Why the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada could really benefit from a new name

 At least once a month I pick up the phone at the church office and the person on the other end says, "Hi, is this the Dee Eee Oh Lutheran Church?" I try to be polite.   I say, "Yes, this is Deo Lutheran church, Pastor Erik speaking."  "Oh, Day-o Lutheran?  Like the banana boat song?" I swear, someday when I've had too much caffeine I will snap back -  "No, Deo Lutheran, like the dative case of the Latin word meaning "to or towards God", as in "Gloria in Excelsis Deo".  I will undoubtedly regret this exceedingly geeky outburst when it finally happens.

The bulk mailings that we receive at the church also underscore that the second part of my church's name is a problem.  I've seen many creative spellings.  Luthern.  Luthrin. Lutheron.   But I graciously forgive these spelling mistakes, even though I was a city champion speller back in grade five (3rd and 4th place, b**ches).  I forgive partly because it is part of my job description to forgive, and partly because there is forensic evidence that the awesome guy who made the main sign out in front of my church building must have sinned LOUDLY when he realized there was no "O" in Lutheran after he had already finished carving all the letters on both sides of the 8'X4' cedar sign.

There is no "O" in Lutheran.

The word "church" in the name isn't without significant challenges either -- but let's save that for a different rant, because I've got another confession I want to make today.

Straight up: I am embarrassed by the name of my denomination.  I am grateful that my denomination's name was way too long to fit on our road sign, and that the acronym initialism "ELCIC" is all that appears there.  Because if our sign maker had had the space, I'd be be forced to explain to passers-by what the HECK the word "Evangelical" is doing there, assuming they hadn't already run away screaming with their hair on fire.

I'm tired of having to give a history lesson every time someone asks me "what does 'ELCIC' mean" in order to avoid losing people's respect the second I utter the word "Evangelical".   Yes, Martin Luther roundly hated the idea that the churches that had been cut off by corrupt mother Rome would be named after him.  He suggested "Evangelical" as a good name for the exiled church, after the greek word "evangelion" meaning "good news", and indeed, the church Luther instigated in Germany is presently called the Evangelische church.  The epithet "Lutheran" that was hurled by the enemies of Luther's movement in its early days was ultimately reappropriated by the church - it became an expression of intra-group siblinghood within the Lutheran subculture in a similar (but way less edgy) fashion to the way the "N-word" gained new usage in the late 20th century.  Hoping that the Lutherans would be motivated by their marginalized status to develop gangsta-hymnody or low-riding  liturgical wear?  Lutha' please!

What I'm trying to get at here is that the meanings of words do not remain static.  This is especially true in the case of words that are used as labels - there is constantly a tug-of-war being fought by people who wish to claim the right to apply them.  In the 16th century, "Lutheran" was a pejorative label, applied with the intent of convincing the reformers that they were foolish to hitch their wagon to an ass like Luther.   Today, it's a term that is spoken with (occasionally justified) pride.   In similar fashion, the "N-word" was a label used to shame and subdue a huge number of people.  Today, it is used by urban youth in a way that subverts the old meaning to such an extent that it is now self-applied by white kids.

As for this other label, "Evangelical" -- I'd argue that outside of academic cloisters and other circles of church geeks -- this word no longer means what it is supposed to mean.  When the general public hears the word "Evangelical", they do not associate it with the Good News that Jesus taught and for which Jesus died.  They are more likely to associate it primarily with the antics of the American Christian Right, whose message is often completely at odds with the Good News, and which seems to spray a new layer of skubala (Philippians 3:8) on the word "Evangelical" every time there is a Republican primary or American general election.    

The "Evangelical" brand name has been irreparably damaged by these associations.  Personally, I think it is time for our church to abandon this label altogether.  I'm also certain that there are many "Evangelicals" (in the new sense of the word) who would similarly be relieved to be no longer associated with us, due to our "liberal theology" that is so crass as to require that we work and advocate for the welfare of the "least of these who are members of [the Lord's] family" by any and all available means.

Let the others have the label.  It was getting awfully smelly anyway.

