Elevation's Pastor keeping it edgy and real
International man of mystery, Doug Beaumont, clued me into this video from Elevation Church‘s “Code Orange Revival”.
The woman giving the sermon, Christine Caine, laudably works to fight human trafficking (something the Catholic Church has worked effectively at for a long time, in spite of the Administration’s removal of funds from the Church’s program). Caine is a leader of Hillsong Church in Australia.
One of her main premises is that churches and people have to be vigilant for how God is moving today (which may be quite different from how He moved yesterday or last year). If a church doesn’t keep up and stay attentive to the Spirit’s current work, they will die.
There is a kernel of truth in what she is saying. But there’s also confusion and error. Just after dismissing churches that still sing songs that were popular five or fifteen years ago–God has moved on from those songs she tells us–Caine says:
We keep going back to our Creeds and our Bureaucracies and our Institutionalized Ways of doing things, but the manna has ceased!
She’s referring to the manna in the desert ending after (about) forty years and how the Israelites had trouble adapting to the new thing God was doing.
Notice how the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds are equated with “bureaucracy” and “institutionalized ways of doing things.” The takeaway of course is that these are all bad (or at least old) things that God no longer works through.
But of course the Creeds are ageless truths that didn’t stop becoming relevant because Hillsong wrote a few gold-selling songs that topped the CCM charts. This is the “religion vs. relationship” false dichotomy in all its oblivious splendor.
In her zeal to keep up with what (she thinks) God is doing today, she throws out the baby (the Creeds) with the bathwater (rigid man-made bureaucratic institutionalizations).
The only way to keep from going the way of the dodo, we understand, is to “keep up,” “stay relevant,” “anticipate the next move of God and be there.” How long can any church keep that up? Not long. Soon Hillsong and Elevation will get older and less hip and less able to constantly change with what’s popular to the ecclesial consumer (which is easily mistaken for being the same as what God is doing). And they’ll disappear, displaced by newer and more edgy churches.
As John Senior said in The Restoration of Christian Culture:
Through the courts, in think-tanks and research institutes, in activist ideological organizations such as Planned Parenthood, the Humanist Society and the Civil Liberties Union, we have become victims in our public life of a mass agnosticism unknown anywhere in history, and worst of all, this spirit of relativism has paralyzed the Christian churches themselves, whose bewildered and diminishing flocks huddle in the fenceless folds while wolves in shepherd’s clothing explain from the pulpit that the essence of tradition is change.
The alternative is to encounter God in the ever ancient, ever new liturgy that the early Church celebrated, where the Creed is always recited–as true 1,700 years ago as it is today–and just as powerful. God’s Word is read and the Eucharist is confected. The liturgy is not a man-made creation, but the way God has shown that He is to be worshiped in spirit and in truth.
So while God does indeed move in new and unexpected ways in every age, in every year (just look at the growth of Christianity in the Global South, or at the tapestry of saints who uniquely lived their God-given charism in each epoch of history) some things never change, including the truths of the Faith found in the Creed and the liturgy itself.
It amazes me how some people are so quick to throw off what is old in favor for something edgy. Why can’t God move in both of those things? He’s above and beyond time. I think it’s dangerous for people to confuse human need for novelty with the way God moves — he can and does move that way, but as we see in the Church all the time he also speaks to us through Tradition.
Our creeds are our roots as believers.
Right on, Anna. That’s exactly right. Holding firm to the Creed doesn’t mean God can’t be doing new things.
“May [we] no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles.”
“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings.”
Then again, these are old sayings from nearly 2000 years ago… older even than our creeds! Maybe the Spirit blows a lot of different winds nowadays.
Very true, Jeffrey. Mrs. Caine’s presentation says God is doing new things so old things should be discarded. But some old things are true and never lose their “relevance” and value.
My favourite response to anyone who claims, “We have no creed but Christ” is “That’s the shortest and worst Creed I’ve ever heard”. My favourite response to anyone who claims that the Church needs to “get with it” is, “Any Church that is married to the spirit of the age is a widow in the age to come”.
The key problem I see is that what’s he’s describing is Christ in the abstract. There are no details allowed. So Joe says Christ looked, acted, and spoke a lot like Pat Robertson and he wanted us to kill all communists; Harry says Christ was an avatar of Krishna and delivered the same message; Mike says Christ looked and acted a lot like Doug Beaumont and he just wanted you to do your own thing and just do whatever you’re inspired to do; Eckhart says Christ is a force of the universe; Richard says Christ is just a good teacher, like Socrates and Buddha. They all believe in the same Christ and they’re all proclaiming the same message because who are you to say they are not?
From a secularist persepective this is nonsense. It really is no surprise that atheists laugh at Christians if Christians believe in nonsense, and want to banish such illogic from governments that affect how they live. Even when denominations and Creeds were strong in the 1950s, the fact that denominations couldn’t agree on who Christ was and what our fate was scared Mohandas Gandhi enough that he banned Christian proselytizing since it would cause too much division. This is saying a lot in a country that hosts every religion known to man.
The word became flesh and dwelt among us. Christ was not an abstract idea. He was a real man who walked on the real earth at a specific time, did specific things and asked specific things of us. Pretending that this was not so is far more foolish than pretending that there is no constitution or laws or social norms and just doing your own thing because we all believe in democracy. In the law case, one should not be surprised to find oneself in slavery or dead or imprisoned on this earth. In the Christ case, one should not be surprised to find oneself in slavery or dead or imprisoned in the life to come.
