Changes Ahead?

For at least the last twenty years I’ve had an annoying commitment (some would describe it as a ‘call’) to the local church as a place of community and formation. I call it annoying because I often wonder if I’m being too idealistic in my expectations and so sometimes feel like I’m setting myself up for disappointment. I’ve watched many friends at least choose to stop going to church, and, in some cases, walk away from faith all together. They leave due to what they see, and to be honest what I also see, as a significant disconnect between real life and what happens in church, as well as between what Jesus seems to be about and what happens in church. I get that. I feel it. Sometimes I feel like I could easily walk away from the institution too… except there’s that commitment or call that I just mentioned.

Over the past decade or so, I’ve met heaps of people, most of them significantly younger than myself, who are asking questions, who are trying things, and who have ideas about what church could look like. In my experience, though, these voices are seldom heard, unless they find themselves on an ‘emerging leader’ panel and so are perpetually relegated to being not-yet-leaders. These are the voices that those of us in church leadership, like myself, need to not only hear, but to get out of the way of. Rather than seeing agitating or dissatisfied voices as a negative thing (or worse, heretical), I need to take up less space within the community that I am leading in so they can fill it, for the sake of a dwindling western Eurocentric church.

That’s easy for me to say, but is often much harder to do. My experience as a straight white man is one that is dripping with privilege. I benefit daily from the patriarchal and white supremacist systems that run the world I inhabit—and that I perpetuate because it suits me to. I have been and continue to be confronted by my unwelcome but present sexism and racism (and other ‘ism’s’ and phobias). I have a choice about how to respond to those confrontations; defensively or with humility and confession.

Which brings me back to the agitating voices. What if those voices say things that I struggle to hear, or just flat out disagree with? What if those voices threaten the power that I enjoy? What if they interpret and apply the Bible in a way that is different to the way I interpret and apply it? Maybe, as a church leader, I’m also worried about how other people in the congregation, or those in leadership of the denomination I’m a part of, might respond to these voices. These fears are some of the reasons I think we often don’t give ‘airtime’ to counter voices that bring challenge. I guess there’s nothing new here though, right? Look at the prophets in the Hebrew scriptures. They saw the writing on the wall, and for the most part were ignored.

A key problem in the institutional church remains a problem of power—who has it and who doesn’t. The systems that have been in place for decades, or centuries, that uphold patriarchy and white supremacy enable someone like me to thrive, or at least exist with little, if anything getting in my way. They give me the ability to speak and be heard, because that’s the way the system is set up. The system also doesn’t provide accountability for me to ensure that I am behaving in a way that matches the theology I say I believe. I can (and do) say, for example, that I believe that egalitarian theology is the best way of reading, interpreting and applying scripture and at the same time, continue upholding the patriarchal systems in place by simply being present in the role, laughing along at sexist jokes, or only reading and listening to voices that affirm me and my place in the world. Without intentional thought and action, from my position of power, that leads to me getting out of the way to ensure that there is diversity in the voices that are being heard within the community I am leading, I remain enjoying the power of my position while also appearing to be saying the ‘right’ things, but never allowing those voices to change me. And worse, I would be silencing or closeting those voices that I am saying I am seeking to serve, value, and get out of the way for.

I recognise as well that I am one church leader, in a small church, and so on the wider church scale, I don’t have all that much power. I look at the denomination that I am working within and the systems that are in place that make things easy for me are ever present on a much larger scale. With that being the case, if it’s tricky on a local church level to see change, it’s significantly more complex at the denominational level. This is a challenge of systemic change. An observation I’ve made is that those of us working locally can easily think the problems lie predominantly with the national structure, whilst those working at the national level reflect that the problem lies with the local congregations. Clearly this is a both/and rather than either/or situation, and in both cases, the easiest default is for the status quo to be prioritised, even when there is intention to see change, and platform voices who have been overlooked or silenced. It’s my experience that the system is only willing to go so far, and that when voices push beyond the perceived limits, they are silenced. That is easier to do than to engage in genuine robust conversation.

I can appreciate something of that complexity. If I’m completely honest, there are times that it would be easier for me to not think about and work towards getting out of the way of voices that are different to my own. But, I believe that a part of the calling of all of us who are in leadership is to do the work of disempowering ourselves for the sake of the people whose voices are marginalised and in some cases even demonised. For their sake, yes, and also for the sake of the whole faith community, who I could be preventing from hearing the voice of God when I don’t get out of the way in order for those voices to be heard. This getting out of the way does not negate that call to being involved in leadership that I mentioned above; God has a place for me in all of this. I simply think it requires a different kind of posture to what I’m used to within church spaces; one that is less controlling, more spacious, more permission giving, and is more open to hearing from and being formed by different voices.

One of the ways I’ve been trying to do that this year is through a podcast that I’m co-hosting with my friend Cathy Marston. We’ve called it The Changes Ahead Podcast. On it, we are speaking to people who sometimes see the world and church very differently to ourselves, who see the need for change, who have the ideas for what change could look like and who are often not being heard or with the space to act on their passions. It's a work in progress; we could be, and are working on hearing from more diverse voices, and because we are working within a particular system, we have already experienced the silencing of one voice. There is also an irony in the premise that we are talking about change without having direct impact on any particular community, but our hope is that the people we speak to will begin to articulate the often unheard questions, doubts, hopes, and challenges facing the church in Aotearoa New Zealand. By having these questions articulated, we will hopefully give our listeners a little bit of courage to take some steps towards being change-agents in their various faith communities. If not that, at least they might feel a little less odd in their communities as they hear some of their questions and wrestles being spoken about.

We’re almost finished season one. We’ve had some great conversations already, including with Jaimee from Metanoia, and are excited about the conversations we’ll have in the future. You’re invited to have a listen, and if you’d like to be a part of the conversation, we’d love to hear from you!

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Steven Goulstone is pastor at Wellington South Baptist and co-host of The Changes Ahead Podcast.