Being Buckeye Disciples post 3
(the Part 2 is in the original 15 page .doc)


Part Two -- A Rant
(From the last two paragraphs of the book:)
Five hundred churches, many schools and colleges, missionary and benevolent agencies, and a voluminous literary heritage have been bequeathed to next century Disciples . . .The second century of Ohio Disciples’ history should be more glorious than the last.
Buckeye Disciples (1952)
Henry Shaw



Many of us, Buckeye Disciples or not, know the story of the James DeForest Murch letter(s) out of Canton that, through misstatement and deception, led hundreds of congregations to withdraw from the yearbook in the late 1960’s and early 70’s. That accounts for at least 200 of that 500 now independent, or closed . . . as independence was far from the panacea Murch and others proclaimed. But we can also look at recent yearbooks of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and see that, realistically speaking, we are far under 200 congregations still in covenant, still self-identified as "Disciple" congregations, still contributing to ODO or DMF or whatever one wants to call it: 170? 165 perhaps? Counted by congregations that choose to support the capital campaign even in the most minimal fashion, one could even argue for a number around 100. Look at the "Keep The Fire Burning" numbers, if you like. I don’t like.

So at least another 125 or more congregations have either gone independent or gone under in the last 25 years, then. Institutions have gone independent or gone away as well, under a variety of auspices – Hiram College, Cleveland Christian Children’s Home, ecumenical campus ministries, to name a few.

Have we somehow betrayed a glorious future Henry Shaw saw in store for us? Or was he looking with unreasoning eyes at an already implausible prospect in 1953?

Shaw was no Pollyanna; the line immediately after the epigraph cited above (and next to last of the entire work) says "So it will be if the spirit, courage, and resourcefulness that characterized the pioneers remain at the core of the movement."

Resourcefulness, in a pioneer context, is flexibility, is adaptability. Many of the closures or departures represented a healthy break with the past. What seems less healthy is the sense that the rest of what we’re doing now, what hasn’t closed or ended, is fine as it is; that the diminution is a loss only of the unfit and unwilling, and that we somehow grow in strength as we decline in numbers.

While we seem to share a fair degree of anxiety on individual issues and in particular situations, the institutional impression projected is one of "stay the course," keep on within the same general outlines of the Christian Church in Ohio, with the same governance structure, same staff priorities, same programs at camp, conference, and regional meetings, since this carefully constructed plan has served us well thus far.

My concern here is to show that a) we didn’t really carefully construct the framework we’re using, we just compromised our way into it, which itself is a reason to be open to reform; and b) for all the outside factors which have challenged us, from Murch et al to a modern culture of narcissism, it is the structure itself that hasn’t served us well at all, the most compelling argument for "blank sheet of paper" reforms.

Aside from shrinking numbers from departures and decay, on what do I base my internal sense of how Buckeye Disciples need to radically rework our covenantal life? For this process, along with the readings we assigned and the additional ones I chose to take on, I’ve spoken to 47 clergy/church staff; of that number, 27 are Disciple (22 CCiO, with five from other regions), 9 UCC, 4 Church of Christ, 4 United Methodist, and 3 Episcopal clergy, all from Ohio or neighboring parts of West Virginia.

In these conversations, what I’ve heard is this:

? Institutional Trust is gone, gone, gone. Skepticism is part of the landscape, and travel in any direction has to take that into account. Institutions may be used or worked with, but skeptically: no one should take that personally, but no one gets a personal exemption from it, either.

? Clergy alienation and isolation is "deep and wide" and real. . .and while known, is in practice not acknowledged. ("Why, sure most clergy feel alienated, but not you, Jeff, right?" "Um, why yes; yes I am. . .sorry about that!") Loren Mead in "The Once And Future Church" has this well analyzed and defined.

? There is an over-focus on what is wrong, what’s missing, which keeps us from building on what we’re doing well (gotcha: you just thought "what on earth does he think that would be?" which kinda makes my point, doesn’t it?)

? Deep breath: we have lots of money and plenty of people. Yes, we do, just not as much as we think we should, or as much as we’d like (a good impulse, that), but there are 15,000 to 18,000 souls worshipping in our sanctuaries and 1,500 going through our camp and conference program and a seven figure budget, however we choose to spend it. Would we like more? Welcome to the club. . .but are we valuing properly what we have? (Which is my Counsel Number One to couples talking to me about financial crisis, who usually make more than I do, but feel poorer.)

? Fear of failure is so strong we self-limit our chances to ever succeed at anything. If the Christian Church in Ohio was really about the work of dynamic mission & ministry, we’d have more big, splashy failures to reminisce about these days. To start a Sunday school class or any small group with "legs" you have to start three, of which maybe one will last the year. That’s true on the regional level as well, but we don’t let anything live until we’ve studied it to death. . .or something like that.

