It is not news that the United Church of Christ and other mainline denominations are in trouble. There may be enough organizational momentum to keep most of our churches’ doors open for another generation or so. But even now, more and more of our churches are no longer functioning as outward-reaching agents of inspiration, empowerment, hope, justice, and redeeming love. While bearing the name of churches of Jesus Christ, many churches are becoming hollow organizational shells who suck inordinate amounts of talents, loyalty and financial resources from their people for the sole purpose of staying "in business." This is a shameful idolatry and makes a mockery of everything Jesus lived and died for.

This paper attempts to address this disheartening situation by offering an analysis of the changing cultural situation that has both contributed to the problem and that opens new doors into the future. Whether or not you agree with my perspective or suggestions, I think you will agree that it is of utmost importance for us to make it a priority to address this issue on all levels of the Church. I hope that this paper will help generate many other ideas, and, beyond that, a renewed enthusiasm for responding faithfully and creatively to the challenges that await us at the cusp of a new millennium.

B. Standing on Shifting Ground

I dare say all of us are aware of the ground rumbling and shifting under our feet, leaving us with the feeling that we are working harder and harder to prop up organizational structures, language systems and missions with methods that are losing their power to motivate and inspire. It has become clear that the social situation that fueled the growth of mainline churches in the 1950's and ‘60's, and that created the organizational structures, programs, and social values that we have inherited, has disappeared. Most of us have seen the traditional family unit shaken to its foundations and replaced by a variety of other "family constellations;" we have seen our volunteer pools dry up with the dramatic reduction of housewives and of retirees who stay put; we have seen a plethora of individual leisure and recreational opportunities tie up church members’ weekend time; and we have seen a "liberation" from values based on authority, duty, and social responsibility in favor of the pursuit of individual fulfillment. In addition to these changes, the WASP middle class, which has long provided the socioeconomic foundation of mainline-ism, is shrinking somewhat in real numbers and shrinking dramatically in relation to other segments of our society.

Now, if we saw our denomination’s problem as largely a result of changes in demographics, we could set about working to adapt our programs, evangelism, worship, and education to fit our "changing market." But I believe that the crisis we face is far deeper than changes in demographics. The real shifts that we will be experiencing into the next millennium are of the highest and the deepest order. They have to do with such questions as the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how human beings can survive together on our planet, and what is the foundation of the social and political contract. In short, these are spiritual and philosophical questions, questions of meaning and value, and questions of human and ecological ethics.

The demographic changes I referred to earlier pale in comparison to some of the changes in perception that our society is undergoing. I invite you to ride the wave toward a new world view as you consider the revolutions that are simultaneously occuring in diverse areas of our society.

1) Science is molting out of rationalistic reductionism and into a spiritually-friendly world view. Ponder: a) Physics has discovered that subatomic particles are not determined by known "laws" or forces that make them move in predictable ways. At the most elemental level of physical reality they have been surprised to find extraordinary openness and freedom. And yet chaos tends to arrange itself in ordered patterns. b) "Matter" is not stable solidness as it appears. Particles appear and disappear as quantum fields interact. What we think of as matter is actually energy patterns that constantly interact with surrounding and even distant energy patterns. The world we see and touch is not an arrangement of distinct objects, but a part of a highly complex unified force field. c) The act of observing natural phenomena tends to change the phenomena; i.e., the object cannot really be seen as separate from the subject. This has profound implications, not only for sensitive scientific experiments, but also for our sense of connection to the "objects" (including people) in the world that we "act upon." d) Changes effected to a particle at point A can affect a previously-paired particle at point B, even when there is no apparent connection between the points or the particles.

To me, such discoveries have profound, far-reaching implications for the future of Western religion. Science is breaking away from a world view where miracles are, by definition, impossible. Instead, reality is seen as a unitive, flowing, and highly interactive energy system--a context where the energy of Spirit might be seen to move freely and "naturally" through what we perceive as the "material world."

