_____

Trusting, in the Haptic Sense

Like Thomas, I stretch out my hand, hoping
for a brush with the divine—
Christ at my fingertips

I’ll believe in what I cannot see,
just let me touch it.

A bee sting, muscle cramp, or sunburn;
hunger, thirst, horripilation;
the Moro or the Babkin reflex—
these are things to be sure about.

There is feeling beyond touch,
but I am rich and weary and numb.

I want nothing more than your hand on my face.

I also like jokes that are somehow about myself or groups that I belong to, because they tend to be very telling, sometimes without really trying—and they also form a part of the fabric of an “in-group.” So when I joined TEC, I intentionally sought out jokes about the denomination—and there are some good ones (Garrison Keillor’s got a great little bit, actually).

I had an interesting conversation with our interim rector not too long ago about how some of the jokes (you can guess which ones) have actually become rather outdated. In large part, TEC is no longer the “Republican Party at Prayer” it was a few decades ago. The demographics are changing. Have changed. (Though another, more recent conversation with Episcopal sorts assured me that there still exist Episcopal churches that embody these jokes.)

So with that brief introduction, I leave you with a pre-Lenten, pancake-worthy dose of silliness, a few collected jokes from an amalgam of sources. Feel free to add any in the comments section!

_____

An old Episcopal grandmother finally decided to read the Bible. She purchased a large-print edition and read it cover-to-cover. When she finished, she pulled the rector aside at coffee hour and confided, “I really enjoyed reading the Bible, but I was surprised how much it quotes the Book of Common Prayer!”

Episcopalians drink coffee as if it were the third sacrament.

An Episcopalian is nothing more than a Catholic who failed Latin.

You might be an Episcopalian if while looking for a can opener in the church kitchen, all you can find are four corkscrews.

Do you know why Episcopalians are lousy chess players? Because they don’t know the difference between a Bishop and a Queen!

Where two or three Episcopalians are gathered, there’s a fifth.

A woman dies and goes to heaven, and St. Peter takes her on a tour. They pass a pit where people were gnashing their teeth and wailing, and the woman asks, “Who’s down there?”
St. Peter says, “Oh, those are the Catholics who ate meat on Fridays.”
They walk a little farther and there’s another pit with more groaning and wailing, and she says, “Okay, who’s down there?”
St. Peter answers, “Those are the Baptists who went to dances.”
A little farther along, there’s another pit filled with people gnashing their teeth and crying and ripping their garments. The woman asks, “And those people?”
St. Peter replies, “Those are the Episcopalians who ate their salads with their fish forks.”

Q: How many Episcopalians does it take to change a lightbulb? (in ascending order)
A: Two. One to mix the martinis, and one to call the electrician.
A: Ten. One to change the bulb, and nine to say how much they liked the old one better.
A: Twelve. One to do the work and eleven to serve on the committee.
A: Change the lightbulb?! My grandmother gave that lightbulb!

Alex Wagner is a 25-year-old graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying accounting.  He was born and raised in the Catholic Church but decided to seek out a different church due to problems with their positions on gender and sexuality, as well as what he perceived to an increasingly lower priority given to economic justice.  He is currently active in the Lutheran Campus Center in Madison. 

You..will be…assimilated

Although I agree that denominations are helpful and even necessary, I think that there are too many of them (especially in the mainline) and it can be very confusing to people.  Where do you even start and what are the differences and similarities between the PCUSA, UCC, UMC, TEC, and ELCA?

The distinctions may have been sharper during the time our parents were growing up.  At this point, most people don’t join mainline churches specifically because of the “brand name,” but rather they join them because of the mission of the church, or the worship style, or whatever.  Denominations can be a good guide to what you can expect at a particular church, but they can also muddy the waters and make churches seem a lot more different from each other than they really are in many cases.  Thus, I would like to present my radical 3 point realignment plan that will probably never happen, but I think it should happen.

