Nearly every church in the western world is facing the same question: how do we get the younger generations to engage with us and our message? New Church societies are no exception. In fact, this is a question that it seems the General Church has struggled with for a long time. Here we have these incredible teachings that can transform a person’s life and alter their view of the world, but how do we get people to listen to them? How do we get them interested?
The traditional way has been through the distribution of books. An “outsider” visits for a wedding or funeral, likes something they heard and we say “Here, have book!” Often we give the books away in the fear that $20 is too large a barrier for a seeker to overcome. This method of evangelisation has had its moments of success. Many if not all of us know of somebody who came into or heard about the church by stumbling across one of Swedenborg’s books. This has led to us attracting mostly people who are of a more intellectual ilk. Their rational mind sees what they are reading is true, which is great. But what about normal people? What about people who don’t consider reading 18th century theological literature a fun past time? How do they find us? How do we react when they do?
To start with I think we need to remember just how weird we can sound to somebody who is new to our church. We believe the second coming has already happened. Oh, and it occurred in the 1700s…this scientist, well, Swedish mystic, he was really a genius, had this meeting with God himself, and wrote all these books – about 35, depending on your translation – and they reveal our spiritual reality. The creation story? Not literal, neither was Noah and the Ark, but the just after the Tower of Babel story we believe things are historically accurate. Well, except that God didn’t actually stop the sun in Joshua, that was the Israelites seeing through their spiritual eyes. But let me tell you about Swedenborg’s flying machine! It was better than daVinci’s! Want a book?
It can be a lot to swallow. Especially for a first timer. However, most of our evangelisation work has been focused on promoting the Writings of Swedenborg. In my view, this creates a large barrier to entry. Take a look at the New Testament and notice how Jesus called His disciples. How did He introduce himself? He had a similar situation. The Jewish church was the ruling authority, the Romans and Greeks had their influence, and then there was Jesus, a single man with a new message on a mission to save the world. He didn’t go up to Matthew and say, “Matthew, I want you to join me. You see, I am the promised Messiah. I’m not what you expected, because I didn’t come to literally be a king to shake off the Romans. There’s a deeper meaning to my purpose. But look at the prophecies in scripture – see how I am fulfilling them? Listen the answers I have for the Pharisees and Sadducees! My answers make sense! Don’t worry about the letter of Law and Prophets, I’m giving you the New Testament! I need you to change your life – stop being a tax collector, give it all up, and commit yourself to me and it is going to be great.”
Matthew would have likely thought Jesus a mad-man. Matthew “knew” from the Scriptures that God certainly wasn’t somebody we could even be near, much less talk to face to face. So what did Jesus actually say? “[Jesus] saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him” (Matt 9:9) The call was “Follow me.” That’s it! That is a very simple calling. There’s no sales pitch, justification, explanation in that calling. Jesus doesn’t sound anxious as to whether or not Matthew actually will follow. No lesson as to what Jesus’ mission is. In fact, in the next verse Jesus is sitting down with Matthew and Matthew’s friends having dinner. That is Jesus going where Matthew is comfortable. He’s making the concession, Jesus is accommodating Matthew.
I submit that this is a different approach than what is traditionally done in General Church congregations. Asking people to simply follow us and observe who we are as people, that is the first step. It does put the burden on each and every one of us to be an ambassador for the church. We all have to live the teachings so that new people can see that we’re different, and that there is something special going on here. As people follow us they will also hear our teachings, and my experience is most people do like our theology. They’re just usually not going to be successful of appreciating the New Church by reading the Writings to start with.
This is not to say I want us to stop promoting the Writings, but I do think we need to promote the church and our message in more than just our traditional way. There’s no reason why we cannot do both. Jesus gave us the model. Let’s follow it by encouraging people to follow us. More to come next month…