Some practical applications of these insights have been demonstrated by experiments that bring science into the realm traditionally relegated to religion. For example, plants have been demonstrated to grow better when they are spoken kindly to and when they are prayed for. In a carefully-constructed blind experiment, heart patients recovered faster and with less pain when prayed for by people who did not know them. Faith, hope and love significantly increase the chances of recovery from cancer, while serenity and loving relationships reduce the risk of heart disease. Verifiable "out-of-body experiences," such as in "near death experiences," have demonstrated the existence of a "self" that is in some way independent from physical senses and functions.

2) Patriarchal political structures based on intrinsic authority, gender and racial superiority, and centralized rule by force are breaking up. In the last forty years, the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movement, Women’s Movement, Gay Rights Movement, and activism by persons who are "differently abled" have all begun shaping a vision of a new social and political order that values the inherent worth of each person and group and seeks to incorporate them into a diversified rather than homogenized society. This new understanding of the social contract is evidenced in all levels of our society. The unquestioned authority of the dominant male figure is passe in many families. In the corporate world, work groups, quality circles, and TQM teams are making authoritarian bosses obsolete. Most information no longer comes from the top, but can be instantly shared among anyone with E-mail and Internet capability. In the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope‘s authority is increasingly questioned, challenged, or sidestepped. And in a growing number of mainline churches, God is no longer seen as exclusively male; "kingdom of God" is now read as "realm of God;" and "Lord" is "Sovereign" (or the deferential words are dropped altogether.)

These changes are much more profound than rearranging the political furniture or playing word games. They reflect a transformation of a hierarchical world view, where power was located at the top, into a more egalitarian world view, where power is located and shared in our midst. In theological terms, transcendence is giving way to immanence.

3) Tribalism is being superseded by universalism. Since the dawn of the human race, "tribalism" has formed the psycho-social foundation for much of human social behavior. In tribalism, the individual receives his or her identity primarily from the social group, which defines itself as over and against the other groups with which it competes. Thus, the individual’s identity is at least in part based on its own group’s differences from other competing groups.

In the Church, "tribalism" made me look down on Catholics when I was growing up, prevented my Catholic friends from visiting my church, and made my Baptist friends try to "save" me. Denominational tribalism has determined which Christians can and cannot receive the sacraments in which churches. Western Christian tribalism sent missionaries all over the world to "convert the heathen." Christian tribalism prompts Randall Terry to declare, "I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good...our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called on obey God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism" (The News Sentinel, Ft. Wayne, IN, 8/16/93).

All of this is nothing new. Inquisitions and crusades, ethnic cleansings and genocides have been going on since Joshua led the Israelites into Canaan with the "divine mandate" to utterly destroy every city that worshiped Baal and other foreign gods. What is new is the growing number of people who are transcending their tribalism and embracing a universal perspective that locates their home as the planet, and their people as the human race.

Many factors have helped bring this about. The fear that gripped the human race when tribalism’s ultimate weapons of universal annihilation kept the world teetering on the brink of irreversible destruction made a strong impact on the human psyche. Photos of Planet Earth taken from space, showing our small, beautiful planet without any national boundaries, looking for all the world like a single ecosphere, impressed on our minds a new view of reality. Back down on earth, increasing shortages of natural resources, the depletion of everyone’s ozone layer by people on all continents, and the threat of global warming have all brought home the reality that the world is indeed one world, and that the human race will thrive together or go down together.

In addition to these ecological realities, the changing demographics of America has exposed us to a wide variety of cultures. Over 10% of Americans have been foreign-born. Episcopalians have been surpassed by Muslims in the number of American adherents. Once seen as a melting pot, America is increasingly a tapestry woven from a variety of textures and colors.

Whether or not you live next door to someone from another culture, your TV news show will show you scenes from around the world. And chances are your TV was made on the other side of the world, or rather, has parts that were made in many different parts of the world, dependent on a multiational corporation to establish a system of planning, management and finance that interconnects a variety of languages, cultures and economies.

