To comfort or to challenge?

I've heard many professors say that you need to do theology with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other - meaning, of course, that we need to keep theology grounded in the reality around us, that we need to understand both how God has acted in the past and how God continues to act in our world today. Theology and "real life" need to question and challenge each other; otherwise we run the risk of constructing a lovely theoretical system that has no practical application.

Last week the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Faith + Values section ran a cover story entitled "Rock of [younger] ages" which described the growing phenomenon of new churches aimed specifically at the under-35 set. While most of this article was hardly news to me, I was surprised to read that such churches are springing up in the Twin Cities area at the rate of about one per month. Here's a quick synopsis of the journalist's take on these "unchurchy" churches:

• They don't use the word "church" in their name, in an effort to distance themselves from the traditional images of church that young people may have.
• They can generally be described as "low church" - very little ritual.
• Multimedia (video and music) are a primary means of communicating the message.
• Informality reigns supreme, both in the casual dress of the worshippers and the worship space itself (often set in an auditorium or school cafeteria).
• Relevant, practical, and useful are the popular buzz words used by young adults to describe their attraction to the "non-church" churches. 

While I read this article, my other hand held Richard Viladesau's Theology and the Arts, a book I'm reading for my course in Theological Aesthetics. Viladesau argues that since aesthetic experience is a central means for humans to access beauty and truth, art is central to theology. Music, the visual arts, even liturgical worship are human mediations that can either reveal or inhibit divine revelation. Therefore we need to develop a deeper sense of appreciation for beauty and the arts so that we can more fully apprehend God's revelation to us. 

Viladesau has a wonderful phrase about the need for "conversion from our egotism." Liturgical worship must not simply stroke our egos and feed our desires - it must also challenge us so that we can love wider and deeper. It must pull us out of ourselves, to broaden our worldview so that we can love that which is "other." Worship must help us to move from our particular loves and preferences into compassion, solidarity, service, truly agapic love.

So I'm always ambivalent, perhaps even troubled, when I hear about this growing tendency of churches toward "relevance" as if it were the Christian ideal. Jesus was not primarily concerned with marketing his message in attractive ways or winning lots of friends - his way led to the cross, to suffering, to unpopularity because it challenged the status quo and made people rethink what it meant to love God and neighbor. I understand the strong desire to draw people into our churches, especially the younger generations that every church seems "out to get" these days. Evangelization does call us to take the Gospel to those who have not heard it and to speak it in their language. But we can't simply allow people to remain where they are - otherwise I believe our efforts to evangelize have failed. The Christian message demands "conversion from our egotism." Preaching the Gospel must help us to see our own need to grow, our own sinfulness, or else it can easily become a temptation to complacency or self-righteousness.

Viladesau argues for the need for conversion in aesthetic taste - that, for example, liturgical music cannot simply be limited to what a particular group finds appealing. Our common worship of God through music and song must connect us to a wider community and a larger reality than our own lives. If I come to church on Sunday and all I hear is music that sounds just like what comes out of my iPod or the car radio, am I ever challenged to think about the world, myself, or God in a different way? When churches simply give up on trying to invite young adults into their more traditional forms of worship and look to "young adult services" as the answer, are they ultimately doing young people a disservice by not integrating them into the life of the larger community?

It's a fine line to walk. We want to gather people in, but we also want to remain true to the traditions of our faith. And since questions of worship style and liturgical music are often the battleground for these battles of theology and pastoral approach, I think we can't afford to gloss over the essential connections between how we worship, what we believe, and ultimately how we live as a result.

Stakeholders

We can encounter ministry in the strangest moments. This week I went to the dentist and had a particularly chatty dental hygienist who wanted to talk more than clean my teeth. When she learned I was studying theology and planning to go into ministry, she seemed particularly intrigued and wanted to know more about exactly what I was studying (and whether I could "just use that degree to be a minister in any denomination I wanted, once I got done" which was a pretty hilarious ecumenical question, though a good teachable moment about Catholicism).

I gave her the Cliffs' Notes version of my interest in young adult ministry, and at that point she put down her hygienist tools (I realized I wasn't getting out of there anytime soon) and exclaimed, "EXACTLY! That's the same problem we have here! That's the same age we lose them here in the dentist's office, too! They finish high school or college, and then they just drop out and we don't see them again for years, because they don't have health insurance and no one's reminding them to take care of their teeth anymore. Young adults don't go to the dentist and they don't go to the doctor - they don't take care of themselves and it's just not good!"

Never had I considered this project would lead me to the dentist's chair, but the hygienist had an excellent point. We ended up having a very interesting conversation about young adults, and as I left the office, she told me that once I "figure out how to get them back to church, tell them to come get their teeth cleaned too!" Ok, point noted: Gen Xers and Millennials need to attend to their religious hungers AND floss regularly. But our conversation reminded me just how many stakeholders are involved in conversations about young adult ministry - not just those attuned to the spiritual needs of young people, but those who care about their physical and mental wellbeing as well. 

In her book Tribal Church, Carol Howard Merritt makes a strong case that churches need to recognize the many stressors on the lives of today's 20- and 30-somethings - rising debts, college loans, lack of job security, lack of health insurance - in order to draw them into community and support them with pastoral care. I had never thought to ask a health professional their opinion on today's younger generations, and yet I learned an entirely new perspective - another piece of the puzzle. It makes me wonder who else I need to talk to about these questions, outside the normal confines of the "ministry world"...