thoughts on showing up to all that is

Archive for April, 2012

The Power of Belief

I am reading  The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.  it is a great read and provoking all sorts of thought for me.  One is do we believe that change is possible and things can get better for the church?   We have been hearing a story of malaise of the mainline church for so long, do we believe that story more than we do about the possiblity of God doing a new thing?  Are we so convinced that the U.S. is increasingly  a post-modern, post-Christian culture in which the church will continue to decline and be less and less relevant that we do not see any way for the church to have a new and different future?

What got me thinking about this was the idea that for a habit to permanently change, people had to believe that things could be better.  The book gives a couple of examples.  Alcoholics Anonymous is built on a process of teaching people new habits.  For many people it works.  But some, when they hit a crisis or stressor, return to old habits and fall of the wagon and others don’t.  What was the difference?  What researchers found was  the power of belief.  Those who believed in a higher power, had developed a capacity to believe.  And that translated to  other parts of their life.  They began to believe that they could cope with the stress  without alcohol.  They believed they could change.  “AA trains people to believe in something until they believe in the program and themselves.  It lets people practice believing that things will eventually get better, until things actually do.”

So what I am wondering: what do we believe?  I am off to General Conference next week…the global gathering of the United Methodist Church.  I have been known to be cynical about the ability of a 1000 people to legislate themselves toward a new future.  We know the church will not continue in this same form if we are going to be relevant to the world we find ourselves in.  But do we believe we can change?  We can post statistics weekly to a dashboard.  We can change our structure, which personally I think is long overdue and needed.  But none of those things will change us unless fundamentally we believe God is still alive and at work in the people and churches called United Methodist, and even though it will be different, our future can be even better than our past.

Ironically, we are in the belief business.  Of all people and organizations, we should be training people in how to believe…in God, in themselves, in the reality that transformation is possible and does in fact happen.  But in my conversations with clergy, with congregnants, with ordinary citizens…I don’t hear many people express much sense of believing the church can be on a different path than growing older, growing smaller  and growing more and more sidelined in our world.  So what is up with that?  And how do we start believing in a different story?

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Do we believe we are an Easter church?

I heard a respected church consultant say that every church could potentially have in weekly worship the number of people who attend on Easter Sunday. He was consulting with a church of about 1,100 people who attend on Easter; on a “normal” week, they have about 500 in worship.

It was intriguing to consider what this church would be doing differently, what the staffing would look like, what systems would need to be in place to effectively disciple that number of people on a weekly basis. An even more provocative idea was setting the intentional goal of being an Easter church, and how they could embody that day in and day out.

Of course, the irony is that this is what sets the Christian church apart. We are an Easter church. The Christian Sabbath is Sunday because that was the day of the resurrection. Even in Lent, as we are reflecting on the journey to the cross and the crucifixion, Sundays are not considered a part of the forty days of Lent because every Sunday is a mini-resurrection.

In this Easter season, reflect upon Easter services you have attended. What set them apart? In many of our churches, children, youth, and adults are in worship together. The music is joyful and celebrative and there is lots of it. The worship space is filled with flowers and other visuals to make it colorful and alive. Often there are special components such as skits, movie clips, and multi-sensory experiences to help people experience the power of the resurrection.

Easter worship shouts that something significant happened and it has changed everything. Those who plan that worship hope that everyone present will feel and know that so they can have the promise of new life.

Celebrate the resurrection year-round

What if every week we were as intentional and creative about worship as we are on Easter? What if we asked ourselves how we can embody the resurrection in our congregational life in all that we do?

If we truly believe that Jesus Christ is risen, then the body of Christ should be a community where people experience God as alive and well and present in our midst. And what if we believed and acted like an Easter church 52 weeks a year? Yes, that requires energy and resources. But it might just be what people are looking for in a church: that we believe our own story enough that we act like it is true!

I believe the world needs the hope of a God who can heal, make whole—and yes, bring life out of death and new beginnings out of dead ends. When we go back to “business as usual,” we send the message that Easter is only a day and not a way of life; not a real possibility for life after all. What would it take for us to be the Easter church that the world needs?

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