1.  Merge the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  This would bring the two biggest mainline churches in the Reformed tradition under one umbrella.  My experience with these churches, as well as what I have read about them, indicates that they are very similar in beliefs and worship style, and may benefit from consolidating and sharing resources.  There is actually a precedent for this:  In Canada, their versions of the PCUSA and UCC merged—in 1925.  Any merging/closing of individual congregations should be left up to local leaders.  To the extent that there are subtle differences between the PCUSA and UCC, celebrate them and continue them in individual churches.  Just merge the administrative structure and don’t perpetuate unnecessary divisions.

2.  Since the United Methodist Church seems to be bigger and healthier right now, I might leave them alone, plus I don’t know what to do with them anyway.  They seem to be kind of a middle ground between the Reformed traditions and the “un-Reformed” liturgical churches.  I would note that the Methodist Church of Canada was also part of that 1925 merger, so that could be an option here as well.

3.  Perhaps my most radical move of all would be to essentially dissolve the Episcopal Church.  The most conservative congregations of TEC might join Pope Benedict’s new ordinariate in the Catholic Church.  A few others might not want to go that far, but might opt for the ACNA or the Southern Cone.  The rest of TEC could stop pretending to be “Anglo-Catholics” and could once and for all embrace the fact that you have essentially evolved into being British Lutherans.    While I wouldn’t want to belittle the opinions of those who believe otherwise, my impression is that some people in both TEC and ELCA exaggerate the differences between the two churches, and don’t appreciate how similar they seem to someone who is not a “cradle” Episcopalian or Lutheran.

So, sorry, Alissa, I would get rid of TEC but it is only because I love you and your Episcopal compatriots so much that I want to welcome you into the ELCA.  You should keep the BCP and hymnal and “high church” liturgy and having the Eucharist as part of worship every Sunday.  (Some ELCA churches only do it every other week, but I actually think it should be every week anyway.)  The distinctive Anglican rites, prayers, hymns, architecture, and ways of thinking would enrich the ELCA immensely, and could even be incorporated into other Lutheran churches when desired.  Conversely, I think those Anglican traditions would have a much better chance of surviving long-term if they were part of a less dysfunctional national church.

This way, instead of having the confusing “alphabet soup,” we’d now have three big mainline denominations:  the Reformed, the Methodist “middle way,” and a united Anglican/Lutheran bundle of liturgical awesomeness.  Unchurched people and people leaving Catholic or evangelical churches would have a much clearer idea of what to expect when exploring mainline churches.  Even though this radical plan may never become a reality, my hope is that cooperation among mainline churches and their members will only continue to increase.

I’m not married. I’m not engaged. I’m not dating anyone.

I’m not anti-marriage, anti-engagement, or anti-dating. I have many great married, engaged, and dating friends. I’m certainly not anti-men; there are a lot of great men in my life.

I’m just currently unattached, and that’s okay: I’ve learned much and grown much and benefitted much from time spent in a romantic relationship and from time spent not in a romantic relationship. Both have merits. That it’s the latter right now really doesn’t trouble me. It does, however, make me more conscious of the role marital/relationship status plays in various communities, including church communities.

I grew up in a culture that taught my peers and me that we should date often and marry early (of course, it was also assumed that these would all be heterosexual relationships, which is another issue). My 6th-grade Christian-school teacher actually told the girls in my class that we should really try hard to find someone to marry in college, because once college is over, the only places to meet men are the bar and church, and the single men there aren’t necessarily the most desirable. (This is unfortunate, as churches and bars contribute significantly to my social life.)

Many of my friends did find someone in undergrad—I attended a Christian college complete with all the jokes about “Senior Scramble,” “Ring by Spring,” and “Mrs. degrees.” Most of these friends are really smart people in really good marriages, but I didn’t follow their example, and I’m glad I didn’t. I still feel—I still am—remarkably young.

