reality is the will of God so let's start there...

Decades ago - while visiting a boldly evangelical, white Lutheran pastor in a burned-out neighborhood in Detroit whose congregation bucked all the trends and continued to grow by leaps and bounds - I was told: "The ONLY thing the church has to offer people that culture can't is... Jesus."  That continues to shape my sense of doing and being the church. In our current context, however, the rise of independent, big box, mega churches has caused some confusion re: what are small congregations to do? The big box churches have been wildly successful in creating spiritual shopping malls that provide soy chai lattes before worship and merch and music afterwards. With rare exceptions, most of these congregations are in the South/Southwest. Most are non-denominational communities or part of the Calvary Chapel franchise. All attract a minimum of 10,000+ every week, claim 2000+ in membership, are multi-racial, multi-cultural, and vigorously informal and tech savvy. And, as an NPR report puts it:

At a time when empty pews are forcing churches across the country to shutter, these mostly nondenominational houses of worship are largely bucking that trend — attracting younger, more vibrant and more diverse congregations. The average Christian congregation in the U.S. is in precipitous decline, with just 65 members, about a third of whom are age 65 or older, according to a 2020 pre-pandemic survey. By contrast, a separate 2020 study found that three-quarters of megachurches were growing, many at a rapid clip.

(read more @ https://www.npr.org/2023/07/14/ 1187460517/

megachurches-growing-liquid-church)

Countless once mainstream but now sideline congregations have tried to borrow the external style of these obviously popular churches. They assume that style matters most in 21st century America - and to some degree they aren't wrong. What participants in these mega-churches say is that they left the churches of their youth in search of a spiritual home that evoked: "a feeling of belonging... where the congregation mostly looked like themselves with a lot of millennials and Gen Z participating in an enthusiastic manner." They valued the informality of the gatherings, resonated with the sophisticated use of technology in worship, appreciated the "hip" vibe of the worship, and the easy anonymity of participation. "It's like Wal-Mart," a dear friend used to say to me, "easy in, easy out in a context that looks and feels like me."

The Wal-Mart analogy has legs in an era where convenience trumps community: just ask the owners of countless mom and pop neighborhood shops that have been unable to compete whenever big box stores move into town. And while I am NOT one to demonize competition - or economies of scale - like Joni Mitchell sang presciently so long ago: "something's lost and something's gained in living every day" right?

The conservative commentator for the NYTimes, Russ Douthat speaks to this in his most recent newsletter where he observes that in addition to institutional decline and the inability to compete with big box operations, another transformation is taking place in culture - including religion. (see" "How the Internet is Making Everything Nondenominational" in his subscription series.) We might call it the deconstruction of tradition, or, the emergence of radically decentralized living. The more we relinquish loyalty to traditional institutions, that harder it is to analyze what's taking place.

The emerging nondenominational landscape, to say nothing of post-Christian forms of spirituality — the complex of paganism and pantheism and spiritual-but-not-religious explorations that I also try to write about — is making any coherent sense of what’s happening in American religion ever more elusive. And the same is true of a journalistic landscape where a historian on Substack has a bigger audience than many voices in traditional media. The media as a feature of American culture doesn’t have to face an extinction-level event to become much harder to analyze, generalize about and reasonably critique.

What I’m describing with religious phrases is similar to the distinction drawn in a recent essay by the critic Ted Gioia (another Substacker), who describes how the old America of “macroculture” doesn’t understand the new America of “microculture” — meaning, mostly, that big lumbering enterprises like movie studios and media companies and Ivy League universities are working uphill to adapt to a world where a YouTube star they didn’t know about till yesterday can matter more than Oscar votes, a well-reviewed book or a Harvard imprimatur. At one point, Gioia paraphrases another critic, Ryan Broderick, arguing that there’s increasingly a “real internet” and the “media’s idea of the internet,” implying that traditional media isn’t working hard enough to understand or learn from the microcultures that are quickly taking over.

That closing sentence cuts to the chase: there’s increasingly a “real internet” and the “media’s idea of the internet,” implying that traditional media isn’t working hard enough to understand or learn from the microcultures that are quickly taking over." Or as Bob Dylan sang with a snarl: "Something's going on all around you and you DON'T know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"           

All of which suggests to me (as a clergy person just returning to serve a traditional congregation) at least the following:

+ As Meister Eckhart (13th century mystical Dominican priest) told us: "Reality is the will of God; it can always be better, but we must start with what is real." There's NO way to put the Jinn back in the bottle, ok? So let's embrace our new decentralization playfully, creatively, and faithfully. Let's make small sacred again in communities dedicated to the radical love of Jesus. We cannot - and will not - be able to compete with the big box churches. We can neither do entertainment as well as Disney, coffee better than Starbucks, or convenience like Wal-Mart. So, in this era of high tech decentralization, let's build communities of compassion where every individual matters. How did the "Cheers" theme song put it? 

Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got

Taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot

Wouldn't you like to get away? Sometimes you wanna go

Where everybody knows your name and they're always glad you came

You wanna be where you can see  our troubles are all the same 

You wanna be where everybody knows your name

+ Let's go deep, not wide: deep with connections, deep with radical hospitality, deep with going the extra mile, deep with wisdom and spiritual guidance. The big box experience celebrates passivity - like a shopping mall with music market-tested for your demographic - it is easy in, easy out. Our charism as small faith communities on the margins is different: our gift is being there in the un-easy times because we're small enough to listen and flexible enough to respond. We also trust that homogeneity is NOT always what we're looking for - especially if we don't fit in with the status quo. So, let's boldly proclaim the love of Jesus for those who DON'T look, act, think, or believe like us.

+ And let's go beyond pop-psychology on Sunday mornings and cheap politics, too: let's help people nourish a contemplative inner life. Let's treat formation as a sacred gift that can bring healing to someone in pain. Let's put our partisan politics aside - not abandon our convictions, mind you, but use discretion - so that we might discover our common ground. Back in the day, REM sang: "Everybody hurts." And that's as true in Trump country as in the land of Biden - and beyond. 

Douthat closes his reflection like this: The internet makes everything much more visible but considerably less legible. We see our own culture through our screens, darkly, and the things that matter most may be somewhere back in the shadows, just beyond our sight. This is part of our reality so let's find it's blessing trusting St. Paul when he proclaimed: God works good in everything for those who love and trust God.