Powerfully put, Anil. And very true.
“Any Church that is married to the spirit of the age is a widow in the age to come”
Wow. I *LOVE* this!
My deal is, you have to know the core of what you believe before you can branch out and try to get edgy. Otherwise, you’re just drifting in the sea of confusion. You have no identity, just appeal. Great companies or organizations that last know the core of what they’re about and can communicate that. When they innovate, they do it off the core. When they lose sight of the core, they fail.
I think you’re right about chasing the “edgy.” It’s like the entertainment industry. To stay in people’s view you have to continually push the envelope because you eventually become yesterday’s news.
Our company bases its business in part off the book Profit from the Core which talks about exactly what you’re saying.
Did she really say “anticipate the next move of God and be there” ? Really? I, a human, am supposed anticipate God’s next move? Maybe I’m just a stupid Christian, but sometimes I have trouble doing the right thing RIGHT NOW. Let alone trying to somehow be one step ahead of God.
In a related note, the late Jarislov Pelikan was on the NPR show “On Being”, where he discussed “…the history and nature of creeds, and how a fixed creed can be reconciled with an honest, intellectual faith that changes and evolves.” It’s very good.
Elizabeth,
That was not a direct quote but my own extrapolation from her talk’s theme. Thanks for the link to Pelikan’s talk–had no idea he was still alive so recently!
Every word in the Creed(s) come directly from Scripture. No…not word for word, but derived from Holy Scripture.
If you ever have the chance, you can point this out to Evangelicals who say that “it is man made”.
Good idea, Steve!
What’s interesting is that at Nicea the Council Fathers used a word not found in Scripture (“homoousios”) to ensure that the Arians didn’t have wiggle room for their misinterpretation of Scripture.
I enjoy reading your blog, Devin. I’m a Protestant feeling the pull of the Catholic Church. I go to a non-denominational church that gets its worship songs off the Christian radio station. I can’t tell you how much that bothers me. Give me the ancient traditions over pop culture Christianity any day! If only my husband felt as I do, we’d be in the CC right now.
Hi Kim!
It’s tough because they want to offer people what they will enjoy, the “worship experience,” and that means the newest and most popular contemporary Christian music. But that changes constantly and gives an emotional high that eventually diminishes. I would say discern how your husband might consider the Catholic Faith: books if he is a reader, the Catholicism DVD series if he watches documentaries or shows, Catholic men’s group if he does men’s groups, etc. God bless and thanks for your kind words.
Thanks Devin,
My sister, fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it…coming from an agnostic family, goes to Elevation…it worries me, i want her to participate in fullness of Truth that the Church has and in the Joy that Christ truly brought for us in the freedom of the “rules”. I try, but at times am too pushy I think… alas, I guess being overzealous is better than not. PS. love the podcasts with brent…
Cary
Thanks Cary! I have friends and family who have gone to various mega-churches like Elevation. There’s good that happens there, people encountering Jesus, growing in faith and truth. Some people aren’t open at all to considering where the fullness of the truth is found and are content to have the “worship experience” found in these communities. So I would advise, be patient, be prudent, prayerful, and watch to see how you can best share with them the truth of the Catholic Church.
She is correct about God being so “up to date,” but she id wrong about the Creed being passe….. I’ve got a tweet from God that says so……
Except that’s not the liturgy your church uses. Your liturgy dates to 1962. We have no idea what liturgy the early church celebrated. If you want to use an early liturgy the Syriac church (Antiochene Rite) is really the only church with even a remotely plausible claim to an early liturgy as we see both sets of churches that split on the 5th century using something similar. You cannot claim to be in favor of using the oldest possible liturgy and be a western rite Catholic. The Western rite liturgy is (by Catholic standards) quite recent.
We can have a complex argument about whether the Antiochene Rite really goes back to the early 2nd century (or as some of the Orthodox claim even earlier to James himself) or is rather mostly a product of the late 4th century. But your liturgical history is well known,
current mass was a major overhaul of the Tridentine Mass in the 1960s.
Tridentine Mass was a major overhaul of the Gallican rite mass in the 1570s with minor revisions in the years in between.
Gallican Rites are a huge collection of rites that show massive change and evolution.
Among the Gallican rite the only possible rite that dates back even to the 2nd century is the Mozarabic Rite.
There is no argument. You do not use the liturgy of the ancient church any more than Christine Caine does. Far from not changing the liturgy is in a constant state of flux.
CD,
Yes and no. We don’t speak Aramaic or Hebrew either. That’s fine. There is legitimate development of the liturgy, just as their is legitimate development of doctrine. Recognizing the legitimate from the illegitimate is the question, and the Spirit guides the Catholic Church to do so.
No one argues that different liturgies didn’t develop in the early Church, or that they looked just like how the Apostles celebrated the liturgy. There was development and legitimate differences (in words, language, symbols, gestures, etc.) that grew over time, but the Catholic Mass (in whatever form) and different Orthodox divine liturgies are in line with the ancient Church’s liturgies, as they are legitimate developments of it.
Hillsong and Elevation communities do not celebrate this liturgy and even repudiate the need to do so. Instead they have adopted a philosophy that newer is better because newer is what God is doing now and liturgy is what God did way back when.
…also, you only have to glance at those early liturgies (Justin, Apostolic Tradition, St. James…) to recognize many common Catholic characteristics
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