Denoms, NonDenoms, and Accountability

A couple of weeks back, I spent nearly the entirety of a Friday sitting in a long training.   This was the mandated training for Presbyterian pastors on sexual misconduct and malfeasance avoidance, one which we've got to attend every couple of years or so to maintain our good standing within the denomination.

I'd done it before, of course.  Multiple times, both in seminary and through the local Presbytery.  But there I was yet again, watching videos, talking with small groups, and sharing as a whole.   It was a familiar dance, so familiar, in fact, that it would have been easy to dismiss it as just another pointless hoop inflicted on us by the Woman.  'Cause you know, you just can't call it Da Man if you're PC(USA), 'cause it ain't.

Thing is, it wasn't pointless.  It wasn't a hoop.

I wish I'd never had to use my prior misconduct training, but the painful reality is that the awareness it provided me has come in handy over the years.   Encountering the reminders about warning signs to look for in a faith community, I see them now for what they are...the swords of cherubim, protecting the integrity of the church from those who would use it as a place of sexual predation.  Take that metaphorically if you must, but whichever way, that knowledge is important.

It's not about legal liability, either.  It's about insuring that church is a safe, gracious, and truly welcoming place, truly reflective of our Master and Friend.

The training also provided a reminder to the not-predatory-but-flawed human beings who pastor churches that human beings...if they are stressed, isolated, and spiritually out of balance...can make decisions that shatter their integrity, and leave former Christ followers cynical and broken and bitter.  We all need that reminder, all of us, and the tools that the wisdom of others can provide.

Here, though, I wonder about how that plays into the dynamics of the nondenominational world.  Having cast themselves free of the yoke of denominational affiliation, every nondenominational church is free to be itself.  The nondenominational pastor is accountable to no-one but himself, Christ, and the circle that has gathered around him.  And that is a problem.

Why?

Because in the absence of the discipline of denominational accountability, pastors can more easily wander afield.  You are the brand-made-flesh of your entire community.  The church exists because of you.  Your flock, who adore you, are unlikely to be willing to see you weakening, unlikely to admit to themselves that your behavior is critically compromising you.   In the absence of the insights of those who have resisted or endured that form of human brokenness, those pesky demons are likely to have far more play.  In the absence of the oversight and the training, and freely submitting yourself to a discipline that can guide and inform your struggle, your ability to maintain yourself in Christ is weakened.

And when we are weak, ugly things can happen.

That's not to say that denominations don't have a problem with malfeasance.  Of course we do.  But we know we have a problem, and together, we work to deal with it.

In those admittedly clumsy structures of our connection, we are doing something about it, and can hold each other to standards that honor the intent of our Teacher.   Across the many churches of a denominational community, the institutional memory of the damage done remains strong, and those stories act as a reminder and a caution to those fool enough to imagine that It Could Never Happen Here.

But if you are free, free of that discipline, then those stories are not in your ears.  If you are disconnected, and free of the collective reinforcement that comes from denominational affiliation, you are also free to wander deep into dark places.  You are free, should you so choose, to use your power and your charisma and the adoration of those who follow you to follow your every hunger.

Advantage?  Denominations.

Denoms, NonDenoms, and Disagreement

One of the favorite themes among nondenominational folks of all stripes is the essential failure of the denominational systems of church governance.  The Oldline churches are trapped in endless political squabbling, bickering about sexuality and ordination and the authority of the Bible.  Independent churches are free of all such nonsense, and can thus better grow into the vast sprawling parking lot Jesus MegaCenters that are the clear sign of God's favor on earth.  For as the Apostle Paul once wrote:  "How can they know if they have not heard?  And how can they hear if they cannot park?" (Romans 1:14-15, The Church Shopper's Bible)

Much of the success of the nondenoms, I think, comes from their ability to be in sync with the corporate/consumer ethos of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.   If the ethos is growth, then you're more likely to grow if you have a clear and definable brand.  Denominations, which are structured like governments, well, they're more prone to manifesting politics and bureaucracy.  If you're trying to be a self-governing community of communities, there are always going to be tensions and disagreements.