This early-and-often attitude toward romance spills over into church life. Many churches see families as the foundational building blocks of church community. I love families, but I’m uncomfortable with a perception of marriages and families as the pinnacle of human attachment and Christian living. I don’t think this is a very hospitable (or biblical!) perspective, and I know people who have been deeply hurt as singles in church.

Overall, my own experience is a really positive one—I have single and married friends at church. Our 20s and 30s group incorporates singles, couples, and young families across the age range (which isn’t enforced—another plus for the group), and I LOVE having a mixed group. One of my church pet peeves is the way congregations often group themselves off by marital or relationship status, and I’m so glad my church doesn’t do this.

This may surprise you, but not all single people are alike (just as not all married people are alike). Some who are single really, really want to find someone to marry A.S.A.P. Some have decided to remain single and celibate for life. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle, and I think it’s really important to recognize that there is a whole range of stories, and that assumptions about those stories are what can be irritating and even hurtful.

Single people hear a lot of dumb, ignorant things from (usually well-meaning) married people. Jon Acuff’s post and its 500+ comments cover most of these. [My favorite comment, from "Wtbowden": "(line I used to use when single) 'I used to get mad every time some grandmother type came up to me at a wedding and pinched my arm and said "you're next!" They stopped doing that when I returned the favor to them at funerals'"]

I think the best thing to do is simply to embrace people of any relationship status in Christian community, and to remember that we all have things to learn from one another. Married people are not superior to unmarried, and vice versa. Neither group is wiser or more loving or more able to minister in the church. And each group has stories and gifts to offer.

_____

Has your relationship status affected your church participation or attendance? Have you ever felt more or less welcomed because of that status?

A new-ish development is the Young Adult Leadership Taskforce (YALT). I recently discovered its/their official blog, Momentum. I’m pretty sure I was at Calvin with some of the folks in charge of the org/blog, and I’m happy to see some of the neat stuff that’s happening.

(Tangential recognition of the time of year formerly known as Calvin College’s homecoming week—I’ll be wearing my Calvin sweatshirt tomorrow (k)night, and rooting to beat Hope on Saturday! I will not, however, be submerging my body in frigid, dirty pond water.)

Anyway, the CRC is losing young people like everyone else (though perhaps not at so great a rate as some), and the YALT is, as I understand it, part of the reaction to this movement. The Momentum blog has only five posts as I write this, but they’re quite good, and though uniquely denomination-specific, I suspect many of my readers—CRC or not—would appreciate them.

I’d like to point to one in particular, Mark Hilbelink’s “State of the Union—Young Adults in the CRC,” an attempt to lay out some trends regarding, well, young adults in the CRC. Many of these points would apply to any denomination, I suspect. Here are my brief summaries (with some parenthetical commentary):

• This is not just a CRC problem (nope, sure isn’t)
• Too many people assuming church-leaving is a normal part of growing up; “leave them alone; they’ll come home”
• Culture is changing faster than ever; the Church is not, leaving an increasingly wide gap
• Rise of missional, service-driven (vs. attractional, program-driven) churches
• Death of denominational loyalty (while I think this is a good point, I also think there’s a lot going for denominations, and I’m not ready to give them up—I suppose the CRC bloggers aren’t, either)
• Age targeting has ruptured inter-generational cohesion (see mega and multi-site churches)
• Major hemorrhage points in the CRC are between high school and college, and between college and work/grad school
• Reasons for leaving churches vary for cultural reasons (the CRC has a number of Korean, Latino, and Native American members)
• Many were affected by two big church wars in the 90s—women in office and the “worship wars” (TEC’s been ordaining women longer, but I wonder if we’re still seeing some of the same issues, esp. this year with the ordinariate going through)
• Millennials give (financially and otherwise) differently than their predecessors, and this is going to change how churches are run (this is sort of a scary thought to me)
• Relational leadership development > top-heavy, knowledge-based discipleship (must these be mutually exclusive, I wonder?)
• Authentic, consistent character > appealing style (just say no to happy-clappy)
• “Young adults are unequivocally drawn to churches whose impact is felt in the immediately surrounding neighborhood and city” (this seems really important)
• Young adults seem to prefer churches that are about something, rather than those churches that try to please everyone, being purposefully vague, and so sort of becoming about nothing (While I don’t think TEC is about nothing, I think it’s easy for a thoughtful, progressive church to become leery of offending—we respect multiple perspectives!—and as TEC is built around common worship rather than common theology (vs. the CRC which is rooted in Calvinism), figuring out what exactly we’re for can, I think, be a difficult task)

