Pittsburgh and the Presbyterian Church

It’s fitting that the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s General Assembly will be meeting in Pittsburgh, beginning on Saturday.  It’s fitting, not just because Pittsburgh, per capita, has more Presbyterians than any other city, and not just because it will be the first time that the national decision-making body will meet in the ‘Burgh since 1959.  In many ways, the character and composition of Pittsburgh and the PC(USA) are similar.  Here are three.

First, Pittsburgh is more like a compact collection of towns than a single city.  Because of the rivers and the hilly terrain, and because of immigration and settlement patterns, the city is made up of many neighborhoods, each with a very distinct personality.  Shadyside and East Liberty may be right beside each other, but they are about as different as night and day.  A few years ago my stepdaughter lived in Bloomfield, which is nice.  But if she lived about a half block in one direction, she would have been in Garfield.  And that would have kept us up at night.

In the same way, our denomination is becoming more like a collection of neighborhoods than a unified church.  It’s not enough to say that you’re a Presbyterian to have a sense of kindred spirit with each other.  We reserve judgment until we know which “neighborhood” you’re from.  Where do you stand on ordination issues?  What’s your perspective on the authority of Scripture?  Are you more concerned about social justice or morality?  In my opinion, recent changes in our denomination have made it easier for us to identify with our neighborhoods.  The new Form of Government allows each presbytery and session to establish its own manual of operations.  So things that are “normal” in one part of the church are unheard-of somewhere else.  Just like, in Pittsburgh, Homewood is completely different from Fox Chapel.  Second, our standards of ordination are now determined more fully by the local ordaining body (session or presbytery) than by national standards.  The potential now exists that someone who is an elder or minister in one Presbyterian “neighborhood” won’t be recognized as such in another one.

Second, the adage “You can’t get there from here” applies to the roads of Pittsburgh.  There’s no neat checkerboard of streets and avenues, like you’ll find in cities built on pancake-flat terrain.  The roads in Pittsburgh follow meandering streams, skirt steep slopes, and accommodate every other geographic challenge that they find.  To make matters worse, the locals have their own names for these highways, which you’ll never find on a map or a road-sign.  If you want to travel from downtown to Monroeville, “everyone knows” that you take the Parkway East.  Everyone, that is, except for the highway signage people, who call it I-376 East.  You won’t find the Tenth Street Bridge between the Ninth Street and the Sixteenth Street Bridges; that’s where the Veteran’s Bridge is (also known as I-579).  Confused?  Don’t worry; you will be.

Once again, Pittsburgh and the PC(USA) have a lot in common.  Sure, we have a labyrinth of confusing bureaucracy, just like any other large organization.  It can be infuriating, as groups seem to work at cross-purposes, oblivious of what others are doing.  But the issue runs more deeply than that.  Some of us have such deeply entrenched convictions that “you can’t get there from here,” if you don’t have the same beliefs.  We’ve lost the ability to see eye-to-eye with each other.  Roads that should connect us only seem to drive us further apart.

But there’s a third way that Pittsburgh and the Presbyterian Church are similar.  For all of their differences, Pittsburghers share a common identity.  We’re proud of who we are, and there are many things that rally us together.  We commiserate over the potholes that spring up faster than PennDOT and the city can fill them.  We’ve all enjoyed summer days at Kennywood Park.  And of course, there are the Steelers.  It doesn’t matter if you come from Manchester or Regent Square or Mount Lebanon; chances are there’s at least one Terrible Towel in your house.  Any differences that we have with each other pale in comparison to the way we all feel about “The Mistake on the Lake” (i.e. Cleveland) or Baltimore, the city of purple pigeons.  If you’re from Pittsburgh and don’t have at least a little bit of Black and Gold in your blood, you’re a rare exception.

I’ll leave it for you to decide: is this something that we Presbyterians have as well?  Do we have a common identity, a common devotion, that trumps anything that disconnects us from each other?  We say that we do: that the saving grace of Jesus Christ and our devotion to our Lord is the guiding principle of our lives and of our church.  But is that how we live?  Is that how our commissioners and delegates will deliberate next week?  Will they interact with the love and respect of brothers and sisters in Christ?  Will they recognize and appreciate each other’s desire to further the kingdom of God?  For all of our sakes, I hope so.

Tax Collectors and Zealots

The Presbyterian General Assembly will meet in Pittsburgh during the first week of July.  This will be the first time since 1959 that elders and ministers from across the country will come to our area to make decisions that steer the course of the Presbyterian Church (USA).  If this year’s meeting of “GA” is like most, some of the issues and decisions will spark controversy and strong disagreement.  In fact, decisions from past GA meetings have led some congregations to leave the denomination because in good conscience they could not remain in fellowship with others with whom they disagree so strongly.  Others are seeking ways to reorganize the denomination so congregations can associate with other “like-minded” people, in order to limit their contact with people who believe differently from them.  It’s natural for us to want to be with people who think like us, and to limit or cut off contact with those who don’t.

