Ecclesiological Sea Change
24 April 2007
Another example of the sea change… (hypersync)
The above post quotes several articles about changes in the Church(es) of the United States. I am very much with him on this one.
The Church must change. The Church cannot merely be a service club, although it should be the service club par excellence. The poor need not be poor, so we cannot see the Church’s primary role as “feeding the poor.” The Church is the Body of Christ, with all the brothers and sisters in Christ as its members. And it’s a big body, folks. Bigger than we realize, most of the time.
The Church cannot survive unless we a) recognize the value, relevance, and validity of a diversity of expressions of faith (from Quakers to the Orthodox) and b) reclaim the ancient and medieval traditions of the faith (monasticism, liturgy, and the wisdom of the Fathers and Mothers of the Church).
Do this, and the church might flourish. If we keep doing what the Baby Boomers have done, we are finished.
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26 April 2007 at 11:27 am
I posted about this today.
26 April 2007 at 1:52 pm
Hi Jorge – I’m Tripp’s friend Megan. I followed the link to this post that he embedded in his blog entry today.
What do you mean, “The poor need not be poor”?
26 April 2007 at 1:56 pm
When I say “the poor need not be poor,” I am responding to a popular belief that the church exists to serve/feed/clothe the (economically) poor.
While the church should do that, that’s not its purpose. Poor people need not be perpetually poor, nor need there be poor people perpetually. If the church does what it should, if the world is as just, fair, peaceful and beautiful a place as it ought to be, then there would be no (economically) poor people.
One of the things the church should strive to do is to provide the (economically, spiritually, emotionally, or otherwise) poor with what they need to be complete, fulfilled human beings. But I don’t think that there *must* be poor people. Ideally, there should be no poor people, because everyone has dignified and sufficient means to live.
26 April 2007 at 2:10 pm
Ah. The way you phrased it originally, I was hearing overtones of the right-wing point of view that would say “If they would just pull themselves up by their bootstraps they wouldn’t be poor… they’re CHOOSING to be poor!” And I didn’t think that was probably what you were after.