I first became acquainted with Phyllis Tickle at the 2012 Festival Gathering of the Network of Biblical Storytellers in Black Mountain NC. Lively, funny, insightful, authoritative, with the ability to be bitingly irreverent from time to time, she offered her audience bountiful plate-fulls of food for thought.
The thing that has continued to somewhat haunt my thinking was her detailing of this 500 year phenomenon that has occurred in human history for the past 2,000 years or so (you can even go back another millennium for good measure if you like).
Here's the way she puts it in her book, "Emergence Christianity - What it is, Where its going, and Why it Matters",
"Every five hundred years, give or take a decade or two, Western culture, along with those parts of the world that have been colonized or colonialized by it, goes through a time of enormous upheaval, a time in which essentially every part of it is reconfigured."
According to Tickle, the historical 500 year phenomenon has greatly influenced religious experience and practice. The pattern looks like this:
1-Now - tabbed as "The Great Emergence"
2-500 years ago - the Protestant Reformation
3-1,000 years ago - the Great Schism (the split of East and West,
the separation of the Orthodox from the Catholic Church)
4-1,500 years ago - Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
5-2,000 years ago - The Great Transformation - a period of such change in the
Western world that we mark time (BC - AD, or the newer designations of BCE - CE).
This of course is the moment of history that gave us the Word made flesh,
the birth and growth of Christianity.
Reminding us that this is not just a cultural phenomenon that impacts Christianity, Tickle points out that we can go back another 500 years and find the Babylonian Exile of Judah, and still another 500 years and run right into the Davidic Kingdom in Israel.
I find this all pretty fascinating, and frightening stuff. If this rhythm is correct, then, as Tickle points out, we are smack dab in one of those historical seasons of great change and upheaval, culturally, socially, economically and religiously. And one doesn't have to be a history scholar to realize that the advancement of technology is moving at break-neck speed. Buy the latest electronic gadget or smart phone today, and it will replaced by something faster and more advanced within 6 months.
And you don't have to be a scholar of religion to recognize that the religious landscape is changing. The Westernized Church has been in steady decline for quite some time now. In my beloved United Methodist Church, worship attendance has steadily fallen across the board, churches have had to cut salaries and many stand-alone (Station) churches have had to move in with one another (reverting to their days of being on a circuit and sharing a clergy-person).
The picture that Tickle (and others) paint is that the days of the Institutional Church, as we have known it, may very well be numbered. We don't know what the Church will look like after this 500 year cycle runs its course, but all the signs are pointing to the possibility that it won't look the way many, or most, of us have grown comfortable with it looking.
And maybe, you know, that's not really a bad thing.
Comfortable Christianity has never been the way we would describe periods of growth for "The Way", the followers of Jesus. In fact, it could be argued that Christianity has never fully recovered from becoming the State Religion of Rome under the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century (the beginning of Christendom - Christianity as a state-sponsored politically powerful religious entity).
As a member of the clergy, coming to the close of my 22nd year as a United Methodist Pastor, with a little over a decade away until retirement, deeply entrenched in the Institutional Church, I find I am spending a great deal of time trying to scratch this 500 year itch. I'm trying to discern what it means for my work as pastor, what it means for my vocational life and what it means for my discipleship. I'm trying to make sense of it all, and trying to figure out what to do about it.
I find that I'm spending a good bit of time trying to read the relevant voices who are trying to speak to these changing times for the Church. And though so much of what we have seen over the past several years may tempt us to give into a bit of hand-wringing, many of the emergent voices seem intent on offering good news in the midst of the uncertainty of these changing times.
They seem to be saying that the end of Christendom is not really a bad thing, that being a comfortable, fat, lazy and out of shape Church is never what God intended in the first place.
What I do know to be the case is this - I desperately desire to be a faithful pastor in this season. And I do believe that these are days of great challenge and profound opportunity. I do, truly, believe that this is a phenomenal time to be the Church!
Here's my invite - pray with me, and join me as I try to scratch this 500 year itch.
stay tuned....
Grace and Peace!
Pastor Randy
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