1 Corinthians 9:16-23
If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.
For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.
About a year ago I had a conversation with one of our members who I hadn’t seen in church for about two years. I saw her in the parking lot of a grocery store, and went out of my way to say hi to her and to find out how she was. I told her that I missed her, and that I wished she would come back to the church. We then talked about why she wasn’t coming to church anymore. I don’t normally make a habit of sharing these kinds of conversations in my sermons, but I feel comfortable sharing this with your because since our conversation she hasn’t been in church, which means that she really hasn’t been to church in almost three years.
Basically, the gist of what she said to me was that she didn’t come to church anymore because the church had just changed too much. She said that she was much more comfortable with the church when it was always the same, and when it didn’t have so many new people. She didn’t like the fact that we’ve added so many new members, and that we’ve changed so much to attract these new members. She said that she liked the church much better when new people didn’t come, when she knew all the faces in worship, and when it didn’t change. She was adamant that she wasn’t upset with me, but that she just didn’t like the fact that the church had changed so much.
So let me ask you a question. How would you have responded to her comments? Keep in mind that you have to keep our passage in mind when you answer. As Presbyterians part of our charge is to put scripture at the center of our faith and actions, which means that we have to apply scripture to this question. So how do you respond to her complaints that the church had changed too much to reach out to new people, especially after reading what Paul said in our passage? He said, “I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak.”
So how do you respond to her concerns? If you agree with her, are you ignoring what Paul says? Remember, Paul is not saying that we need to adapt ourselves to others for the sake of adapting. He is very clear that we adapt to others so that we can win them for Christ. What that means is that our focus has to be on creating a church for others, not ourselves.
I think these issues get right to the heart of what our calling is as a church, and how difficult it is to be a church in this day and age. How do we be a church in an age in which there is such a diversity of people who we are called to reach? In Paul’s day and age he had basically two groups that he had to satisfy in opening them to the Christian faith. He had the Jews, who had a very structured faith rooted in the reading of scripture, preaching, reciting psalms and certain memorized prayers. They also believed that new Christians should subscribe to the Jewish tradition of circumcision. The Gentiles, on the other hand, had a completely different approach. When they worshiped, they worshiped in temples to Greek gods. They loved philosophical debate. They loved to speculate and discuss Aristotle, Plato, as well as Epicurean, Stoic, and other philosophical ideals. And they did not want to be circumcised. How does one reach out to Jews who want one kind of worship, and then to Gentiles who expected another?
The struggle of our age is that we don’t just have two different approaches that conflict with each other. We have many. Today people not only have Christian beliefs, but they also have Buddhist, New Age, atheistic, agnostic, and a mish-mash of cultural beliefs about God, religion, and spirituality. We have fundamentalist Christians, moderate Christians, liberal Christians, those who are spiritual but not religious, religious but not spiritual, and everything in-between. How do we adapt ourselves to reach out to all of them?
The biggest problem is that we in the Presbyterian Church have not always been so good at adapting ourselves. Let me give you an example. In 1991 the Presbyterian Church came out with a new hymnal, the “blue” hymnal that we use on Sunday mornings. It was hailed as a great achievement. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. It restored a lot of classical hymns to their original meter (making them harder for untrained worshipers to sing), brought in a lot of traditional hymns from other denominations, and included some hymns from around the world (many of those were good, but others are very difficult to sing). It was short on contemporary hymns or any hymns that might attract younger Christians at the time and now. For instance, I was 32 when it came out, and even though I kept hearing about how wonderful it was, my sense at the time was that very few hymns spoke to me. It reflected a fact about the Presbyterian Church: we do not do a very good job traditionally of adapting ourselves to others, whether that means people of different generations, ethnicities, or cultures.
In the 20 years that I’ve been a pastor, everything has changed in the world of churches. Last week, while I was at a conference, I spoke with a retired pastor about what worship was like for most of his career. I asked him if he thought much about adapting worship to different generations or people when he was serving the church 30 years ago. He laughed and said, “When I was in my prime, we never thought about things like that. We sang the hymns we had always sung. We played everything on the organ. We never tinkered with worship at all. We just did what we had always done.” All this has changed. In the past 30 years, people have left the mainline churches such as the Presbyterian Church in droves, some to join evangelical churches, many more to create their own spirituality, saying that they are spiritual but not religious. To me what they are saying is that they are spiritual and would like to find a place to grow in faith, but that our churches haven’t done anything to reach out to them. We have not followed Paul, and in a culture that becomes constantly diverse, we fall behind.
What do we do, as a church, in the face of this? The woman I spoke to, whom I mentioned in the beginning, would have said that we should do nothing. We should let other churches reach them. I don’t think that’s our calling.
