Vanishing Believer Syndrome (Sermon for 4-6-08)

Acts 2:14a, 36-41

One of the sure signs of spring here in Park City, at least for our family, is the appearance of the pavement in our driveway. Being a north-facing house, we usually have a thick layer of snow and ice throughout the whole winter, but on Friday the last big chunk of ice broke up and is finally gone. There’s still about 3 and a half feet of snow in the front yard, but we know that spring has at least a good chance of being a reality in the next month or so.

In other places in the country, signs of spring are springing up everywhere, too, but one of those signs has been missing the last couple of years. Maybe you’ve read about this, but one of the most significant and necessary signs of spring—the appearance of honeybees pollinating plants and crops, has been rapidly and mysteriously disappearing. Beekeepers have been opening their hives to find them completely empty—the bees gone without a trace.

Here’s the troubling statistic: In recent years, at least half of all U.S. commercial honeybee colonies have been affected and billions of bees have gone missing. That there are more than 90 fruit and vegetable crops that need bees to pollinate them, and that the value of those crops is estimated to be more than $14 billion in this country alone, suggests the extent of the concern about CCD. What’s more, although the problem first showed up in this country, it’s now occurring in Europe and the Middle East as well.

Why CCD happens is poorly understood, but current investigation suggests that it might be caused, at least in part, by a virus. If that’s the case, it may be possible to counteract the virus by breeding bees that are resistant to it and then repopulating the collapsed hives with them. But we’re not there yet, and researchers aren’t even certain that a virus is the complete explanation. It’s possible that pesticides, unknown pathogens, emissions from cellular phones, global warming, poor nutrition and even vampire mites could be playing a role. We just don’t know at this point.

Beekeepers tell us that in the affected colonies, a few dead bees are usually found near the hive, but that most of the adult bees seem to disappear without a trace. In fact, the alternate name for CCD is Vanishing Bee Syndrome (VBS). The current speculation is that if CCD/VBS is caused by a virus, it may somehow interfere with the bees’ ability to get back to the hive.

When bees vanish, there’s a serious ripple effect. Interestingly, I was reading another article this week that was eerily similar. What’s happening with bees is the same thing that’s happening in churches—churches closing, membership, worship attendance and participation declining—there’s something interfering with people’s ability to get back to the church. Call it “Vanishing Believer Syndrome.”

Here are the statistics: 40% of Americans surveyed by Gallup said they attended church in the last seven days, but an actual survey of church headcounts revealed that the number is actually more like 17%. According to the American Church Research Project, church attendance from 1990-2006 remained constant at about 52 million people in the pews each week, but during those 16 years the population of the US grew by an equivalent number—52 million. Church participation is nowhere near keeping up with population growth. If current trends continue, by 2020 only 14.7% of people in the US will be in worship on a given Sunday, meaning that 85% of the people in our cities and towns are not.

Come to think of it, another sure sign of spring are the denominational conferences popping up, where officials wring their hands wondering what they’re going to do about their declining numbers. Our Rocky Mountain Annual Conference is in June and our conference is declining, despite living in one of the fastest growing areas of the country. Some of us are concerned about that but, sadly, there are many more who don’t even notice.

Our own worship attendance, while not declining, has been relatively flat for the past three years. Some have argued that we’re a resort community, so maintaining our average of participation is actually a good thing. I believe otherwise. To my way of thinking, if we’re not growing, if we’re not seeing more and more people coming to worship to have an encounter with Jesus, then we’re missing the mark. No, we probably won’t collapse—but our goal needs to be growth, not maintenance.

What’s happening here? Where have all the people gone? Some point to the fact that birth rates in this country have slowed considerably, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at our congregation! But when I looked at the theories of possible causes of Colony Collapse Disorder in bees, I think some of the same factors may be at work in the church—particularly when it comes to a virus.

