Andrew Root
Baker Press, 288 pages
Reviewed by Anthony Robinson
As a work of practical theology, this is unusual in its breadth and depth. Church leaders will find it getting at conundrums with which they contend. For example, many affirm a church they perceive as “active” or “engaged.” But these same people, when encouraged to take part in a new initiative, are apt to say they are too exhausted to add one more thing. Andrew Root can help you understand this paradox.
Root’s trilogy, “Ministry in a Secular Age,” is written in conversation with the philosopher Charles Taylor and his book, “A Secular Age.” Root is concerned not only with a culture where church membership is no longer the norm, but with an even more challenging expression of secularity — a world where not believing in God comes easier than faith. In this third volume, “The Congregation in a Secular Age,” Root engages an additional interlocutor, the German social theorist Harmut Rosa. Drawing particularly from Rosa, Root helps readers understand how and why “modernity is the constant process of speeding things up.”
If you and members of your congregation have the sense that someone has turned up the speed on life, you are — according to Rosa and Root — right. It’s not just that your technology has a more rapid decay rate (the rate at which it becomes “out of date”). Even more importantly, the “decay rate” for our social norms has been reduced, with the effect that the present is “compressed.” The present doesn’t last as long as it used to! People and churches feel constantly under siege to keep up, to do more in less time and to stay relevant. We take our cues from Silicon Valley’s culture of acceleration, disruption and constant innovation. Root claims that in doing so, churches are putting themselves on a hamster wheel to nowhere. Following Rosa, he argues that resonance (not relevance) is what is required for churches to be an antidote to the angst and alienation of modernity’s constant acceleration. What does that mean?
“Too often,” observes Root, “congregations look to programs and strategies to change them. But this reverses things. Programs and strategies are best born out of a story of transformation. Congregations should yearn for a story, not just for innovative programming.”
Root is right. Churches concerned about decline often look for the program or strategy that will be the fix. Instead, churches should look for the places in their present life where God is present.
As an example, Root cites the story of one pastor, Meredith, and her small congregation — one that “has no children of its own.” One day a normally reticent older man, Henry, surprised everyone by getting up to pray for his critically ill granddaughter. Henry was overcome, and he wasn’t the only one. The entire congregation was drawn in and connected to one another and to God. From this connection, a call emerged. The congregation realized that it did have children. They had children to carry and families to serve like that of Henry’s granddaughter, and others in the community whose children suffered serious illness.
From such an experience of resonance, a church was found by a calling. It probably helped that in her previous work, Meredith had been a nurse caring for children born prematurely! But Root’s point remains. Instead of superimposing a denominational program for renewal or imitating another seemingly successful church, attend to God’s presence and intrusions in your midst.
Anthony Robinson is a UCC minister and author of 13 books, most recently “Useful Wisdom.” He lives in Seattle, and blogs regularly at anthonybrobinson.com.
