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Holy Week resources and reflections

Always reforming: The living faith of the dead

by Jessica Tate

Things are changing in North American mainline Protestantism. Harvey Cox calls it a “bumpy transition” into the “Age of the Spirit.” Phyllis Tickle says it is a transformation as radical as the Protestant Reformation. Pew Center polls show continued increases in those claiming no religious affiliation. Pastors and church leaders notice it, too. Things are changing.

The difficulty in a time of change, reformation even, is determining what we keep and what we let go.

Three things will definitely transition with us:

1. Our call to be followers of Jesus and to proclaim and live his teachings in all areas of our lives. Our lives are noticeably transformed by our faith.

2. To be deeply rooted in Scripture, what John Calvin called the “spectacles” through which we see the world. Scripture is the lens we have into knowledge of God and ourselves.

3. To be surrounded by the community of saints – those who have gone before whose wisdom we need and those who journey on The Way now.

It is a short list.

Other elements of church life are harder to judge. They are all we remember but have roots in the recent past. Common church organizational structures (staff, boards, committees, etc.), for example, belong to the post-war periods of general prosperity, urbanization and industrial development. Dismissing children from the sanctuary to “children’s church” is a product of the 1950s booming church attendance and the need for more room in the sanctuary.

Does a successful church require a full time pastor? Not necessarily. Does a congregation need a building? It depends on its mission. Should worship be exactly as you like it? Not if you are trying to grow in your faith.

When we confuse trappings of church life with essentials of faith, we risk being caught by what scholar of Christian history and theology Jaroslav Pelikan calls traditionalism, or “the dead faith of the living.” “Tradition,” in contrast, “is the living faith of the dead.”

Difficulty arises because the trappings of church have enabled some to experience the power of the living tradition. This reformation moment asks us keep the power of living tradition at the forefront, even at the expense of some of the modes through which that tradition has been mediated to us.

This is hard.

Cox and Tickle note that religious transitions mean a loss of hegemony and pride of place. That is not easy for those in the dominant culture. At a NEXT Church National Gathering three years ago, Theresa Cho commented that for church leaders who have long been on the margins of society (and often the church), the current disestablishment of mainline Protestantism is not a significant loss. Rather, she said, it is the way those of us on the margins are used to being Christian. Perhaps, she went on to offer, we can teach you how to faithfully live in marginalized space.

This reformation is coming from the grassroots. It requires of us deep listening to one another – to people in our pews and in our neighborhoods, particularly those who are different from us. It requires deep tending to Scripture, the stories of our faith. It requires deep engagement with the wisdom of our tradition. It requires us to respond to what we are hearing, not in attempts to be relevant or cave to culture, but so that we embody the living faith of the dead in an invitational way.

The invitation in this reformation time is not, “Come, join my church.” The invitation is, “Come, be part of this community as we seek new life in Jesus Christ – where we tend to the poor and the orphans, share what we have, and confront the pharaohs of our day with a new kind of kingdom.”

Jessica TateJESSICA TATE is the director of NEXT Church (nextchurch.net), a movement in the PC(USA) to spark imaginations, connect congregations and offer a distinctively Presbyterian witness to Jesus Christ. She lives in Washington, D.C.

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