Culture Talk: Understanding the People to Whom We Preach

by Fletcher Tink

Ever notice how the word "community" has deteriorated into a limp euphemism?
Suspicious of such, I thought I'd check the Internet, which yielded the following examples of the word: "virtual community of the disabled," the "surf virtual community," the "gay community," the "military community," "faith community" (without any definition of what constitutes "faith"), the "artistic community," "Community Credit Union," the "Community of Science," the "netscape community," the "polyamorous on-line community," and a church called "Community Fellowship" (sounds a little redundant to me!). All nebulous, amorphous, washed-out definitions, not much in common with the early Acts edition when the disciples "shared everything they had" (4:32).

Perhaps some of its debilitation is due to urban diversity and transience. But then New Testament Jerusalem had that. Perhaps some of it stems from our societal need to belong but not to commit. Perhaps some of it comes from the glut of voluntary associations that compete for our time and effort. Perhaps we just live from diminished expectation of what "community" can be.

I was taken aback some time ago in reading psychiatrist Scott Peck's Different Drum, in which he states that most churches are not communities at all. They are "pseudocommunity": lots of talk, hand-holding, and platitudes, but few characteristics of genuine community. As the sociologists say, we live engaged in "simplex roles" where we only know each other by our posturing on Sunday mornings; in the good old days the pastor was neighbor, store client, PTA member, and second baseman on the church ball team, all adding up to "multiplex roles."

Peck proposes a process by which a group perhaps can retrieve community. He says that we must first admit to being "pseudocommunity," aching for something more. We then risk moving on to "emptying"--"gut-level" honesty that vents ambition, false illusions, resentments, institutional props, and theological categories--a cleaning out of our intellectual and emotional closets. Done radically, the result may be chaos, where all of our assumptions, pride, ego constraints are laid out on the floor in a trash pile of clutter. Only at that point can a weary, fearful group, leveled and led by the Holy Spirit, begin to discard, reorganize, and reconstruct genuine community.

Peck himself advocates "intentional" community building where, over extended days, this process is simulated or achieved. Another way that it occurs is as a by-product of crisis. This can be a natural calamity, or leadership void can galvanize a group into a genuine community, at least for the immediate. For example, the experience of the disciples under threat on the Sea of Galilee or in Pentecost's Upper Room. Spontaneous revival fires that flamed congregations into open confession and transformed lives effectively fashioned frontier community.

What makes me very nervous about Peck's thesis is that he suggests that the major "emptying" should emerge from the leader. Gifted with position and power, the pastor can be an obstacle to true community, securing the status quo and hoarding power. What is required is the displacement of "Godspeak," trite formulas, postured spirituality, and rank. Minus the lead of the leader, the exercise is meaningless. The risk, of course, is that the leader, emptied, appears inept, vulnerable, out of control. At that point, there may emerge openness to new forms and relationships under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit. Group prayer, so rarely exercised, can facilitate the emptying process.

Philippians describes Jesus as "emptying himself," an act considered a namby-pamby exercise by those wanting community restoration by political activism. Yet, a majority of Christians identify themselves more in Christ's role as helpless Christmas babe, as vulnerable hostage of Satan on Temptation Mountain, as mournful weeper before Lazarus's tomb, as anguished intercessor in Gethsemane, as suspended accused on a cross. As has often been repeated, at the foot of the Cross we find ourselves "leveled." No wonder the disciples retreated as a unit again and again into group solace.
As a minister, I feel terribly uncomfortable with this notion of "emptying." But I do have comforting predecessors: Isaiah, who anguishes after confronting God's holiness, "Woe is me"; or Daniel, who prays, identifying the sins of his people as his own; or that miserably dressed high priest Joshua of Zechariah's chapter 3; or Paul, who expounds on the foolishness of preaching (1 Corinthians 1:21, KJV). I want to be in control, to determine outcomes, to be credited for the successes the institution celebrates.
Yet one contrary experience in my ministry changed me. I had prepared a sermon for delivery but had experienced an awful week. Feeling drained of energy, ideas, and spiritual authority, I approached the pulpit and admitted my spiritual need. I set aside the sermon, approached the altar, and invited the congregation to come forward and intercede for their inept pastor. It was awkward. I felt ashamed, but ultimately restored.

A year later, a young visitor attended our Wednesday evening prayer session. Afterward, I queried him about any past relationship with the congregation. He stated that a year earlier he, an unbeliever, had been coerced to church by a buddy in the congregation. In his cynicism, he armed himself for confrontation.

But the service revealed a strange twist. The pastor that morning admitted to his own weakness and requested that the congregation pray with him. This so disarmed the visitor, who thought that if a pastor needed prayer for his torment, how much more he needed it. He returned home, looked for a local church, was converted, and was subsequently elected to the church board.

Now I confess that I have preached some artful sermons less productive than this sermonless service. Apparently, pastoral "emptying" opened doors for his inclusion into community.

With hesitation, I dare to suggest how a pastor might "empty." Frankly, even this can be so manipulative, so managed. But here are some thoughts:

1. Dare to journey with your congregation into the land of your own failures and weaknesses. If the Bible can "fess" up all of its strange cast of characters, the pulpit can tolerate, even benefit by, the same.

2. Level with your people about difficult times that you are passing through. However, keep confidences; do not exploit for effect; don't be masochistic; allow your parishioners to be Christ to you. Find humor in your pathos, and share it.

3. Design sermons that allow parishioners to see "splices of life," yours and theirs, that feature not only victories but also the pained process to get there.

4. Hint of suggested areas of theology where the certitudes don't apply. I appreciate my seminary mentor, Dr. William Greathouse, who, when confronted by unsolvable theological questions, would admit shelving them "in [preserving] solution" for later dissection.

5. Find an alternative forum for your imagination, for your questioning, for your disappointments, where you are not expected to pontificate or pronounce ultimate truths. Sometimes we lay on our people an unnatural soberness about life without enough whimsy.

6. Allow your congregation to see you in multiplex roles where you are not in control.
Strange, isn't it, that Christmas draws together such a hapless cast of characters. But it was around a cattle trough that true and eternal community was born, with a baby, God's "emptying," as "the center point of a turning world."

Fletcher Tink is an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene, serving as adjunct professor of urban missions at Nazarene Theological Seminary and coordinator of education for Nazarene Compassionate Ministries International. He has taught leadership development and cross-cultural communications in over 20 countries. He can be contacted at Tinkmetro@aol.com.