Didn't You Used To Be Somebody?

I believe it was Tom Brokow who shared this story. Some years after he had retired from broadcasting he was shopping when a lady walked up to him and asked, “Didn’t you used to be somebody?” I sometimes wonder if perhaps that same question is being asked of the Church.

Many of us have a memory when church life was different. I grew up during the time frame stretching from the mid forties through the mid sixties. Church was central, or at least it seemed so, to most people. In my home town if your car was still in your driveway on Sunday morning, people assumed that you must be sick.

I remember talking to an older pastor friend of mine who shared how easy it was to start a new congregation during that time. Basically all you had to do was move into one of the many new neighborhoods and open the doors on Sunday morning. That was still somewhat true in 1975 when I helped to start a new congregation. There were four other denominations starting new churches in that area of San Antonio at that same time, and all were doing well growth wise.

I think it safe to say that is no longer true now. So what happened? Someone observing today might ask the aforementioned question, “Didn’t we used to be somebody?” There are all kinds of theories as to why this is true, mostly depending on who you are talking to. I have one, and I offer it for what it’s worth.

I fear that being the church got too easy. It became something you just did to be a part of the community. It was basically the religious version of the several service clubs that existed (which are also suffering a decline in membership by the way). It was a comfortable place to be. For many it was merely socially acceptable. Church was what you did. It was a habit. But remembering that period’s social problems from race to economics, one might ask: “What difference was it making?”

Tim Alberta, writing in his book The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory, says it this way:

“Jesus commanded us to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. This is the recipe for reaching the unchurched. This is the recipe for convicting the unconvicted.”

It was as though we lost sight of that basic claim of the faith, loving the Lord and our neighbor as ourselves. And if we were mindful of that calling, we tended to narrow the definition as to who fit in the neighbor category, and what loving them really implied. In short, in our comfort with what was, we lost sight of what could and should be.

This was not a new occurrence. Writing eighty years ago in his book In Quest of a Kingdom, Leslie Weatherhead said this:

“On the other hand the church has withdrawn herself so far from the evils around her and been content with pietistic quietism which prevents religion’s making a sufficient impact on the world in which she lives…She may not provide a map, but she ought to be able to provide a compass.”

About the time I was finishing high school things began to change. Groups of people who up to then had been basically ignored, or worse, treated with brutal unfairness were clamoring for recognition and more freedom to participate fully in the American Dream. The war in Southeast Asia meant more and more separation between the groups here at home.? All that sent strains throughout the system, and the church had to deal with what it meant to be faithful to its calling in that contentious setting. Often that meant raising questions about what before had been the accepted, comfortable ways of doing things.

This of course created problems, especially for people who came to worship in order to have their ways of seeing things affirmed. A consumer mentality began to assert itself more openly than it had in the past. “If I don’t hear what I want to hear, I will go some place that will fill that role.” It was increasingly hard to speak a prophetic word in such a climate. (Of course the job of prophet is never a popular occupation.)

In addition, the number of scandals among church leadership made public did not help the situation. Coupled with the growing mistrust of institutions, trust and loyalty built up over generations began to crumble.

Society made its own contributions. More and more events started to appear on Sunday mornings. Everything from 10 K runs and marathons to kids’ soccer games became part of the Sunday morning space. Hard weeks at work made sleeping in on Sunday morning look more and more attractive. Gradually, the habit of church was easier and easier to break.

In response the church struggled to reshape its message in order to attract people again, to reestablish the habit, if you will. The attempt to give people what they wanted to hear led to competing versions of the message since not everyone wanted to hear the same thing. That raised a question: “Which of these messages is the valid one?”

History has indicated that when there are varied messages it becomes easy to do one of two things. The first is to pick a version that allows me to be and believe what I already am and trust. The second is to doubt the importance or even the validity of any of the answers that these sources provide.

All of this and more is what I believe has led us to where we are today. As one who was raised in the church and who has spent the majority of my life working there, I have seen and felt the changes. In light of that experience, I find myself asking “Didn’t we used to be somebody?” And the answer is “yes,” but somehow we got used to being comfortable. We became accustomed? to not really having to work at being the church. We became hesitant to be prophetic both as leaders and congregants.

But there is a sense of recovery among us. Certainly it is not universal, but it is there. It lies in a sense of responding to the claims of the faith in terms of both loving God and treasuring and being responsible to and for humanity specifically and the creation as a whole. Recovery lies in not only speaking the word, but being a people who wants to hear that word and encourage it being spoken. Moreover, having heard it, we then are called to respond with changed lives. It is not particularly helpful to think “Well, I have listened to that, and that is all that is required.”

Diana Butler Bass writing in Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening says it this way:

“And the awakening? What will it look like? It entails waking up and seeing the world as it is, not as it was. Conventional, comforting Christianity has failed. It does not work. For the churches that insist on preaching it, the jig is up. We cannot go back, and we should not want to.”

In short, we are called to be somebody, not in the sense of public notoriety, but rather in terms of allowing our faith to shape and motivate us into service. It will not always be easy. Real conversion never is, but that finally is our calling. This is not a nostalgic plea to return to the good old days. Rather it is a call to a response of faith in the midst of our ever changing world. Yes, we used to be somebody, but the call is to be the somebody that is needed right now in the world of which we are a part.