Part two. Yes, Mark, I don’t think it will necessarily be a good thing, either. Like I said, I probably won’t like it as much as it gives me hope for something new.

A Denomination Will Not Fix All Our Problems

At this point in America, a denomination means very little. There was a time when being a part of a specific group helped others know what you personally believed and practiced. A person was a Methodist, a Baptist, a Congregationalist, or any of a number of other things. It’s not that a person would believe that their group was the only one to correctly interpret the Bible as much as a reflection of how a person understood Christianity and how they practiced it. Over time, however, a recurring problem arises from a denominational name: history. The teachings and practices may change over time without any guarantee that other Christians or even others in the community are aware of those changes.

At this point in time, the easiest way to escape a problematic history is to make up a name. Max Lucado did this with the Oak Hills Church of Christ, now the Oak Hills Church. Most of the largest churches in America have no obvious ties to a denomination. Even Kip McKean has done this twice in an effort to escape an inconvenient history.

Denominations as Christian Identity also present other problems. A person can be a member of a denomination, yet have different beliefs from the ‘official’ doctrine. Official is in quotes because there are churches that claim to have no creed, but the official beliefs become obvious over time. Being an unwritten creed only means it doesn’t exist on paper, it does not mean that the creed does not exist. Its like wind, you can’t really see it, but you can see the force it exerts on its environment. (I’m sure some folks on the Gulf Coast would love to know the secret of making storms disappear by claiming that wind doesn’t exist.)

Historically, it appears that when the church’s doctrine conflicted past the point of comfort, one answer was to form a new denomination. It can be a way for Christians to represent themselves as different from one another without necessarily rehashing those disagreements. (This isn’t always true in more recent history. The Philadelphia Church of God split from the Worldwide Church of God when the WCG stopped publishing their founder’s books. The PCG sued the WCG for the rights to those books and won. Years later, the PCG still defines itself by the perceived evils of the WCG leaders.) Forming a new denomination is also a way for individual Christians to become comfortable with what the new denomination holds as doctrine. This is pretty common. In fact, there are thousands of denominations in the US and Canada. The differences between many are subtle, while others differ wildly.
Another answer for differing with your denomination was to influence the decision makers of that denomination to change the beliefs of that denomination. Like any other political office, those that manage a denomination have power over its members. To change the course of a denomination, a member must convince a decision maker with some measure of power. Some members may even choose to run for such an office in order to create change for the entire denomination.

These days, though, members usually choose to do nothing. In the American spirit of individualism, the beliefs of the denomination are not seen as important to individual faith. For example, the denomination may teach that speaking in tongues ceased in Early Christianity, but individual members may still believe this as a matter of personal faith. The denomination is seen more as a social function than a source of identity. In other words, a person tends to attend service with people they know. Depending on the church and how they enforce their doctrines, any two members may believe very similar things or in wildly different things. In addition to this, various parachurch organizations exist for more specific causes. These parachurch groups may do more to shape identity than the denomination because church affiliation is secondary to the primary purpose of these groups. A person may identify themselves as a member of Habitat for Humanity much more than a member of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod.
Rick Warren will tell you that he renamed the church in order to make it more seeker-friendly. Even if history isn’t a problem, it doesn’t appear that folks are interested in a typical name. Names like Community Church, Family Church, House of Prayer, Church of New Beginnings in Christ, Servants’ Quarters Fellowship, etc. appear in an effort to put a meaningful name to a given congregation.

All of this moves away from the original point – a denomination will not usher in a new awakening. Denominations are no longer the source of a believers identity. When something new comes, it will, by definition cross denominational lines. In all likelihood, it will be more identified with as a parachurch organization than anything else. I do not believe that crossing denominational lines will make the new awakening more noble or more unified. In fact, as I’ll mention later, I think that members of the new awakening will have more experiences in common than doctrines or practices. Watching the group interact with itself may even appear to be vicious and unloving at times. Whereas parachurch organizations form around a specific cause, the new awakening will tend to form around a specific set of experiences. Denominations tend to form around common beliefs and practices. As such, they are not quick to interact with those of different denominations that share a common experience. This leads me to believe that an individual denomination (or a set of closely related ones) will not be able to implement something new.

