A Faithful Response to the Changing Culture (eCrozier #261)

On May 1, 2015, in Anxiety, Change, culture, faith, fear, gospel, grace, by bishopbenhase

As we live through the rapid change of our contemporary culture, some are fearful that Christianity is losing its traditional, privileged place. Demographers tell us that the fastest growing cohort is the so-called “nones,” those with no religious affiliation or particular religious practice. Those who are fearful about this development warn that the lost, privileged place of the Church’s faith will inevitably lead to a growing hostility toward Christianity. Every fear has at least a kernel of truth to it, so there’s reason for us to pay attention. But I don’t think fear about the changing nature of the culture is a faithful response, even as we pay attention to it. Fear is never faithful. All culture is highly elastic and, at least partly, cyclical. Historians look back and find times when particular social, religious, political, and economic conditions in one era were similar to those in another. That’s true of Church history as it overlaps with the larger cultural history. In every age then, the Church faces new as well as familiar challenges for how she will be faithful to the Gospel of Jesus.

I believe we’re in a similar time as to what the Church experienced in the 4th Century. Christianity then had a foothold in the culture, but it was by no means the dominant religion. The Roman Empire had grown vast, outgrowing its own power to govern and control that vastness. In the other words, the Pax Romana wasn’t what it had been. This resulted in great social anxiety as groups sought to blame other groups for why Rome wasn’t what it used to be. Some blamed the Christians. Others blamed the laxness of the traditional Pagan practices. What was evident was this: No one group was dominant or privileged in its ability to guide the culture. This was also the time of the great Church Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon. At these Councils, the Church struggled to define her own faith, identity, and practice. But even amidst the great debate within the Church, we continued to witness to the grace, compassion, and mercy of God. In the middle of the 4th century the Roman emperor Julian (later he had the moniker “the Apostate” attached to his name, which, let’s just say, wasn’t a term he chose) wrote a sarcastic complaint about the Christians he observed: “These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also. While our pagan priests neglect the poor, these hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity.” 

The Church today is struggling, as we always have, to live out our faith, identity, and practice. As was true 17 centuries ago, today we’re not all of one mind on various issues. But that has never stopped the Church from its essential witness to the world’s redemption by our Lord Jesus Christ. We’ll need to continue to find ever more creative and effective ways of sharing and dispensing God’s grace to this beautiful, yet broken world, especially as it becomes more disinterested in or indifferent to the Gospel. So, I believe the truth claims we make about Jesus will never win the day if they’re limited to a “we’re right and your wrong” contest. I think the Emperor Julian (the Apostate) unwittingly showed us the most effective way: A steadfast commitment to sharing God’s unmerited grace with others, particularly to those who are lonely, lost, or left out in our culture, through specific acts that make tangible God’s grace in their lives. The old camp song has it so right: “They will know we are Christians by our love.”

+Scott

 
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Leading with Learning Anxiety (eCrozier #216)

On April 11, 2014, in Anxiety, congregational development, Evangelistic Witness, leadership, by bishopbenhase

The organizational theorist, Edgar Schein, has studied for decades how organizations function, particularly around their specific culture’s capacity to adapt to new learning in a changing context. His work with the Harvard Business School on these issues has gained him lots of attention among chief executives. He argues that there’s a built in contradiction in organizations: anxiety hinders the ability to learn, but anxiety is absolutely necessary if any kind of learning is going to occur. Anxiety about the way things are motivates one to learn something new. But anxiety has a negative cognitive affect on our ability to learn. In other words, we don’t learn well when we’re anxious.

Schein goes on to argue that there are two kinds of anxiety associated with anything new: learning anxiety and survival anxiety. Learning anxiety is associated with the fear that we’ll fail at the new thing we’re trying to do, or that it’ll be beyond our abilities, or we’ll appear foolish to others, or that we’ll have to jettison our old patterns that used to work for us. Survival anxiety is the fear that if we’re going to make it, to literally survive the context we’re in, then we’re going to have to change behaviors. In his studies of how businesses operate, Schein contends that most of the time learning anxiety is more powerful than survival anxiety. So, most people will opt to not learn new ways of business even though they know their professional survival depends upon it.

