The generation leading up to the Reformation is rarely studied as carefully as the Reformation itself, with a resultant convoluted presentation of the various woes and ills of the Medieval Church. Certainly, the rise of Indulgences is mentioned, the Renaissance as well. Sometimes the Turkish invasion of Europe is harped upon, but rarely do we delve into all the factors when seeking the cause(s) of the Reformation of the Western Church. (Truly, to delve into all the factors is a voluminous undertaking.) Let us cut slightly at an angle to an odd line-of-inquiry in the direction of Romania.

The life of Vlad Tepes, the infamous Dracula, can help us understand both the political science behind those princes who accepted the Reforms, the fears that prompted them, and the ills that impassioned them. Such is helpfully brought to light (with a little help from your humble reviewer) through a biography of Dracula written by a Romanian aristocrat, an actual descendent of Vlad, Radu Florescu, and a sometime Boston College professor, Raymond McNally.

Let us review the situation: Romania is separated into various areas, Moldavia, Wallachia, etc. But the people of this language group are very loyal to the Greek/Russian Orthodox Faith and still are to this day. In the midst of Romania, Saxons who are loyal to a German Roman Catholicism are living. In Hungary, there is a strong presence of Roman Catholicism. The King of Hungary, often attempting to attain the German Emperorship, is fighting against the disciples of John Huss, a proto-movement of the Reformation. The Polish Kingdom is likewise loyal to Rome. Muscovite Russia is crouching to move towards ascendency among the Eastern Orthodox as Constantinople falls to the Turks. Greece is compromised and many Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs and Romanians have fallen down to the Sultan’s will. The situation is desperate.

The age of Crusades is not at an end. Rome continues to declare them. But Italy plays the political games that make that peninsula the stage of the Borgias, Machiavelli, the martyred Savanarola and the good, the bad and the ugly of the Vatican. The Germanic kingdoms have their own drama. And in the midst of all of it, the Balkan Peninsula to the Black Sea is the scene of slaughter unbridled and blood up to the bridle. Is the world coming to an end?

Folks must have wondered if it were so. But a man stepped into the picture who, while only leading the people of Wallachia (in between various exiles) less than a decade, would become a figure of such political science as to make Machiavelli a midget and Ivan the Terrible almost tolerable. Vlad was inducted very young into the Order of the Dragon, one of the semi-secret military orders like the Knights Templar of a previous century. Loyal to Rome, they were supposed to fight the Turks and stop the Hussites. When he began to rule Wallachia, he became Romanian Orthodox. When he wanted to marry into Hungarian royalty, he became Roman again. He impaled a lot of people. He sometimes persecuted the Church, whether loyal to Rome or Constantinople. He sometimes upheld the Church, both Roman and Byzantine. Was Vlad of Wallachia a monster? Yes. Was he a hero? Yes.

Let us fast forward a generation: The rebellion of John Huss has been hijacked by Martin Luther. Some of the princes of Germany, for whatever reasons, supported Luther. Henry VIII remained loyal to Rome for a bit, debating Martin Luther. Henry VIII needed a divorce so that he could have an heir and so that he could separate from the Spanish whose allegiance had perhaps become oppressive. The Spanish, having recently ousted the Moors, had become Roman Catholic fanatics. He was aware of the way the Emperor of Byzantium had had some measure of control over the Orthodox Church. He knew the claims of previous monarchs of Europe concerning their right to rule their local part of the Church. His scholars sought means to divorce him from his wife. He crushed his enemies: St. Thomas More’s head rolled, the Holy Maid of Kent prophesied no longer, the Carthusians of the London Charterhouse were drawn and quartered. So very like Vlad, his reign became bathed in blood. Yet, unlike his daughter, Queen Mary, “bloody” was not his undying suffix; she was Roman after all, not Reformed. And she, like her Spanish husband, was certainly bathed in blood, just not dead spouses.

Henry VIII stripped his monasteries – but he intended to build them back up again as non-Papal places of prayer. Henry VIII utilized something of the Eastern Orthodox idea of Divorce, declaring it for himself as a Pope-of-sorts, and he did so to a fault. He persecuted the Church. He built the Church up. He supported the Crusades against the Turks along with Roman Catholic nations. Indeed, he never left the Roman Communion just had himself declared the head of the Western Church in England. He dwelled, like Vlad, in a nowhere land, not between Rome and Constantinople, but between Rome and Reform. He didn’t make the situation. He just reacted to it, the way a leader has to – bearing the consequences along the way.  

