There are several ways to respond to a crisis. There's the Chicken-Little response. Actually, his wasn't even a response to a crisis - which is the irony of it. But suspend belief for a moment, imagine the sky was indeed falling. His frantic response would have done no good anyway. Of course, our emotions sometimes get away from us. That's to be expected, and if it weren't we'd be less than human. But if the response is only a frantic kind of running around, well, it's possible to put yourself in a deeper crisis than before. Clearly it's not the best response.
Another way to respond to a crisis is exactly the opposite - bury your head in the sand, and hope it will go away. Like a turtle sunning itself on the road, there is a steadiness to this approach. But it's not a steadiness based on a wise assessment of the dangers. The crisis is ignored, not dealt with. Now sometimes I leave a paper on my desk long enough so that it becomes irrelevant. Problem solved through inaction. But in this case, acting on it wasn't crucial. But if the crisis is real, ignoring it could be...well, like that turtle sunning himself on the road.
The psychologists among us - whether professional or amateur - will notice the passive/aggressive nature of these two options. And the psychologists will also suggest that most of us tend one direction or the other in a crisis. We either tend to over function or under function, based on our predisposition - our hard wiring. And it's good to know which we are. And if you don't know, spouses can usually help, because spouses tend to be mirrors of each other in terms of crisis response. Not always...but usually there's this complementarity in couples....which is both what we admire and what also drives us nuts...
Anyway, back to possible responses to a crisis... It might be thought that the best way to respond to a crisis is through management. It's how I was trained as a pilot. You work the problem - calmly, in a focused way. You follow procedures, step by step. For a pilot it's "A-B-C." Airspeed, first you nail your airspeed - Best place to land - and once those two are settled you begin a Cabin check, troubleshooting what's going on.
And often this is the most effective approach - especially when the crisis is best addressed by a disciplined, orderly procedure. Believe me, it's what I'd do in an airplane.
But what if the real answer to a certain crisis isn't following a procedure but thinking imaginatively? What if the most helpful response isn't in an established check list but is something you only get to through a creative leap? Well, then those procedures are just going to bog you down. Those steps are just going to blind you rather than free you.
So why all this talk about crisis? What if the crisis is a spiritual crisis?
I'm reading an unsettling book. It suggests that the church as a whole is in a crisis. Here are some of the statistics that mostly focus on the perceptions of young people, ages 16-29....or the under 30 crowd.
Overall, they have 38% bad impression of Christians, 45% neutral, and only 16% positive.
57% think Christians are very judgmental. One of the main complaints: 54% think Christians live lives filled with hypocracy - we say one thing and do another. Other words they suggest fit Christians in general are borning, closed minded and not accepting of people of other faiths, and old-fashioned. At the same time the good descriptors aren't strongly affirmed either. We're not consistently found to be friendly, worthy of respect, consistently showing love for others, or people who can be trusted. (UnChristian, by D. Kinnaman) And it's not that it's always been this way...a kind of extended adolescent questioning of adult beliefs. The studies from previous years indicate this is a radical shift.
And we in the Church need to take notice....or we should have. Our under-30 crowd, even at Bethel, tends to be on the "light" side, and not just in the summer. Unfortunately, we're part of the social trend. We're in the thick of it. According to the parable of Jesus, if we were farmers there's far too much seed being scattered in places that don't allow for growth. And it is a sort of "crisis."
Now we could do the typical things in a crisis. We could over-react and waste a lot of energy running around without any purpose. We could under-react and continue sunning ourselves believing that if we ignore it, it will go away. And it's not the kind of crisis that lends itself to management. It's not like a mechanical failure.
Now I don't have all the answers. But let me suggest a few things...
First, this crisis is a wake up call for our own self-examination. Have we, inside the Church, truly put our faith at the center of our lives or have we simply been "playing" at our Christian faith half-heartedly? In other words, is there something in their perceptions of us that we need to admit bears some truth? When we've been faced with important decisions have we truly sought God's direction? Do we pray regularly or just occasionally? Do we let things overshadow the love that God has placed in our hearts? Is our practice of the faith sometimes perfunctory? And are we in the liberal, mainline church here because it's where our convictions lead us or because it's easier....in other words, do we enjoy the freedom without the responsibility? This crisis might lead us to these tough questions. It's what the people outside ask about us. The crisis might be an opportunity for some honest self-examination and where appropriate, some confession too.
But along with these questions let me raise this caveat: We could try to will ourselves to be better Christians by our effort. We could take the questions and prove them wrong. But we'd come off being dull, strident, and, well, we'd fall back into some of the perceptions again....
This crisis really goes to the heart - our heart. One thing is for sure. We won't be able to manage our way out of this, work on our image a little. I think it goes deeper. And, in fact, it may be a crisis that helps to turn us because it has to do with genuineness.
I sometimes get the chance to talk with a musician friend at Bethel. You're aware we do have a musician who spends some time here... We were talking about the changes in performances. Recordings today are "produced." Interpretations are set by prior performances and the recordings themselves build up expectations about what a perfect performance of a particular piece entails - a kind of standardization that forces everything into a mold. So rather than freedom and imagination performances become more confined. So my friend suggested that great Arturo Rubenstein would probably not be recording Chopin today. He took too many risks. He played with too much creativity. He did not over-manage his playing.
When was the last time you thought of coming to church as something that might be risky? Isn't this the place where you examine your life and priorities? Isn't this the place where everything could be reordered? Or have you begun to think of Church as a settled place...predictable?
It just may be that this crisis is also opportunity...not less for them who are outside, but also for us. I suspect that's what God is hoping.
Let us pray,
God of love, take our half-hearted faithfulness and make us whole. Take our meager efforts and give us new vitality. Take our lives and touch them again with your Spirit. Breathe into us anew, the very breath of life. Amen.
Children: Something you do regularly? Brush teeth, comb hair....but even more regular than that: breathe. We take a breath. And God is as near as that.