I’m part of a research group - by which I don’t mean I’m being experimented on (not after last time), I mean I join up with other people involved in research and listen to them talk about what they’re working on. Don’t judge me. I’m a very boring man.
This week it was my turn to talk about something I’ve been working on, so true to form I took some bits of work I’ve done in the past, and did something new with them. That last clause almost perfectly sums up my career over the last decade or so.
My paper was called ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper(?)’ I like to use parentheses because I think it gives a title some gravitas. No brackets? No interest.
But as you might have picked up, the title was a play on the words of the title of the Blue Oyster Cult Classic - well, not so much a play as a steal. I love that song, and want it to be played at my funeral.
“Seasons don’t fear the reaper, nor do the moon or the sun or the rain, we can be like they are…”
When Buck Dharma (aka Donald Roesner) wrote those words, he intended it to be a song about enduring love, but it puts me in mind of the never ending process of life.
According to “process” thought, what we perceive as life/reality is a constant stream of perishing and becoming. Or if you like, constant, iterative, death and birth. Each moment is a moment of perishing, just as it is a moment of becoming. This process never stops.
The necessity of death and new birth is also baked into the story of Christianity, I am contractually obliged to point out.
When you look at the world like that, I think it puts things into perspective - even things like the decline of the church.
There’s no doubt that the church is in decline in Western Europe and North America, the only question, really, is what to do about it. Lots of money and considerable effort has been spent on trying to arrest the decline, or to put it another way - to prevent the perishing. Everywhere you look, people are burning out as they do their best to shore up their declining congregations.
In my research paper I posed an alternative perspective: What if, instead of trying to stop the perishing, we accepted it as part of the natural order? What if we all stopped trying to stop the perishing, and instead looked for what is becoming? What if we stopped trying to hold up the building and instead looked among the rubble for whatever is growing in the ground?
From the perspective of Process thinking, perishing (The Reaper) is not something to be feared. That’s not to say perishing isn’t painful, sometimes it can be very painful. But it is necessary.
‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’ was, I think, heavily based on The Byrds’ version of ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ by Pete Seeger - listen to the guitar and the vocals, reflect on the content - I think it’s quite obvious. That song was, itself, a reworking of a passage from the Bible. All things have their season, even songs.
I think the wisdom that all things have a time, and that time is limited, is a grand truth. And when seen through that lens perishing/death/The Reaper can be something very positive. It offers the promise of something new to come, because perishing leads to becoming.
What would happen if we stopped trying to prevent the process of ecclesial decline from taking it’s natural course, and instead we embraced it? When I gave my paper I took quite a lot longer than this to ask this question, I should say, so perhaps this post lacks a little subtlety. But for those who are interested in the fate of the church in the UK or the USA, I’d love to know how you feel about the challenge of embracing the (inevitable) perishing. And, more so, I’d like to know what you see ‘becoming’.
Answers on a postcard/comment/email please. (Copies of the paper available on request).
Perhaps hope should feel daring... I think you're right that you have to look in the unexpected places to find the green shoots, plants grow in neglected corners and cracks in the concrete after all. Perhaps what some of this boils down to is that we need to take more seriously the distinction between church as people and church as institution. And having done that, we can consider our definitions. I remember a book which argued 'we need to lower the bar on what it means to be 'church' and raise the bar on what it means to be a disciple.' An interesting thread to pull on...
Thanks so much for your reflection and truth spoken in a time where I think we need to be in lament and reality about the decline and death of churches as we presently know them in so many denominations. I just thought you might be interested in a resource that I and a friend have developed called Ember Spaces . This is the blurb about it and we are wanting to offer it across the UK and across denominations:
Ember Spaces:
A Holy Saturday kind of day to
…come away together.
…acknowledge things that are dying in your church context.
…give space to your grief.
…be brave, honest and courageous
…expect encounter and be open to God and one another
This is an offer for Christian communities facing endings; churches, fresh expressions, congregations and places where there is parish restructuring.
I am very interested in the work you are doing and wondering what overlap there is. Feel free to get in touch - Sally Taylor - sally.taylor@poolemc.org.uk