c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J.)

UNDATED _ A few years ago, in a sermon addressing the paucity of church membership among black men and boys, author Jawanza Kunjufu asked an intriguing question:”Does a 16-year-old African-American male need a different worship service than a 65-year-old African-American female?” For many black pastors, including myself, the question raises some disturbing issues.

For one thing, it forces us to reckon with the loss of a critical constituency. Kunjufu, an educational consultant and author of”Adam! Where Are You? Why Most Black Men Don’t Go to Church”(African American Images) notes that in 1940, 80 percent of African-American families regularly attended church and roughly the same proportion of black families had both parents living at home.

By 1994, the number of black churchgoers had been reduced by half, and of these, only 25 percent were men. At the same time, only one out of three black fathers live at home, and 40 percent of our young men are in trouble with the law.

For black clergy, the implication is obvious: the reduction in male piety is having a horrific effect on our community.

Even more painful, however, is the attitude this loss of piety should be blamed on the black church and its leadership. As Kunjufu observes, concerns about what many view as the church’s classism, relevance (or the lack thereof), and Eurocentric (read”white”) influence on theology and worship are but a few of the reasons black men cite for their failure to attend church.

Yet beyond the issue of the”whys”and”wherefores”are concerns regarding the”solutions”proffered by Kunjufu and others.

Many programs now being tried, such as rites of passage groups based on African manhood rituals, Bible studies emphasizing an African presence in the Scriptures, and Kunjufu’s proposal of age- and gender-specific worship services are controversial because they fly in the face of more traditional approaches to ministry.

For many, to employ methods that emphasize culture, age or gender is not perceived as”biblical.”This is because what is often deemed to be biblical has less to do with the Bible than with what we are familiar. In other words, to employ a model with which we are not familiar can often threaten our sense of what is biblical.

Yet a re-examination of our interpretation of the church and its role may go a long way toward putting such concerns to rest.

In his classic treatise,”The Misunderstanding of the Church”(Westminster Press), Emil Brunner draws a clear distinction between the institutional church of the 20th century and the New Testament fellowship from which it evolved.

According to Brunner, the”ecclesia”(a Greek term meaning”called-out ones,”and from which the word”church”is derived) had none of the institutional character of the church as we know it.

For example, by contrast with many denominations _ and local congregations _ the ecclesia was not controlled by a highly bureaucratized system of authority. Rather, the ecclesia, as Brunner notes, was a fellowship of the Holy Spirit known as”the body of Christ.” One did not join the ecclesia, one was born (again) into it.

Similarly, the authority and doctrine of the first church leaders (the apostles) was entrusted, in the words of the Apostle Paul,”to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also.”(II Timothy 2:2)

As Brunner suggests, what Christians have come to accept as”normal”in terms of structure, doctrine, worship and ministry is a result of the evolution the ecclesia underwent following the deaths of the 1st-century apostles. Over a period of 2,000 years, the ecclesia of the New Testament morphed into an institution whose various denominational manifestations reflect the character of those who influenced it.

Thus, for black Christians to question innovative evangelism methods based on subjective ideas of tradition is ludicrous. For the reality is that today’s innovations become tomorrow’s traditions. Given our current destructive trend, innovation is an idea whose time has come.

MJP END ATCHISON