Bob's Blog

It’s one of my favorite scenes from the movie “Hook” – the 1991 Disney classic starring Robin Williams as Peter Pan.  Captain Hook, played by Dustin Hoffman, kidnaps the children of the boy-who-never-wanted-to-grow-up-but-did, forcing Peter Pan to return to Neverland in order to rescue them.  Upon arriving, Peter seeks help from the Lost Boys, but they are hesitant because they don’t recognize the adult version of their friend — that that is until one of the boys, Pockets, touches Peter’s face and looks deeply into his eyes.  With surprised innocence, he proclaims “Ohhhhh, there you are Peter!”

There is something profoundly beautiful about the emotions that well up inside of us when we find something that we thought was lost, or when we discover that a perceived absence can be overcome if we just take the time to look hard enough.

That’s how I feel about the Church these days.  At first glance, it seems no where to be found.  Devoutly religious people who claim to be on the side of Jesus, continually deny his teachings and betray his love.  The Franklin Grahams of the world speak, and we do a double-take because of the absurdities being proclaimed.  White Evangelicals continue to stand behind the President, putting political goals and ambitions ahead of Gospel essentials, and revealing their uncompromising worship of empire.  One of the largest Protestant denominations in America continues to deny the LGBTQ community “a place at the table”; and a Christian school in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio expels two young girls upon discovering that they have two different fathers.  In so doing, both betray the One they claim to have “invited into their hearts.”  Further, Sunday morning worshippers decline in numbers; and while many Americans claim to be spiritual, involvement with local congregations fails to be bear that out.  While God is certainly not dead in America today, sometimes it seems like the institutional Church is!

So while the Easter Spirit of resurrection is still fresh in our minds, perhaps we need to look a little harder.  For the Church is still here.  Like God, it’s NOT dead; and it’s presence is one of the only things that can give us hope for these days in which we are living!

First, the Black church remains a cornerstone in many Black communities, and continues to offer support and encouragement to a people who have been suffering at the hands of White supremacy and privilege for generations.  While Whites continue to grieve over the 11:00-12:00 hour on Sundays being the most segregated hour in American life, the Black Church laughs!  That hour of segregation is the least of their concerns; and Black clergy continue to call their people to remain faithful to the Christ, in spite of the White bastardization of his Gospel.  The Black Church has been the lynchpin in Black communities since colonial days and they remain alive and well across our nation: supporting their families, speaking truth to power, and mobilizing people to be agents of transformation.  So if we want to see a vital church, we might start there!

Second, we might also want to look for the small denominational churches, rather than the large independent mega-church!  For decades, American’s have been tempted to determine a church’s value based on the three “Bs”: butts, buildings, and budgets!  The more people, and the bigger their buildings and budgets, the more successful and faithful they must be, right?  Wrong!  For while many are indeed led by charlatans, offering a perspective on the Gospel that has been so popularize it bears little if any resemblance to the radical message proclaimed by Jesus, I refuse to add my voice to the chorus of people who condemn the mega-church movement.  Many are doing great things for the Gospel.  But many small churches are doing great things for the Gospel as well!  They too are growing passionate and faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.  They have not given in to simplistic teachings of the Bible, and they aren’t afraid to push back against the superficiality of America’s Christian subculture.  They embrace intergenerational forms of outreach and mission; and while their worship spaces may not be overflowing on Sunday mornings, they care for one another in ways that the mega-Church’s small group ministry never will!  When it comes to Churches, size DOESN’T matter!  And while one isn’t necessarily better than the other, the small church is much easier to find that the large mega-church.  So don’t write them off, and keep looking to them for ‘kindom’ work.

Finally, look for Church leaders on the margins!  While Scripture makes it clear that Jesus was drawn to the those on the social margins of his day: the poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden; his refusal to identify with the religious establishment might also reveal an affinity with teachers and religious leaders on the margins as well.  And here in America, that realization has never been more important than it is today!  Like first century Judaism, the religious establishment in America today has also let the Church down.  The leadership of Roman and Evangelical churches continues to deny the gifts of women for ministry, while at the same time covering up the sins of pedophile clergy and denying the blessing of same-gender love and marriage.  Their passionate pursuit of wealth and power exposes their selfish hearts and should cause us all to question their Gospel perspectives.  Today,  the words of Jesus today are being best interpreted and translated by those writers and teachers on the margins: those who have not been afraid to challenge the religious establishment, and those who have refused to accept the false teachings of a racist, sexist, homophobic, and exclusivist Church.  We are likely to find the most authentic and accurate accounts of the Gospel if we look to the work of writers and speakers, musicians and artists, who are living on the margins of the religious landscape of our day!