There’s much more I could say about Mark’s post—and all the other posts on Momentum—but I’ll let you all go see for yourselves. One final comment I want to make is that this blog makes it clear to me that multiple denominations are having similar issues (duh), and that there’s much to be gained from ecumenism (again, duh). This isn’t news. But it’s a good reminder. And also a place where social media can play a key role.

_____

What do you think of these points? Are they applicable across denominations? Have you done interesting ecumenical work?

So you know I’m a grad student in rhetoric and composition, right? And that that sometimes means presenting at conferences? Well I’m skipping 4Cs, but I’m on for Computers and Writing in May—NC, here I come. I’m presenting on religion and digitality with a couple of men I’ve never met, and we have the next month(ish) to collaborate on a title and 50-word abstract for our panel (Google Docs for the win!).

Only, I had lots of editing/focusing/tweaking to do on my individual abstract (as a reviewer noted, it needed to be “ruthlessly scope[d] down,” work I’ve been putting off for weeks, and I spent a good chunk of my weekend figuring that out instead of thinking about episcotheque. (I also spent a good chunk of my weekend eating Thin Mints and reading McSweeney’s archives and not vacuuming or ironing or writing a paper on Lyotard, but never mind that.)

Serendipitously, my newly-minted duly-narrowed abstract is super episcotheque-y. So because I value input and collaboration, because I’m going to have to write this conference paper eventually, and because I can still change stuff at this point, I give you my new abstract, and invite any thoughts/suggestions:

*            *            *

Through a Screen Darkly: Religion in the Digital Age

In many Christian churches, the sacred aspects of space, body, and self are defined apart from—even protected from—technology, despite how this apparent incompatibility contrasts with religious and rhetorical history: churches have a record of adopting and adapting new technologies. As computing becomes increasingly ubiquitous, this chasm between spirituality and technology grows increasingly convoluted. I will take as an example the Episcopal Church (TEC), a mainline Protestant denomination with notably physical worship experiences as well as a commitment to exploring digital media.

Some aspects of church life have translated more easily to the digital than others. For instance, many dioceses, churches, clergy, and parishioners are active on various social media, while fewer churches incorporate digital components (such as projectors) into worship. Even rarer are digitally mediated sacraments—unauthorized and unrecognized by TEC and other denominations. I am interested how and where these lines are drawn­­—into which sacred spaces is technology allowed, and from which is it excluded, and why? In this paper, I will explore what happens when the physical and the digital collide in sacred space, using TEC to point to a broader story of the often uneasy relationship between unfolding technologies and religious practice, mindful that by examining this relationship, we may better understand the cultural world that shapes students, teachers, and scholars alike.

I’ve been really busy, so rather than figure out my cool video camera, I shot this on iSight. In under 10 minutes. You can totally tell. You also get my wonderful sleep-deprived-scholar face/voice/brain function. And my sleep-deprived-scholar editing abilities. This is the first time I’ve used iMovie (besides super-short introductions to my students), and I did almost nothing to this clip. I’m also not including any music, which I know is a poor choice, but I have neither time nor motivation at the moment to comb through Creative Commons search results or play with GarageBand.