When we seek to crucify or congratulate some political leader, to declare him or her a monster or a model, we should look very carefully at the complex scenario and the propaganda of that leader’s friends and foes. It isn’t easy. But I think that when we look at whether a man is a tyrant or just a terror to his enemies, we need to consider all sides. As the recent movie Dracula Untold attempts to do, we should begin to understand that a leader can easily become a monster for the sake of his own people. One would not wish to make excuses, but one might beg to point out: It is a duty very clearly outlined in a coronation oath – one is to defend the people committed to one’s rule, with sword, with scepter, by blood.    

            

We live in a post-Christian society. So how do you get back into society? Here are some thoughts....


1.      Change your signage. People notice change. If it is the same all the time, they stop looking. Then when you have something to announce, they don’t notice it. You don’t have to have a wacky message or pithy saying, but there are plenty of dignified ways of keeping it fresh.

2.      Keep your website updated. This keeps getting said, but websites keep not getting updated. If a volunteer doesn’t get it done, hire someone. (If you don’t know who to hire, contact the webmaster of this website.) One article on this subject said that you should at least spend as much money on your website as you do on coffee and donuts for fellowship. You could spend as much time updating it as you do editing your bulletin, because more people might well see the website than the bulletin.  

3.      Volunteer somewhere, doing something. The community is used to pastors coming in and trying to grow their congregation and impress their people and thus keep their job. If you have some extra time (yes, that was a joke), you could volunteer because people want to know that your congregation wants to be of service to their community and that you want to take the lead in that.

4.      Find a group to have coffee with. From town to town, across the land, elderly men (and women), and young people too, get together for coffee in the (early) morning. That is a constant. Do you drink coffee in the morning? Great. You can have some company while you sip.

5.      Read your community newspaper(s). Do you enjoy the Wall Street Journal and consider the local paper “a liberal rag”? That’s okay. It is still your community, the community where you’ve been called to preach the gospel. Check the activities, the obituaries, the articles. That way, when somebody in the community talks about what’s in it, they know that you care about what goes on in your community, instead of what goes on somewhere else.

6.      Go to activities. You don’t have to spend money. There are historical society meetings, bingo opportunities, community meals, and genuinely interesting things going on at the library. It works better if the activity is something in which you are (somewhat) interested. But if you can be interested in somebody else being interested, then you can attend just about anything that a Christian can attend.

7.      Join the local chamber of commerce. If you join the local chamber of commerce, you can go and exchange your business card with folks. Not many clergy do so. I was trained by my bishop to do that and, in one community, word got around that I did and other clergy started to too.

8.      Let organizations use your building. The church isn’t a social club. It isn’t a community center either, but that doesn’t mean that the community can’t use it. The more people who feel comfortable walking into the church, the more comfortable they feel walking into the church. Plus the community wants to know that your congregation wants to be of service to the community, so be of service. Is your congregation a cult? Then why might it be appearing like a cult to the community? Maybe because people aren’t allowed inside.

9.      Business cards. Have them stocked and ready to go on a daily basis. This is one feature of the professional world that has not gone out of fashion. It connects your face to the place, the place to your emergency contact, your email, your website.

10.  Become the chaplain of something. There are plenty of organizations that need chaplains. They may never join your congregation, but you might evangelize them, serve them, minister to them. And that is the point, isn’t it?

11.  Have the emergency number readily available to the public. Don’t like getting calls from people looking for money or drunks needing rides? Understandable. Nevertheless, I have noticed that after a while the freeloaders figure out that you don’t own a money tree and the alcoholics learn that you won’t budge until they start to go to A.A. But, after a while, the folks who need a minister learn how to find you. That’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.

 

From church to church, throughout the country, we have a lovely tradition: The Tradition of the Guest Registry. Eclipsed by other technology, this lonely book stands in the back of the church/nave/sanctuary/auditorium, a tribute to a bygone era. What is that era? It is the era of the home visit and the calling card.

            My best friend, when church hunting, was surprised to find that the preacher called very soon after his family’s visit. Some of those leaflets stuck inside the pew holder can indicate “Visit Desired” or something to that effect. But mostly these slips of paper or cardstock succumb to the onslaught of toddlers’ crayons, the crumpled results of mistaken identity (mistakenly identified for some hymnal or other) or because of years of being ignored and stressed by various bodies resting against pew backs.

            Can anything save the waning age of the guest register, a register that so often stands in the back of the church in the opposite direction of the way to the fellowship hall, to which congregational conclave visitors are eagerly pressed by well-meaning congregants? Probably not, but you can, for the time being, before your guest register rides off into the sunset never to be seen again, like the All-American cowboy, stave off this unhappy departure and make it more useful in the interim.

            How can you do this? You can do so by purchasing a new guest register (one that doesn’t sadly show how few visitors have visited – or rather taken the time to sign [not quite the same thing] – the guest register since 1984.) Can the home visit ever go out of fashion? Not completely. It is always sophisticated when done well. Can the note thanking a visitor for gracing your church go out of fashion? Never! But you can, as the business world says, “increase your email capture” with the new (2011) Guest Register from Franklin X. McCormick, Inc. out of Milwaukee.

            Not only is it noticeably different – and thus more likely to draw the “church shopper’s” eye, the shopper who has been so used to seeing the same register time and again - it is new, period. So many guest registers have been worn out from years of use, or lack thereof. I highly recommend this gold-lettered edition, complete with scripture verses at the bottom and the email slot clearly marked before the address line. Why? This is because so many will more likely share an email address, while remaining concerned about an address, not least of which because it might lead to a visit. Of course, if they should like a visit or wouldn’t mind one, they can always share their address. At least it shows that a church is aware that the internet age is upon us, whether that is to our pleasure or woe. Is it the answer to all church outreach issues? No. But evangelism is all about the little things.

            While you’re at it, it is always nice to make sure that the pen is of a dignified make, such as one sees at the guest register at the funeral home. And, when somebody inevitably steals that pen to write a lovely check with, replace it with yet another dignified make and model. Furthermore, have you thought of how wonderful it is if you have the email address? It means that you can keep that potential parishioner/congregant “in the loop” on various matters. You can send him a lovely pdf version of your newsletter (which, incidentally, you can send to a great deal of parishioners and save on stamp and paper and ink). Yes, I think that this leads to a lot of good things.

You may see the reviewed guest register here.

I found this lovely volume among some books given to me by a predecessor at one of my parishes. It is by the clergyman who wrote “Onward Christian Soldiers” and it is really excellent.

Rev. Baring-Gould was born in 1834 and entered Cambridge University in 1852, earning his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees there. As a curate, he met the love of his life, Grace Taylor, with whom he had fifteen children all of whom lived to adulthood! To add to his unconventionality, even for those days, she was quite a bit younger than he and low-born, while he was of the country gentry. He became a Rector of a parish in Essex and then when his father passed away, he inherited the family estate and then, being the local squire, he was able to appoint himself to the parish connected with the estate when it became vacant.

His works were varied and, some would say, eccentric. He, surprisingly, wrote the most widely read (to this day!) source on Lycanthropy, yes, on werewolves! His works often deal in the realm of folklore.

His devotional book, The Golden Gate, has excellent catechetical material and is not unlike The Practice of Religion and The St. Augustine’s Prayer Book – although it is distinctly more Anglo-Catholic and less Anglo-Papalist. For example, his treatment of the Angelic Salutation clearly prefers the Medieval form that lacks “Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” Rightly so, he states that this was not added until the Fifteenth Century. Indeed, Savanarola was the first to put that phrase and request for intercession into a devotional work. (The original form, as it was used in Medieval England, is totally scriptural and cannot be debated by any Anglican as to its legitimate use.)

He is a bit hard on Roman Catholics in England as well as Dissenters from the Church of England and even Lutherans. Yet there is a charity pervasive in most of the work. He includes the Liturgy of the Hours, Family Prayers, and personal sets of Morning and Evening Prayer, in some respects similar to Lancelot Andrewes Preces Privatae – although distinctly more accessible. There are Litanies abounding and Collects galore and it is well worth a purchase.

