Last week I made reference to the Pew Forum study that was recently published on "Why Americans Go (and Don't Go) to Religious Services." I mentioned that there was one aspect of the report on which I wanted to push back a little bit. I need to clarify that I am not pushing back on the integrity of the report. As I said last week, I believe the Pew organizations do their work very, very well. My pushback is that I think this report feeds and draws on one of our more misguided ways of viewing the church. Let me see if I can explain myself well enough.
George Hunsberger, a professor of missiology at Western Theological Seminary, describes a tendency in the church to see itself as "a vendor of religious services." With this phrase, Hunsberger is naming a view of the church that many of us take for granted, partly because we have been raised as good capitalists. By that, I mean that we have been trained to look at almost everything from the cost/benefit perspective. I think we can see this most clearly in the way that we view the word "member," organizationally. If we're "members" of a church, it means that we have chosen this congregation, we expect certain goods and services from it and feel free to express our unhappiness to the management if those expectations aren't met. We pay our dues (so to speak). We show up at annual members' meetings to cast votes on the Board of Directors. And if we don't like the decisions that they've made or the personnel that they've hired, we can always leave and take our membership elsewhere. In fact, the threat of taking our membership elsewhere is what drives the Board of Directors to pay attention to us.
That view is overstated for the sake of making my point, but it is not too far outside of a very popular way of interpreting church "membership" organizationally. And, I must add, we church leaders can be among the worst for perpetuating that perspective. Of course, there are ways in which that interpretation of the word "member" works well enough. But, the Christian church's use of the word "member" has always been quite different. Whenever the Apostle Paul speaks of the church as "one body, with many members," he is using the word "members" organically, to refer to body parts. (Think of the meaning of 'dismember' to see how this term continues to retain its organic overtones in some expressions.) "Members, as parts of a common body" is a very different thing than "members of an organization."
If we think of church "membership" organizationally, we are missing two very important things that the biblical tradition teaches.
First, as much as we might evaluate the churches in our area and ultimately choose which church we might leave or attend, the Reformed tradition has always seen our membership in the church as being - primarily - a gift and call from God. Through words like "sovereignty," "grace," "providence," and even "predestination," we have tried to find a language that remembers that God is always and ever the one who initiates our walk of faith, as well as our family of faith. God has called the church into being - it is not simply an association of like-minded people. God has called you to be a member of St. Mark - it is not simply the result of happenstance or your own free choosing. Of course we bristle at the thought - "We are the captains of our own ship!" we like to think - but there it is. Either God is sovereign or God is something less than our tradition has always tried to uphold.
Hunsberger's reference to the church as "a vendor of religious services" shows what can happen to our practice when we buy into an organizational and not organic perspective of the church as a body with many members. Pastors and Elders can spend more time worrying about "pleasing the clientele" (I actually heard this in an HR meeting years ago) than discerning the will of God (which is not always popular.) Members can begin to speak of the church as "them" rather than "us," and ask whether "the church" offers the kinds of things they want, rather than how "we" can do the kinds of things we should. It is a subtle difference, perhaps, but I think we should cringe whenever we hear anyone refer to the church as "them" and not "us."
The second thing the organizational view of membership shortchanges is our real connection to one another. The illustration I use is Ben Franklin, writing a letter and asking his correspondent to forgive his handwriting because the gout in his large toe was severe that day. The 'member' called the toe was experiencing swelling and the other 'member' of Franklin's left hand was shaky as a result. Or, as Paul puts it, we "weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice." Our "membership" as part of a common body is organic; we are connected and no longer see ourselves as solitary persons plying our faith on our own with occasional visits with others when it serves our purposes. I suppose it is possible to pray on a golf course, or - as the Pew study indicates is a popular answer - to pursue one's faith apart from the church. I suppose. I certainly don't feel that being dragged to church kicking and screaming has any integrity to it. But, what if the question, "Do I need the church?" is a secondary question and "Does the church need me?" is a better question? What if the question of "Who needs who?" is secondary and the question of "To what God calls us" is primary? As Paul puts it in his letter to the church in Corinth, "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you', nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'" We can't because we are, in fact, members of one another, not vendors to one another.
My discomfort with the Pew study is that - as a sociological study - it most effectively measures attendance of religious services from the perspective where the church is a vendor and the attendees are shoppers. What if we began with the perspective that in, through, or despite our preferences, God has brought us together as a body? What if we likewise assumed that we are connected to the same body as organically as our head and foot, and not simply because we choose to be engaged? It seems to me that the organic perspective changes everything.
Mark of St. Mark
