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Commentary
GEN-X RISING: Smaller vision may offer denomination some answers Andrew C. Thompson, Feb 10, 2009
Andrew C. Thompson
By Andrew C. Thompson UMR Columnist
Shane Claiborne has an answer to the church’s problems. And it sounds nothing like what we’re used to hearing.
Shane is a Gen X-er who grew up in a Methodist church in east Tennessee (though his comments about the Methodism of his youth aren’t always complimentary). After attending Eastern College in suburban Philadelphia, Shane moved to the inner-city and helped found an intentional Christian community called The Simple Way.
He traveled to Iraq before the 2003 U.S. invasion to witness to the non-violent message of Jesus in the midst of that tense and dangerous situation. His 2006 book, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, part-memoir and part-call to action, has rocked many Gen X-ers to the core.
I went to hear Shane speak a few days ago, eager to see if the man matched the message.
He’s a curious guy, with a preference for homespun clothes and dark-rimmed glasses. His face is framed by dreadlocks and a scruffy goatee. He’s tall and thin, and looks like he’s always deep in thought.
In a presentation that included both lecture and Q&A time, Shane laid out his vision for the church. There was no grand church-growth theory or summons to a culture war. Instead, Shane called for an approach to discipleship that, if not small in numbers, is at least small-scale in vision.
Shane believes in people rather than programs, yet he defies the clichéd sound of that statement. His spiritual hero is Mother Teresa, and he likes to tell of seeing her gnarled feet when he went to work with her organization in Calcutta. One of the nuns told him that Mother Teresa kept giving away her good shoes and settling for ones that were too small. Over the years, wearing ill-fitting shoes had deformed her feet.
For Shane, that story sums up what it means to follow Jesus. Mother Teresa’s Christian witness came out of the life she lived, making her the perfect example of expressing belief not through words but through a sacrificial pattern of life.
“We are not sent out to make believers,” Shane said to his audience. “We are sent out to make disciples.” In other words, helping people grow into what it means to follow Jesus.
On the surface, this sounds like Sunday school 101. But Shane gently adds that most Christians fall short when it comes to living as Jesus calls us to live. Jesus has a lot to say about money, about violence and about loving the poor, for example, but we often gloss over those words. Shane won’t let us.
“We’re never going to have a church that cares for poor folks until we have poor folks at our dinner table,” he says. And at The Simple Way community in Philly, Shane practices what he preaches.
He wants us to see the church as a place of real community, where God’s love and justice are embodied in authentic relationships with God and neighbor. In The Irresistible Revolution, he describes faithful Christians as “people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about.”
Shane’s “micro” vision isn’t reflected in the church’s typically “macro” approach to problem-solving. Big denominations look for big solutions; the United Methodist Church is a good example.
Faced with an aging population, a decline in numbers and a creaky bureaucracy, what do we do? We pass legislation at General Conference to create sweeping new programs through our general boards and agencies. We tweak our mission statement and baptismal vows. We fund multi-million dollar advertising campaigns designed to enhance our reputation in the larger culture.
These strategies may work. They haven’t yet, but they may. I’m just not holding my breath.
In the meantime, perhaps we should pay attention to Shane Claiborne’s perspective on Christian discipleship. It looks more like Jesus than anything I’ve seen in a long time.
Andrew C. Thompson
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