Pastor John Wright

I've just finished grading a set of finals for my Introduction to OT class -- 2 days of work. To reward myself, I go to some of my favorite spots on the web: ericisrad.com; ressourcement.blogspot.com; nouvelletheologie.blogspot.com; and tcrnews2.com. I found the following post on tcrnews2.com by one of their editors, Stephen Hand. While it presupposes some specific Roman Catholic history, the essay spells out quite clearly what I conceive the life of congregations of the future must become.

Ironically, I don't hear evangelical churches talking so much about such a future, especially church leaders in the Church of the Nazarene. Of course, it speaks for only some of Roman Catholicism in the United States today -- the most vibrant part of the church, but only a part of it.

What seems to me is two types of churches in the future: congregations like the one described in this essay, and congregations that find their life in therapeutic support of individuals in order to move towards a social activism to influence governments to take certain actions on the left or on the right of American culture.

The Catholic Church of the Future
By Stephen Hand

As I look at the Catholicism I grew up in, drifted from in my youth, returned to after a good pounding by the empty ecstacies of this world, and ponder the various and fierce factions within her, all speaking helter skelter, and running in different directions, it has been clear to me for some years now that the Catholicism of the future will be different in some very significant ways than we know her at this moment.

Reclaiming Neglected Parts of the Past

It will be different because we have lived in the light of the Council and in the light of that greatest expositor of the Council, Pope John Paul II. Clearly, this difference will not come by any rupture with the past, but, rather, a reclaiming of neglected parts of that past, even as it is ever forward looking and adaptive to the signs of the times.

Clearly also, the Church of the future will be neither integrist in orientation nor progressive. For the Church both conserves and progresses at once in every age, passing through the centuries, millenia, and innumerable cultures while remaining true to her Lord. The Church of the future, I am convinced, will continue reconnecting to the dynamic texts of the Second Vatican Council and seek a new relationship to the world while ever remaining the herald and sacrament of the world.

More Kerygmatic, Less Speculative and Abstract

The Kerygma or proclamation of the Church is the same today as it was in the days of the apostles. It proclaims the acts and message and meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ:

"Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. 23This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. 24But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him...

38Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call." 40With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, "Save yourselves from this corrupt generation." 41Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

42They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:22-47)

Back to Radical Encounter

The proclamation in the earliest Church, we see, was focused on this stupendous Christ-event wherein God became man and dwelt among us (Jn1:1, 14), teaching, suffering, dying for our sins, and, on the third day, defeating death itself by rising again from the dead. She invited all to "receive" this Jesus as "Lord" and "Savior" and "Prince of Peace" (Jn 1:12). I believe the Church in the future will have to reclaim this evangelical language, which has always existed in Catholic preaching, but not prominently, not in as pointed a way as it should have been. It needs desperately to be revived, lest Catholicism seem like mere dreary church-going to the befuddled masses in the world today.

The Church must call individuals to radical personal conversion---whether the audience is nominally Catholic or of no religion. Only an encounter with Jesus the Christ as Lord and Savior will make men and women want to learn of his countercultural message as contained in the Beatitudes (Matt 5-7).

It is better to ask a person if he or she knows---has "received"--- Jesus Christ (into his or her heart and life) than to simply say "you ought to go to church". If there is radical personal conversion to Christ, wherein the sanctifying seed of baptism explodes into a personal relationship with God Almighty, then the sparks will fly! Then Church and Eucharist and doctrine will make sense and look more desirous than anything the world has to offer by far!

We must begin with the kerygma, for all! The proclamation of what God in Christ has done in time and space alone can give our lives meaning by realigning us with our Maker who is Love.

Beyond Apologetics to the Fruits of the Spirit

The best argument for Christianity is to see it happening in persons ---and in the community of the Beloved around the Eucharist. I am tired of pushy and defensive apologetics (which we never see the popes indulging) which is found everywhere like so much mold in the Church. This kind of apologetics-polemics often seems more calculated to easing self-doubt than to winning a sympathetic ear regarding the salvific deeds and message of Jesus.