Our world is shrinking and shuffling together to the point where a universal rather than a tribal perspective is ecologically and economically necessary. And this is creating an entirely new climate for religion. But as many people in our society make the transition from tribalism toward universalism, our conception of truth expands vastly beyond our own limited "tribal" perspective. Truth can now be seen as multi-faceted, with each vantage point revealing a new aspect of the infinitely-wondrous whole. In this climate, dogmatic arrogance naturally gives way to humility. Religious intolerance gives way to an eagerness to behold the treasures others have discovered.

4) Static goals are being replaced by dynamic processes. On the macro level, some goals that once were treated as reachable have receded from us at least as quickly as we have approached them. Science has experienced this unexpected phenomenon. The entire enterprise of scientific inquiry was founded on the premise that as our knowledge increased, our ignorance would decrease. What science has experienced instead is that as our knowledge increases, the mystery increases exponentially. Each question answered opens up more questions that are not answered. The goal of knowing it all flies away faster than we can approach it. And the more we learn, the faster it flies. The implications of this phenomenon have not yet been assimilated by the scientific community. Doctoral students still carve up ever-smaller pieces of the puzzle to scrutinize, obliviouis to the fact that they are only making the puzzle larger. But there are already a few pioneers in physics who are beginning to experiment with the language and tools of metaphysics. Practicing metaphysics requires the cultivation of wisdom, which does not have a static goal of attaining all the possible data, but is a dynamic process of expanding the mind.

Another static goal our society has devoted itself to is the elimination of poverty, or at least its reduction. Vast amounts of financial, political and human capital have been invested in this worthy goal. It is becoming clear to people across the political spectrum that setting targets of income and unemployment levels, defining social problems that need to be corrected, and investing resources to reach those static goals, while perhaps affecting the welfare of people in poverty, have little impact on eliminating poverty. Perhaps we are coming to the realization that something undesirable cannot be eliminated by declaring war on it and defeating it. It can only yield to us as it is replaced by something good--personal empowerment, hope, and the conviction of having a contribution, along with the sharing of resources and opportunities for the common good. The cultivation of these is a dynamic process.

One wonders how many billions of dollars will need to be spent "fighting crime" before our society realizes that defeating crime is also an unattainable static goal the way we are approaching it.

Many business corporations have begun making the transition from using static goals to using process goals. When a company seriously identifiies "quality" or "excellence" as its highest priority, it must transfrom its organization and utilization of resources to enhance creativity, longterm planning, and collaboration, while reducing internal competition, fragmented planning, and short-sighted goals.

We can see a similar trend happening on the personal level. Fewer people seem to be satisfied with such static life goals as owning a home, putting the kids through college, making vice-president in their firm, or retiring. More people are looking for their lives to express a dynamic purpose that heals or expands their sense of self. Such Twelve-Step Programs as Alcoholics Anonymous teach its members see themselves in a lifelong recovery process. Many of its perspectives have been borrowed by such movements as Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families, which has helped millions more see themselves in a lifelong process of healing. Others are in pursuit of total health and wellbeing, inspired by the holistic health movement, mind\body science, or such eastern practices as yoga, ayurveda, and T’ai Chi. Best-selling books like Embraced by the Light, A Course in Miracles, A Return to Love, Your Sacred Self, and The Celestine Prophecy have inspired millions more to think of their lives as a dynamic process of fulfilling a higher purpose of manifesting divine energy and love.

In short, more and more people are seeing their lives, not as a means of reaching an objective destination (whether it be comfortable retirement or heaven), but as a journey of the self, whose purpose is found in the full living of it. Rather than working for "pie in the sky by and by," people on this journey more readily respond to Jesus’ words, "I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10).

I see the crisis facing North American mainline Christianity today as arising from these fundamental "paradigm shifts." Our mainline Protestant belief systems, language, organizational structures, and missions are all rooted in thought patterns that emerged during the Enlightenment and the "Age of Reason." Many Roman Catholic structures and systems are rooted even further back in Medieval thought patterns. Both are becoming increasingly obsolete, as Western Civilization enters a new millennium and a new way of perceiving our world and our place in it.

What would the Christian faith look like if it were not limited by the perspectives of the past? I invite you to use your imagination with me and open your spirit to the Spirit that says, "Behold, I make all things new." Here are some thoughts that may prompt your reflection.

