The Church in Palliative Care

It's painful to write this.

When someone you know and love is nearing the point when they must make decisions about the end of life as we know it, we tend to desperately desire a miracle. Pleading with God, bargaining with the Fates, raging against the machinations of a seemingly fickle existence, we pray that the disease might be taken away so that we can return to normal life.

All of us know someone, maybe more than one person, who is dealing with a debilitating and (often) terminal illness. Whether cancer, motor neuron disease, Parkinson's or dementia, these painful and difficult attacks on the body push us to confront our own mortality but even more present, the mortality of those we love who are about to be moved into the dreaded realm of memory only.

In times like these, the dying process can be helped by utilising palliative care where the 'aims are to give the best possible quality of life to someone who is seriously ill or about to die. It helps people live life as comfortably as possible.' (Health Direct definition)

During the palliative process, the dying and their families are given options. In palliative care, the patient and family do not necessarily end all treatments, but they do get to select which treatments are important and which are not.'

The Church, as we know it, is dying. There are many diseases that have ravaged the body over the centuries and it has survived. I won't list the cancers or syndromes that have been chronicled ad nauseum by a particularly virulent anti-religious world press. But it feels like in the last twenty-five years or so, the writing has been on the wall. The Church that we've known and loved, the place of relationship and connection, of spiritual health and healing, of music and ministry to the joyful and the bereaved, is waiting for the end.

There are options of course. Treatments will not end. Worship in buildings will continue. We will share the stories of the past with great fondness. Just like getting together with a loved one as they move on from this life to the next sharing humorous moments, loving times of connection, we, the Church, will gather to reminisce about the time Jane accidentally tipped the communion cup onto the floor, Ezra knocked out a window playing baseball in the church hall or those wonderful Christmas services where we came together to celebrate a God who descended to us as Immanuel - a baby born for all people.

Yes, we will still share the stories and we'll make the church feel comfortable as the pain overtakes it. As it writhes intermittently in agony with the shock and fear of what comes next, we will attempt to treat it with loving kindness, hold its hand and tell it we loved everything about it - the good, the bad and the exquisite.

The statistics don't lie.

We don't need to be spiritual doctors to read the charts. All metrics for church 'attendance' are down. Buildings are being closed and repurposed. Financial donations are shrinking. A secular world that has no interest in the things of the Spirit tears down faithful, caring and serving communities because of their financial mania.

The building is crumbling.

And yet isn't this the very thing that Jesus spoke about when they were on a lovely morning walk? "As he was going out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, 'Teacher, look! What impressive buildings!' Jesus said to him, 'Do you see great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another - all will be thrown down.' (Mark 13:1,2)

In John 2:19-21, "Jesus answered (the Jewish officials), 'Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.' Therefore they responded, 'This temple took forty-six years to build, and will you raise it up in three days?' But Jesus was speaking the temple of his body.

Isn't Jesus still speaking about the temple of his body? Isn't the body of Christ still the people of Christ, the living, moving and breathing church? The people who, from the very beginning, '...were God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared ahead of time for us to do? (Ephesians 2:10)

As the buildings of churches around the world enter the final phase of their existence, the next generation of faithful, those who have received the stories of a loving God from the faithful before them, must have 'their eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.' (Hebrews 12:2)

The living, moving and breathing Church, the people, must seek God's vision for the people post-church building/temple age. 

What does this look like?

Well, we have the opportunity to treat the building-centric church with dignity, care and respect. We continue treatments of joy and celebration for all that God has done. We remember. Simultaneously, we engage the collective energy and wisdom of new generations of believers who are chomping at the bit to understand both their faith and how it is employed into the same world that has brought about the last gasp of the building-centric church. We, as older members of the body, diligently take a step back to hear and to be led by the newest church full of what John Perry Barlow calls 'Digital Natives' who understand the next phase of building up the Church and reinforcing it with spiritual pillars rather than those of stone.

Next week, we'll have an interview with some young people about what it means to be part of the 'Resurrected Church' and what priorities are for the future.