What Now?

So I started off this morning reading this.  My first response was to get a little angry.  It was a throwback response really, back to my earlier days, when I used to think that Christian Faith was a flag to be flown, and a tower to be defended against the infidel.  But as the article unfolded, I felt the author's hurt for sure, but I found myself having a hard time feeling the good old outrage.  Understanding that "the Gospel is as unstoppable as it is unacceptable," was a bit of a comfort to be sure.  I am a fan of how this author has contextualized and dealt with what was obviously a rather traumatic time for her.  Recovering the counter-cultural impact of the Gospel is perhaps the most important thing that we American Christians need to do.
Unfortunately, and here's where I'm going to poke a bit further, we probably cannot do that if we continue to hold on to our privileged position.  As much as it seems like an injustice to have Intervarsity and other Christian student groups lose their "official" status, I think that is exactly what needs to happen.  I will admit that I am biased, as a young adult, coming out of a lifetime of church involvement, I very briefly explored the world of campus Christianity, and quite frankly I found it lame.  If you liked it, please don't jump down my throat, I'm glad you found it helpful to your walk, but allow me to explain.  I am not really much of a joiner.  In fact, I consider the fact that I have been called to serve as a pastor (read leader), as not just an adept use of my talents and gifts, but as a concession to the fact that I would make a lousy church member.  If I attended at all, I would be cranky and non-committal, I know it, and so God has put me in this place perhaps because I have empathy for cranky and non-committal people.
I serve an institution, but I have these dreams of serving a community of disciples, united by more than just a need to pay the bills and run some programs.  So when I got to the place where Tish described what happened at Vanderbilt in the end; the fellowship of Christians did not dissolve or go away, it just stopped being an "official" institution of the university.  Kids started wearing T-shirts that said simply: "We Are Here."
Jumpin' Jehosophat, how perfect is that?
No smarmy messages about getting saved, or WWJD, just a reminder that the person wearing that shirt was part of something.  And in what I remember of my College self-awareness that would have been a lot more of an effective hook to get me interested.  The fact of the matter is, they probably didn't change what they did all that much.  Their group was probably still "pizza and the Bible," but embracing their place as a group that stood outside the culture?  Those politically paranoid university administrators couldn't have done those kids a bigger solid in terms of fostering their Christian walk.
Inertia is no secret, an object in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted upon by an outside force, also an object at rest tends to stay at rest.  The Status Quo most often represents a point of equilibrium.  Things have settled the way they are for a reason.  The reasons may be good, bad or ambivalent, but the Newtonian rule applies in all cases, change takes effort, and the only easy change is probably not worth it.  As Wendell Berry says in one of his sabbath poems: "Wrong was easy, gravity helped it."
I understand the grief that people feel as they watch the world change around them.  I understand that after over a thousand years of Christendom, it's hard to watch our beloved Church fall from the pinnacle of power, and become a sordid sideshow of conflicted, broken people.
Except for the fact that we probably never should have occupied that pinnacle in the first place.
And the fear of losing what we probably never should had in the first place has led to a lot of bad behavior.
Conservatism makes sense, until it doesn't.  Trying to hold on to an equilibrium point is not an ignoble effort, until it crosses the line of sanity and becomes the repeated attempt to try the same thing, expecting different results.
I often get "helpful suggestions" on what our church could, and perhaps should do.  Ideas that are seen and read about, churches that have "magically" started to climb back out of decline and into vitality.  I enjoy reading about these ideas, they feed my dream of a church that runs wide open.  But as the shepherd of the church as it is, I know there are lines that cannot be crossed at the moment.  There is anxiety that must be dealt with, and as much as I would like to say, "pshaw" to the anxiety, I know that is not an available option.
A trend that I have noticed among revolutionary churches is that their revolution happened when the church was forced to stare down their own mortality and realize that if they didn't change, they were going to die, like a smoker who only quits when the first cancer spots show up on their lungs.
As a pastor who cares about the good creation that his church is right now, I do not want to see people in that position.  But my own desire to run the machine well does sometimes get in the way of seeing a new possibility, particularly when it comes from the margins.  What I try to do is be permission giving and supportive of people who have ideas, which means saying, "that's a great idea, how do WE do it?"  Emphasizing the WE.
Keeping the institution going is a full time job, it's designed to be that way, just as it's designed to hold onto that functional equilibrium.  But if you want to grow, the machine has to change, the institution is going to have to split open somewhere.
So here's a message church: if you want to grow, you're going to have to change.  And you're the ones who are going to have to do it.  Your pastor, if he or she is any good at taking care of you, might throw down the challenge to grow, but they won't force you into it.  They won't force you into it for the same reason God won't force you to accept love and grace, because they value who you are.  But they also see who you can be, and they want very much for you to grow into that.
In the Jesus model, the disciples never feel quite ready or up to the challenge, they are always a little too invested in the status quo, because it's comfortable.  Being counter-cultural feels too much like swimming upstream, and it comes with all sorts of baggage and maybe even some persecution, but that's the road we're called to walk, isn't it?