Vital Christianity

What does it mean for a church to be vital? Is it the programs? The preaching? The music? It has been a mantra for the past several decades that Conservative churches grow and liberal churches don't. Just look at those Episcopalians, they're falling apart because they're so liberal. But if you read some of the things coming from some corners of Evangelicalism, the future isn't too promising for them either!

Maybe not everything is as it seems. Maybe we need some new definitions of what it means to be vital as a Christian community. Diana Butler Bass in a book I've been talking about here in several posts provides a helpful reminder that Mainline Protestantism has only recently begun to emerge from its Country Club status. It needs to be remembered that at the height of Mainline Protestant dominance, being a church member was considered important to upward mobility and community influence. Being a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian counted for as much in the board room as in heaven!

So what does it mean to be vital? This piece from Diana's book is helpful:

Vital Christianity is not about being conservative, about being foot soldiers for the religious right. It is about being responsive to people's spiritual longings and experiences, and drawing from tradition and history to help make sense of it all. A congregation grows when it draws its worldview and practices from scripture, engaging the Bible as Marcus Borg so memorably says, "seriously but not literally." Mainline churches decline when the neglect scripture and prayer, discernment and hospitality, contemplation and justice. I have witnessed the old mainline recovering faith through an emerging set of practices of passionate Christianity, in communities that are both spiritual and religious. (Christianity for the Rest of Us, Harper Collins, 2006, p. 45).

So, I join Diana in celebrating a vital Christianity that is passionate, committed, biblical without being literalistic about it, and hospitable. It is both spiritual and religious, with being religious having to do with walking together in community as pilgrims. Too often we're content to remain spiritual tourists pursuing our own private spiritual fulfillment. Vital Christianity not only transforms the individual it is world changing!