Here are a couple of headlines I ran across yesterday and the implications they hold for ministry in our contemporary context are "deep and wide" (as we used to sing in Sabbath School). Here are the headlines with links to the full articles (which aren't long), followed by some of my reflections.
American's commute earlier and longer: study
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Americans are leaving home earlier to
get work, fewer are walking, and more are driving alone,
according to a study of commuting trends released on Monday.
For first time, unmarried households reign in US
WASHINGTON (AFP) - It is by no means dead, but for the first time, a
new survey has shown that traditional marriage has ceased to be the
preferred living arrangement in the majority of US households. (Thanks to Bill for this link)
Commuting is ubiquitous here in Southern California. My 5 minute drive to my office is virtually unheard of around Los Angeles. But we set our lives up intentionally this way. As far as ministry goes, however, the issue of commuting is not benign. The more people who commute to your church, the less likely your members really understand your neighborhood and the more they see the church as a place to go to for a worship service. We have learned that, in the words of Mark Lau Branson, commuting is not 'gospel neutral.' There are environmental issues at stake, there are issue of family at stake (what happens to your family when you spend 1-2 hours per day in your car?) And there are fundamental issues of community at stake. If the place you live is little more than a bedroom (hence, the ever popular 'bedroom communities') what happens to the social fabric of a community. The ripple effects in the world are immense. This is why the solution to traffic and congestion in Los Angeles is not more lanes on the freeway and wider streets in our cities, but neighborhoods where people actually live near where they work and play and go to school.
There is so much to say about this second article I hardly know where to begin. First, this is a reality in my congregation and I'm sure in many of your congregations as well. We pastors can no longer simply stand in our pulpits and talk about family as though everyone is coming from a traditional family. In my church my guess is that "traditional families" are the minority. This also means that youth and children's ministry needs to pull it's collective head out of the sand. It's more than just a matter of teaching kids the Bible. Most of our kids have no social support network and the whole church needs to be that place for young people. It isn't enough to simply have a "youth ministry."
One of the most telling sentances in the whole piece, I think is, "it is difficult for the traditional family to emerge unscathed after three and a half decades of divorce rates reaching 50 percent and five decades out-of-wedlock births." What a tragedy that the church has not led the way in this area for the past 35 years. By the way, it will not help to scapegoat homosexuals. "Heteros" created this mess. Let's not blame someone else.
I posted about the marriage article on my blog: http://findrest.blogspot.com/2006/10/im-minority-group.html
Who ever would have thought that marriage would be countercultural?
Posted by: Matt Wiebe | October 17, 2006 at 10:16 PM