Those of us above a certain age remember well the 80s movie “Dirty Dancing.” If above 40 at the time, you had to decide whether to allow your teen-ager to see it. If under 20, it was a “rite of passage” to see a movie with a title designed to provoke your parents’ censorship genes.
Among its many themes was a sense of foreboding among the Catskills resort’s clientele. Every year they returned expecting to see the same people and to engage in the same activities run by the same managers. Parents hoped their children would find the same cultural anchors that helped them survive adolescence.
But the film exposed a fault line developing in what had been assumed was a stability extending into the future. At the end of the film, it might have seemed like folk were “getting it” — but we suspected most would go home, come to their senses, and make sure that that summer’s program staff did not come back the next summer.
The terrible price to be paid by those straddling the known and the unknown was clearly revealed in the face of the father (Jerry Orbach). Viscerally, he knew this place and this world he had counted on to be there forever, would not survive the Visigoths of his daughters’ generation. They would have to navigate a world without lighthouses like this resort. He appeared to be struggling to recall the words of Kahlil Gibran, “the souls of our children dwell in the house of tomorrow which we cannot visit, not even in our dreams.”
Twenty years ago, I saw it as a “coming of age” movie about young lovers searching for identity and belonging. From the vantage point of grandparenthood — with my sons on the safe side of 30 — I’m now drawn to the angst of the older cast members who aren’t quite the villains I saw the first time around. And to my surprise, “Dirty Dancing” comes to mind as a metaphor that, for me, ties together so much of the anxiety and sense of displacement and disestablishment that has taken up residence in the narthexes and sanctuaries and board rooms of our churches.
For the past 16 years, I’ve served governing bodies of our denomination. I have watched us painfully inch our way toward accepting that the church of the 50s to 70s, like the resort in the movie, no longer exists — and never will again. The “corporate” model of the church, which felt so solid and made so much sense, appears to be going the way of the Tomorrowland displays that fascinated us when Disneyland first opened. The structures that drove the church for four decades now feel like driving a Studebaker on a Los Angeles freeway. The fault line of “Dirty Dancing” has become, for most of us, a chasm over which we have one foot planted on each side of the abyss below.
There are those still stuck in the twilight zone of burgeoning membership and massive youth groups and young families (each with four children) filling up the education building. Churches of 120 members maintain sessions of 15, with 12 committees, with five people on each. And presbyteries and synods operate on the illusion that churches with declining memberships will pay $50 per capita to maintain governing body museums staffed by executive curators.
Pastors and denominational executives often feel like the owners of the “Dirty Dancing” resort who survey the talent show audience (congregations and presbyteries) acutely aware that most of the audience footing the bill is on the twilight side of 50 (in many instances, the twilight side of 65) — but that it is the dirty dancers who must become the patrons of the future. Something has to change, and change soon, if we’re going to stay open.
“Dirty Dancing” becomes a marvelous metaphor for our attempts to learn how to let go of what was and to dance an improvisational choreography that is not naturally in our repertoire. We’ve come to shorthand this search for what unleashes the passions of faith as “missional,” a word incorporating into itself everything from the power of hands-on mission to the search for authentic spirituality to reclaiming relational ministries to governance emphasizing leadership over management. It describes efforts to shrink sessions and redirect their energy toward trying to discern where God is calling the Body. Missional allows us to think in terms of abundance rather than scarcity; permission giving rather than regulation; partnering instead of hierarchy. What began as an emphasis on mission at our doorstep has evolved into a way of providing a context for change — for being a minority in a culture where church is just another option for investment of time, talents, and commitment.
From the local to the national level, it means relationships defined less by polity and more by a sense of covenant and communion. It means first asking what is most important to the upbuilding of an authentic community of faith — and then how to “make it so” — sometimes in spite of what the constitution says. It means acknowledging that in a flat world, cooperation, collegiality, and common vision are much more valuable assets in leaders than raising budgets, providing continuity, maintaining endowments, or generating new programs. As Gil Rendle has been trying to convince us for over a decade, we problem solvers have to get over the notion that all this is a problem to be solved and accept that we are dealing with nothing less than a seismic shift in the place of Christianity in the 21st century, one that requires revolutionary adaptations rather than technical fixes.
A subtle sub-theme in “Dirty Dancing” was the plight of the older sister who, not unlike the older brother in the parable of the gracious father, has played by the rules, sought recognition in traditional ways, prepared for the talent show with fierce determination only to be upstaged by the prodigal sister whose outside the boundaries dancing somehow evokes in each of us the kind of passion that makes us feel truly alive. The younger sister’s face glows with the rapture of a soul taking wing to soar among the eagles. Poor older sister: dull, duty bound, playing by the rules, counting on the system to work for her suddenly realizes that the rules have been pulled out from under her. But, what would her life have been like if things didn’t change? Maybe she’ll never learn to dance like these people, but maybe they will take her feet of clay and slip ballet slippers on them and allow her gifts to be turned lose in some passion that she would otherwise never have discovered.
I have a hunch that most folk won’t exactly pick up on this metaphor or want to describe what is happening in our churches as “Dirty Dancing.” “Missional” is so much more culturally acceptable. (Read “safe.”) But I’ve got a hunch that “Missional” doesn’t go far enough. Maybe, just maybe, “Dirty Dancing” is what we really need to be doing; is an even better description of what we have to learn how to do if our congregations and middle governing bodies are going to be around for future generations.
Keith Geckeler was a pastor in California, Illinois, and Indiana for 20 years before going over to the “dark side” and becoming a stated clerk/executive for the past 16. He is currently stated clerk of Presbytery of Los Ranchos in Anaheim, Calif.