How might we see Schein’s insights applying to the leadership of our congregations? In a post-Christian context, we need to learn new ways of engaging God’s mission to bring others to Christ and to serve people in our communities. We know we must do this, but we experience the learning anxieties that come from fearing that we might fail, or that we might not be gifted enough to do it, or that we might appear foolish to others, or that we might have to give up some of our old ways of doing things. So, what happens? Many congregations are choosing to die rather than learn new missionary skills.

Congregational leaders face huge challenges here. Using Schein’s constructs, how do we help people lower their learning anxiety so it’s less determinative than their survival anxiety? One could argue that we could work from the other end by trying to increase survival anxiety, but that would be through the via negativa, i.e., increasing their fear that if they didn’t learn new ways of mission then the congregation would die or be closed. I find that approach repugnant because it’s based on threats and fear.

That means congregational leaders need to create supportive opportunities for their people to learn new missionary skills working with those in the congregation who have shown some motivation to learn. I think it’s a mistake for leaders to expect everyone to overcome their learning anxiety or even come to recognize that they need to do so. Leaders can work to develop a critical mass of willing learners, people who are ready, even if tentatively, to learn new ways of reaching out in mission. That seems to me be the primary missionary task for leaders: identifying those disciples who are capable of learning new skills and then focusing their energy on working with those disciples.

+Scott

 
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All Shall Be Well: Anxiety, Hope, and a Robust Eschatology (eCrozier #153)

On November 2, 2012, in Anxiety, Eschatology, hope, by bishopbenhase

We are living in a Star Wars civilization with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions and Godlike technology. – E.O. Wilson

The above quote is from evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson’s book: The Social Conquest of Earth. If Wilson is correct in his contention, no wonder so many people in our culture feel diseased, or at least, ill at eased. It might also explain (at least in part) the extremist behavior we see in politics and other areas of our common life. In Wilson’s observation, our civilization and technology have far outpaced our personal, human capacity to make sense of them as well as the institutions we have to shape and manage them.

For example, medical and scientific advances have developed capacities for stem cell therapies, cloning, and gene manipulation that have moved rapidly ahead of our moral and ethical discernment about what the “good” is. And the institutions that traditionally have shaped and guided such discernment aren’t currently equipped to do so. Likewise, in an age of nuclear weapons in suit cases and unmanned predator drones with missiles in the sky, the old “Just War” constructs, first promulgated by St Augustine and later shaped more clearly by St Thomas Aquinas, are nearly impossible to apply.

I may be wrong, but I think this helps explain why so many people experience chronic anxiety these days. If you Google “Generalized Anxiety Disorder,” you will get over 5 million hits! The National Institute of Health describes Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) as “a pattern of constant worry and anxiety over many different activities and events. The main symptom is the almost constant presence of worry or tension, even when there is little or no reason to worry about them.”

Given this world as it is, we may all be tempted to reside with Booby McFerrin and just sing: “Don’t Worry, Be Happy!” But I don’t think that’s the answer. What I believe is needed is a robust eschatology based on the “sure and certain hope” we have through God’s grace in Jesus. Eschatology is the study of how things will end. With that grounding of God’s future, we can work back to our present time from that hope, using it as the lens by which we discern the difficult moral and ethical choices in front of us. Such a hope-filled lens is not a black and white roadmap, but it will give us a frame of reference that allows us to lessen our anxiety about the way things are (and how they might be heading). We make better choices when we’re not overcome by anxiety and a fear of the future.

Simply enjoining people to “be happy” isn’t robust enough. And neither is the misguided theology of the “Left Behind” series where the authors seem to know more about how things will end than Jesus claims he himself knows. A friend once noted: As Christians, when it comes to eschatology, we’re not called to be on the “program committee,” we’re called to be on the “welcoming committee.” And as the Brazilian writer, Paolo Coelho, wrote: “Everything is ok in the end, if it’s not ok, then it’s not the end.” Or maybe even better from Dame Julian: “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

+Scott

 
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