As a part of our church council strategic planning retreat we reviewed the data from our last all church survey conducted  September.  Over 2,200 people took the survey - a pretty good sampling of our congregation.  One of the questions invited people to describe themselves as either very progressive/liberal, leaning progressive/liberal, moderate, leaning conservative or very conservative.  Not surprisingly the top answer was “moderate” with “leaning conservative” following close behind and “leaning progressive” next.  85% of our congregation was in one of these three categories. [As an aside, I don't care for the term "moderate" - I don't want anyone to approach their faith in "moderation" but to be passionate and completely devoted to Christ - I prefer "centrist".]

It has been my hope that we could create a church that brought together people on both sides who would share a common desire to follow Jesus Christ and a willingness to listen and learn from those who held views different from their own.

Interestingly, according to the newly released Hartford Study of American Megachurch Trends  megachurches across the country are becoming less conservative.  In 2005 51% of megachuches indicated they were predominantly conservative.  That number dropped to 33% in 2008.  Those reporting that they were somewhat conservative rose by 33% and those reporting that they were “right in the middle” rose by 55%.  This is part of a broader trend in our society away from the extremes.

While it is a recent trend in society, this place in the middle is where our church has stood from the beginning.  It is the essence of Methodism to stand in the center in an attempt to hear and hold together all of the truth.   In the 18th century John Wesley sought to hold together the competing religious impulses and ideas of his time - high church/low church, enlightenment/romanticism, evangelical/social gospel, etc.

We had several open ended questions in the survey.  These generated 6,000 different responses.  I read  27 pages of single spaced responses to the question, “If you could improve one thing about our church, what would it be?”  I found it interesting that five or six people lamented that Resurrection was “too liberal” while several others lamented that we were too conservative!

Following the retreat I stopped by my office to check the day’s mail and had a letter from a member requesting to be removed from our membership role because we were too conservative on a particular social issue of importance to them.  On that same issue we’ve had  members leave because we were “too liberal.”

Recently, as I was doing research on the “King James only” folks (people who believe that only the King James Version of the Bible is to be used by churches) I was surprised to see that conservative icons like Billy Graham and Chuck Swindoll were called out for being too “liberal.”  We’re all liberal compared to someone and conservative compared to someone else.

In the end our task is not to be “liberal” or “conservative” but to be seekers of the truth and followers of Christ.  We must approach our faith and the theological divisions in the church and the sociological divisions in society with a healthy measure of humility and a recognition that we have something to learn from those who hold different views from our own.

I value and love the fact that Resurrection contains a large number of people on both the right and left.  Each side has an important perspective to offer and each enriches the whole.