Orthodox men love church, says Frederica Matthewes-Green. A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across an article she had written after dialoguing with one hundred Orthodox men who had converted to Orthodoxy as adults to find out what drew them in.
It's no secret that in most Protestant churches, females make up a larger portion of the congregation, often significantly. This was one of the reasons Matthewes-Green decided to find out why Orthodoxy bucks that trend. What she discovered was very interesting. Look at some of the responses below. It is especially noteworthy, I think, that many of the men commented on the challenge of Orthodoxy:
"It's the only church where you are required to adapt to it, rather than it adapting to you."
"Orthodoxy is serious. It is difficult. It is demanding. It is about mercy, but it's also about overcoming oneself. I am challenged in a deep way, not to 'feel good about myself' but to become holy. It is rigorous, and in that rigour I find liberation."
"Guys either want to be challenged to fight for a glorious and honourable cause, and get filthy dirty in the process, or to loaf in our recliners with plenty of beer, pizza, and football. But most churches want us to behave like orderly gentlemen, keeping our hands and mouths nice and clean."
"Christ in Orthodoxy is a militant, Jesus takes Hell captive. Orthodox Jesus came to cast fire on the earth. In Holy Baptism we pray for the newly-enlisted warriors of Christ, male and female, that they may ‘be kept ever warriors invincible.'"
"...‘the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay’ has almost nothing to do with the Eternal Logos entering inexorably, silently yet heroically, into the fabric of created reality."
"Men get pretty cynical when they sense someone's attempting to manipulate their emotions, especially when it's in the name of religion. They appreciate the objectivity of Orthodox worship. It's not aimed at prompting religious feelings but at performing an objective duty."
A lot of the things these men say they like in Orthodoxy could be true of Protestantism as well. The problem, though, is that many churches have changed and have adapted too much to modern culture. But a Protestant church that is true to its heritage and tradition does require you to adapt to it. I mentioned the Book of Common Prayer the other day; worshipping in a church which uses the BCP presents a challenge that you need to adapt to. Protestant faith is serious and difficult and demanding; Jesus said that if anyone was to follow him they needed to first lay down their life (Matt. 16:24-25). We are called to be holy too, and learning to submit to Christ's Lordship over all of your life is a difficult process. Early Protestants saw Jesus as a strong and powerful King; the tender, soft Swedish Jesus is a modern invention. Protestant worship isn't about feelings and emotions and it does require participation.
But it's not difficult to see that in many churches this is not the case anymore. So, maybe we need to change something. Maybe it's not about coming up with new ways to challenge men, but returning to more classical forms of faith and worship. Maybe instead of dumbing everything down, we make men wrestle again with words and phrases that take some work to understand. Maybe instead of making worship as comfortable as we can, we make them kneel once in a while or stand for prolonged periods of time. Maybe we get them thinking hard about being disciples of Christ, as workers, as husbands and fathers, as citizens, as sports fans. Maybe we don't allow them to be passive and train them to teach or to lead in prayer or to mentor young men.
Christianity should be hard work. It should be challenging. It requires us, after all, to surrender everything to Christ. If men are not learning that in our churches, then something is wrong.
Over the past month, I have (very) slowly been making my way through William Willimon's book, Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry. In a section discussing different images and models of pastoral ministry, Willimon suggests the recovery of a classical form of Christian ministry:
There is much to be said for the pastor being educated in the classical forms of Christian ministry. The church has much experience as a minority movement. We need to draw from that experience today. In that regard, I predict a recovery of the classical shape of ministry: to teach, to preach, and to evangelize through the ministries of the Word, sacrament, and order. I sense the end of a proliferation of ministerial duties and a reclamation of the essential classical tasks of Christian ministry. Because so many of our people have not been well formed in the faith, pastors must now stress doctrine, the classical texts of our faith, our master narratives, the great themes. The culture is no longer a prop for the church. If we are going to make Christians, we must have a new determination to inculcate the faith. In some ways our age parallels that of the Reformation, in which the church was faced with a vast undereducated, uninformed, unformed laity and clergy. Pastors need to be prepared to lead in catechesis, moral formation, and the regeneration of God's people.
He argues that we no longer live in a culture where Christianity holds a prominent place. As Christians, we are now living in a context in which the idea of being aliens and strangers in the land must be recovered. This was the situation of the early church, and it shaped the way they carried out their ministry. In particular, they invested a great deal of time and energy into the formation of believers. As we now find ourselves in a similar context, Willimon suggests that
more of our pastoral time, in this missionary situation, will be spent in catechesis, the formation of Christians who have the equipment they need to survive as Christians.
I often hear people react against the idea of catechesis because of an assumption that it is mere indoctrination, drilling purely intellectual and academic theological propositions into the heads of children. This, unfortunately, may have been the experience of some – to be honest, this was partly my own experience – but Willimon helpfully points out that catechesis instead is about the holistic formation of believers, equipping them with the tools necessary not only to think rightly, but to live rightly in the world.
In order to understand more fully what catechesis is supposed to entail, it is helpful first to have a well-rounded definition of the practice. The Catechism of the Catholic Church provides one such definition:
Catechesis...[includes] especially the teaching of Christian doctrine imparted, generally speaking, in an organic and systematic way, with a view to initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life....catechesis is built on a certain number of elements of the Church's pastoral mission...[including] the initial proclamation of the Gospel or missionary preaching to arouse faith; examination of the reasons for belief; experience of Christian living; celebration of the sacraments; integration into the ecclesial community; and apostolic and missionary witness (II, 5-6).
Catechesis is not just about intellectual matters, but it is about the whole of the Christian life. Recovering this sort of ministry is crucial for discipleship, and thus of great importance for pastoral ministry.
A recent book, Jesus, Paul, and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with N.T. Wright, is a collection of essays from a range of different scholars, interacting with Wright's thought on a number of different issues. Among the essays is one by Wright himself on Pauline studies and the life of the church. In that essay, just before the conclusion, Wright makes an important remark about the necessity of theology for the church. He says:
We need theology... We need it, not because it's a nice thing to get our ideas sorted out and our heads organised so that we can do the jigsaw of all these wonderful ideas. We need it because without prayerful reflective investigation of who God is, who the people of God are and what is the hope that belongs to our calling, without that prayerful, wise investigation the worldview whose central symbol is the one church of Jesus Christ will not be sustainable. Think of the churches that have given up theology, and you'll see what I mean.
No medium is neutral. The medium shapes and reforms the message, transforming the message even as it purports to be delivering it. An entertainment culture tends to consume Christian worship. The sincerity and concern conveyed by the media preacher are only apparent. Among the media mogul's failings is an inadequate ecclesiology. The virtual church made through electronic media is less than church, where, to extend Paul's corporeal analogy, the eye has no opportunity ever to meet the foot. There is no flesh for incarnation. The fundamental form of the Christian church as a participatory body, the character of the pastor as one who knows the flock and is known by the flock, is changed by immersion into the modern 'entertainment culture.' The primary function of television is entertainment, whereas the purpose of the gospel is transformation. Furthermore, when we are holding the TV remote control, we are in control of what can be said and shown to us. There is thus little opportunity to be jumped from behind by grace.
Simon Smart, of the Sydney-based Centre for Public Christianity, sat down with Kevin Vanhoozer to talk a little bit about the importance of looking at culture through a theological lens, and the responsibility of the church in the world. Vanhoozer contributed to a book a few years ago called Everyday Theology, which forms the basis for their discussion, and looks at the calling and challenge of living as a faithful disciple of Christ in all parts of life. The two part, 15-minute discussion is below:
