Seems like every other Wednesday, my neighborhood smells kind of farmy-sort of like manure and pig slop.  I hadn’t noticed the pattern until the weather warmed up.  It’s the day our cul-de-sac sets yard waste out for pickup.  It’s the smell of decay.

Our lives are filled with cycles of growth and decay.  We’re supremely conscious of where our bodies stand in the cycle.  Our cars and shoes and computer operating systems have lives of their own.  Frankly, it’s hard to think of things in my life that stand outside it.

Few living in Seattle, let alone North America, would deny the decay of organized religion.  As a whole, our society is losing faith in church.  We trust church less, participate less, give less, and believe less of the things which former generations took as the indications of faith.  Church is in institutional decay.

Sometimes the growth cycles of different institutions intersect.  Though markedly more volatile, the collapses in the global economy have forced many to question their faith in the marketplace.

This morning, NPR interviewed people who’d lost their jobs on Wall Street, and asked them what they were doing now.

Stephen Chen shared that at Bear Stearns, ‘we were always known as the folks that worked twice as hard and put in twice as many hours as other investment banks. And so it was kind of sad to see a really great institution falter like that.’

Will Haughey lost his job at Goldman Sachs. “I’m a capitalist at heart, and I believe in the power of the market,” he says.  “And we sort of had to come to terms with accepting unemployment insurance. But the truth is that it’s really serving its purpose. It’s given us the breathing room to actually take a chance, to do the homework, to do the research and to prepare for something that we might not have otherwise been able to do.”

I’m not sure I share Will’s faith in the marketplace, an institution many think can regulate itself, but which time has shown to be dangerously susceptible to the greed of its most wealthy constituents.

But maybe it’s a matter of degree.  The marketplace undoubtedly motivates people to think creatively, and marketplace ‘corrections’ can certainly re-orient investment and production in important and much-needed ways.

Shortly after Stephen Chen lost his job, he met up with an old friend who had also lost her job and together they started a business.  Now, Green Soul Shoes is recycling old tires into sandals and sales are up.

I believe in the power of imagination and the will by which the creative and courageous shepherd possibilities through the valleys of apathy, cynicism, short-sightedness, and despair which mark our society.  But I think the religious institutions of the last century have left a legacy of narrow-mindedness, self-centeredness, and fear of failure which threatens our ability to re-orient the church of today.  A good many thinking and caring people have gotten close enough to catch a whiff of our toxic brew and have turned away.

I recently heard the story of someone whose family, mostly atheists, lost their matriarch.  Out of sensitivity to those who were Christian, they asked a pastor to officiate a memorial service, but asked him to be sensitive to those who didn’t believe in God.  During the service, they were ambushed by a hell-fire and brimstone message exhorting them all to repent or suffer the eternal fire.

The impulse of some to ensure their place in heaven is easy for pastors to leverage, but doing so comes at great cost.  Taking advantage of people’s fear creates a church of people afraid.

Jesus called common folk to drop everything, their livelihoods, their familial relations, their reputations, and follow him.  Today’s church needs members with entrepreneurial spirits to envision lives of wholeness and pursue them with all of the resources they can muster.

The church needs disciples who grow toward spiritual maturity, learning how to lead others toward wholeness.  This means we need to name our toughest questions and pursue their answers, even when they’re not simple answers.  It means we need to identify our shortcomings and welcome relationships with those who help us to grow beyond them, not just with those who are like us, or believe like us.

And the power which will make all of this possible will be compassion–the very heart of God, the heart which is broken by the hatred and fear of our world and makes healing its sole purpose.

Olympic View is a changing church in a changing world, and God calls us to serve the needs of this time and place as we are able.  Many of the people this church has loved have slipped away from us.  Some of the things which have made us who we are have been lost.  But the call to serve our world and bear witness to the Prince of Peace is not lost on us.

The Church of the Brethren, too, is changing.   We prune and economize, and come up with new structures to help us work more purposefully and productively, but we’ve not regained the trust and unity of purpose which once made miracles possible.  The every-other Wednesday whiffs of decline and decay remind me of our place in the cycle.  I’m losing my religion.

But every day I serve as your pastor, I see people who do amazing things with the gifts they’ve been given.  I study with people who bring their big questions to the stories in our scripture, and the insights of their friends.  I join my energy and resources with others who want to do more than they would accomplish on their own.  I hold, in your trust, the charge to speak Love’s word that it might teach us a new language, understood by all, and lead us toward unity.

I’m losing my religion, and finding my faith.

To read the full story referenced in this blog, please visit:   http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104334308