I leave it to someone else to choose an alternative label for us.  Any number of things could work - but my strong preference would be that it could be easily understood, pronounced, and spelled.  Otherwise, I don't think the label really matters, as long is it is not a barrier to our continuing to be an "Evangelical" church in the original sense of the word, ie. a community that is defined by, motivated by, and committed to the same Gospel that Jesus proclaimed in life, stuck with until death, and added a great many exclamation points to when he was resurrected.

The 20th century: a rift in the cultural continuum.

At its National Convention in July of 2011, the denomination I serve  was asked to consider a drastic restructuring plan. In (very) simplified terms, the plan was to close 40% of the regional offices that support our congregations and make the best of the ones we would have left.

In any other organization, this would be cause for great concern, yet our convention barely raised a collective eyebrow.  Everyone knew this was coming.  They knew it was coming because our church has been steadily and precipitously declining for a generation.  They also knew the reason:

Our church has largely failed to engage its own children and grandchildren.  


As one of those grandchildren who has been trained and ordained, and who presently has 4 years of ministry under his cincture, I feel that I have the responsibility to offer some thoughts and observations on behalf of "my people".

First: I need to make a confession.  Although my father is a Lutheran pastor, and I went to a Lutheran university, then a Lutheran seminary, and at 34, am as much a poster-boy for the ELCIC as anyone else is - the truth is, the church that raised me never quite felt like something that I could fully belong to.  My sense of non-belonging has not come from discomfort with our theology or our heritage. In fact, I'm extremely grateful for both of those things.  My sense of non-belonging also is not about the individual people in my congregation.  They are wonderful, welcoming, faithful, and kind and yes, I'd say this even if I wasn't afraid of offending them with this post.

The reason I barely feel I belong in this church is because the culture of the church is that of my grandparents and (to a lesser degree) my parents.  And their culture is completely different from that of my generation.

Prior to the 20th century, it was unimaginable for a child to have a different culture from their grandparents.  Yes, the generations pecked at one another as children sought to differentiate themselves from their elders, but the variations were still well within the scope of a single unified culture. 

When the 20th century hit that world, it hit like a tsunami -- everything changed and it changed fast.  Consider that:

• At the beginning of the 20th century, most people in the world made their homes in rural settings.  As of 2008, for the first time in all of human history, most people in the world live in cities.
• In the early 20th century, it was rare for women in North America to work outside the home.  Today, it is rarer for them not to do so.
• In the early 20th century, short of sending a very expensive telegram, the only way to send a message across the ocean was by mail, which took weeks if not months to arrive. Today that same message takes milliseconds and costs virtually nothing.
• Prior to the Wright Brothers' flight in 1903, it was assumed that heavier than air human flight was essentially impossible.  A mere 66 years later, Apollo 11 would bring pieces of wood and fabric from the Wright Brothers' Flyer with them as they landed on the surface of the moon in their 16 ton spacecraft.  Commercial air travel, unimaginable in 1900, has become beyond commonplace.  At any given moment 250,000 human beings are cruising overhead.
• Computers, once rare beasts the size of buildings and requiring brilliant engineers to run them, are now several orders of magnitude smaller, cheaper, more powerful, and easier to use.  Fisher Price now makes a baby-proof case for smartphones so that children as young as six months of age can use them.

Most of the people in my congregation are old enough to remember the world as it existed before it was hit by this tsunami of technological and cultural change.  They were formed and shaped in a different world with different norms and opportunities.  They are committed to this culture in the same way an adult child remains committed to their parents.  It's hard to find any fault in this instinct.  It seems like the most natural thing in the world to me.

But here's the thing...

I was born after a great many of these changes were already well entrenched.  I was born into a different culture, one defined not by homogeneity and stability, but by diversity and constant change.  I don't have any memory at all of life on a farm.  I have no experience of war (unless you count the kind fought with an XBOX controller in hand). The social circles that one belonged to when I was in junior high school were far more likely to be determined by the music we listened to or the brands we wore than the colour of our skin or our country of origin.   At least 5 languages were spoken in the halls of the high school from which I graduated.  At the small Lutheran university I attended, I had the privilege of having 4 different friends (all exceptionally wonderful people) confide in me that they were gay, and I'm certain that there were others I didn't know about.