? Parallel point: Let things die! Stop reading and look up John 12:24! Shaw’s "Buckeye Disciples" is filled with fascinating sounding regional programs and annual events from the 1920’s through the 50’s that don’t exist anymore, but worked fine then. If A. Campbell had kept Buffalo Seminary going, he would have never started Bethany College; when the Christian Baptist lost its reason to be, he closed it and started The Millenial Harbinger.

? Our Long Range Plan(s) in 1994 and (mildly) updated in 1999 were good; I’ve given them to a number of trusted, active lay leaders here in Hebron, and their reactions parallel mine: this is good stuff. . .why didn’t we follow it? A good question, and one worth our time: how did we end up doing fifteen other things than the helpful handful prioritized by these folks tasked by the region to do that for us? (Come to think of it, that’s kind of discouraging for us, but nevermind. . .) Which leads directly to:

? Any coalition/aggregation (like, say, the Christian Church in Ohio) can do one new thing a year. Maybe two, possibly three, but. . .wait, see, now I’m doing it. Let’s go back and try again – A freely associating organization can do one new thing a year well. And as my wife is always reminding me about new books in the house: when one new one comes in, probably an old one goes out. OK, maybe we can do two new things a year. . .

? We have a great resource in the role of elder in our congregations, and we don’t use them. This office is a gift of the Disciple ethos to the church in reclaiming this scriptural role for local leadership, and unless we just want to disavow it (yes, I have my concerns about CUIC, and no, Dick Bowman and I aren’t good buddies by a long shot). The pre-General Assembly event for congregational elders and the "regional elders" concept for pastoral care to clergy, staff, and congregations represent huge steps forward in my opinion (but see immediately previous point), and this revitalization area has plenty of acreage to plow.

? Preaching and teaching elders, aka clergy (I Timothy 5:17) are doing precious little of either, and this represents a challenge for the faith and a dilemma for the region. With clergy using pre-packed sermons in large numbers (10% a minimum, some analysts say closer to 50%), and very few pastors regularly teaching in any way with the congregation (see a random sample of newsletters), how are we communicating our wider connection and the deeper meaning of that covenantal relationship to the membership, let alone new Christians who likely come with a) no church background, or b) a Catholic, Methodist, or other very different set of understandings. Do we take a "if we can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em" tack and prepare our own pre-written sermons for pulpit use? How do we resource ministries and ministers to communicate the meaning and the method of co-operative missions?

Obviously, there’s what people thought they were telling me, and what I thought I heard them saying. I take full responsibility for this formulation of what my conversations may have added up to. But the status of "covenant" among Disciple clergy is barely that of an abstruse Biblical concept, not a living principle binding us together. We’ve forgotten much we once knew, and practice little of what once gave us vitality – though we sing the songs we sang then with gusto tinged with sadness.

How’d we get there?
* * * * * * *

To answer that, let me go off on another historic tangent.

Covenant’s closest analogue is modern church life is marriage. When it comes to Restoration Christianity and weddings, our history is rather interesting. Campbell and most of the early reformers, concerned about ecclesiastical abuses and a profusion of sacraments, stepped way, way back from weddings as part of church life, refusing to conduct them within the church building.

In fact, up to and through WWII, even in the Disciples’ wing of the movement, weddings were conducted either in the bride’s home or in the parlor of the parsonage: not in the church itself. (Believe it or not, Campbell and others early in the movement would not perform weddings at all, but only quietly relented in the face of seeing couples go to other clergy when judges were hard to find on the frontier.) Church weddings were for sacramental traditions, and most of the full-blown ritual surrounding a wedding was tied to such theology. Having no theology of marriage, the vacuum of Disciples’ wedding practice was gradually filled by Methodist and Episcopal service books, the wedding sliding over to the church parlor, on down the hall into the auditorium/sanctuary, and the next thing you know (but not until well into the 1950’s) we have bridesmaids, groomsmen, Lohengrin, and aisle runners to match the lengthy train of a vast dress topped by a veil (symbolic meanings available on request).

Today, many Disciple clergy struggle to reform a set of assumptions around when and how the congregation affirms weddings which are themselves based on assumptions largely foreign to our own basic understandings of church. We’re trying to tidy up loose ends on a sweater that isn’t ours and that we don’t know how we ended up with – and we’re not sure how to get rid of, or even if we can. Did we get it from Mom, or was it just a grab bag present we can unload painlessly?