1) God. Our traditional understanding of God is limited by our cognitive habit of perceiving "objects" as distinct, separate entities that can be categorized and ordered into hierarchies. Our minds are "programmed" to think of a transcendent God who dwells far away from us in heaven, in some idealized realm of perfection, or in the Bible stories of a distant place and time. Ironically, it is the new physics that frees us from a "hardening of the categories" and opens our minds to a more biblical understanding of God as a creating, sustaining, renewing force that infuses every aspect of reality. Perhaps we can hear anew the words of Meister Eckhart that were written 700 years ago:

(Meditations with Meister Eckhart, tr. by Matthew Fox, Bear & Co., 1983, p. 22)

Such a perspective changes not only the way we think about God, but, even more importantly, the way we experience God as we behold all created things. Another pre-modern mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, helps illustrate this:

2) Jesus the Christ. The Church’s early deification of Jesus of Nazareth was its way of expressing the doctrine of the Incarnation--the insight that the Spirit of God "became flesh and dwelt among us" in this extraordinary human being. But by defining him as "begotten, not made" and incorporating the man Jesus into the Trinity, the Church catapulted him beyond the reach and identification of most Christians. He is often depicted as "perfect" in the Greek sense of without human blemish or even limitation. By contrast, we humans have often been depicted as depraved and totally corrupted by our flesh. This is a good motivator for repentance, which can certainly be a good thing. But it is not so good for getting people off their knees and onto their feet, empowered to live out their own calling as incarnations of God’s Spirit.

As our dependence on for hierarchical relationships diminishes, Christians of the new millennium can rediscover the power, not just of "Christ for me," but also of "Christ in me." Jesus’ "Christness" consisted in his complete yieldedness and faithfulness to God’s Spirit and in his extraordinary ability to embody in the human realm the creating, redeeming, loving, empowering Word, the Logos of God. Though we are not called to be Messiahs as he was, we are indeed called to embody, or incarnate, the Word in our own ways, using our own gifts and discerning the movement of the Spirit of God in our own life situations. This brings Jesus more within reach as our prototype, teacher, and guide--a human mediator who links the human with the divine. His crucifixion powerfully dramatized the nature of divine love, which vulnerably takes upon itself human sin and continues to offer forgiving love. Even this most powerful expression of his divinity is something that he taught his disciples to emulate ("take up your cross and follow me;" "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," etc.).

3. The Holy Spirit. The mistrust and lack of understanding of the Holy Spirit in most modern mainline churches is a symptom of our dispirited dilemma. Rather than mentioning this third of the Trinity once a year, on Pentecost, and moving on to other more familiar topics, we ought to be celebrating and re-enacting this drama every Sunday, for it was the Holy Spirit that gave birth to the Church, and without which the Church cannot be sustained or renewed from age to age.

The Holy Spirit cannot be readily described, doctrinized, tamed, controlled, or used to meet organizational needs--it "blows where it wills." It takes us beyond our comfort zones and into the uncharted domain of dreams, visions, miracles, inspiration, wisdom, healing, and joy. It invites us to open up to an energy force that is not our own, and that recreates us and unites us in ways we have not yet dared to imagine. With the limitations of rationalism becoming clearer to more and more people, the kairos moment for a resurgence of the Holy Spirit in our churches is nearing. As frightening as this prospect might be to most left-brain oriented UCC churches, our denomination has a deep, strong tradition of Holy Spirit inspiration. The Puritans and Separatists that formed the Congregational Church tried to purge the church of hierarchically-imposed doctrines, orders and governance, relying on the Holy Spirit to guide and direct each congregation in these matters. The name "Congregational" was not orignally meant to imply that each congregaton was the highest level of authority, but that God speaking to each congregation through the Holy Spirit was. In my view, a rediscovery of the Holy Spirit and the active cultivation of a responsiveness to this dynamic, life-breathing agent of the Divine is at the foundation of our hope for a vital Church in the next millennium.