Restoration Movement is Not the Answer

Along the same lines as mentioned above, I do not believe that branches of the Restoration Movement, or even efforts for RM Unity will create national revival. One major factor in this is our narrow scope of issues. Most of Restoration Movement differences are actually matters of practices masquerading as doctrinal matters. In many ways, we in the RM have more in common with each other than other similar denominations.

To folks outside RM history, so many of our own issues appear trivial. It is remarkable, in a bad way, to many that we had splits over things such as instruments, kitchens, number of cups in communion, and more. In our pragmatic society, even the issue of silence is strange. The common response is, “why limit yourself?”. The answer, of course, usually involves a 15 week correspondence course complete with explanations of early church history, true bibilical interpretation, the Kingdom of God, and baptism. To the post-modern mind, this is overthought, overraught, and overshot. In other words, it takes too long to explain unnecessary details, it goes to far to explain the concept well, and the method of the answer usually answers more than what was asked. I used to personally believe that this was an issue of people’s short attention span. However, as I’ve spoken to people outside the RM, the issue of silence has become more and more peculiar in light of the sheer volume of effort and paper dedicated to an issue that doesn’t really exist to the rest of Christendom.

I think we in the RM are seen as pedantic. We scrutinize the most subtle aspects of mood and tense of the ‘original greek’, but tend to forbid such scrutiny of our own practices and beliefs. Saying that baptism is not the only thing that saves you is akin to blasphemy and usually met with vitriol at the very notion of such an idea. (And Dan Endelen thinks that only Calvinists are so consumed with being right.) Quoting Ephesians 2:8-9 is met with yet another correspondence course to work through church history, true biblical interpretation, the Kingdom of God, and baptism.

I love the RM and what it has done for me, personally. I really do. I don’t say any of this casually. I would love for the RM to lead the way to a new era of Biblical study and research. I would love to see s lectureship fill Memorial Stadium in Lincoln. However, we in the RM are a group of related denominations. If no other denomination is going to lead this revival, we won’t either. I do not believe we are any better equipped to address shared experiences than any other denomination.

What our Children Are Doing Now

The common elements in many children’s lives are very different than previous generations. My generation had computers at home, I had my first one at age 8. But what this generation has that mine did not was the Internet. The effect of this change is deeper than just blogs and MySpace. How relationships are formed and maintained is very different. How groups of teens and young adults identify themselves is also very different. More importantly, seeing their reaction to the Information Age demonstrates some trends that will certainly affect future spirituality. While not an exhaustive list, here are some items of note:

Mashups are providing insight by comparing two or more seemingly different sources of data. There may be very little understanding of each source of data independently, but the combination of the two or more sources leads to new directions.

Physical location is becoming less important in many aspects of life. Folks have casual friends in other countries that share the common experience of playing Halo 2 on the same team. It’s not just games that provide common experiences, though. Some common experiences come from online communities. More than that, with MySpace and YouTube, people are sharing their lives to anyone that cares to comment. With enough positive feedback, ad hoc communities form around a single page or video or picture.

Let’s look at lack of physical location another way. When I go into a store for a list of 10 things, I have to walk around the store and find those 10 items. All the thousands of other items are physically hiding or obscuring the 10 items I want. (Otherwise, I’d walk in and all 10 items would be on a shelf together at the entryway of the store.) The Internet experience, however, allows for all the other items to be filtered out so that I am presented with just the 10 I want. I don’t have to navigate a store set up that everyone experiences, I have my own custom experience to get what I want.

Communication is possible with more than one person at a time. Despite feeling that this may be a bad thing, it doesn’t change the trend that the younger crowd is comfortable with being the hub of a mass communication network. I’ve seen one person simultaneously talk on the phone and hold 12 different IM conversations. The phone call was a four-way conversation. Some of the 12 different IM windows had other talking to each other. Drawing all the connections on a map would look like a web (or more aptly, an integrated circuit).

There is a reaction forming to the overstimulation in our society. As strange as this may sound compared to the 16 way communication described earlier, I’ve seen more and more young people look for ways to disconnect.

The next generation doesn’t see the world getting smaller, they already understand that the world is vastly interconnected. They are more surprised that remote areas exist, not that it is possible to get an internet connection on Mount Everest. (Of course you can connect to the Internet on Mt. Everest, why wouldn’t you? What I can’t believe is that there’s no hi-speed connection in the western part of the state.) One of the effects of this perspective is that upon meeting a stranger, there are many connections that are automatically assumed to exist.

As always, more later.