In this regard, allow me to sound again as if I’m changing the subject – trust me, that’s not the intention here, either. Here’s a piece of a conversation between two Vineyard pastors on the dilemma all too familiar to Disciples’ pastors as well: how to respond to certain wedding requests. Noted – I’m aware that every DoC pastor handles this a bit differently, but I doubt any of this dialogue will require much translation. (The full conversation can be seen at: http://www.next-wave.org/may03/marriage.htm)
"So where did you leave it with that young couple?"
"I don’t know. I guess I kind of wimped out. I talked to them about the idea of covenant relationship, but they just didn’t get it. It was like I was speaking Latin."
"I guess the language of covenant is not familiar to people in general."
"I’m not even sure it’s familiar to me. This getting married thing is starting to make me crazy. We are increasingly operating around a traditional paradigm of marriage that presupposes pre-marriage celibacy accompanied by deep lifetime commitments. The statistics just don’t bear that out anymore."
"I know what you mean, Mike. I recently attended a wedding where the bride was marrying a guy she had lived with for over a year. She had two other live-in boyfriends before that. Nobody seemed to see the irony in her wearing of a beautiful white dress that has traditionally symbolized virginity. It does become a little surreal when you really think about it."
"I think I’m beyond just despairing over the state of the culture. That really isn’t my primary issue. My concern is how to authentically address the reality of the life situations without seeing my job as reorganizing their lives to give the appearance of respectability."
"What do you mean?"
"Think about it: A typical conservative pastor meets with a couple for the first time. He finds out they are living together or at least sleeping together regularly. What does he advise them to do?"
"Move out. Quit having sex."
"Right. I understand a couple making a new commitment about their lives before God and then separating temporarily as an act of faith. I think that can be a profound symbol of trust and faithfulness before God. But what does it really, truly change? What if the couple has been together for a number of years—maybe they even have had a child together—are we OK with dismantling them for the sake of appearances—for the sake of performing a ‘sin free’ wedding?"
"But Mike—Isn’t it for more than just the sake of appearances? Isn’t it a statement of their lives? On the other hand, I see what you mean about the incredible disruption in someone’s life. That’s a tough one."
"Here’s what I’m thinking about: What if we began to see our roles more in terms of being spiritual directors for people? What if we let people tell us about their lives, and then, in the context of our understanding of covenant relationship, identified the truth of their lives and led them from that point? Is it possible that we have allowed the validation of a marriage by the civil authorities to become the benchmark of legitimacy? Have we somehow submitted ourselves to the wrong standard?"
"Wow. You’re suggesting something that could be really disturbing."

The dialogue "Stumbling Towards A Theology of Getting Married" goes on, but our implications take off from here. What’s disturbing in the context of the Christian Church in Ohio is not a matter that is liberal or conservative, but the question of benchmarks, of submitting ourselves to the wrong standards. These pastors are trying to resolve a functional problem by thinking theologically; they’re taking the current situation, laying it next to the ideal of a closer relationship with God through Jesus Christ mediated within a community of faith, and looking at how to get from one to the other.

Disciples tend, in my experience, to take a felt need or perceived problem, and lay it next to what we expect people to do, or in Bellah’s formulation of "a nation of behavers," how to behave in conformity with expectations. When those expectations are grounded in societal norms instead of theological assumptions, they can change out from under us in the blink of a societal shift, and we’re left looking for solid ground.

Covenant and modern American marriage do not, of necessity, have much in common. Covenant and a wider understanding of the Body of Christ, such as in the regional and general manifestations of the Disciples of Christ, do not automatically compute for most people; if their basic understanding of covenant is based in societal norms of marriage, they may relate it much more closely to contracts and contract law. . .and the language of duty, obligation, and accountability heard in the church around covenant tends to hew much closer to legal norms of contract than self-giving, mutual standards of covenant out of Scripture.

Do we have a Disciples of Christ theology of covenant? If we had one, how would it be taught? Who would embody this theology into the common life of our communion? What structures and traditions would model the teaching described and lived out by clergy and regional/general staff? How are we already communicating such a theology through our actions as a region, and how does that hold together?

Our theology of covenant is much like our theology of marriage: we’ve accidentally and unintentionally borrowed much of it by default from sources that carry other baggage. We need to develop a theological, a "God-talk" understanding of why we structure our common life the way we do, just as those marryin’ pastors were willing to go back to first principles to re-vision their approach to weddings and marriage, even if it wasn’t in line with behavioral expectations that are more societal than theological.

How do we do this? Well, to borrow a line from a friend who borrowed it himself (thanks, Bob), "we make the road by walking." Let’s head down the Way toward a closer relationship among the various parts of the Body of Christ, and re-member them, knit them together in a new shalom for a new day, a new wholeness for these times. But we need to be willing to face that we have been walking for some time down a road which defines us in ways that may not be what we intended.