Reinventing American Protestantism

I just finished reading Donald Miller's Reinventing American Protestantism. Miller, a sociology professor from the Unversity of Southern California, applies his discipline to understanding three growing movements: Calvary Chapel, Vineyard Association, and Hope Chapel. All three of these movements are of the charismatic persuasion and have experienced tremendous growth in the past couple of decades while many mainline Protestant churches have been in decline.

Miller espouses the religious markets theory that compares churches to businesses. Some rise, others fall - much depends on a church's "polity, clergy, religious doctrines, and evangelization techniques.'

A quick summary: "New paradigm churches eliminated many of the inefficiencies of bureaucratized religion by an appeal to the first century model of Christianity; this 'purged' form of religion corresponded to the countercultural worldview of baby boomers, who rejected institutionalized religion; with their bureaucratically lean, lay-oriented organizational structure, new paradigm churches developed programs sensitive to the needs of their constituency; new paradigm churches offered a style of worshp that was attractive to people alienated from establishedment religion because it was in their own idiom; this worship and the corresponding message provided direct acces to an experience of the sacred, which had the potential of transforming people's lives by addressing their deepenst personal needs."

Miller's book is a scholarly look at the growth of these movements in a positive light. He also has some reccomendations for the revitalization of the mainline denominations -- some of these keys are worth looking at for our own church, too.

What Should Denominations Do?

Bill Isaacs, Administrative Bishop for the Churches of God in Northern Ohio, has a blog in which he asks the honest question, "What can/should denominations do?" Considering the mandated reallocation of funds (decision of our general assembly), this is the first question that must be addressed before deciding where to set the knife.

Bill has opened his blog to user comments, and there has been quite a number of responses to his question -- with many various opinions. Below is my response to question as I posted on his blog.

Bill, thanks for opening the dialog on this topic. Let me address the matter from a more historical perspective by asking the question, what were the core values of our denomination in its earliest years. Finding out what contributed to any organization’s early successes will normally be tied to its DNA. So. here’s my take on our core values.

1. Church planting From the onset, A.J. Tomlinson had the desire to evangelize by planting new churches. In 1902, there was the single church in Camp Creek, NC. By 1905, there were churches in NC, TN, and GA. At the first Assembly in 1905, there were five congregations. By 1910, we had 31 churches; by 1911 there were 51. By …, well you get the picture.

2. The Power of Holy Spirit I place this second on purpose due to its historical timing. Although there were charismatic demonstrations with the Christian Union in 1886, there was no teaching about it. And it appears that the charismata didn’t stick with the group. It was in 1908, after the third General Assembly that A.J. Tomlinson was filled with the spirit at a revival in Alabama. Subsequently, he invited G.B. Cashwell to Cleveland and the Pentecostal revival came to stay in the denomination.

3. World Missions By 1909, Edmund Barr and R.M Evans experienced Pentecost. The next year, they went to the Bahamas to plant the COG. Other missionaries and countries would quickly be a part of the denomination’s outreach. Today, the COG is in 170 countries.

4. Social Ministry From 1900-1910, the leaders frequently collected clothes for needy children. There were several attempts to establish an orphanage. 1910, Lillian Thrasher started an orphanage in Egypt. Finally, the first COG home for children was established in 1920 in Cleveland.

5. Youth Ministry 1906, already the need for family ministry, family devotions was expressed. Later initiatives, youth camps and the YPE movement.

6. Ministerial Training/Education Most of us know about Lee University having its roots at the Bible Training Institute. It began in 1919. Since then we can look at all the different educational initiatives and programs, including the MIP and CIMS.

After writing this, I am still of the conviction that the local church is the hope of the world. The denomination exists because of the local church. However, the denomination has the power to be greater than the sums of its local congregations. The purpose of the denomination is simply to help us all achieve things that local churches by themselves cannot accomplish alone.

I think these core values listed above can really be our north star / our true north as we navigate the waters of decentralization (how else are we to interpret the decision of the last General Assembly) and budget reductions.

Easter in Russia

My blogging has been in a slump as of late. As you can see below, I worked on two newsletters and I would be duplicating a lot. So, here is a report from Jeannette Chesser, a guest teacher at our school in Moscow, who shares her experiences from the past week in Russia.

Russian Easter

Because they use a different calendar, Easter is different than the US; this year it was April 19. The Russian Easter weekend starts Thursday night with communion and foot washing service.

After a late lunch on Thursday afternoon, I was sitting in the dinning hall chatting with another guest teacher. He told a staff member that some students in class had complained that no foot washing service was scheduled here at the seminary and they wanted their own service. (Students are assigned to different churches upon arrival at the seminary so it had been assumed that students would disperse in different directions for the evening.)

The visiting teacher and I strongly encouraged him to consider establishing the practice here. During the next 5 hours there was scrambling: spreading the news; assigning someone to go to a store to buy suitable basins; and, another to find enough clean towels. The visiting teacher was asked to teach/serve communion; and I was to give a message on foot washing.

At the end of the service, the women went to a portion of the library that had been set up for us. When I took a survey, only half of the women had ever witnessed such a practice. They were shy, self conscious, and an awkward hush permeated the room.

After demonstration a few had the courage to start, stiffness began to dissolve and little by little they entered into the spiritual experience. What happened was beautiful. Once they started praying for the person whose feet they washed, then they wanted to go to someone else. Before long it was evident that everyone was committed to wash the feet of everyone there.

Those on duty around the seminary came in late and the whole cycle started all over again. One woman said as she went around several times "Now that I have experienced this, I don't want to stop".

The water had to be brought from the kitchen in big pails and poured into the basins. I lost track of how many times someone went for another pail. Several hours later when it was over, every towel was soaking; there were prayers, tears, joy, laughter, singing, hugs,

On Saturday afternoon I was shocked to see lines so long they that wrapped all the way around a complete big block where people were slowly making their way to the entrance of a nearby Orthodox church. The purpose was a tradition to present eggs and bread for the priest to bless at the time he also blessed them.

For evangelicals in Russia, late Saturday night is the traditional church service with somber songs, prayers, and scripture reading. At midnight the sound changes to joy. The minister states "Christ is risen”, answered in unison by the people, "Indeed Christ is risen" thrice in succession, followed by shouts of praise and joyful singing.

Easter Sunday, the temp was near freezing, and the wind strong and piercing. There had been enough snow flurries to whiten crevices around trees and sidewalks. Families were out walking and the bells of the Orthodox were peeling. All day Sunday people were greeted with "Christ is risen" and the expected response would be "Indeed Christ has risen."

How wonderful to have the reality of Christ within, not just following a tradition. How blessed we are because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, His blood was shed for the remission of our sins; not just a covering but blotted out, never to be held against us again.

Love and blessings, Jeanette

Update

The April newsletter from the school in Moscow is now online.
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs072/1101898662382/archive/1102552465064.html

Family Newsletter online

Our latest newsletter is now online at
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs072/1101898662382/archive/1102536275849.html

Currently, our kids are on Spring break (Easter break). We'll upload some pictures here before too terribly long.

AG Church Destroyed in Italian Earthquake

Many of you may have heard about the 6.3 earthquake to rock central Italy early yesterday (Monday) morning. To this hour, about 180 people have been confirmed dead; over 1000 injured, and 50,000 homeless.

Italy is a staunchly Roman Catholic country. So I was quite surprised to learn that a Pentecostal church (Assemblies of God) in L'Aquila was totally damaged through the earthquake. It is too early to tell if any of its members are among the missing/dead. There are still several towns and villages that cannot be reached by automobile and the recovery efforts are still in process.

If you can read German, here is the preliminary report from idea.