My theory about Vanishing Believer Syndrome is that it is viral—and the virus the church is suffering from is one that it has caught from the hyper-consumerism of the culture at large. The truth is that most people in our culture look at the church like they look at many other institutions—as a provider of goods and services. People pick churches based on what “meets their needs” and what is there to benefit them. For the larger culture and for people with no church connection, the church is nothing more than a dispenser of religious goods and services: a place for baptisms, weddings, and funerals (what we might call “hatching, matching, and dispatching”). Two incidents this week are prime evidence of how deep the virus runs:

I got a call from a travel agent this week—a travel agent—who called to book the church for a wedding for his clients who happened to be vacationing in Park City next week. When I asked whether the couple had any kind of church connection, the travel agent was very confused. Why was that important? All they want is to book a venue with a nice view. I sent him our wedding policy guidelines, which require some premarital counseling, church connection, and relationship building and told him to have the “clients” give me a call. I never heard back.

Next there was a bride planning her church wedding (somewhere else) who was given a list of Bible passages by the pastor. She said, and I quote, “But what I’d really like is some Bible verses that are not so bible-y.” Bible-y? That’s like the bride who called here once and said, “We like your church and all, but could you take the God stuff out of the service?” Nah, I said, God comes with the package.

Now, we might blame a spiritually bankrupt culture on all this, but the truth is that the church itself has largely bought into this mindset, coming up with more and more gimmicks and techniques to attract people without requiring anything of them. Then there are those in the pews who view church attendance as little more than yet another activity or entertainment option to engage in when there’s nothing else to do. In that mindset, fresh powder on Sunday morning or little Timmy’s soccer practice takes precedence over worshipping God and being with God’s people. It’s the virus that speaks when I see vanished believers in the grocery store who say, “Well, we really should be in church more but we’re just so darn busy, you know? We just got out of the habit, we’ll be back when (skiing, soccer, mountain biking, etc.) season is over.” Am I stepping on toes here? I hope so.

There are also those who vanish from the church for other reasons—they don’t like the pastor, someone offended them, the music isn’t to their liking, etc. People leave churches for a lot of reasons but, interestingly, statistics are showing that most of these people don’t connect with another church after they leave. The virus of consumerism and self-righteousness interferes with their ability to get back to the hive.

The bottom line is this—colonies collapse and bee-lievers vanish when their primary reason for existence isn’t being well-maintained or is struck by a mysterious infection. How do you fix it?

Well, in the world of bees and beekeepers, one of the solutions being talked about involves breeding bees that can develop certain hygienic behaviors. Bees bred for hygienic behavior detect and remove diseased brood from the nest before pathogens become infectious. These virus-resistant bees somehow learn to pay more attention to what’s going on in the hive and collectively take action to maintain the overall health.

I really believe that the solution to Vanishing Believer Syndrome involves the same kind of operation. We need to develop disciples of Jesus who are more resistant to the virus of hyper-consumerism and narcissistic individualism—disciples who are trained and equipped to challenge the viral nature of the culture and who maintain the church as a place of growth, nurture, and production for God’s Kingdom.

Look at today’s text from the Book of Acts. Luke, the writer, reports the reaction of the crowd on the Day of Pentecost to Peter’s sermon. As Peter concluded, the crowd, which had been “cut to the heart” by his words, cried out, asking, “What should we do?” Peter told them to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus so that their sins could be forgiven and they could receive the Holy Spirit.

Those things — repentance, forgiveness, baptism by water and by the Holy Spirit — are what we might call the “entry level” things that a church must mediate to be the church in any meaningful sense of the word. If we are not offering Christ and calling people to repent and follow him, then we really are not the church. The people on that day understood what Peter was saying and a great many of them accepted Christ on the spot and were immediately baptized, which must have kept Jesus’ disciples very busy.

That started the church.

However, if we continue reading to the end of the chapter, we find Luke’s account of significant developments among those early converts that go beyond the entry-level things, developments that strengthened the church. He says the believers began to pool their resources, thus caring for all of their number; they also began to spend their time in worship, learning, fellowship, the breaking of bread with glad and generous hearts and prayer. And one result of all of this is that they had “the goodwill of all the people,” meaning that everyone, even those who had not themselves embraced Christianity, saw the colony of Christians as a bright spot in the community.

