The realities of our church life

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In both of my lifetime roles of church leadership—23 years as a pastor and 10 years as a denominational executive—the foundation for leadership has been a mix of spiritual and sociological knowledge and perspective. This combination of human and divine—my knowledge of Scripture, with the application of human observation—has formed my intuition. It brings a balance to understanding how the realities of our church life and witness are created and carried forward.

This is why I am delighted with the initial reports of the Church Member Profile organized by Donald B. Kraybill and assisted by Conrad L. Kanagy, who specializes in the Mennonite Church USA data and compares it to studies in 1972 and 1989. Receiving this information is like peering through a recently washed window that was smudged by many fingerprints. I reflect on Paul’s lament that “now we see in a mirror, dimly … ”    (1 Corinthians 13:12), hoping for added insight this side of the “face to face” clarity we anticipate in heaven. Sociological research is like acquiring a valued companion—as my father once told me, “A real friend is one who will tell you exactly how it is.”

Lyle Schaller, a practical-minded pundit of “what works,” popular in the 1970s, gave me a piece of churchly sociological wisdom when he said, “Congregations almost always vote no before they vote yes.” Knowing that made me a better pastor. How congregations make decisions or committees function is not always “spiritual” stuff; it is about our human natures.

In the early 1970s, when I began as a pastor in a rural congregation, we made copies on a purple-print mimeograph machine. A few years later the trustees agonized whether we could justify buying a copier. In the second congregation I served, the office secretary told me we ought to buy a computer. “Why?” I asked. Soon the advance of technology gave me the obvious answer to my question. These days perhaps 90 percent of my desk work involves staring at a screen and pressing keys on a keyboard. Typewriters and dictaphones are no more. The transformation process that resulted in our new denomination might not have happened without the rapid exchange of data and ideas made possible by email.

It is a truism to say that things have changed since 1972. Thirty years later, in 2002, we became a new church with a new name—Mennonite Church USA. This new reality is the result of other changes; it is less the cause of change, only five years later. We simply live and behave differently now—we are generally more affluent, more highly educated and less rural.

We have a membership of growing racial/ethnic diversity that reflects the sociological realities around us. We are more open to participation in secular politics and perhaps have allowed that human passion to color our spiritual perceptions more than in the past.

What does this data about change mean for us in our calling as Christians who view Christ’s teachings and example through the lens of Anabaptist reform and Mennonite culture?

Mennonites have often found our differences with others as our reason to exist—our game was to make comparisons, both to other Christians and “the world.” What if the data now informs us that we are now more like other Christians than we thought? Or what if what we once considered worldly is now commonplace among us? If we find our spiritual diversity increasing, or that pastors and congregations view things differently, what will we make of the proof offered to us in this current data?

Our view of ourselves and our reality changes slowly but continuously, moving like the hands of a clock. The answer to What time is it? often comes only when an alarm rings—when something happens, such as the creation of Mennonite Church USA, or when 9/11 awakens us from our slumber to see things that were happening before our eyes but that we had not taken care to notice.

Thank God for the sociologist/theologians among us. May God bless their work of offering us lenses to see ourselves and God more clearly so that we know how to pray with both gratitude and supplication.

James Schrag is executive director of Mennonite Church USA.

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Additional Notes

James Schrag is executive director of Mennonite Church USA.