next generation. Kinnaman acknowledges that every idea will not relate to your particular situation and that the listing is not necessarily an endorsement. These ideas come from many different persons who are attempting to live with new realities.You can check out the book by visiting the website www.YouLostMeBook.org.

7 Jim Wallis, Call To Conversion (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005), xiv.

8 Richard Blackburn, Leadership and Anxiety in the Church (Lombard: IL: Lombard Peace Center, 2007). From a 2011 workshop in Louisville, KY.

9 Bill Adler, Dear Pastor (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1980).

10 Walter Lord, A Night to Remember (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2005), 10.

11 Ibid, 12.

12 James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1978), 88.

13 Iona & Peter Opie, eds., I Saw Esau (Cambridge: Candlewick Press, 1992), 25.

14 James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, 81.

15 Henri de Lubac, quoted in Kathleen Norris, Acedia & Me (New York: Riverhead Books, 2008), 143

16 Tad Tuleja, Quirky Quotations, 59.

17 Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2006), 88.

18 Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture (New York: Hyperion, 2008), 116.

19 David Kinnaman, You Lost Me (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011).