So, here it is. My first video:

Visiting any church for the first time is intimidating. I’ve been doing it all my life, and I still get nervous (and visiting alone is even harder). Sometimes I think Episcopal churches can be especially hard to try for the first time—it seems like everyone else knows what to do when and how to find all the right places in all the books. The first time is the worst, though—it only gets easier. (Shoutout to Sarah Moon, who plans on first-time-attending a whole variety of churches, and who recently wrote up her experience visiting an episcotheque.)

There are plenty of results that pop up in an Internet search for “Attending Episcopal church first time.” Some of the books I mentioned here have sections about services. Christopher Webber’s Welcome to Sunday is entirely about the worship service from start to finish. The book resources are great, because they explain why things are done.

I can’t give you all that—I mean, I just have a blog post and my limited knowledge. I was a first-timer not too long ago, though, so I’m going to include a few pointers (in roughly chronological order) that I think are important, in hopes of making your first visit a little easier. Fellow Episco-readers, add your own hints and tips in the comments section!

Do your research. Figure out when the services are and which you’ll attend. Figure out where the church is and how you’re going to get there. If you’re driving, make sure you’ll be able to find parking. If you require an accessible entrance, note where it’s located. Also check out the church’s website (if it has one). You can often learn a lot about a church by what it chooses to publish online, and you can see if there are any programs that might interest you (children’s programs, young adult groups, adult education, etc.).

Dress comfortably. You’re going to feel a little nervous anyway, at least if you’re like me, so wear something you know you like. The dress code varies from church to church. No one’s going to chastise you for wearing the wrong thing. If you want to dress up—go for it. If you want to wear jeans—go for it. If you want something more prescriptive than that, the safest option is probably a skirt or slacks and nice shirt for women and dress pants and collared shirt for men. Casual dress.

Arrive on time. Most Episcopal services begin with a procession, and it’s awkward getting tangled up in that. The time before the service is actually a really lovely time to sit or kneel silently (save socialization for coffee hour) and center/settle yourself before worship.

Take a bulletin. There might be ushers handing these out, or they might be set out somewhere. Some churches print the whole liturgy inside so that you don’t even need to use the Book of Common Prayer (BCP), but either way, this is your key to what you’re doing when.

Sit in the back. This can change as you grow more comfortable with the service and congregation, but for newcomers, this is an ideal spot. Not because it allows you to hide from the priest and congregants, but because it gives you the perfect opportunity to observe and follow what everyone else is doing—when they stand, sit, kneel, shake hands, go forward for Communion, etc. You by no means have to copy everything—do what you feel comfortable doing—but having experienced people to follow makes everything easier.

Follow along. The bulletin will list page numbers in the Book of Common Prayer (black) and hymn numbers in the hymnal (blue or red)—note that numbers beginning with “S” mean “service music,” which is the first section, so the S-numbers come first, and then the plain numbers start over. It can be helpful to look ahead; some parts of the service go really quickly and can leave you fumbling with the books in your pew.

Receive Communion (if you’re baptized). This is the center of the Sunday Eucharist service; what everything is leading toward. Official policy in TEC is to extend Communion to all baptized Christians, though some parishes are a bit less… stringent about this invitation. Anyone can come forward to receive a blessing (cross your arms over your chest to show that this is your intention). Follow the other people in your row to the altar (or remain seated if you wish), and kneel or stand. Hold out your hands to receive the bread/wafer (which you may eat immediately); help the minister guide the chalice to your mouth. If you’re sick or don’t want to partake of the wine, you can cross your arms over your chest after receiving the bread. Some people prefer to intinct (dip) their bread/wafer in the wine rather than drinking—if this is you, hold on to the bread/wafer until the chalice comes around. If you have accessibility questions, ask an usher before the service and s/he will be happy to help.

Relax. Nobody’s watching and judging. If you lose your place in the BCP, don’t worry about it. You don’t have to say every word every time. If you can’t find the service music, don’t fret. The choir has you covered. Never chanted a Psalm? Sit and listen. You’ll catch on. As intimidating as it can sometimes feel, this service isn’t about blending in and making all the right motions. It’s about worshiping God; about gathering the people, telling the stories, and breaking the bread.