But if you're structured like a business, with an iconic founder/CEO/Senior Pastor, then there is less potential for disagreement.  The board?  They'll support the person who's the reason they're there.  The flock?  They'll follow the shepherd, whose face beams down upon them from the Jumbotron every Sunday like the great and powerful Oz.  And so the brand is clear and unsullied by difference, the message is clear, and the laserlike clarity of brand identity stands as a beacon in a world that yearns for neatly packaged certainty.

Until the pastor dies or retires or is caught in a motel room with three strippers and an array of assorted livestock.  Then?  Well, then things get a bit trickier.

The process by which big independent nondenominational churches do leadership transition often has all the grace of the choosing of a new patriarch for the Borgia family.  Or, to be more biblical about it, the process by which Judah often selected her kings.  Things can get ugly and political, because all of that politics we denoms do on the front end just sits, repressed and unexpressed, under the iron thumb of the Brand, until BLLLANG!   It's a bit like Yugoslavia after Tito.   You remember, right?  Tito?  That whole mess with Bosnia and Serbia in the 1990s?  Sigh.

Take the recent ugliness at Jericho City of Praise, a big sprawling nondenom in my area.  Once the iconic founding pastor and his pastor wife passed, suddenly the board and the son were fighting it out in court over control of this huge 19,000 member Jeeza-hemoth.   Court, mind you, because if you're an island in and of yourself, when disagreement strikes, there's nothing left to do but take things to the law.  Settling things in-house becomes impossible, and as there's no authoritative external connection outside of the brand, the only recourse is the government and the services of highly paid counsel.

Strange irony, that.

Advantage:  Denominations.

Faith on the Hill

The report on the religious composition of the new One Hunnered and Twefth Congress that was released earlier this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life contains some rather interesting data.  It measures the self-stated faith affiliation of each of the members of our Congress, which can then be compared to the broader populace and dissected by the talkocracy.

Which would be me, I suppose.

Several things strike me.  In Pew's own analysis of their data, they note that the most significantly underrepresented group are the "nonaffiliated."  Meaning, the agnostics, the atheists, and the people who basically just couldn't care less.  While such souls are about 16% of the overall population, there are no unaffiliated folks in Congress.  Six members, or around 1%, didn't reply to the survey.  Two members, or around 0.3%, indicated their faith didn't fall into any measurable category.  But none of them explicitly said they were without faith.  Not one.  Is this a question of bias or just the inherent democratic unelectability of being a minority that articulates an unpopular worldview?  Six of one, half dozen of the other, I suppose. 

Pew also notes that while the oldline denominations are in decline, they are significantly overrepresented in Congress.  While Presbyterians and Episcopalians combined make up only 5% of the U.S. population, we're 16% of the Congress.  Perhaps it's a factor of our love of decency, order, and mind-numbingly pointless bureaucratic wrangling over issues rather than actually solving them.

What wasn't noted, and seems worthy of it, is the number of self-identifying "nondenominational" Christians.  Nondenominational Christianity is...at least in terms of the public face of Christianity...a significant player in the American Jesus People world.  The nondenominational churches are supposedly everywhere.  They range in size from the teeny bitty little house fellowships to the big Bible megachurches.   They make up, depending on what research you look at, somewhere around 15% of congregations.  But a grand total of two Congressmen self-identify that way.  That's means there are as many self-identifying nondenominational types in Congress as there are Muslims.   The only non-zero category they beat out are the Quakers, who are usually just too darn nice to get elected.

Except for Nixon.  Man, that was one wacky Quaker.

Still and all, I was particularly struck that this category, which is so prevalent in the American Christian world, should be such a non-presence.  Perhaps it's that folks don't see it as meaning anything.  A non-denom might be more prone to calling themselves "evangelical."  Or "Bible-believing."  Or perhaps they just all plopped themselves down into the largest Pew subcategory of Protestant lawmakers after the Baptists:  "Unspecified/Other."

It might be nice to see that on some church signs.  "The First Unspecified/Other Church of Wabash."