There are plenty of reasons to bemoan the state of the Church in America today.  But it it NOT dead.  You just have to look a little harder.  You have to be willing to run with the women to the tomb — to that place of death and decay — and then stooping down, and perhaps squinting, look hard for signs of life.  Because just as the Christ is alive, so too is God’s Church.  It’s here, and it’s the only hope for our world!

I can accept purple candles during Advent, and purple paraments during Lent; and purple hymnbooks and choir robes don’t bother me a bit.  But seasons of the church year and aids to a congregation’s music program aside, purple is a color that really doesn’t look all that good on the Church.   Like a chameleon that changes color according to it’s surroundings, the color purple makes congregations appear to be unable at best, or unwilling at worst, to take a prophetic stance on issues that are important to a society: particularly issues that Scripture and the traditions of our faith have gotten wrong for so long!

Sadly, in too many instances, purple appears to be the Church’s constant color of choice!  Perhaps it’s because article after article continues to challenge pastors to better learn how to embrace their purple congregations, or to simply accept the polarization that has been on the rise for the past two years in Trump’s “greatness-seeking” America! Perhaps it’s because so many churches are dying, and doing anything that might in any way challenge or upset the remnant would only hasten our demise.  Or perhaps it’s because we pastors aren’t able to distinguish between being partisan and being political, and as such, we think that anything that challenges policies of those in office might be perceived as our endorsing one party over another.

Whatever the reasoning, these days, churches and clergy everywhere appear to love the color purple.  Last week, even NPR’s Tom Gjelten, from “All Things Considered,” jumped on the bandwagon with an April 6 segment on “Pastoring a Purple Church.”

But before we completely give up on our blueness, or our redness, let’s take a  moment to carefully consider the nature of this new purpleness!  Before we call in the Fab Five from “Queer Eye” to help us change our image and update our look, perhaps we need to go back to our message.    

You see America has always been diverse; and churches have always had to deal with congregations full of people with differing political perspectives.  Most churches have knowingly and unknowingly understood that guiding principle: “In essential unity.  In non-essentials liberty.  In all things love.”  As a result, civility has guided our conversations; and when it came to “non-essentials”, red and blue managed to coexist.  For generations, we were able to stay ‘on message’  . . . at least when it came to the essentials, and in spite of our many differences over non-essentials.

But things are different today.  And they’re different because we appear to have forgotten our message.  All of a sudden . . . everything seems to be a non-essential: truth, honesty, integrity, humility, kindness, compassion, grace, mercy . . . and it doesn’t ever seem to end!  These are the issues dividing our country and churches today, and there is nothing non-essential about them.  They are all essential characteristics of anyone seeking to follow Jesus, and they need to be proclaimed from every pulpit, in every American church, and with prophetic boldness.  The issues dividing America today are NOT the traditional red and blue issues that have divided America for so long:  issues like the size of our government, the purpose of social programs, or the role of the military.  Americans always have and always will disagree on these issues and countless others.  And our democracy can and will continue to survive in spite of the differences that exist in these areas.

But those are not the concerns of so many Americans today.   Today, the issues of concern have to do with the way we treat people, particularly those who are not like us.  Today, the concerns facing so many Americans have to do with truth-telling, and being honest in our dealings with others.  Today, peoples’ concerns center around our society’s failure to confront the racism and sexism that plague our nation, along with countless other ‘isms’ and ‘phobias’ that continue to marginalize others.  And these issues, and countless other essential issues like them, are the very issues that resulted in the crucifixion we are even now preparing to remember.  So they must be addressed.  They can never be pushed aside, as if they simply fall into a category of non-essentials!  Rather the Church is called to confront them all, head on, and with the boldness of the Jesus who rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, irritating and challenging the empire!

Unfortunately, what saddens me more than any of this, is that when it comes to the color of the Church today, it only seems to be the White Church, that has suddenly become a proponent of the purple Church!  And doesn’t that makes perfect sense?  For it is the large, traditional, White Church, that has the most to lose.

Churches that for so long have been a mixture of red souls and blue souls, are really not interested in staying, or even becoming purple.  They’re just interested in staying White.  They want to stay together not because they honor diversity, or because they value their differences, but because they honor, and they value, their Whiteness . . . their sameness!  They don’t have people from the LGBTQ community.  They don’t have people of color.  They certainly don’t have immigrants or refugees.  So is it any wonder that don’t want to hear “politics” preached from their pulpits?  They don’t want a ‘blue’ take on the Gospel.  And admirably, so they would say, neither do they they want a ‘red’ take on the Gospel.  But they don’t want a purple take on the Gospel either.  They want the good ‘ol White take on the Gospel — one that maintains their privilege, and that honors their fragility.

Which is why purple looks so bad on the Church — because the purple is just masking our Whiteness: a whiteness that denies the Gospel, that betrays the Christ, and that offends anything and everything that is holy.

So once again I ask, please, stop being an advocate for a purple Church!  We look terrible in purple!