Go to the coffee hour. Seriously. You might not feel like hanging out with so many strangers, especially if you’re an introvert like me, but if you don’t meet people in the church, you’re never going to feel at home there. The clergy and members of the congregation should be eager to meet and welcome you, and ideally some of them will do this before you even leave the nave (where you’ve been sitting). Sometimes they forget that they’re supposed to do this, though, or rush off to complete important tasks, take care of children, catch up with friends they only see once a week, and imbibe copious amounts of coffee. So go to where the coffee is. If no one strikes up a conversation (shame on them!), walk up to someone friendly-looking (those with clerical collars or nametags are great options) and say hello. You’ll be glad you did. (Sometimes you even get presents. Not that this should be a motivation.)

So. This was going to be my first go at a “perplexionary” video. I picked my passage (1 Corinthians 8), I set up my camera, I arranged my shot. I spent about half an hour filming, then plugged the camera into my laptop and downloaded the footage.

A symptom of being something like a digital native (and a Mac user) is that when I put things into my computer, I expect to have a pretty clear and obvious idea of what to do with them to make them work. Alas, not so this time.

I downloaded the footage, but couldn’t play it. “Ah,” I thought, “I must need to install some software.” Sure enough, a CD-ROM came with the camera. I slipped it into my laptop, but nothing started automatically, so I opened the file. Nothing I clicked on would work. Never mind that I have yet to look at the manual.

I’m sure I’ll decipher this technology after I spend some quality time playing with it, but that’s not quality time I had this week (I was too busy reading Derrida). So: no video.

In fact, no perplexionary, because as I was filming myself, I realized something: I’m really bad at filming myself.

Some of it’s my fault. I decided I could speak extemporaneously, since I’ve seen other vloggers/vidcasters do it. The thing is, extemporaneous isn’t really my style. I teach extemporaneously, sure, but pretty much every speech I’ve made over the past decade has been completely written out.

As it turns out, looking at a video camera feels more like making a speech. I had images of Ian Morgan Cron-esque vid-nuggets of wisdom, but I ended up with dozens of “ums” and a whole lotta time staring silently at the little digital image of myself.

Editing takes care of much of that, but I never got a chance to edit: technical difficulties.

This got me thinking, though. One of the criticisms I often hear about young Christians (e.g. me) is that we have difficulty articulating out faith/beliefs. This may have been said in connection with the Barna Group research, which is heavily interview-based.

There may be some truth to this typification. Or I could be a somewhat awkward introvert made nervous by the pressure and presence of a camera. Or, you know, maybe both.

I wonder what could be done to make young Christians more articulate about belief?

Education is key—if I’m uncertain about something, if I don’t feel I have a solid grounding to articulate and defend it, then I’ll probably avoid talking about it. If I don’t know the details and scaffolding of my faith tradition, how can I ever expect to explain it to someone else?

Practice is also vitally important—Practice makes perfect, but where do we practice? I attended Christian schools. I went to youth group. I was fed information—information that I didn’t have to critically engage until years later. I passed quizzes. I played the right role and was a great listener. I never needed to articulate anything. Even talking to the consistory (and, later the bishop) in preparation for profession of faith/confirmation didn’t require a great deal of thoughtful articulation.

One January in undergrad, when I was on an off-campus Interim trip in New England, my group attended a Unitarian Universalist church. We ended up attending on “Credo Sunday,” when a group of (14- and 15-year-old) teens planned the service and shared their credo statements, their personal statements of belief.

