Transforming the Mainline Church: Lessons in Change from Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Hope

Christian Century, Nov 15, 2000 by Stephanie Paulsell

Transforming the Mainline Church: Lessons in Change from Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Hope.

By Robert A. Chestnut. Geneva Press, 186 pp., $19.95 paperback.

THE OTHER DAY, on a crowded subway, I glimpsed an ad featuring an attractive, curly-haired young woman. She was leaning over the back of a chair and laughing in a quietly pleased sort of way. I wondered what she was advertising. Furniture? Clothing? Miracle shampoo? At the next stop, as passengers stepped off the train, I leaned over to see what the photo urged us to buy. No, it wasn't shampoo. It was church. "Vineyard Christian Fellowship. Going to church was never this much fun."

Such advertisements, aimed so precisely at a particular demographic group, are a hallmark of what Jackson W. Carroll calls "posttraditional churches," and they point to some of the most contested issues between these churches and the mainline. The posttraditionalists worry that those outside the church will not be drawn inside unless church can be made entertaining and fun. Traditionalists worry that such approaches present the life of faith as just one more consumable commodity.

Posttraditionalists argue that congregational life, including worship, must adapt to contemporary tastes in order to reach the unchurched. Traditionalists argue that too much adaption will obscure what is mysterious, prophetic and holy--in short, what is countercultural about Christian faith. Posttraditionalists accuse traditionalists of allowing aesthetic tastes shaped by social location to keep the unchurched at arm's length. Traditionalists accuse posttraditionalists of abandoning a rich musical heritage.

Jackson Carroll and Robert Chestnut attempt to move beyond these anxious debates to ask what we can learn from the new forms of church emerging around us. Their books are addressed to their brothers and sisters in the mainline--both those who are chafing under the pressure to embrace neo-Pentecostal forms of church life in the service of church growth and those who are intrigued by the new forms but have no idea how to integrate them into liberal Protestantism.

Carroll's is the gentler voice. He wants to allay the fears of readers, reminding them that innovation in worship and congregational life has been a vital part of the history of the church since its earliest beginnings. He wants us to evaluate and learn from the new forms instead of feeling threatened by them.

Chestnut takes a more apocalyptic tone: if we want the mainline to survive, to renew itself, to bring the gospel to seekers outside the church, our churches will have to become "entrepreneurial." With his eye on the parable of the talents, he writes, "The gospel is venture capital, and if we don't venture with it, it will be taken from us."

Following Robert Schreiter, whose groundbreaking work (Constructing Local Theologies) showed how theologies are shaped by the context of particular communities, Carroll wants to pay attention to local ecclesiologies. His refrain throughout is a riff on a line from Barth: "There is no intrinsically sacred sociology of the church." In a postdenominational age (which both Carroll and Chestnut agree we are in), the place to look for "clues to renewal and vitality," Carroll argues, is in the new and creative ways particular communities strive to embody the gospel in particular social and cultural contexts. Though not all these ways are worthy of imitation, Carroll thinks we should imitate the boldness with which new churches are "exercising the freedom that we are given in Jesus Christ to develop ecclesial practices that are both faithful to the gospel and appropriate to the social and cultural challenges of posttraditional society."

The social context of Pittsburgh's East Liberty Presbyterian Church is precisely what convinced Robert and Jan Chestnut that Robert should accept a call to become its senior pastor in 1988. A majestic church which, in the years before World War II, was situated in the midst of a thriving business district, East Liberty experienced a steady decrease in membership after the war. Whites began moving to the suburbs, and a badly planned urban renewal project resulted in the closing of many businesses and the creation of a moat-like traffic circle that kept African-Americans enclosed in a decaying neighborhood.

The congregation responded to its changing context by opening a shelter for homeless men, a food pantry, a soup kitchen, after-school tutoring programs and a summer camp program for neighborhood kids. It held dinners so that the members of the congregation and those served by the church's ministries could eat together and get to know one another. Church membership, however, continued its slide. And while the membership of the church was somewhat integrated racially, it was much less integrated socioeconomically.

Chestnut saw here the seeds of the kind of ministry he longed to lead: urban, interracial, multicultural and deeply involved with the local community. But he warned the call committee that if he became their church's pastor, they would have to be ready for radical change.