The Black Church, here in town, is like a great and fearsome battle ship, with state of the art weaponry. Only, this ship never fights any battles. As the war rages, this elite battleship never leaves dock. Never fires a shot. Instead, all we do is polish the brass and put on grand celebrations of what a great and fearsome battleship we are, celebrating each passing year of our mighty vessel taking up space at the dock.
Part 2:
The Failure of Leadership
I may be about to give up on the Black Church. At least the
black church here in Colorado Springs. And I am not the only
one. The congregations of churches in town have grown
increasingly transient, the crowd flocking to the best show
Sunday morning and departing when they are no longer
entertained. The civil rights era passion and fervor of our
mothers and fathers has largely dimmed to a vague abstraction
while we go through the motions of imitating what we've
experienced all our lives— without actually experiencing it.
It is nothing new that the true worshippers of most any church
are to be found not so much on Sunday but during odd hours
during the week. At prayer meeting. At bible study. Your most
faithful and most spiritual and dedicated members will tend to
show up when the band is not playing. When the choir is not
singing. When there is no show, per se, but when the real work
of ministry needs to be done.
Meanwhile, conspicuously absent from most of these activities
are the church's true shot callers. The various boards and
committees empowered by the church's by-laws to control the
purse strings and dictate policy, even to the church's pastor.
It is my collective experience, in 29 years of ministry, that
the people who gravitate towards these positions, who are
nominated and elected into these positions, are almost
universally the least spiritual people in the church.
Paradoxically, these people are also often the least mature
people in the church. Sixty year-olds, entrusted with the future
of our beloved institution, and whom we assume to be mature
based on their advanced age. But they're not. They are deeply
insecure, which is why they want position and title in the first
pace. Or, fearful that there are fewer days ahead than there are
behind, they are feeling vulnerable and helpless in the face of
changing times and new and innovative ideas (like computers and
the Internet). Feeling threatened, they take power as a matter
of self-defense, making it their mission in life to block the
natural course of progress in their church because progress, to
them, places in peril their entire relevance as human beings.
When I meet people like this, deeply wounded and deeply insecure
people who are, more often than not, enormous road blocks to the
church's progress, I immediately recognize the very personal
struggle these people are going through. Though well hidden
behind a stony facade, these people are desperately lonely and
afraid of the future because the future suggests that the best
years of their lives might be behind them.
I'm reasonably confident that none of these people actually
realize what they are doing or why. In their minds, they are
doing what is right and what is best for the church. Like my
beloved friend I mention in part one, they can see only one
layer of the very complex motivations that instinctively drive
them to impede the church's progress. For the most part, these
are people who are only truly alive at church. Church is the
only place they feel empowered or respected. The word “no” is
their hand grenade, and the deference we are obligated to show
these people— coming into meetings on our knees, hat in hand—
provides them with the same kind of endorphin rush a shopping
spree or new car or casino win might provide us.
In nearly every reasonable application of this theory, I have
found that working in black churches usually entails turning a
“no” into a “yes.” Before I even ask, the answer is “no.” It is
no not because the idea is no good but because I am the one who
is asking it. At 42, I am still considered quite young, and
among the church leadership there is frequently a great and
desperate resentment of the young. A pastor of 52 is also
considered quite young and likely a radical out to change
things. Many church leaders are vehemently anti-change and
anti-progress. They are frozen somewhere in time, in a day when
they felt relevant and useful, and they are determined to drag
us all back there to their fond yestertime. Or, absent that, to
freeze us wherever we are and in whatever state we are in.
These people often have little respect for the pastor. The new
trend, here at least, seems to be firing the pastor or chasing
the pastor out or making the pastor so miserable he resigns.
Pastors are trending towards becoming mere transient caretakers
rather than dedicated leaders. Pastors have a great deal of
trouble leading because everything they do is monitored and
hampered by the shadow cabinet of people who'd have a hard time
finding Genesis in the bible, but who hold the keys to the
church.
There really should be a minimum aptitude test for church
leadership. Short of a full-out catechism, there ought to be
some standardized written and verbal test these people have to
pass before they're handed the church's checkbook, and
reasonable performance standards which include regular
attendance at bible study and Sunday school. The pastor must
pass a great many checks and balances and personal
investigations before he is seated, but the Sanhedrin are voted
in based on how long we've seen them hanging around. In many
cases, so-called “trustees” are voted in based on their fat bank
accounts or their standing in the community.
In direct contravention of the scriptures and in direct contrast
to the orderly and progressive self-revelation of God, the black
church routinely faces backward, longing for the plantation and
the fond yestertimes and showing hostility and ridicule for
forward ideas.
I was recently setting up eMail accounts for a local church when
a deacon wandered into the office and demanded to know what I
was doing on their computer. Then he wanted to know who
authorized it and what it was costing the church, a pretty
standard reaction to my two-year attempt to get all of the
churches here wired up (and there was no charge). When I asked
Deacon if he wanted me to set up an eMail account for him,
Deacon glared at me like a Doberman through a chain link fence,
and scoffed, “I don't need none of that mess.”
The product of this thinking and of these deeply entrenched
individuals has been a steady decline of church membership. The
church, now a politically toothless parody of the brave
institutions who faced down national guard troops and police
attack dogs, is at best a shadow of its former self. Having
given over control of spiritual resources to unspiritual people,
we are now reaping precisely the apostasy we have sown. We are,
increasingly, a people who do not really know God in any
meaningful way, but are a people who are, “playing church,” as
our parents used to call it. Going through the motions, wearing
the robes, but we don't really know God.
Truly knowing God, truly being connected to God, causes a kind
of fusion between God and man. And any fusion, as we all know,
creates power and byproducts. It is impossible to truly know God
and be a coward. It is impossible to truly know God and be
selfish. It is impossible to truly know God and be unspiritual.
It is impossible to truly know God and be hateful or spiteful or
petty or mean.
But that, in large measure, is exactly who we, in the black
church, are. As I said in an earlier essay, I find it curious
that, in my Christian experience, the black Christian community
is often the demographic least like Christ. We are so very quick
to anger. We are so thin-skinned. A people of toes perpetually
stepped on. Of all the people in the world, we seem to forgive
each other the least.
And this is a fair indicator and fair indictment of the failed
leadership in the black church. Pastors who are either weaklings
pushed around by their various “boards,” or who are deeply
flawed and deeply scarred, insecure individuals addicted to
applause and needing to feed massive egos at their congregants'
expense. Preaching a Gospel of Impotence, these ministers are
typically those among us with the biggest ego, the thinnest
skin, the shortest temper and the least patience.
And so here we are, in 2004, still doing everything with a note pad and a very old calculator. Still bringing the worship service to a dead stop so some completely unspiritual person can dryly read through lists of announcements. We still do everything the plantation way, by oral tradition. We don't read. If church folk in this town actually read anything, I'd have been run out of here years ago. But the fact is, reading is not in our tradition, listening is. Which tends to explain the transient nature of today's congregations, people blown to and fro by every wind or doctrine.
