The Simplest Idea: Inception and the Church

A pastor at our weekly text study came in with an idea yesterday to read a book together and discuss. The book was titled, I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church, by Paul Nixon. This pastor was in need of finding some wisdom to deal with the travails of leading a struggling congregation in the midst of a declining mainline Protestant denomination. In short, he was in a place where a lot of clergy find themselves--pastoring to decline.

I found myself thinking, "Are we still there?" Are we still focusing on leadership techniques and programs for pastors to churches in decline? Are we still moping about the challenges of churches with fewer members? Are we still talking about the death of the church?

Some of us have moved on. I mean, we have thought about this. For many church leaders in my generation the decline of the church is not something new but in fact the only reality we have ever known. When pastors and professors have tried to shock us by saying things like, "The church as you knew it is over" we have looked at them blankly and thought, "Actually, this is the only church I've known. The church you've known is over."

But most of all, we think about how the church is going to look different. I was struck yesterday by the methodology of having a book study in the midst of declining congregations. It felt so wrong. For one, it is not the pastors who need to think about this; it is the congregation members who have no formal training. But more importantly, they need to come to this idea in such a way that it actually sticks--that it actually penetrates their psyche and makes the light bulb go on. For most people, that's not so easy.

That's when it hit me. This is really a matter of inception. The 2010 Christopher Nolan motion picture, Inception, is based on the premise of changing a subject's mind by planting an idea in that person's brain. In order to make inception work you first need a goal--what you want the subject to believe. Second, you need an idea powerful enough to accomplish that change. In the movie, the goal was to get the subject to break up his father's company; the idea was that the subject's father loved him and wanted him to choose his own path.

Crucial to the success of inception is implanting the right idea. I find that churches recognize a problem--there are less people in mainline denominations, less vitality, less energy, etc. But then they come up with all sorts of massive philosophical changes without synthesizing the singular idea behind the matter. So, pastors throw out frightening words like change, missional imagination, rooted confessionalism and the like, which members of our congregation are neither ready nor able to hear. What the mainline denominations have seemingly failed to do is find that one idea that needs to be planted deep in the psyche of our people. So, what is it?

Let's start with what it's not. It's not "we must change;" or "we need to grow." In Inception we learn that neither fear nor material gain are powerful enough motivators to plant an idea. The only emotion powerful enough to make an idea stick is catharsis. Our churches--our congregation members, our people--are desperately in need of catharsis. We need to face our past and hear, like Robert Fischer Jr. on his father's death bed, that the monumental figures of our past want us to go our own way. Semper reformandum, said the leaders of the Reformation, "Always reforming."

But the way most of our people see the church is like that lowest dream level where the buildings and structures of the world are collapsing before their eyes. Moreover, since the structures of the church are tied inextricably to the outside world, this is also how they view their lives. Things are changing: the world is becoming more complicated and chaotic. There are horrible people doing horrible things. There is so much out of our control. The world that we recognize from our past is disintegrating before our eyes.

So, we come to the goal we want to accomplish. In a world whose edifices seem to be crumbling the only catharsis, the only good news, is that this world is not the ultimate reality. Like the spinning top totem that Cobb (Leonardo diCaprio) uses to determine whether he is in the real world, we are in need of something to ground us. The goal of the mainline church's inception, therefore, is not to acclimate our people to change or to get them to see the necessity of being the church in new and different ways. No, none of that will work, and it is precisely the kind of things we have been trying all along. Instead, the goal of our inception is to show people that this world is a mere dream of the ultimate reality. We live in the shadow-lands where things don't quite make sense.

But this realization is not easily achieved. I can preach death and resurrection week after week and it will often seem to be falling on deaf ears. Sure, the Holy Spirit will do its best to open the ears of the people, but I know well enough that the very premise that I'm preaching is far too big. I'm in need of a simpler idea; a synthesis of this new creation. I'm in need of catharsis.

That's when it hit me like a bolt from the blue. We have been making this way, way too complicated. We have been telling people about systems, about programs, about theology and eschatology. We have been telling them about Christology and pneumatology. We have been telling them about historical criticism and other modern methods of reading the Bible. We have been teaching them bits of Greek, Hebrew and Latin. We have been preaching meta-theories when the simplest idea of all has never sunk in, because we never went deep enough. We tried "God loves you" but it just feels so shallow. We tried "You are saved" but it does not connect. These, too, were too complicated. They involved static realities that we could not see. Neither involved catharsis.

You see, we've only taken it down a single level. We've never touched that second dream state, let alone the third, so the idea never stuck. We have to press harder into the subconsciousness of the people we meet and tell them the most fundamental truth that can shape their realities. The truth is this:

You are forgiven.

This is the very essence of catharsis. They are the words that break down the walls around our supposed realities and show us a creation more real than anything our dream-like waking could ever promise. Forgiveness--true forgiveness, not the "I'm sorry" hokum that passes for such in our world--opens doors to a new future with hope.

Church leaders, I cannot impress this enough, the key is going deep enough. This is not just a matter of reciting some words in the liturgy. It is instead meeting those in the most desperate need in their most desperate moments, when their tops are spinning wildly out of whack, and pointing them back to the ultimate, Christ-drenched reality and saying, "You are forgiven in spite of your faults, in spite of the past, in spite of everything historical that binds you to this moment and this place. You are set free--by a Savior who came to re-write history, to make the dead rise and bring about a creation so much more real than anything you experience here and now."

But more important than the words is that single moment of catharsis. In the movie it was the pinwheel that Robert Fischer made for his father, hidden in the safe, that represented the pride his father felt. For us it may be a hug, it may be a cup of tea; it may be something much simpler still. But remember, it is never complicated. Forgiveness never is. But true forgiveness will set the church on fire. It will shake the foundations of our world. It will make us rise again.

So, get planting.