A couple of years ago a couple in my church asked me if I could baptise their son. I was taken back a bit. I knew their son was a Christian, but I had not seen him in church for along time.
I knew that he had been going to church on Sunday night at a more ‘youth’ church and attending the youth group there. When I enquired whether he would prefer to get baptised at the church he was attending, they said no, he still identified himself as part of us and myself as his pastor which is why he wanted to be baptised with us.
This illustration sums up the modern Christian and how they ‘belong’ to a church has changed. I can think of many examples of where parents have moved to a more ragey church to get their teenagers involved more and find their teens start going to a little youth group down the road because ‘their friends go there’! Christians I think are less likely to compartmentalise themselves with their church.
This shift was observed in the 1980’s when Christian leaders realised that Kiwi Christians no longer identified with the denominations they were in and when they moved town did not automatically go to their denominational church but happily shopped around. Today we are still seeing this shift but it has now moved to where Kiwi Christians are not looking to their church as a one stop shop for their spiritual needs anymore but taking it from several sources. Compared to 20 years ago the Kiwi Christian now has Christian radio, television broadcasts and the Internet from which they have an incredible choice of diet of Christen information and teaching which they can choose from which no connection with the local church has. There are Christian schools they can choose to send their kids to, and after school Christian groups.
One common habit which is rarely commented on is the regularity of church members attending other church services. Even ten years ago I observed that at the large church I attended around a third of the attendees at the evening service went to other churches that did not have evening services. Certainly in the city now with often only larger or ‘youth’ churches having Sunday night meetings many who go are actually committed elsewhere. I often wonder if these people get counted twice, once by their own church and then again by the church at which service they popped along to.
It is becoming quite normal for Christians to send their kids to one churches kids programs to send their teens to another church program for the parents to attend another church and the Mother to go along to her friends coffee group which is connected to a different church altogether. This is an extreme example but differing degrees of this are increasingly common. The reality is that the Kiwi Christian is becoming more interconnected with their local Christian community and world and the paid clergy need to catch up.
I remember being told by an older man in my church several years ago that in the 1970’s the Presbyterian, Methodist and Anglicans voted on whether they should amalgamate. Their was to be two votes one for the church members and one for the clergy. Both had to pass for it to happen. In the congregational vote 70% of the church members voted overwhelmingly to unite, however about 70% of the clergy voted to stay separate and so nothing happened. Where the people were, was not where the clergy were. I tell this story because I wonder if today pastors are trying to build strong local churches which try to provide for every physical, emotional and practical need of the congregation not realising that their church members have moved into another paradigm. A paradigm of the City (or regional) church where we all belong to the church in Auckland for example.
