Ubuntu, Mission Focuses and ... God

I was reading an article on ENS (that's the Episcopal News Service) about the upcoming General Convention in Anaheim. There's lots of hype on this one, even a word that was outside the vocabulary of most Episcopalians until now ... "ubuntu" ... That's the theme of General Convention 2009. The meaning of the word is something like "I am because we are" and the article talks a lot about new-fangled "emergent" worship, getting conversations in dioceses started on "mission focuses", Creative Worship from different cultural perspectives to include Chinese drums, and Korean drums, new liturgies and all this and that. Well, frankly I have to say that I am troubled by all this. Just one huge smorgasbord ... sprawled out over an Anaheim convention center.

All that to say, that I think we have a lot more to worry about as a Church than using choosing between Vietnamese Strings and African drums in our liturgy and a lot more than "mission focuses", when I see a lack of focus on God. When I mentioned smorgasbord, that, I think is an accurate representation of the current state of the Episcopal Church, just one huge smorgasbord. One huge mass of scattered people circling around the newest worship fads, the newest doctrine fads, the newest "mission" fads (don't get me started on the MDGs). Although I am proud to be an Episcopalian/Anglican (though less so Episcopalian on many days), I just find myself troubled over the direction that the Episcopal Church is going. Although in some pockets our numbers are growing, by and large, I think our numbers (along with those of the wider 'mainline Protestant' movement) are declining albeit it is a slow leak. On the other hand, we see growth in places we wouldn't think would grow in a time such as ours. Tridentine Masses (that is Roman Mass in Latin) is a fast growing movement in Roman Catholic circles. These masses are not filled with the decrepit ancients, instead they are being filled by the new young generation who have been totally disillusioned by the liturgical and theological reforms of Vatican II. We are also seeing swaths of Protestants and Anglicans, being disillusioned by the newest developments in theology ,convert wholesale into the Eastern Orthodox Church, whose Liturgy is about 1,500 years old, it's theology not much younger, and where innovation is considered to be a very very bad word.

I think that instead of seeking out new fads and revising liturgies to suit modern tastes, I think we ought to go back and take a good look at those old liturgical books, dogmatic theology books, and Bibles we traded in for shiny glossy hardcovers that talk about a Jesus that doesn't require you to go to Church or be part of a community, or a Jesus who didn't rise from the dead, or a Gospel that behaves more like secular humanism than God's direct intervention into human history. It is in these ancient tomes that we will find the key to the way forward. Using our Anglican ingenuity and fortitude and our firm grasp on tradition and innovation, we can forge a way forward that responds to the spiritual hunger of our society and present the Gospel in a way that makes sense.

While I believe that all the outreach we do is important, valuable and are actions that help us to fulfill the Great Commandments, I think we focus too much on the second one and lose focus on the first one. Let me remind you all that the Great Commandments are: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourselves". There are two commandments there. While the second is, again, important, it should be an outgrowth of the first. Notice that the Scriptures don't phrase it as "Love your neighbor as yourself, and love God only if you feel you have to". We need to love God first, we need to first hand over our whole existence to Him. We can never pretend nor presume that our reasoning or our thoughts on their own are ever perfect because of our innately fallen nature as children of Eve.

I think that it is high time that we have a General Convention that is not about MDGs, our "Mission Focuses", our need to "revise and renew" liturgy. Instead, we ought to have one whole General Convention dedicated to doctrine and creating the foundation for our mission work in the world. If we truly claim to be Christians, our mission work must be grounded in good doctrine and good theology. We as a Church must return to a doctrinally sound foundation. Some will tell me that we are united only by our worship and not by our specific beliefs. To these people, I will respectfully say "you're wrong". While Anglicans are not doctrinally authoritarian as other Christians, Anglicans recognize that Christians are united by minimal common belief as evidence by the Articles of Religion and the acceptance of the Nicene and Apostolic Creeds as sufficient bases for our common faith. While we are free to have differences of opinion, there are somethings where our difference of opinion would put us outside of the Christian community, not just the Anglican community. We need to discuss what we as a Church believe about God, Salvation, the Scriptures and other key areas of faith and practice. Without this, I fear that we are nothing more than a benevolent association cloaked as a Church, which I hope is not where we are going.