No Special Sauce on My Eucharist, Please

I recently found a website purportedly raising money for a pilot program that, if successful, would place McDonald's franchises in underused church buildings across the country and of various denominations. I won't link to the program, called McMass, for various reasons: in part because I hope that the whole thing is sarcasm, but also because I think it's easy enough to find and that if it isn't sarcasm I don't want to support it in any way.

Whether sarcastic or not, this site points to some issues with contemporary church thinking:

1. The number of people at a church is somehow an indicator of how healthy a church is. Yes, in general, a church should be increasing its members, attendees, or whatever, because that is the result of spreading the Gospel. But putting firm numbers and definite expectations on such growth shifts the emphasis from the long, slow processes of growth in Christ as disciples to a strategy of increase at any cost. That cost can be continued growth of existing members or even the Gospel itself.

2. The church is unsuccessful, but can become successful by applying modern business methods. Yes, the church is fairly unsuccessful by business standards. But the business standard measures success ultimately by profit. When churches are taking in much larger amounts of money than they are "spending", people are suspicious of them in a way that isn't even relevant to, say, Apple. Or McDonald's.

The modern business methods in churches aren't there for profitability, of course. They're there to increase the numbers: attendance, membership, participation, even giving. It's about increasing efficiency, better marketing, giving the people what they want, eliminating underperforming ministries, creating buy-in, and the like. These practices will increase numbers, certainly. How the fit in with the Good News of Jesus Christ, I have no idea: making a convert increases numbers, but making a disciple (as the Great Commission calls for) does not.

3. Every congregation has the same problem, which has a single solution, unless of course they've already implemented that solution. In the McMass proposal, the problem is vacancy, and the solution is a McDonald's franchise. Other problems have been declining membership, cultural irrelevancy, and losing the Millenials. Solutions have included contemporary worship, seeker services, small groups, upbeat music, nontraditional settings, and mission statements.

The idea that every congregation has the same problem (unless it's already been solved) is absurd. Rural, suburban, and urban congregations all have different dynamics because of where they are. Newer congregations aren't the same as older ones. Large congregations word differently from small ones. Conservative churches face different challenges from progressive ones. Ethnic, racial, and denominational histories influence congregations today. The idea that one solution, no matter how "successful" it has been elsewhere, will fix the problems of all of these is at best wishful thinking. This goes double when you realize that "successful" usually is defined in terms of number one and two above, and not in terms of a closer walk with Jesus.

4. The present time is special, at least when compared to the past. Usually this idea is implicit in the idea that now we have the knowledge (usually modern, effective business practices) to solve the problems the Church faces, which it has never faced before. The idea that somehow the contemporary situation is unique in church history such that we cannot look to the past for solutions (indeed, the past is often seen as a cause of the problem) is a kind of temporal arrogance. As Christians we are part of a chain of believers going back to those who actually heard the words of Jesus. We may know more about certain things, but only because we have the insights of previous generations: we see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants (Isaac Newton). We are not loved by God any more or any less than previous generations. We are no more and no less human than previous generations. The idea that our answers are better without listening to our predecessors, or that our problems are worse because of our predecessors, is, as a previous generation might have said, malarkey. The Church has always had problems -- and wisdom.

Biblical Inerrancy and Human Fallibility

I keep hearing from starkly conservative Christians on various issues arguments along the following lines:

1. The Bible is the Word of God
2. Therefore, the Bible cannot be wrong,
3. The Bible says thus-and-such on an issue.
4. Therefore, thus-and-such must be so.

Here's the thing. This argument overlooks the role of the reader of the Bible in understanding what it says, among other things. Let's take a closer look at this argument.

The Bible is the Word of God
Well, yes, but only secondarily. Jesus Christ is the Word of God, as the Bible itself says in John 1. The Bible is God's message to us. But that message says that Jesus Christ is God's ultimate message to us: God's self-disclosure of who God is. So while it is the case that the Bible is the Word of God, it is not the ultimate Word of God. The Bible is important, but it is not as important at Jesus Christ. If the Bible seems to say something which is at odds with what Jesus says or does, then Jesus is the surer guide to truth.

Therefore, the Bible cannot be wrong.
Well, yes. The Bible is God's message to us that Jesus Christ is God's ultimate message. There is really no reason for God to lie, or even be mistaken, in telling us that. However, it is about this message that God has for us in the Bible that the Bible cannot be wrong. Other aspects of the Bible are secondary. They are aspects that God uses to get the main message across. They need not be correct in themselves. In some cases, in fact, they had to be wrong.

Why? God may have inspired the Bible, but from the moment that any given verse was more than a divine thought humans were involved. These humans were, as all of us are, products of their time and place. Modern ideas about such things as the origin of life, the creation of the universe, and the age of Earth would have been absurd to those who first heard them as well as several generations of those who transmitted the texts. The result would have been that any texts which described the world in modern terms would have been considered nonsense by its first hearers and likely lost.

