Churches, Young People, and A Call to Ministry

I have spent the past several days at the annual meeting of the Academy of Parish Clergy, the organization for which I edit the journal Sharing the Practice.   The organization has been around since the late 1960s, born at a time when the church was flush with members and aspiring clergy (mostly male).  The Academy like the church has struggled of late.  But there are signs of hope for the church and for the Academy, but that's really a discussion for another day.

The topic at hand concerns the role of the church in nurturing the call to ministry among youth and young adults.  There was a time when young people heard the call in high school, if not before (see Fred Craddock's wonderful autobiography of his youthful call).  Today it's quite common for people to move into ministry as a second or even third career.  The question is -- where are the young people?  Is God not calling them?

I just started reading a new book called Greenhouses of Hope: Congregations Growing Young Leaders Who Will Change the World, (Alban), edited by Dori Grinenko Baker.  I'm reading the book with a great deal of interest in part because I'm working with a young intern who grew up in our congregation.  This young woman is full of energy, vision, and has heard the call.  The question is -- is the church encouraging the call and in what ways? 

In her opening chapter Baker describes the image of the Greenhouse -- using as an example a set of greenhouses used for growing roses that were abandoned and now have been reclaimed and revitalized for a community garden.  One of the greenhouses has yet to be reclaimed, but there are roses growing in there, untended and unsupported.  Baker writes that this image is an "apt metaphor for God's calling in the lives of young people."  She goes on:

God will call young lives, with or without the help of congregations.  God will bring them bursting through glass ceilings as they grow toward who they are called to be.  But how much better, and how much richer might the journey be if young people were not left to eke out their calling solo, but rather were given the best of their community's resources of attention, love and nourishment toward their vocational calling?  (p. 11)

Baker's question is a good one, one that I'd like to lift up for our discussion.

Identity in the Post-Modern World

I posted a piece yesterday asking the question:  Are you spiritual or are you religious?  In reality, a majority of people want to keep these two together.  But, it is important to acknowledge that the world of today is very different from the church's "golden age" in the 1950s.  We look at the world in very different ways.  In the forthcoming issue of Sharing the Practice, the journal that I edit for the Academy of Parish Clergy, Loren Mead, founder of Alban Institute writes a piece on the changing world of ministry.  He uses the metaphor of the tides to describe the difference between the world in which he entered ministry, in which the Academy of Parish Clergy was born, and the world of today.  Then the tide was coming in, now it's going out.  That makes doing ministry much more difficult.

Yesterday, in her closing presentation, Diana Butler Bass shared with the gathered Disciples clergy a matrix to understand the old and the new -- she made it clear that old isn't "bad" and new isn't "good," they are what they are.  She shared with us the three areas of inquiry that sociologists use in formulating polls and surveys.  They want to know about identity -- to what do you belong -- belief, and practice.  I'll be commenting on the latter two at a different point, but I want to focus now on questions of identity.  

As Diana laid it out the question that lies at the base of this inquiry is "Who Am I?"  Descartes answered that question for the modern age with the words:  Cogito ergo sum -- "I think, therefore, I am."  Identity is defined in terms of rationality.  What makes us different from other species is our rationality.  You can see how this would affect and influence the way the church exists and organizes itself.  It leads quickly the next point -- belief, which is defined in very rational terms, and practices, which are defined as techniques -- How do we do what we're supposed to do?    That is the old paradigm that defined the world in which the American church had its golden age.  It focused on the external and the institutional -- what so many describe today as "religion."  And it worked very well.

But, the world has changed, and the identity questions have changed.  Science is asking different questions about identity, and those questions have made it clear that things are rather complex.  We may be rational beings, but we're more than rationality.  In fact, identity is defined in a context of a complex web of experiences and possibilities.  Identity is wrapped in economics, politics, the environment, religion, science, and more.  So, in this new age, when we talk about identity we must add prepositions -- what Diana referred to as "Prepositional Identity."    Thus we must tweak the question.

It is no longer "Who am I?" or "Who are We?"  Instead, the question is:  "Who am I in . . ."  Or, Who am I with . . ."  And as people of faith, we must ask the question of what we're doing or why we're doing something in this way:  "Who am I in God?"

And that's the question I want to pose.  Who are you in God?