The book is available for purchase here.

The Anglican Church is not a large church – at least in America. As the third-largest tradition of Christians in the World, it is, in fact, pretty big. But there is something rather disconcerting about explaining to your community who you are, day after day. If one looks at the history of Anglicanism in America, there has rarely been an area where that tradition has been well represented. After the American War for Independence, most of the Anglicans went to Canada, or Barbados, or back to the Blessed Island, England. So it is hard to find anywhere where we are the “religion of the masses.” For people proud of their tradition, this can be a let-down.

            The answer is not church growth. The answer is church witness. We do not exist in a “church growth crisis.” We rather have a witnessing problem. Witnessing will usually (emphasis – usually) result in growth, but growth should not be our main objective anyway. As long as a church is witnessing to its community and being holy leaven in our towns, then it is successful – period. Size doesn’t matter. There is a word for little churches that have no positive, cultural, gospel-centered influence on their communities – that word is “cult”. There is a word for large churches that have no positive, cultural, gospel-centered influence on their communities – that word is also “cult”. Size doesn’t matter.

            Witness-Paralysis comes because we focus on the fruits instead of the seeds, on the results rather than on the realization that we are really not in control, Jesus and His Holy Spirit and His Heavenly Father is. Youth are not the future of the Church, Jesus is. Young families are not the vehicle by which the Gospel is preached to our communities, the Holy Spirit is.

            The word “Magic” in Greek is strongly connected to attaining a certain result through a certain technique. Church-Growth gurus have a lot of magic; they have a lot of techniques. So did the Baal prophets. They cut themselves and made loud noises and ran around trying to attract a dumb idol’s attention. Elijah had faith. The Egyptian priests had a lot of magic. They could turn staves into serpents and mimic Moses’ miracles. But Moses’ miracles devoured them up.

            The Wesleys, good Anglican clergy who wanted to see the Church witness more effectively to their communities, had holy clubs, leaven for the lump. Does your congregation have “Witness-Paralysis”? For example, you feel in a slump, at a dead end, ineffective in your communities. Or, you feel as if church growth is working for everybody else in town but you. You say your congregation is “graying.” You say you are the youngest member in your church – whether it is true or not. “Nobody wants to do anything.” If this sounds like you or your church, then you probably have “Witness-Paralysis”. More shockingly, you probably have C.G.A. – Addiction to Church Growth. Here is a 12-step process for overcoming this destructive pathos. Yes, it is based on The Twelve-Step Process.

1.     We admit that we are powerless over our addiction to church growth and need help. Clergy, adults, even teens, play the “numbers game”. When I was in elementary school, being destined for ministry, I had already “caught the bug”. I checked out the attendance every week to see “how we were doing.” It is exciting. It is quantifiable. It is addicting. And it is sinful. We seek to win God’s favor by showing how well we are doing in the right stuff: Youth and Money. Besides being a wrong way to approach God, being outside of His holy blood-shedding, it isn’t even the stuff He likes. He says, “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats” (Isaiah 1:11). Basically, the number of cattle that you bring to His temple doesn’t matter to Him, and neither do the number of people. The Prophet David says, “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.” God wants a changed heart. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalm 51:16-17). And this step is an essential first-step to a changed heart on this matter.

2.     We admit that God, utterly and completely, is in control of revealing to us our Gospel witness to our communities. God is in control of what our witness is. When one starts a ministry, one has a very specific idea who one’s target audience will be. Or, at least, usually we do. Our family. Our friends. People who need healing. People who are down-and-out. People at the country club. God is probably happy about this zeal, until it starts to get in the way of His divine will. But often the people He first puts in our heads as the reason “for” the ministry is the only thing He could put in our heads, because we don’t know what we don’t know. And what we don’t know is the wonderful thing that He has planned for His ministry through us. “For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him” (Isaiah 64:4).

3.     We make a decision to turn our wills completely over to Him and the direction of our church witness completely over to Him. It is His church. We know this. Decisively turning this over to Him is hard, however. But He can’t do much with the church to which He has led us (it’s not our church) - He can’t do much if we keep a tight grip on it.