The Bible says thus-and-such on an issue.
Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. How can you tell? The only way to tell what the Bible says is to read it. And therein lies the issue.

The Bible cannot be wrong. But you can. And so can I. So can any of us who aren't God. And as soon as you introduce a fallible human into the picture, the picture changes. Because while the Bible cannot be wrong about its central point, you and I can be wrong about what the Bible means. The error, then, isn't the Bible's, it is ours. And when we make a mistake of this sort, then our claim that the Bible says a certain thing is wrong, even though the Bible is not wrong.

Therefore, thus-and-such must be true.
Well, yes, if the Bible actually says that. But see the section above. Not every interpretation of the Bible is necessarily true, simply because it is an interpretation of the Bible. This last statement is somewhat trite. It is trivial to come up with patently incorrect interpretations of the Bible. Nonetheless, interpretations which are offered seriously can have errors, not because the Bible is fallible, but because the interpreter is fallible.

So while every step of this argument is at least potentially true, the argument as a whole is far from ironclad. As it is usually used, it acts as a shutting down of discussion due to what those arguing seem to consider to be obvious truths. But it is only possible to make this argument if you ignore the role of the interpreter or reader in communicating the claimed statement of the Bible. Yet this role is vital: without someone to read, and by reading interpret, the Bible, it is an inert document, no more capable of revealing us God in Jesus Christ than a coffee mug in a box in the back storeroom of a coffee shop.

The Lectionary: Why Use One?

Traditionally, the scripture readings for worship services were not selected by any of the worship leaders. Rather, churches used a lectionary: a book which lists the readings for worship services. In contemporary use, there are in fact multiple lectionaries for Sunday and holy day worship, for daily Eucharistic worship, and for the daily office. My comments here will apply to some extent to all of these, though of course you only use those lectionaries which work for the services you have.

Why use a lectionary? Let us look at two apparent weaknesses of using lectionaries, before looking at some other strengths.

A lectionary forces me to read more Scriptures than I preach about
The idea that you can read too much of the Bible strikes me as absurd in itself. But I know that many Christians have the idea that if a passage of Scripture is read, it must be explained. But this is not so. Much else happens in worship that is not explained. The point of reading the Bible during worship is to let the Bible speak to those present. The further proclamation of a sermon or homily is necessary, not so that the people can understand a passage of Scripture (because many passages of Scripture have too much meaning to be understood fully in a single setting anyway), but so that the people may understand some particular aspect more clearly.

Even if you do preach on a given passage, those at the service may get something different from the reading anyway. So including other passages doesn't change anything in this regard; it only means that the worshipers will be exposed to more passages, and therefore have more chances to have their lives changed.

I want to preach on a given topic, and the lectionary won't give me a Scripture to base it on
A variation on this criticism is, "I want to do a sermon series on a topic, and the lectionary isn't arranged so that I can do that." This second version is simply the first applied to one topic over multiple services.

Here is the problem with this criticism, as I see it. Essentially, you are saying, "I will decide what to preach on" rather than "I will listen to what God has to say to me, and what God wants me to say". Yes, preaching topically allows you to address topics of particular concern to your congregation or at a particular time. But usually, other avenues exist to discuss these topics: a pastor's column in a newsletter, a church blog, Sunday school classes, or bible studies, for example. These media also make it clear that what is being said is the pastor's informed opinion, and not necessarily the voice of God. By using a lectionary, the preacher is no longer allowed to follow his or her own fancy, but is subject to a discipline such that both preacher and congregation have to listen to topics regardless of their own whims or preferences.

There are other reasons to use a lectionary.
I want to expose the congregation to as much of the Scripture as possible
Then use a lectionary! While they are not perfect, and criticisms of current lectionaries exist, modern lectionaries use a substantial part of the Bible, far more than most pastors will remember to use otherwise. About the only alternative is reading straight through the Bible. This strategy is a lectionary of its own, really, only one which may be started arbitrarily and is not set up by any church authority.

I want my congregation to hear the same passages as other congregations
Then use a lectionary! There are three main lectionaries in us in U.S. Christianity, and they are quite similar. The Roman Catholic Lectionary is used by the Roman rite of the Catholic Church and is the basis for the other two. The Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) is used by many Protestant churches. It replaces Old Testament readings in the Catholic lectionary which are taken from books not in Protestant Bibles. The Episcopal Lectionary is a similar effort, which was devised in the same way as the RCL, but shortly before, and disagrees with the RCL only slightly.

I want to be able to use sermon preparation aids
Then use a lectionary! There are several aids to sermon preparation available, from exposition of passages to anecdotes and illustrations. Many of these are keyed to various lectionaries. By preaching from a lectionary, finding relevant sermon preparation aids becomes easier.

One final note: while a lectionary is set up for traditional-style liturgies, one can be used with other styles of worship: just read the passages where you already read Scripture. Lectionaries are about Scripture passage selection, not about positioning or surroundings or style of proclamation.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Let me know in the comments, please.