So I was
on TV yesterday. Not a big deal. So far down the line, my days on 2nd string B-Team seemed a highlight.
I asked the producer, the old band mate who
asked me to appear, what the viewership is. He said, “Half-a-dozen.” I don’t
think he was kidding.
But I have sent the link to my church family, so…a
ratings boost! Up 300 percent! Wait. I don’t want to talk about my ratings.
Unpastoral. Unseemly, too.
What I do
want to talk about is something I said yesterday almost unwittingly…
I had
been talking around it for a while but it sort of crystallized in the moment.
The interviewer
asked me something about whether, on the downside of the COVID-19 lockdown, corporate
worship would change. I said it already has. We could list many of the various
ways: from "sing along" hymns to online stewardship; from virtual (or, in the words of Pope Francis, “spiritual”) gatherings to virtual/ spiritual Communion (as we did last week); from live stream to archived, "catch it when you can" services.
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| channahonumc.org |
But
almost instinctively, I appealed to United Methodist history: how in the early
days, the movement was comprised of small groups gathered for Bible study and
prayer. The members of the group held each other spiritually accountable. The
Methodists would go to the parish church for the Sacraments, but the primary
locus of the spiritual life and growth was the small group: the Class Meeting,
as it was called.
In
America, where there were few churches at all—and where most American Methodists
were distancing themselves from anything “England”—circuit riding preachers
traveled among the small groups, providing Wesley-approved sermons and the Sacraments.
Circuit Riders might see a small group only once or twice in a year, and were
never appointed to any circuit for longer than a year, and so the people were
really pretty much on their own in terms of discipleship and evangelism. And
did they ever evangelize! Methodism grew very rapidly in those days.
So: small
groups regularly, big church occasionally.
One could
argue that the same dynamic was present in the early church. The disciples of
Jesus gathered together to tell Jesus stories, to pray—and without mandated
form or credentialed celebrants, to share the Meal that made the Church the Church,
and to baptize. Later, codification occurred.
Which is
to say, over time, the early patterns were reversed. In the early church, a
concern for “manual, apostolic succession” defined who could and could not
administer the Sacraments, who and who was not authorized to preach—the “stuff”
of faith was taken out of the hands of the people and given to professionals.
Faith became more passive and the clergy more powerful.
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| wikipedia.org |
In America, the same solstice occurred:
from vital small groups to a “local church” model. And from local churches to BIG churches. One could cite reasons: the settling
and increasing urbanization of the country’s population (going from more
transient and rural to more sedentary and municipally clustered in ever larger cities); the expansion and education
of the clergy… there are more besides.
But the upshot is that, among Methodists,
at least, our original pattern of belonging was reversed: people were
increasingly (and more nominally) a part of centralized congregations, but only
occasionally a part of a small group. And many of the small groups (Sunday School,
Circles, etc) were often more social than spiritual.
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| trcnyc.org |
If the churches became the primary
locus for what passed as “Christian education,” the pastor became the “expert” or
resident theologian. Spiritual authority was ceded to the educated clergy,
while “membership” was less discipleship
than passive and consumerist: “Let’s see what the preacher has for us today.”
(I am
told this dynamic is present in other churches, too, with a kind of cult of personality
associated with some preachers and a kind of “Temple” mentality associated with
some churches.)
I wonder though if now—and this brings me back to the TV interview—we may be seeing yet another
solstice, one that returns us to our roots. Is this lockdown awakening people
to the power of the small group? Could people begin taking spiritual responsibility
for their own households (much as the epistles urge people to do—though those passages
are often read dismissively and quixotically: as the strawmen of anti-patriarchal
anger).
Professional clergy may become more
of a rarity, and a more functional class at that—as the rabbi goes to the
Weismann house for the bris of the
new baby in the Marvelous Ms. Maisle, pastors may go into homes where small
groups gather for Baptism or Communion.
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| reformjudaism.org |
Buildings may be converted to other
kinds of ministries, or deconsecrated and sold.
Imagine:
no budgets, no maintenance and upkeep, more spiritual vitality, less credentialed
clergy but more lay responsibility, more personal engagement in daily faithfulness…
could this be a tipping point for all these things (and in one form or the
other, some of these trajectories have been underway for a while)?
The changes will not be completed immediately
or perhaps ever, but one could (read: can) see it happening, for those who
choose to remain Christian on the other side of the sea change that is upon us.
Temple and Synagogue, as I
mentioned the other day. And on account of the synagogue, perhaps again the kind
of growth and enthusiasm that characterized our earliest days.
