Tyson, Jon and Villodas, Rich | Sacred Roots

Sacred Roots: Why the Church Still Matters
Jon Tyson, Rich Villodas

Paperback: Zondervan, 2013, 90pp.

Introduction

In Sacred Roots: Why the Church Still Matters, authors Jon Tyson and Rich Villodas examine data from the Barna Group that indicates the declining interest in and attendance at church. At the outset, this data likely troubles anyone engaged with church ministry in the West. Tyson and Villodas consider why people are increasingly dissatisfied with the church, assessing factors like individualism and consumerism. They ultimately posit a much more unsettling reason: the church has forgotten who she is. Therein, of course, lies the solution. The church needs to remember her calling as witness to the world and her identity as the bride of Christ. Only by recalling who she is, will the church regain its power and potency in the world. Villodas and Tyson illuminate a possible path, highlighting four shifts (from dabbling to devotion, transience to permanence, preference to proximity, and belief to practices) that correspond with early church practices such as radical kinship and participatory worship.

Radical Kinship

Both Tyson and Villodas encourage churches to reconsider what it means to flourish. They acknowledge that flourishing is a spiritual matter but contend it always extends beyond the spiritual. Villodas states his perspective bluntly: “I am convinced God is interested in the flourishing—the shalom—of a concrete place” (79). This is no abstract statement for Villodas. Neither is it an unattainable one. Villodas and the people who attend his church do not ask how they can improve the city, which would be overwhelming, considering it is New York City. Rather, they emphasize the communities, the boroughs, that compose the city. They regularly ask, “What can I do to make Elmhurst [a New York City neighborhood] more beautiful?” (80). Tyson offers further illustration of Villodas’s perspective: “To move toward rootedness in our discipleship … we have reclaimed the idea of the ‘parish.’ We define a parish as a geographic area of spiritual responsibility. We are not called to just care for church members, but whole communities— modeling the sacrificial love of Jesus in a particular context. This means that what happens in my parish is my responsibility.” In one of the most diverse, multi-ethnic neighborhoods in the United States, members of Villodas’s church are learning to love their neighbors, and to experience the sort of solidarity and kinship that emerges as we follow in the way of Jesus.

Villodas describes how his church cultivates this radical kinship with their neighbors: “Many in our church community have started to take this call seriously. They have stepped into problem areas in the community, acting as chaplains and police liaisons. They’ve forged relationships with local business owners, joined the PTA, launched community associations, opened arts programs, and led initiatives to restore public parks. And they have done all this in Jesus’s name, with humility and love, as servants of the community. As a result, we have seen the beginning of a shift. We have seen cynics’ hearts soften, atheists begin to doubt their doubt, and lonely people find a home in a community where they experience healing and acceptance. And one life at a time, Jesus is becoming a topic of conversation in the places where we live” (62).

Participatory Worship

Besides adopting a parish-centric approach to ministry, Tyson asks what a more compelling expression of the church would look like in today’s world. He answers the question, suggesting that the church can become a compelling agent of grace and truth when it moves beyond the three typical responses to Jesus: public, private, and personal. Tyson argues that the church should push against those responses– which often tend toward passivity and consumerism. He calls this response “primal” and defines it as “denying myself for the sake of communal discipleship and mission” (52). Churches that embrace this primal level of worship can become “provocative countercultures for the common good and renewal of our world… These churches are devoted to Christ, with a faith that is not an additive, but “a reframing of life itself” (52-53). 

The sort of worship that is rooted in the commitment of every member to radically deny themselves is described by Tyson in this way: “A primal church is called to devote itself to the radical pursuit of God, walking with him and delighting in his presence. We create time to steward emotional energy to bear one another’s burdens. We use our strength and energy to serve one another in practical ways—cleaning, moving, celebrating, fixing, and working. We make sure we get enough rest so we can be fully present to what is happening in the lives of those around us. We eat and exercise to steward our bodies as holy temples where God’s presence dwells. Although sharpening our intellect is important, it does not come to the detriment of or distraction from our love and lives. And last, we seek ways to steward what we have, practicing generosity, not letting the desire for more choke out the work God wants to do in our lives” (56).

Tyson acknowledges how strange such a church would be in today’s cultural climate. But, he says, it is no pipe dream. He describes a family with a passionate commitment to following Jesus, so much so that the husband shaped his work life around his commitment to Christ. The husband’s employer warned he was committing “career suicide … he would never rise above middle management”… The husband replied, “That is a price I am very willing to pay” (57).

Crosscurrent Trends

Sacred Roots proposes a reframed perspective of the church, which is grounded in two crucial elements: the specific instructions and general wisdom of the Bible, and current data about the state of the church. That data comes courtesy of Barna Group, a firm that analyzes religion and culture. Their research about the church—and why people do or do not attend—delivers many findings, all of which are worth study and consideration. Barna has also identified two trends, which may seem at odds with one another. The first concerns spiritual self-awareness. “Adults are aware of their spiritual needs,” says Barna. At the same time, adults “are increasingly dissatisfied with the church’s attempt to meet those spiritual needs and are turning elsewhere” (26–27). That dissatisfaction can be attributed to a number of sources, and yet—adults long for spiritual nourishment. Churches who are able to see this need and meet it could altogether transform the communities in which they live.

Consumers and Critics

There are a variety of causes which contribute to peoples’ dissatisfaction with the church. Tyson highlights one in particular: the “church as entertainment culture” (42). In this culture, church attendees are “consumers and critics” rather than devoted followers of Christ. Tyson warns of the dangers of this mindset, “When we expect the church to entertain us, it limits the church’s ability to challenge us. Entertainment rarely transforms. … It rarely challenges the practices that form our character or shape our lives. It’s hard to live the Sermon on the Mount with the whole of your life when your understanding of church is that it is like an exciting concert. The result may be that we overlook the things that make up our actual lives, the normal stuff that shapes who we become over the long haul. And it can cause us to miss our call. We don’t exist for ourselves, but to embody the good news of Jesus to those around us” (44–45).

We don’t exist for ourselves. It’s a scandalous idea today, perhaps even offensive. But if we– the church– want to reclaim our prophetic witness, we will need to return to Jesus’s call. Jesus tells us that if we want to follow Him, we will need to deny ourselves. We will have to die to self and live to Christ. To experience the abundant life that Jesus offers, we will have to stop pursuing what makes us “happy,” and instead pursue a call to lose ourselves for the sake of Christ and others.