Founding the Church of Jeff Ozanne

The recent controversy around the sermon's of Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor, as well as recent studies which show the high percentage of people who switch denominations over the course of one's life raises an interesting question, how much do people need to believe what their pastor, their church, and their denomination believe? The other way of looking at it is how much do the pastor, the church, and the denomination have to believe what I believe. It is obviously impossible for church, pastor, and parishioner to be lock-in-step on every issue. The only way that is going to happen is if we each found our own churches. There needs to be a lower standard than 100% agreement, but what is it? Some people would say that the percentage of agreement is not nearly as important as what people agree on. It would be possible for an fundamentalist Christian and a fundamentalist Muslim to have the same beliefs around the importance of scripture, but what they call scripture is going to be different and that difference alone is enough to make them choose two very different places of worship. I think on the whole people look for people/ideas/experiences like theirs when they choose a place to worship. I just wonder how if there are things that are more important or less important around those issues.

One of the growing trends of the church is the mobility of members. This is not new in the last ten years but is certainly new over the life of the Church. A lot of church growth in the United States is not new people joining the faith, but people switch to new churches or returning to church after years of inactivity. We are not expanding so much moving around within the large tent of the Church. When is the right time to leave a church? Do you leave because the pastor is too liberal or too conservative for your views? What if you agree with the pastor but not the majority of the congregation? Many churches as a whole are asking the question of what to do when the denomination they are a part of makes a choice very different from their own. Do you stay in a church because of what it believes or because of what it is doing? How long do you try and motivate a church to take action before you leave?

When I was in high school my parents left the church we had been going to and joined another United Methodist church. I cannot recall all of their reasons for leaving. I stayed because I had hope that things could change, and I also stayed because ultimately what was more important to me at that point was the community of faith I was in. Though I was involved in the direction of the church and active in trying to make a difference in the church, ultimately what caused me to stay when my parents left was that I wanted to still be a part of that community. I know my parents made the right choice for them, they are at a new church, happy there and being part of exciting ministry efforts. There is obviously not a hard and fast answer, but I think the closest I come up with is the litmus test of ministry. Do you still feel you can do good ministry in the church you are a part of? If you cannot, then it is time to look for something new. I think we sometimes choose the wrong reasons for leaving churches or switching denominations but I think we can stay for the wrong reasons too. I think the church and the Church both need to look at the consumerist culture around membership we are creating and need to work to change that culture to one that is more oriented around calling and ministry. I think we need to look seriously at the importance of orthodoxy and orthopraxy in what church we choose to join and stay at. Lots of fun questions and challenges, but I think I will leave them for another day.