Now, there’s plenty about the UUA that I disagree with, and I admit it also felt a bit odd to sing Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game” in a worship environment (or to pass the offering plate to BNL’s “If I Had $1,000,000” ), but I don’t think I’ve ever heard from such an articulate group of young teenagers. And they didn’t recite received information—one of the young women announced that after careful consideration, she would be leaving the UUA church for a UCC church in town. By encouraging and facilitating the care and preparation that went into those credo statements (and all the others; this is a denomination-wide practice), I think the UUA is doing something really, really, (really) great.

I hope I’ll get better at and more comfortable with articulating my beliefs. I also hope I’ll get better at and more comfortable with using a camera. And I hope I’ll be able to help others with this along the way.

_____

Are you comfortable articulating your faith? Why or why not, in your opinion? What do you think we could be doing to help young people become more readily articulate about beliefs?

If you’ve been with me from the beginning, you’ll recall that I owe a couple of entries to the Barna Group (read them here and here). David Kinnamen’s at it again—on Friday he spoke with Michel Martin on NPR. You can listen to the clip and read the transcript here; thanks to the Episcopal Café for pointing me to it.

It’s a short interview, but Kinnamen said some interesting stuff. A big point he makes is that young adults leave because churches don’t address their complicated life issues. Describing the study findings Kinnamen says, “…in a nutshell, what we learned is that churches aren’t really giving [young adults] an answer to these complicated questions that they’re facing, these lifestyle issues and challenges that they’re facing. And it’s not really a deep or thoughtful or challenging response that most churches are providing to them.”

This is the same across denominations, he says. While there are obviously differences, and the interview-style responses that make up the bulk of the Barna Group’s study are necessarily very individual and subjective, Kinnamen expressed surprise at how similar many of the responses were. “I think the overriding theme,” he said, “was that this generation, in so many ways, is post-institutional, regardless of their traditions.”

I’ve heard this opinion/generalization about my generation before, and I think there’s a lot of truth to it. This is why “house church” models are seeing a resurgence, why “spiritual but not religious” is such a common claim. In many respects, I think this has merit—institutions have problems, and sometimes those problems are too much. (Shout out to the Bohemiam Bowmans who’ve been blogging about leaving the institutional church.)

The thing is, though, I like the institutional church. I like denominations, as I admitted last week. I like the communities of practice we build and the ways we find to run them. I like knowing how the church structure works in a given denomination, how it evolved and is ever evolving. I even like the spreadsheets and official communications and annual meetings. Because even the down-and-dirty, boring, painful stuff is part of the church that houses so many people who have important roles in my life. TEC is very much an institution, with all the baggage and benefits attached to that status; it’s a special institution to me, and I’m not ready to leave it behind.

I think Mariann Budde, the recently installed bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, says this well in The Washington Post. When asked why TEC matters, she replied, “The complete answer…is I don’t know if it matters. Does God really care? But then I realize that I really care. And I think of all the people in my world who also really care. I wouldn’t be a Christian without them.”

So I’m troubled by the idea of being a post-institutional generation. It seems like a throwing-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater situation. Yeah, institutions are broken. Including the Church as an institution. But just because something is broken doesn’t mean there’s no value in it, or that it’s not worth trying to fix (I mean, look at me!).

What I like about Kinnamen, though, as I’ve mentioned before, is that he ultimately emphasizes relationships as the way to build healthy churches. He refers to it as “reverse mentoring”—while Millennials are open to learning from their elders, older generations also have something to learn from Millennials. Kinnamen says, “So this idea of reverse mentoring––we need young people to help enliven and invigorate our congregations and we also need older adults to give good life coaching in the midst of these very different and complicated times that young people are facing.”

In a way, valuing and emphasizing meaningful relationships moves toward the post-institutional, but I think relationships are what give life to institutions. So I’m staying in the institutional church. I’m going in deep—joining groups and committees; giving time, talent, and money; learning how the structure works. And down deep there, I’m building. Building relationships and, I’d like to think, building a future.

_____

What do you think? Is the institutional church worth saving? Is the Millennial generation a post-institutional one? Are relationships and institutions compatible?