We Educated Elite are Killing the Church
When the arogance of the educated elite becomes the norm of the ruling class of the church. Do you resonate with that thought? It is one that, until yesterday, had never occured to me. In recent history I have been struggling with what my church deems "community" and what I beileve "community" to mean. My ideaologies of hospitality and justice get tied up into my sense of community. As does my understanding of place and calling. So I understand if it is challenging for others to have a conversation with me about "what community is" because it is never just one thing. It is an intersection of many things. In other areas of study I have been taught the term intersectionality. It is where differing fields of study help to illuminate one another. That is an academic way of putting it but practically it is when we use knowledge of completely different topics to help us understand or in some way improve what we are currently doing. I am certain I am grossly underselling the full meaning of intersectionality but that is not the focus of my thougts. I only bring it up to say I have seen intersactionality used to describe the area where multiple disciplines cross over one another. I propose that the intersection itself is community. That means it is not the things coming to it but rather the product of the things there. It also means that community is constantly morphing because what is present is never the same. I wonder if anyone is still thinking about my opening thought. Let me bring us back there right now.
Let me say what I mean by "educated elite" and "ruling class". The "educated elite" is one of those phrases that is getting tossed around in recent history. It attempts to address the distance that can occur between those educated within the system of higher education and those who were not. There is an arrogance that comes from those of us who have attended institues of higher education. I mean, come on! Superiority is literally in the name. On of my favorite comedic lines is "she opened the door with that Liberal Arts confidence...". He hit the nail on the head with that one. We are trained to believe that we know. And we know because we have been trained. I cannot tell you how many times I have rolled my eyes at my mom because I knew something better than she did because I learned it at school. True or not true it is the attitude that is the problem. I have generally lost the ability to go to my mother and ask advise of her without contemplating if I can get better, more efficient information somewhere else. And that is a sad state for me.
But that is how we are across the board. I am in seminary and had to take the summer off because I was going insane by the way we talk! Have you ever gone to a seminary? I mean, for the love, the people are great. We care, or we say that we do really well. But the way we talk! (It was worth repeating.) We all talk as if we know we are right. And we all generally tune out the quiet ones who doubt if they are right. But the farse of the whole thing is none of us know anything except this: We know the church is dying and we know the people teaching us have little if no practical experience in stopping it. So we are being taught to lead congregations by thinkers who have brought us where we are now. On the verge of death. It's a farse because everyone hangs off the edge of every professors words as if they have the key. It's a farse because no one talks about the death that is staring us in the face. Well, except of course when we talk about needing to increase #'s. It's laughable how often we do not talk about the greatest obstable facing us as future pastors. Even as I write this I question which one is the greatest. For the moment I believe it is this, we believe that wecan change the tide by force or by running the same ship more effieciently. What happens when the rock attempt to stop the sea? Who wins? The Water. My point is the death of the church will not be stopped by finding the next church innovation. It will not be stopped by doing exactly what we are doing but better than those before us. We are not better than the ones who came before us. We have been called to where the spirit dwells. You know those spaces that make us feel yucky and uncomfortable? Or those places where we have to face the realities of life? That is where the church must be.
We have lost the faith of the people because the Spirit inside them has told them not to trust us. We have forgotten what it is to hope. We have forgotten what it is to need the Lord and to need one another. Everything is vying for our resources and we panick that we won't have enough; as if they were ever ours in the first place. We have allowed the fear of our own death to hold us captive. We are frozen in the forms and on the paths that cause death.
Let me say what I mean by "educated elite" and "ruling class". The "educated elite" is one of those phrases that is getting tossed around in recent history. It attempts to address the distance that can occur between those educated within the system of higher education and those who were not. There is an arrogance that comes from those of us who have attended institues of higher education. I mean, come on! Superiority is literally in the name. On of my favorite comedic lines is "she opened the door with that Liberal Arts confidence...". He hit the nail on the head with that one. We are trained to believe that we know. And we know because we have been trained. I cannot tell you how many times I have rolled my eyes at my mom because I knew something better than she did because I learned it at school. True or not true it is the attitude that is the problem. I have generally lost the ability to go to my mother and ask advise of her without contemplating if I can get better, more efficient information somewhere else. And that is a sad state for me.
But that is how we are across the board. I am in seminary and had to take the summer off because I was going insane by the way we talk! Have you ever gone to a seminary? I mean, for the love, the people are great. We care, or we say that we do really well. But the way we talk! (It was worth repeating.) We all talk as if we know we are right. And we all generally tune out the quiet ones who doubt if they are right. But the farse of the whole thing is none of us know anything except this: We know the church is dying and we know the people teaching us have little if no practical experience in stopping it. So we are being taught to lead congregations by thinkers who have brought us where we are now. On the verge of death. It's a farse because everyone hangs off the edge of every professors words as if they have the key. It's a farse because no one talks about the death that is staring us in the face. Well, except of course when we talk about needing to increase #'s. It's laughable how often we do not talk about the greatest obstable facing us as future pastors. Even as I write this I question which one is the greatest. For the moment I believe it is this, we believe that wecan change the tide by force or by running the same ship more effieciently. What happens when the rock attempt to stop the sea? Who wins? The Water. My point is the death of the church will not be stopped by finding the next church innovation. It will not be stopped by doing exactly what we are doing but better than those before us. We are not better than the ones who came before us. We have been called to where the spirit dwells. You know those spaces that make us feel yucky and uncomfortable? Or those places where we have to face the realities of life? That is where the church must be.
We have lost the faith of the people because the Spirit inside them has told them not to trust us. We have forgotten what it is to hope. We have forgotten what it is to need the Lord and to need one another. Everything is vying for our resources and we panick that we won't have enough; as if they were ever ours in the first place. We have allowed the fear of our own death to hold us captive. We are frozen in the forms and on the paths that cause death.
I push back, hard, against the/my church and its understanding of partnering with the community. I refuse to accept a partnership that does not begin by asking the community what it needs or even wants. To begin this means we must know the people who live and work in the area surrounding our churches. But truly it means that those people then get to make decisions that have real effects over the life of the congregation. We must come to trust the movement of the spirit among them, the neighbors we've ignored. Do you see where hospitality has entred in the conversation? Hospitality is creating a space for the neighbor we know is coming. Not because we see any signs of their arrival but because we know that in making a space specially designed for them that one day they will arrive. We prevent all of that when we believe our education has provided us with all the answers. And reject the knowledge and call of the spirit on those educated differently than ourselves. In your church, how many people, without degrees, are there who have the power to effect change? How many others come directly from surrounding your building? The fact that "those people" don't walk through our doors has led to do with them and more to do with us.
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