At the last Province V Bishop’s Meeting, the Rt. Rev. Todd Ousley, Bishop of Eastern Michigan, shared an article he obtained from the ecumenical magazine The Christian Century.
The article, titled “Dark Night of the Church,” by L. Roger Owens and
Anthony B. Robinson, expressed my own beliefs so well that it became
the inspiration for my presentation for Leadership Days in Kalamazoo,
Grand Rapids and Traverse City.Owens and Robinson compare the message of the poem “The Dark Night of the Soul,” written by the monk St. John of the Cross in the 16th century, with the current declines in the church. They ask, “Is there a dark night of the church? Are we experiencing it? Is God at work wrenching our alluring memories of social prominence and significance from our minds, ripping dreams of fame and fortune from our imaginations?”
The Episcopal Church was once characterized as a church of status, with a disproportionate number of members with wealth or political position. Even President Gerald Ford was a member of Grace Church in Grand Rapids. The elaborate buildings and stained glass windows in our churches point to a time of past affluence. Prominent figures, such as Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Thurgood Marshall were Episcopalians. But the question that Owens and Robinson ask, however, is whether the trappings of prominence, significance and affluence have separated us from God and the mission of the Church?
In my travels around the diocese, I’ve been to churches in which I’m the youngest person there. That doesn’t bode well for the community of faith! High numbers of aging members is one piece of the “lexicon of decline” identified by Owens and Robinson, in addition to an absence of young adults, financial crises and a rise in conflict in our congregations – all of which I have seen myself.
But St. John of the Cross said in “Dark Night of the Soul” that we should rejoice, even as he sat locked in the monastery basement for accusing his brothers of not honoring their promises to the Benedictine rule of life.
St. John of the Cross identified the Dark Night we experience in our lives as the journey our soul takes from its bodily home to its union with God in love.
Think about your own dark night, a time in your life when you were confused, scared, and there was chaos all around you. You wondered how you would make it through.
But at the end of your dark night, you got a new life. That new life may not have been better or worse, but it was different. You now think differently than you did before that dark night.
Jesus too had a dark night. First there was a betrayal, then the passion, crucifixion and death. But after, there was new life. Telling that good news is, if anything, our primary responsibility – to help people understand that suffering and death happen, but the end result is new life. It happens over and over again in the journey toward the end of our own mortal lives.
Because we are an individualistic society, we often mistake the purpose of the church to be for our comfort. I once asked the junior warden of one of our downtown churches where she envisioned their church in five years’ time.
Her response? “Everything has changed,” she said. “I want things back the way they were.”
A leader in another church asked me what they could do about their decline. He said, “We need more members because we need seven more pledging units to make our budget.”
Further, churches have conflict over detaching from buildings, music programs, altars, the Prayer Book – things external to Christian community. But I agree with Owens and Robinson; God is doing something in the midst of that anxiety.
“The church is relearning that its essence lies not in its programs and accomplishments, its activities and accolades,” write Owens and Robinson, “but in the truth that ‘she on earth hath union with God the Three in One,’ and that God is enough.”
Most of you know Anne and I will move to Lancaster, Pennsylvania upon my retirement this summer. Lancaster is known for its Amish community, so I’ve become somewhat enamored of the Amish and have been reading a book called The Amish Way.
I’ve learned that the Amish worship for up to three hours every other Sunday. They own no church buildings, but instead worship at each other’s homes where they gather as many as 200 people at a time to hear the Gospel, pray and sing. While some people do join the Amish faith, their goal is not to convert people to the Amish way, but to live into the teachings of Jesus, particularly those set forth in the Sermon on the Mount.
Our church cannot remain the same because God’s mission is not being accomplished. There are way more important things than the building, the bell, or the $3 million organ.
On page 855 of the Book of Common Prayer, we are told: “The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”
Our denomination is getting smaller, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing. God is speaking to us through the decline, and if the result of that is a deeper commitment to the mission of God, that is a cause to rejoice.
After his dark night, locked in the basement of the monastery, St. John of the Cross reformed the Carmelite order. After his dark night, Jesus rose from the tomb. What will the church be after its own dark night?
It will rise to new life, become more committed and live into its promise to reconcile people to each other and to God.
– The Rt. Rev. Robert R. Gepert, VIII, Western Michigan.
Bishop's Presentation on the Dark Night of the Church
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