Apologetics which aims not so much to dialogue gently with inquirers---as Our Lord dialogued with Nicodemus---so much as to shoot the other position down has always been wrongheaded; it is even more so today, when people are skeptical and tired of words. Defend the faith we can, as a spiritual work of mercy, but we must not make a spectacle of it. To argue for the sake of ego jousting makes no sense from a Christian point of view and rightly turns people off. God woos us with His grace. So must apologetics, properly conceived.

A Church of Service

The Church of the future will be a Church of service to the needy and struggling or it will shrink into lesser influence, beyond recognition. It is more important to live the beatitudes than to know all the theology relating to them. Many people's hearts are more informed than their intellects relative to theology. The power of the Eucharist is intended by the Lord to manifest itself in the fruits of the Spirit as soon as we receive Him at Mass.

The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; against such there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23 NIV). The Fruits of the Spirit are relational, reconciling concepts, with God and our neighbor, a direct consequence of having "received" Jesus Christ into our lives as Lord and Savior and participating in His holy Eucharist and hearing his holy Word.

The Poor and Sick

St. Francis, among so many others, showed us what it means to live the Gospel in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, in community to the extent we can, and in the breaking of the Bread. Of course we will have to adapt these countercultural principles to our circumstances---for not all are monks---but it must be a faithful adaptation which will show the continuity of our life and his, our message and his, our peacemaking and his. The Church of the future will be made up of persons who reject the violence and conformist vanities of the world, without forsaking the world itself which God "so loves" (Jn 3:16)

Living the Gospel means vowing a preferential option for the poor and sick which will be reflected in every aspect of our lives. It will be reflected in our politics and economics, in the jobs we choose and those we refuse; in the simplicity we opt for in contrast to the obscene worship of money and "success" we see in our societies.

It will mean recognizing once again that familes are stronger together than apart, so that extended families, combining even meager incomes will reap more than families split off into individualistic directions. It will be more the Waltons than Donald Trump.

The Church in the future will become more simple herself, please God, with fewer bishops conferences held in luxury hotels and more in ghetto schools showing solidarity with the poor. It will mean inviting the homeless and those down on their luck into underutilized church property to be shown love, caring, hospitality, and to be gently assisted to better circumstances.

Everywhere then the Church will be known as HIS Church because she walks "even as he walked". The earth is waiting to see Christ's love incarnated in us more and more, so that no matter how great the darkness, His Light will ever be greater.

The Church "waits in joyful Hope" for the coming of the Savior ---be it near or very far off. But rather than obsessing on that horizon of human history, she chooses to share the love she first received in receiving Him, the Way, the Truth and the Life. He is the light of the world and our light of confidence into the misty future.

10.14.05 / 2 PM EST

This sketch of the future of the church is admirable. I would, perhaps, add certain nuances.
I certainly agree that the church needs to be more kerygmatic, less speculative and abstract. This is something that Peter Maurin called for in his Easy Essay, "Blowing the Dynamite." A strong part of this Gospel message, however, is the message of Phillippians 3:5-8: the announcement that God has become flesh and dwells among us.

The fact of the incarnation reshapes our appreciation also of the radical encounter with Jesus. This encounter does not occur merely individually or only on sacred ground, but in communion with other Christians, in seeing and responding to the poor, and in our everyday lives.

I also think that embracing poverty is no longer as simple as choosing to have a conference in a slum or a hotel (though I do appreciate the symbolic value of such a gesture). Hans Urs von Balthasar has pointed out that a priest in a religious community with a vow of poverty may know very little about the poverty of a married man with a good job and three children. Balthasar also quotes the following from Rilke, which could serve as a starting point for thinking about poverty in our own time:

"St. Francis: that is already a great deal . . . . But since his time money has become spiritual -- an element that soars and ventures beyond the category of tangible possessions, something almost independent of its possessor, an atmosphere without any possible contrast. The task now is to find a new poverty as counterpart to this new type of 'wealth,' all of which has now retreated far into the realm of the invisible. We can always pretend, through external imitation, that we are poor; but real poverty must be born anew in the soul, and there will probably be nothing Franciscan about it" (qtd in The Grain of Wheat, p 115).

Note that Balthasar, Rilke, or I are proposing the notorious 'spiritual poverty' wherein one piles up goods while supposedly cultivating an inner detachment to them. But certain development, like the Internet, economic structures, and other realities can make attaining Christ's poverty of spirit more elusive.