4.     We make a complete moral inventory of our faults and failings, especially the seeking after false means (magic) by which to achieve a distorted end (church growth instead of Gospel witness). Besides the importance of confession in Methodism, Charles Finney in his “Revivals of Religion” utilizes the ancient catholic concept of self-examination and confession of sin as a necessary step in preparation for a revival in our congregation. When the inordinate desire for revival (in the guise of “church growth”) is the thing that needs to be confessed, the self-examination process takes on a certain irony. Let’s embrace the irony, chuckle at it, and confess our sins. I overheard once at Valley Forge Christian College a Pentecostal professor talking about how old Pentecostal churches, when they weren’t growing, would fast and pray until they figured out why. I think that one of the things that would be revealed to us if we did fast and pray is that we wanted church growth inordinately.

5.     We confess these sins before others and before God. Confessing it means sharing it. Let’s “spread the bug” that we’ve wanted church growth inordinately and for the wrong reasons.

6.     We truly intend amendment of life concerning our sins, especially seeking after church growth instead of Gospel witness. We need to actually desire to change our ways. This is hard, which leads to the 7th step.

7.     We humbly ask Him to remove these failings. Prayer and fasting here would be very helpful.

8.     Make an inventory of all the people we have hurt by seeking church growth instead of the witness of Faith, Hope and Charity. Many churches are the wreck and ruin of desiring church growth, but desiring to control it more. We have sinned against charity time and again by thinking that our ideas (not God’s) are the ways to grow the church; that our ideas will keep the church accounts balanced; that our ideas and our type of people are the right type of people to evangelize. I confess that I have hurt people this way. I have also been hurt this way. We need to make an inventory of the people we have hurt. Some of those people are in churches we’ve left. Some have left our church. Tragic of all, some have left THE Church. Either way they carry wounds and are tempted with bitterness often because of our lack of charity.

9.     Make direct amends to those souls who have been hurt by such activity. At the very least, we need to pray for those people. But also pray for insight; See if there are any ways that you can make direct amends to those people, except where doing so would hurt them or others.

10.  Continue to seek and destroy sin in our lives, noting lapses in which we slouch towards a distorted understanding of church witness, and promptly confessing such sin, admitting that we are wrong. These tendencies creep up and creep in. The opportunity to fall back into wrong thinking happens every time the pews fill up or don’t, every time the church budget balances or doesn’t. It is a constant struggle.

11.  Seek out spiritual growth through prayer and meditation. Resting in the Lord is the best way to overcome the inordinate desire for a little extra, for that little cherry on the top. The Lord wants us. We know that He has called us to be numbered in His flock. He does not wish to lose us. He doesn’t want us to be the one sheep out of the ninety-nine to go astray because we were seeking one more sheep to show Him how much we love Him; or, heaven-forbid, because being with Him wasn’t enough, wasn’t enough to fill the void in our hearts. Let Him do the evangelism. If evangelism is a source of temptation, let it alone for a while and just sit with Him. You’re His.

12.  Share this message with others.

Our congregations are a mess. They are a mess often because God wasn’t enough. We had to have a “successful” church too. This is an addiction, just as much of an addiction as alcohol and drugs can be. For the alcoholic, regular life isn’t enough. Family, friends, a job, all imperfect, aren’t enough. For the person addicted to church growth and success, regular Christianity isn’t enough. Regular Christianity, like family, friends and work, is imperfect. There are two ways to deal with imperfection: Take care of it or let God take care of it.

            I would recommend the latter. When we try to take care of it, it leads to dysfunction and codependence. It leads to pain, heaped upon imperfection. Just like alcoholic families, congregations exhibit the dysfunction and codependence of a family with addictions. Vestry meetings are filled with plays for control and manipulations. Nobody feels free. Everybody feels miserable. It is a living hell.

            But evangelism and witnessing in our communities is freeing. It is fun. Prayerfully finding how exactly God wants you and your brethren in the congregation to witness is finding out who you are in Christ, who you are by nature, who you were born to be! It doesn’t require doing “what works” – for somebody else, for some other congregation in town. Keeping up with the Joneses is boring. Rather, prayerfully seeking God’s will allows you to do what it is that God is working in you! – Indeed, that which is well-pleasing in His sight.