It was a rich and complex environment in which to grow up, and the cultures that emerged in that environment were nuanced and diverse.  My generational cohort came by its culture naturally; I do not recall any point at which we all agreed to jettison our grandparents' culture so that we could adopt a newer and better one.   But both for better and for worse, our culture is definitely different from that of our grandparents.  And it's going to stay that way.
  

The reason why the church is in such a slump compared to the way it was 60 years ago is because there is a huge cultural rift between people who were formed by the culture of the pre-20th century world, and those who are too young to have had any direct experience of that world.  Had these two groups sought common ground rather than wage war with one another, the church might be in a very different position today.   Today, the victors of the worship wars of the 1980's and 1990's are sitting in their shrinking churches wondering where all the young people are. Far too many congregations will soon go to their graves believing that they have been fighting to uphold the sanctity of their faith, when in reality, many of them were not fighting for faith at all -- rather, they were fighting to preserve the monolithic culture of their youth.

This is a shame. 

Christianity is not now, nor has it ever been a faith that is welded to any particular culture.  In his ministry, Jesus was constantly crossing cultural boundaries and transgressing cultural norms so that God's purpose could be fulfilled.  This is a tremendously important part of the good news of who Jesus is.   Similarly, the apostle Paul was far more dedicated to the content of his proclamation than the package in which it was delivered.  He was well aware that getting through to people living in different cultures would require different tactics, and he adjusted his presentation accordingly.   Paul describes this process in 1st Corinthians 9:20-23: 

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.

 All of my grandparents are now dead. Their culture will soon be extinct. In order for my grandparents' faith to continue to bring new life to a radically different context, my church needs to stop behaving as if Christian faith and my grandparents' culture were a single, inseparable entity.  It needs to learn from Jesus and Paul how to circumvent barriers and traverse rifts for the sake of the Gospel.  Moreover, this must not be done grudgingly or seen as a compromise made so that the church can merely survive in a diminished form.  Rather, it must be understood as an expression of profound faithfulness and commitment to the calling that the church has been given in every time, every place, and every culture - to convey the Good News by any and all means necessary and in so doing, to share in the Gospel's blessings.

First post, wherein I talk myself into starting a blog

A special welcome to irate parishioners, future call committees, and anyone else who has accidentally stumbled across my little blog here.

When I first arrived in my present congregation in 2007 they didn't even have a computer in the office.  We've come a long way since then.   In 2009 we launched our church website (deolutheran.org) as a way of offering some basic information to people in our community who (let's face it) generally know very little about Christianity.  I've been posting recordings of my sermons there for almost 3 years now.  Last year I finally was persuaded to start with the social media thing -- and have since become adept at reflecting other people's brilliance on our facebook page (facebook.com/deolutheran). Resistance was futile.

While these were both good steps, no church is fully geeked out until its pastor has a blog.  So here goes.   Truth be told I'm a little reluctant to do this, mostly because I spend a lot of time and effort each week writing sermons, and once they are done, the last thing I typically want to do is more writing. I'd much rather be soldering on one of my electronic abominations or learning  a new programming language.  These realities, combined with my hereditary aversion to any more public attention than is absolutely necessary, could easily conspire to block me from putting my thoughts out on display like this...

...but two ideas have emboldened me to publish this blog and (shudder) do so using my real name.

1. That I might potentially have something to say that would be of use to others. (I leave it to the reader to decide whether this is true or not.  It may well be that the reason my ancestors learned to keep a low profile was that they were raging narcissists with little to contribute to society)
2. That unless I accidentally post things that are true enough to make people angry, it is very unlikely that anyone will ever read any of what I post anyway.

So I'm making no promises at the moment.  I may end up being lazy and re-purposing some of my sermons and passing them off as blog posts. Or I might fire a genuine rant off into the ether from time to time.  Hopefully this blog will be read by people other than parishioners hunting heresy or future call committees trying to decide whether to bring me in for an interview.  But if not - screw it.  I am as much a sinner as the next guy -- and anyone who thinks it ought to be otherwise probably doesn't know jack about Lutheranism anyway.