So it would seem that if we wanted to point to a church today that should not collapse, it would be one where people are clearly and creatively called to Christ, where there is strong worship, fellowship, caring for one another, common goals in mission and ministry, an active prayer life among the membership, a thorough Christian education for children and newcomers to the faith and where the church is held in high regard by the larger community.

To put it another way, the cure for Vanishing Believer Syndrome (VBS) is actually a form of another VBS—Vacation Bible School. Except in this case, it’s not just a week and it’s not just for kids. When I was a kid in VBS I learned the basics of the faith—the core beliefs and habits that formed me as a Christian and contributed to my hearing God’s call to ministry. We all need that kind of basic equipping in order to resist the cultural viruses that are always trying to infect us and enable us to grow a healthy and world-changing church. We need to go back to VBS—except now I might call it “Vocational Bible School.” We all have a vocation as disciples of Jesus and we all need each other to make his vision of God’s Kingdom a reality.

I’ve been sharing with our leadership team and committees a vision that I have been developing for awhile now—a vision that our church would be one that gives primary emphasis, instruction, and training on the foundational aspects of faith—a church that sees itself primarily in the business of transforming people into devoted followers of Jesus who will transform the world. To do that, we can no longer have a colony where the bee-lievers simply flit in and out at will or disappear for long stretches. We can no longer afford to let the viruses of culture degrade our health. We need to buy into the healthy understanding that being a follower of Jesus is both a group trip and an individual experience!

The writer of Hebrews told the Christians of his day to not neglect to meet together, but to assemble as believers to encourage one another (Hebrews 10:25). And he was right. Church isn’t like school where you attend for a while until you receive your “B.A. Christian” degree (or BEE A Christian degree) and then you graduate. The church has no alumni association. We need to continue to be part of a faith colony for both what we receive and what we contribute.

At the same time, however, we need to take individual responsibility for the health of our faith. We do that through such private activities as prayer and Bible reading and giving of our resources of time and money. We do it by following Jesus as both a daily habit and a weekly celebration.

There are 168 hours in a week. How many of those are you giving to God? As part of this vision for our church I’m going to be challenging you in the coming months to make a commitment of time, talent, and energy to becoming a growing disciple of Jesus. I’m going to challenge you to commit a minimum of three hours of your week to the group life of the church—one hour for worship, one hour for Bible study with other Christians, and one hour of service in a ministry that fits your spiritual gifts. That’s three hours spent helping to maintain the hive of our community life together. There’s more to be said about this, but you’ll be hearing more about it. My concern as pastor is the health of our Christian colony and its time we took some specific steps in that direction.

Christians always have a prime responsibility to the church to help it be a place where the things Peter outlined — the preaching of repentance, baptism, seeking the Holy Spirit — are happening. The church, with our help, should also ensure that the practices of the early converts — worship, fellowship, caring for one another, common goals in mission and ministry, an active prayer life among the membership, a thorough Christian education for children and newcomers to the faith and so on — are carried out. We should keep showing up and helping out at our church.

Too many churches are suffering from colony collapse disorder. For some, it’s a matter of simple economics—as populations decrease, some churches don’t have enough people to sustain themselves. 3,700 churches close in this country every year. For the rest, like us, there needs to be a fresh wind of God’s Spirit and a return to the practices and relationships that breed healthy Christians and healthy communities of faith.

Skiing is nice, soccer is cool, mountain biking is something I enjoy—but these activities can never take the place of a vital relationship with God. That relationship takes time, energy, and effort to grow. I’m going to be challenging you in the coming months to do just that—to give some of your prime time and best energy to growing as a follower of Christ.

Do that, and none of us will ever disappear from church without a trace!

Sources:

"Colony Collapse Disorder," Homiletics, March-April 2008.

Olson, David, "Is the American Church in Crisis?" Rev. Magazine, March-April 2008.