4. The Word of God. Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers elevated "the Word of God" to a place of highest authority in our churches’ faith and practice. With Luther’s great efforts to translate the Bible into the vernacular and put it in the hands of the laity, it was inevitable that the words of the Bible would come to be seen as synonymous with God’s Word. Hence, the church has been in conflict over its differing interpretations of the often contradictory and culturally-bound words of Scripture.

As human culture diverges more and more from the agrarian cultures of the Bible, and as we appreciate the wide diversity of cultures in our modern world, it is increasingly imperative that the Church of the coming millennium embrace, obey, and proclaim the Word of God that both echoes in and transcends the words of the Bible. Of course, this is tricky business, because the words of the Bible are bound between book covers and provide a universally available common reference point. Without them, anyone could proclaim their own revelation of the Word of God. Already, books are being published and read that are purported to be divinely inspired (e.g. The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, The Urantia Book, and A Course in Miracles). We also have the current project of rewriting of the Bible to remove or neutralize masculine references to God.

The only way the Church can move forward faithfully now is to return to the original Biblical understanding of God’s Word, which is the active expression of God’s nature or will--through a prophet or a creative or redemptive act, through the Divine Logos as the ordered thought or reason that underlies all created things, and through Scriptures and holy writings whose truths are revealed to us anew by the Holy Spirit in each new age and situation. Rather than deriving our faith and practice strictly from the critical analysis of Scripture passages, we need also to learn to listen to the active expression of God with our hearts, souls, imaginations, and wills. Spiritual discernment needs to supersede literary, historical, and form criticism.

When this happens, perhaps the introduction of nonpatriarchal God-language will not merely be an exercise in political correctness, but it will arise out of encounters with a God whose nature and self-expression both infuse and transcend human sexuality and gender. When this happens, perhaps we will hear the voice of God speaking in traditions other than our own. When this happens, perhaps we will at last see our "sons and daughters prophesy, our old men dream dreams, and our young men see visions." When this happens, perhaps we will need and have "a thousand tongues to sing our great Redeemer’s praise"--each tongue inspired by the ever-new, ever-active Word of God.

5. Worship. This brings us to worship, which for too many mainline churches is driven by the dying momentum of habit, tradition, and disembodied cognitive thought processes. People need to be reborn each week by a divine-human encounter that reawakens heart, mind, body and soul. I eagerly invite you to imagine and explore ways for this to happen--through music, movement, engaging the senses, active participation in the liturgy, prayer, silent meditation, koinonia-building, stories and parables, drama, and sacramental ritual, as well as the Word of God re-expressed in human words. Your ideas and experiences in this area would be most welcome!

6. The church’s organization and mission. Despite our congregational and democratic heritage, the strong pull of the hierarchical archetype has permeated our churches. The pastor functions as a combination chief administrator and professional paid Christian. The people work to serve the needs of the church and support the pastor’s ministry. And local churches pool resources to support the structure of the "Larger Church."

In recent years, this modus operandi has been seen to be bankrupt--first in terms of financial and human resources, and, perhaps out of necessity, theologically. As mainline denominations restructure (i.e. downsize), they are at least employing rhetoric that speaks of empowering local congregations to be in mission right where they are. Whether this new rhetoric proves to be a thin theological whitewashing of financial collapse, or indeed proves to usher in a new way of defining the church and its mission, depends almost entirely on each local church. So often a church’s reduced contribution to mission projects in faraway places simply "empowers" it to pay its utility bills on time, while it assigns its creative members to come up with new ways to engage the congregation in fundraising so it can keep its doors open and "continue its mission in its community." Never mind the fact that the only thing it does "for" the community is hold fundraisers to solicit the community’s money so it can stay open.

Churches that are vital in the next millennium will truly need to have a purpose beyond themselves, define and live out their mission, and expand their mission into their communities and the world by empowering their members to be people in mission, both individually and collectively. Our New York Conference’s Laity Empowerment Project is designed to do just that. Many people today are ready to look at their life’s purpose, to see themselves in an ongoing process of learning and growth, and to discover and exercise their particular gifts in service to the world. If the church cannot effectively help people do this, it will forever define mission as the job of missionaries, ministry as the job of the pastor, and the church’s purpose as keeping its doors open. There is no surer prescription for the demise of our churches in the next century.

