Open to the Public

I was at the weekly meeting of pastors from around my community when this phrase came up and it generated a lot of thoughts, so I'm going to work through some of them here.

But first, the context was a discussion on the service which our local congregations could be to the public schools in the area with regard to counseling and encouraging staff and students through life's difficulties. Specifically, there has been a recent series of teen suicides in our county high schools and as a result, a loosely coordinated effort is underway to have school administrators and pastors meet together. In our own realms we obviously sense that there is a common goal of providing stability and hope for our young people, and in spite of concerns on both sides over church-state separation, there is a sense that churches can help in some way to assuage the mounting anxieties on the part of our public school constituency. Maybe even minister in a helpful and healing way to the real need underlying the very real dilemma.

As we shared around our pastoral circle about programs that were already in place among us to help support families, one pastor asked another about his services. "Are those open to the public?" He asked. "Well, all of our programs are open to the public," was the response.

I reflected on the ministries and programs at the church I serve. "Of course, all our programs are open to the public." Ours, too. But being 'open' to the public is kind of like a guy that tells his new church-going girlfriend that, 'sure, I'm open to religion.' It's a kind of way of saying, 'yes, no, maybe so.' That we're mutually existing in the same global background field of noise and that we each have a message, a mission, a meaning for our existence, but not necessarily any kind of mutual interest in each other's. I'm speaking of the public citizen toward the church as well as the church toward the citizen. Even one church to another.

Lest I be misunderstood as simply decrying the breakdown in trust that people have for the church in our society, let me focus more directly on the reverse of that challenge: namely, how public do our churches really want to be. I have heard arguments on both sides of the equation. That churches have to get 'out of the shaker' and 'into the world' in order to be salt and light to the lost, as well as the cautiously sanctimonious warning 'to maintain our distinctive nature because otherwise we can't be a help to anyone.'

It seems to me that it all boils down to influence. And here, like with gravity, we don't have a lot of options. The laws of influence are rather inflexible and we can either work within them to achieve our flights of fancy or ignore them and perform one epic face plant after another. And let me just say that I sense that my church and I are more accustomed to broken noses than breaking the sound barrier.

The first law of influence I see in operation is we're all influenced by others. As a Christian, I am no less affected by my environment, community and culture, than any one else. What makes me a Christian is that I actively choose to be influenced by Christ and His values, the community of saints, and the culture of heaven, even though I live in an earthly setting which emanates its own influences on all those fronts. But this is precisely what a teenager who is wanting to emulate a particular 'look' is doing. He or she is attentive to someone or some group of people who are modeling a particular way of relating to the world. Each young person is open in a particularly active way to these. In fact, as a young life that is trying to forge a personal way of being, teenagers are seeking influences that resonate with them. They are evaluating these influences based on their perceived merits, and they are aligning themselves with these influences by reflecting their values and styles in the way they think, act and communicate in their daily lives. Thus, a corollary to the first law is that, influence is a hot commodity, particularly during formative times of life. This need not be just the teen years. Educators look for 'teachable moments' during all times of life, which are points at which we feel our need for outside influence, either because one way of dealing with life has just failed us and/or because we sense in someone else a better way.

So while we may be 'open to the public,' the bigger question for a church is whether the public is 'open' to us. That is, on what basis do we think that we can have an influence in people's lives? Again, I sense that the challenges to a church influencing its immediate community are much higher and wider than we are ready to recognize. Thus 'our' efforts to influence 'them' are largely stumbled through with hopes much higher than we deserve to have, and these are sanctimoniously counted on to be amplified by our good intentions. More often than not it's like a toddler calling out across the grand canyon, hoping to hear an echo.

This brings into light another dimension of influence and a corresponding law, namely that influence must be earned and its cost is determined by how different we are. The parent wanting to be a real and significant source of influence in their children's lives must understand that 'because I said so,' buys only the cheapest and most basic level of influence. Churches wanting to overcome the abundant public stigmas against them will find the price of influence to be extremely high. Church leaders may bemoan this fact, may seek to lay the blame on the public for being set in their ways, but the ultimate question for the card-carrying members of any organization is, "What makes us think anyone will listen to us in the first place?" The answer is simply and painfully "nothing," unless the price of influence has first been paid. If we're trying to influence someone who already dresses like, talks like, thinks like and values things we do will be easier to influence because we've already made a down-payment on the price of influence by being more like them. This, however, can have a counterintuitively negative effect on influence. Because unless we are personally living the things which make us similar and are fully convinced that these values are truly compatible with the distinctive values we hope to inculcate, our 'sameness' will come across as fake and manipulative. Which is to state another law, that there are a number of short-cuts to achieving influence and that number is zero.

So based on what I've discovered and am trying to share here, thus is the lay of the land: I must live a life consistent with what I truly value; and to precisely the extent that any of these values match those of other people, I will have a down-payment on the cost of gaining influence with them. For example, if I listen to country music, I will have a down-payment on influencing other country music lovers. If, however, I listen to classical music and merely tolerate country, I won't have the funds in my pocket to really make a down-payment when I begin communicating with a country music fan. Since music is such a universal language and because almost everyone possesses a personal set of likes and dislikes regarding it, our musical tastes will always be one of the currencies upon which influence is bartered.

But let us not think that mere musical tastes would establish the common ground needed to move someone toward a major groundshift of thinking by our influence. For instance, just because we both like classical music in general or even late Mozart symphonies in particular doesn't mean I could presume to influence you to believe in my God-centered worldview. Mozart would just be a down-payment. I still have a fortune to spend before I have afforded the influence needed for such a personal appeal.

Even though this may all be common sense and rather obvious to the reader, it helps me to talk about things this way because in our super-fragmented society, my hope of reaching the world for Christ still springs eternal. However, the reality that I must accept is that only the fraction of the world that I truly care about and invest in will want anything to do with my Christ.