Russell A. Cardwell Online

Howard W. Stone and James O. Duke, in How to Think Theologically, referring to Paul Tillich, state:

Tillich maintained that human life and culture raise questions of the ultimate meaning of human existence to which religions and their theologies propose answers and that the task of theological reflection is to correlate these existential questions with their theological answers.

In other words, society and culture pose questions that demand theological answers.

Every ten years or so, our culture raises a new set of questions that demand new theological answers from the church. This is part of the explanation of why church is not working for so many people.

In aging churches where a small group of people hold all the power, and have been controlling the church for decades, with little turnover, they become an subculture that gradually develops its own norms, values, and traditions, and its connection with the culture at large grows ever more tenuous. They do not revisit and recorrelate their theological answers and eventually the church and its practices become irrelevant to those seeking answers.

There are two reasons for this. First of all, any ingroup is going to be resistant to change. It takes them out of their comfort zone, and any tightly knit group of elderly people entrenched in power and set in their ways for decades is almost always an immovable object.

But even if they are the most altruistic leaders imaginable, there’s a second, and far more serious reason. Having spent so many years in their insular subculture, they have lost touch with the culture. Immersed in their own systems of thought, customs, traditions, and language, they no longer know what questions society poses. They have no idea what answers visitors are seeking. They have no motivation to provide new theological answers, because they don’t realize that there is a new set of questions. They are often upset with the new people who come and quickly go again. They can’t understand why this new generation of unchurched people won’t accept what they offer. They demand that visitors adapt themselves to fit the theological answers they have. The new people are invariably uncooperative, and look elsewhere, often giving up on church all together.

The theological answers they have no longer correlate with the questions seekers bring from the culture outside. Outsiders stepping into the church subculture may as well be from another planet.

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