7. Evangelism. The "E-word" has been a very awkward one for most of our churches. So we have allowed "those other churches" to define it on our behalf, and we have defined ourselves as "not doing that." Guess who is growing?

The "other churches" have defined evangelilsm in terms of static goals: win the nonchristian world to Christ by having them go through a more-or-less prescribed prayer of repentance and acceptance of Jesus as personal Lord and Savior. We need to understand evangelism and salvation as a dynamic process of embracing and entering into the reigning of God in our lives and in our life together as the body of Christ. The church needs to actively find new ways to reach out and embody the Good News of God’s contagious love to all people who need to hear it. It also needs to respect the integrity of people in terms of their own spiritual experience, political views, cultural heritage, sexual orientation, etc. This means that not every convert will look, talk, or think like us, or even want to sing the same old worn-out music as we do! They may even have things to teach us. If a church can’t deal with that in the name of Christ’s love, can it in all conscience continue to claim to do ministry in the name of Jesus Christ?

8. Relationships with other religious groups. It is imperative that the mainline church develop a new model for interdenominational and interfaith relations and dialogue. For the last century, the United Church of Christ and its predecessor denominations have been working towards unity by seeking the "lowest common denominators" and negotiating or minimizing the differences with other groups. This is the approach at work in its dialogue with the Disciples of Christ and in the Consultatationon on Church Union.

But Jesus' prayer was not "that they may all be alike." The unity that he prayed for can best be interpreted as a complete whole, each part complementing the others, similar to Paul's analogy of the whole body with its diverse parts. If we believe that God is One, and that God manifests Godself to all peoples and cultures in a variety of ways, then our faith will be enhanced--not by negotiating away our differences, but by understanding and appreciating the various facets of truth they reflect. Looking at an aspect of our faith through two different perspectives can make the picture suddenly jump into three dimensionality. We suddenly perceive the depth perspective that we could not get with only one eye.

With its rich heritage of interdenominational and interfaith dialogue, the UCC is in a unique position to enter the new millennium greatly enriched by other spiritual perspectives. The key is to learn to hold different understandings in creative tension, without giving up our perspective or asking others to relinquish theirs.

There are many ways of instituting change in organizations that will not work to bring about the order of change we have been talking about. Such methods as using current hierarchichal authorities (denominational leaders, pastors, Councils, etc.) to eliminate "outdated" structures, practices, and belief systems and institute new ones by executive fiat would of course be like pouring new wine into old wineskins. So would the process of setting static long-term goals and objectives, or mounting a campaign so that the "enlightened" faction of the church can take control from the "traditionalists." As Albert Einstein said, "A problem cannot be solved from the same consciousness that created it."

Effective leadership in the emerging church demands that we stop seeing faith as adherence to a set of propositions, and understand it as an evolving process that moves people into fuller communion with God, with creation, and with our fellow creatures. From this perspective, we recognize that faith is both latent and active in every human being. Effective leadership acts as a catalyst of growth in others and in the systems in which the leader works by visibly and authentically speaking, acting, and living out of a vital, growing faith.

This faith is a living expression of a dynamic relationship between the human and the divine. The catalytic leader must be able to hold these two forces in perpetual creative tension as he or she both humbly expresses the need for God and incarnates the Spirit of God.

Jesus showed us how to live out of this powerful creative tension. Even now, when we incarnate the Spirit of Christ to others ("I, yet not I, but Christ within me"), we are also embodying the Spirit of the one who said, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." This is the paradox of faith-based leadership. But there is a tremendously appealing power to this faith when it is lived out in the church’s midst. It helps people envision how they too can embark on the journey of becoming true to their deepest nature, which is at once fully human, mysteriously divine, and dynamically relational..

People do not have to understand what the word paradigm means to sense that the world is changing in often frightening ways. The right wing of the Christian church is growing in part by mounting a religio-political reaction that seeks to restore the old order that as passing away. Main line churches are in a position to take a different approach. We can help guide people into the future with a living faith, hope, courage and love that will help us together create a society where spiritual values might at last be heard.