The Promise and Threat of Tradition

My former student, Steve Compton, has become a fine leader in church development. Compton notes that one of the purposes of the church is to nurture and to renovate our Christian tradition. We are inherently “traditionalists.” Yet tradition can be a two edged sword. Here are some of Compton’s observation about the challenge of tradition when one cares about church renewal:

The dilemma faced by many churches today rests upon the fact that tradition (the way we’ve done it before) is both valuable and detrimental to the church. Jackson W. Carroll, professor emeritus of religion and society at Duke Divinity School, and director of the J. M. Ormond Center for Research, Development, and Planning, says, “To ignore the churches’ traditions is to ignore an important means of grace. The accumulated wisdom of the church’s practices as it has struggled through the years with what it means to be faithful is a rich resource for inspiration and guidance as we face our own challenges. Our traditions re-present that wisdom and make it available to us.” On the other hand, being held hostage by tradition is an unconscionable denial of the transcendent nature of God. p. 14

As a congregation (or denomination) moves from birth to vitality to equilibrium to decline to death, the insidious forces of routinization are at work, resulting in an entropy-like effect. In physics, entropy is defined as “the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work.” In terms of the church, entropy is the unavailability of the church’s original spiritual energy for conversion into a gospel-proclaiming mission. So the life cycle of a congregation is measured not so much in time (though there is often a correlation with time) as in terms of the distance it stands at any given time from its core spiritual purposes. Herein lies another clue to help answer the question, “Who’s killing my old church?” pp. 24-25

Alice Mann, an Episcopal priest and senior consultant with the Alban Institute, suggests, “Vital organizations tend to be clear and persistent (even stubborn!) about their fundamental reason for being but flexible about the means they employ to live out their particular calling.” It is precisely the opposite, a lack of clear purpose and an inflexibility, that plagues many churches today. In the mainline denominations, by age if not experience, most churches are,.. developed congregations. They have membership, leadership, buildings, programs, and money – perhaps just enough to maintain the status quo. But they show little evidence of commitment to formal goals. Perhaps this state of affairs should not be seen so much as an indictment of the church – the process is inherent to all social organizations – as it is an honest statement of predicament from which they need to be extracted, even exorcised! Perhaps before the church in this plight can be freed to shift its primary focus to formal goals, confession of sin must take place. As the writer of I John says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:8-9).

If we love our buildings, our style of worship, our music, our programs, and our traditions more than we love God, are we the kind of church we need to be? If we measure our success as a church by the size of our membership, the prominence of our leadership, the magnitude of our staff, the size of our budget, and the extent of our programming, are we fulfilling the mission God has given us? These are questions every church, new and old, needs to ask of itself – always. pp. 29-30

In his book Death of the Church, Mike Regele, Presbyterian minister and co-founder and president of Percept Group, Inc., writes:

The institutional church in America . has built up many structures of self-dependence upon which it relies and into which it pours great resources. Yet these structures are failing. Like the individual who faces the faltering of his or her structures of self- dependence, the church is moving rapidly toward a moment of decision, a defining moment. It is a moment of definition because, whether we like it or not, the church in American culture is being redefined . Simply, we can die because of our hidebound resistance to change, or we can die in order to live [author’s emphasis] p. 30

Excerpts from Rekindling the Mainline by Stephen C. Compton, The Alban Institute, 2003.

William H. Willimon