6/2 Bass lecture

At the 6/2 afternoon lecture that Diana Butler Bass gave, two lessons stick out. She gave us background as to how she and probably careful potential members might act. In deciding what churches to include as worthy of note, she and her staff looked at websites first. Then, deciding whether to fly and personally visit, she had a local contact check out the significant feature of the congregation.
While the web was not the only source of information, she said that potential new members may not be as careful an information checker as a seminary researcher, like herself. We need to make sure the WPPC website is as user friendly as possible.
We need to be careful of any claims to uniqueness, in this example, hospitality. Bass said the stereotypical example, which WPPC should study and discuss, was a church's web claim to have “extreme” (or some similar adjective) hospitality. She had a friend in the town who happened to be a six foot transgendered woman with a love of feathered boas. Only after this friend confirmed that she had the most warm welcome that she ever had in a church, did Bass include it on her list. WPPC may be a Covenant Network church, but what might we do if going to the next step?
Another definition she clarified was that the village of our childhood was mainly geographic. With the internet and especially in the PC(USA) our connectionalism is worldwide. For each present day congregation, the village is inclusive of different parts of society. WPPC should identify its stakeholders. Our outreach, as well as the rest of our church activities, should reflect our ministry for/to these stakeholders.
As a secular view of the changed environment we are operating, Bass recommended we read The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman. Apparently the three citations around religion were negative, but Bass feels he gives us good food for discussion. The one that she agreed in both the book and her lecture was the idea that churches generally resist change. Openness to change is key to the churches in her study.
Analogous to one of the individual goals of individual spiritual formation, that of transforming from a human doing to a human being, was one of her key findings for congregations. Her study churches focussed on the “be,” rather than “do.” She noted the congregations that stayed with the “do,” had the resulting burnout.
While tradition can be mantra of resisters to change, a positive use is the re-introduction of new members to their heritage to valuable spiritual disciplines not recently seen in that church. Bass noticed that people generally liked the idea of having roots. She said that folks liked to be flexible in using re-discovered traditions, but also knowing why the traditions were important.
Bass said she often saw examples in her study, churches that created a meaningful way of life that involved knowing God and living ethically. She also frequently saw churches that demonstrated Huston Smith's pearl of wisdom that religion approximates the wisdom tradition.
An individual example was Mother Teresa, who had doubts, but practiced wisdom. The laity in Bass' book did not want to leave their brains and doubts in the church parking lot. They wanted to enter the church to learn a wisdom way of knowing or knowing in a different way.
I like her riff on hospitality. She said it was not navel gazing for baby boomers. She also urged us to move beyond thinking of hospitality to those outside our boundaries. If churches invite the homeless in to be a part of the congregation, she rhetorically asked, “Is there a 'them' to whom to provide ministry, if they are part of us?” Maybe we need to just look upon a ministry to an inclusive definition of members. At the other extreme are the churches, she said, who are so fearful, they employ bouncers.
She answered a question to explain that people still like good preaching. She agreed with what Wes has told us that parishioners like a good story. They like narrative preaching. The challenge now is that people can download sermons from world wide sources to raise their expectations.
Bass said a common reaction to change is toleration, with the hope that it will go away. Another is, “over my dead body.” This often occurs around gender issues. She see gender as a trigger for people's unhappiness around cultural changes. She said pastors need to address concerns around, “we'll lose what we have.”
Nostalgia also holds people back. People need to realize those good old days, really were not that good, all things considered. Nostalgia says two things contrary to the Christian message—my experience is better than any other, and the best days are behind us.
She noted that some congregations that use more body prayer give opportunities for demonstrating community. Once a whole congregation senses everyone moving bodily during the liturgy, it is hard to keep a sense of individual prayer. Body prayer is another way to symbolize our becoming the body of Christ, in corporate ways.
She also gave ideas around Sabbath that her book omitted. Some sessions took an administrative Sabbath to devote a meeting to spiritual disciplines. Some churches practiced a technology fast on the Sabbath. Besides cell phones, and pc's, some churches used natural light only. She noted rather than looking on the outdoors as a competitor for people's Sunday time, she suggested looking on nature as a companion to help draw people to church. By making people thankful for natural light on technology Sabbaths, people can start to recognize previously overlooked natural gifts.
As a historian she suggested that we take lessons from the Protestant Reformation. She said the secular society at the time of Calvin and Luther was in turmoil, as it is now. She said the church needs to change now, just as much as in the time of the Reformers.