Matthew’s description of Jesus’ twelve apostles (10:2-4) paints a different picture.  This small band of men who worked and studied closely together included at least two men who normally wouldn’t want anything to do with each other: Matthew the tax collector and Simon the Zealot.  As a tax collector, Matthew worked to support the rule of the Roman Empire over Israel by taking money from his neighbors and giving it to Rome.  As a Zealot, Simon actively resisted Roman rule.  Zealots were the “insurgents” of the time, and eventually started an all-out revolt against Rome.  In Jesus’ time, it would be hard to find two Jews that would disagree more with each other than Matthew and Simon.  People like Simon wouldn’t even consider Matthew to be real Jew because of the way that he helped their nation’s enemy.  He had abandoned their country and had desecrated their faith.

Even though Matthew and Simon disagreed bitterly over a matter close to their hearts, Jesus brought them together.  Because there were only twelve people in the group, they couldn’t avoid each other.  Jesus forced them to find a way to share fellowship and to work together.  That doesn’t mean that Simon stopped being a Zealot (according to Acts 1:13, he was still a Zealot even after the resurrection), and it doesn’t mean that Matthew quit supporting Rome.  But through the powerful presence of Jesus, who had brought them together, they discovered a way to accept and respect each other…even to love each other.  I suspect that it was possible because Matthew and Simon recognized that they commitment to Jesus overshadowed any other commitments or beliefs that they had.  And I’m sure that the presence of Jesus in their lives showed them how to be reconciled to each other.

Things may come out of the GA meeting that deeply disturb you.  There may be decisions in our own congregation that annoy you.  There may be people in our church that you can’t stand because their opinions are so different from yours, or because they have done something that offends you.  At times like these, remember Matthew and Simon: brothers in the faith in spite of their strong disagreement.  If Christ was able to bring them together, he can bring us together as well.

Our Community Is the Mission Field

Anyone engaged in international mission puts a lot of effort into learning the culture of the people that they are going to work with.  As one mission trainee put it, “We need to learn the culture in order to be accepted into the culture so that we can work in the culture.”  The explosion of world-wide Christianity happened only after European and American missionaries stopped insisting that converts must live according to western cultural standards in order to be “real” Christians.  It’s easy to cringe when we think about how they made South Pacific Islanders wear heavy woolen clothing and forbade Africans from drumming and dancing.  They confused the gospel with their culture.  Once they became wise enough to realize that the gospel flourishes in every culture, they got out of the way and allowed it to do so.  Now, mission workers seek to understand the culture that they enter, instead of imposing their culture upon their hosts.

This all makes perfect sense when we’re talking about international outreach, but we Christians fail to recognize its importance when we try to share the gospel in our own communities.  When we invite people to join us in the adventure of faith, we expect them to conform to our standards.  They’re supposed to sing the songs that we sing, dress the way that we dress, and do the things that we do.  When we act this way, we’re no different from European missionaries trying to put hoop skirts on Polynesians.

“Wait a minute!” you may protest.  “The people in our communities live in the same culture that we do.  They’re the same as we are.”  Well…are you sure about that?  Do people listen to the same style of music in their cars and on their iPods that they would find in church?  Do churches have the same “feel” as other public facilities in the area?  Does church have a jargon that would be unfamiliar to a non-Christian?  Is the church clueless when it comes to things that matter to people in its town?

Unfortunately, many of us Christians don’t even know the answer to these questions because we live in a self-imposed Christian bubble.  A few years ago, when our church had an “Invite-a-Friend” Sunday, one of our members told me that he didn’t know who to invite because he didn’t know anyone who wasn’t already going to church.  This gentleman is typical of many of us.  The more involved we become in the church, the fewer ties we have to the un-churched community.  And of course, there are elements of the culture around us that we Christians find unsavory: rough language, overuse of alcohol, and questionable fashion choices.  So, we avoid people and places where we find them.  We’re just like missionaries who were appalled at grass skirts and wild dancing.

It’s time for us to view our communities as a mission field with a different culture.  The time is long gone when churches were the center of the community and the focus of its social life.   Like mission workers going to a foreign country, we need to learn about a different language and different lifestyle patterns.  Then, we can help people discover the gospel’s presence in their own way.

The other night I went to a concert at a club in an old church building.  The place was packed (on a Thursday night!) with people who PAID to get in.  The enthusiasm in the place was exhilarating.  But as I enjoyed the music and the crowd, I couldn’t help but to notice the architectural residue from the buildings past use.  This was a place where people used to gather to worship our living God.  Apparently, over time the church became irrelevant to the community it was in, and eventually sold the building and went out of existence.  What would have happened if the congregation would have studied the culture of its community and took the risk of changing its ways so that the same passion that I saw that night would have been directed to Jesus Christ?