The real problem is something that a church researcher, Bill Easum, spoke about. He said that the problem of the modern church is that we are stuck in a wormhole. Unless you are a Star Trek fan, or a student of theoretical physics, you probably don’t know what that means. A wormhole is a theoretical connection between two distant parts of a galaxy or the universe. There is a belief among some scientists that a small opening in space can form that connects parts of the universe separated by thousands of light years. Theoretically, a person traveling through such a wormhole can travel through it and reach the distant part of the universe in hours, rather than in light years, because the wormhole makes such a short connection. The problem is that the inside of a wormhole is filled with forces that would rattle, twist, slam, buffet, and maybe even destroy a spaceship, making it a very difficult trip, and one that can lead to destruction.
He says that the church today is like that spaceship traveling through the wormhole. Like travelers in a wormhole going from one galaxy that is known to another that is unknown, we have left an era in which the way things are done in a church are certain. We are traveling to an era in which a new way of doing church will be accepted in twenty years. But in the meantime we are in that in-between time in which there are no constants, no complete rules. Everything is changing. The way we did things no longer works, but we don’t know what the new rules will be. It means that we are left guessing when it comes to reaching out to the different generations, ethnicities, and cultures that surround us.
I know that the worship staff of our church constantly struggles with this issue. We are constantly asking what we need to do to adapt ourselves to the realities of the world around us? As a church, we have become very intentional about balancing tradition and adopting more contemporary worship practices. But when it comes to how we worship, finding the right balance is hard. Let me show you what I mean.
One of the struggles we have is between something called “retraditioning” and “trending.” A lot of what we do here at Calvin Church is based on the idea of retraditioning. To retradition means to take a traditional practice of the church and update it in a way that makes it relevant for today. For instance, the way we do communion is a retraditioning of communion. For instance, instead of reading words out of a worship book I try to use common everyday language. I’m still participating in the tradition of communion, but I’m doing so in a way that tries to make the words more relevant. In addition, I always try to connect the introduction to communion with the sermon and scripture. We offer both grape juice and wine in an attempt to make our communion meaningful both to lifelong Presbyterians who are used to grape juice and to those who come from the Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, and Lutheran traditions, where they are used to wine in communion. In our first service, our using a common loaf and passing it through the pews is retraditioning, harking back to Jesus’ passing the loaf to his disciples. The point is that we try to stay rooted in the tradition, but also change it so that it is relevant to today. The whole point of retraditioning is to help people connect with and experience God more fully in worship.
There is another way of changing worship that we do not follow, and that is called “trending.” Trending is making changes to worship in order to attract people to worship. Connecting people with God is secondary. Trending is rooted in marketing, retraditioning in spirituality. So, when churches engage in trending, they offer incentives to induce people to come church. In the process they confuse inspiration with entertainment. They choose music that seems popular. They raffle off trinkets and material inducements to visitors. They try to make worship easy. They follow the marketing trends of the culture in order to get more people in their churches. This is something that we do not do at Calvin Church. The problem, though, is that there is always a fine line between retraditioning and trending. When we retradition, it often attracts people, but mainly people whose main focus is connecting with God. We believe that retraditioning helps us to grow, but to grow in the right way.
We face so many other challenges. For instance, what do we do about the different generations of our culture, generations that all seek something different. Lyle Schaller, one of the best-known church researchers of recent years, has said that if you really want your church to grow, the most effective way is to start a new church that targets only one generation. If you want to understand the growth of the large, evangelical churches in our area, it has to do with them targeting one generation: the baby-boomers. Their worship is designed to attract people born between 1945 and 1964.
What does that say to us? We’ve taken a much harder track in our growth. If you look around our sanctuary on a Sunday morning, you’ll notice that there is no one, dominant generation. We have decided to be multi-generational. That’s a difficult balancing act, though. What it means is that we have to be intentional about choosing music that reaches out to different generations. I have to preach in a way to speaks to different generations. We have to be structured in a way that reaches different people. Our way of doing that musically is to be intentional about using different forms of music. We start out with a contemporary song. Then we do an ancient chant. Then we sing a traditional hymn. Then we sing a hymn that might be contemporary, traditional, or something else. We also are intentional about balancing our anthems. You might hear an anthem on any Sunday that is classical or gospel or contemporary or bluesy or folk. We try to offer a wide variety because you, our members, and the community like a broad variety.
Everything we do is intended to reach across different generations in order to attract a wide variety of people. We are intentionally trying to follow Paul by adapting ourselves to different people. What makes it difficult is when certain people want only uni-generational worship. It may be the older person who wants only classical anthems, traditional hymns, and music played on the organ. It might be the baby-boomer who wants only contemporary worship with drums and guitars. It might be anyone who only wants one kind of worship and who doesn’t want to adapt. It may be the person who likes a variety of worship, but doesn’t like new members in the church. All of this makes doing worship difficult.
Reflecting on Paul’s passage, the question for us is how we adapt ourselves to a culture that is so diverse? How do we become all things to all people? We are all part of a very dynamic church, and we face a very dynamic challenge: how do we become like others in order to open people to Christ?
Amen.
