The Pompidou Center in Paris, also known simply as the "Beaubourg," rises like an oil refinery above a tightly packed neighborhood of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses. An icon to modernism, Beaubourg displays its innards, with heating and air-conditioning ducts and electrical and water conduits wrapping around the building's vast exterior. The interior houses an extraordinary collection of paintings and the visual arts, covering the span from the post-Impressionists to the movements of the 1980s and 1990s. I walked through it this summer with my wife and high school daughter. We scrutinized everything from experiments in color composition and artistic freedom, to the nihilism of contemporary performance artists being filmed cutting themselves. I left overwhelmed by the diversity of modern visual expression, and also with a sense of a western culture in sharp decline.

Is decline an apt description of the church's culture as well? Are we of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) a culture in decay? The signs appear manifold that we no longer share a moral consensus. Like the larger society in which we participate, we grope for values that once seemed so clear.

Perhaps the problem is a loss of institutional will in the church. Many might argue so, and convincingly, for the higher courts of the church seem unwilling to truly enforce the standards of the Book of Order, let alone the values of the Book of Confessions, let alone the mandates of Scripture itself. Some congregations, disagreeing with the dictates of the Book of Order and the judgments of the General Assembly, disobey with impunity. Some pastors cover deviations from Scripture, tradition, and the standards of community by claiming freedom of conscience. Profound doubt has taken root as to the nature of God, the source of knowledge, the value of human life, and even the ability to know reality at all. Indeed, something is amiss in our house.

The problem is not discipline but discipleship

It seems clear to me that the source of our cultural discontent in the church is more radical than political and constitutional differences of opinion. The issue is not a matter of interpretation of Scripture by those who otherwise share a common worldview. The root of our dissatisfaction is a spiritual malaise. The troubles that hound us are analogous to the artist so despairing and so bored she can no longer create, but only destroy. They are symptoms of nominal Christianity within our own house.

In his work "In Name Only: Tackling the Problem of Nominal Christianity," Fuller Seminary professor Eddie Gibbs makes the case that the issue is the gap between the baptized and those living as disciples of Christ. The dividing line between vital faith and nominal formalism may be seen in such practices as participation in a group beyond Sunday-morning worship, in praying with others, in talking with others about God, and in an awareness of the presence of God. Other signs of living faith might be personal participation in mission or family devotions (the principal responsibility of Christian parents is to disciple their own children, or as Luther said, to be a pastor to their own children.)

We have allowed culture to define for us the true, the good, and the beautiful. Secularism scarcely believes any more that these virtues exist in any universal sense. It leaves us with personal preference, and the melancholy vision of human worth defined solely in economic terms. Yet the church has believed we could let the wider culture establish our values in the area of abortion, sexual ethics, consumerism, and careerism. We have set aside the ennobling doctrines of the image of God, of human responsibility, and of vocation, attempting to lay the Christian life on top of a pagan worldview. Ironically, even the doctrine of total depravity is more hopeful than the secularist utopian vision of the perfectibility of humankind; consider the outcome of the French Revolution (the Reign of Terror) and the Russian Revolution (the gulags of Lenin and Stalin), or the specter of an elite group of people determining the genetic design for humanity's future.

Usually as driven and purposeless as the surrounding culture, we in the church simply haven't had time for prayer, for the community of faith, for ministry or family; and when the values come into direct conflict, we allow the culture to trump the kingdom. We have privatized our faith, assigning it to an isolated sector, irrelevant to the rest of our life choices. Whatever is left over, after we have made our choices autonomously, we consign to the realm of faith. Thus, the culture defines our lives, declares what is of value, and fills our time.

More specifically, the contemporary church has not generally educated our leadership with the great ideas of evangelical and Reformed theology. Always pushed to excel and to accomplish, we wax apologetic (judging from my own experience) about asking our leadership to take the time for reflection and for spiritual formation. Maybe it's because we ourselves have not experienced the transforming fellowship of a dynamic covenant community.

Church discipline alone is not enough

This is not to say church discipline is not an appropriate response to those who disregard our constitutional standards. The Protestant Reformers believed discipline was one of the distinguishing marks of the church, and the instruction of the New Testament makes it clear the church can no longer be the church when anything and everything is permitted. "Some have rejected [faith and a good conscience] and so have shipwrecked their faith. Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, who I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme" (1 Tim 1:19-20). Was this excommunication? We can only guess. The Apostle Paul concludes his admonitions on discipline in the Corinthian church with the resounding "Expel the wicked man from among you" (1 Cor 5:13). Our Lord brings to a close the process for discipline and restoration with "If he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector" (Mt 18:17). Discipline is crucial and must be exercised if the church is to be authentic.

My concern, however, is that discipline in and of itself is insufficient to hold us together. By nature it is remedial, with the intention and hope of restoring the offender to fellowship. Discipline is for the disciple. It is intended for the apprentice of Jesus, to use Dallas Willard's term, who has gone astray. But the church cannot hold together without a common set of values and cultural assumptions. It cannot survive in the current condition of cultural Christianity marked by nominalism.

Along with exercising discipline we need to make disciples of Jesus. Why is it that some in the PC(USA) defiantly tear at the fabric of our faith? To answer that, we need also ask why we are unable to produce a serious, biblical, and integral program for disciple making. It's because we have largely lacked a transforming experience of Christ in supportive, teaching congregations whereby we can grow up in Christ. We scarcely know what it is to commit to a costly regimen of faith formation. Just look at the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 to see to what extent the first believers took seriously the demands of discipleship. The purity of a community refined by discipline and reflecting the power of God impressed outsiders and led some to faith. It pushed others away who did not wish to give up personal autonomy. All were impressed to count the cost of following.

The larger problem than discipline is that we have the unconverted within our own membership, and we have untaught leadership. We have built a church culture where serious discipleship is seen as an option, as if there were such a thing as biblical Christianity without discipleship.

Many of our sisters and brothers are anxious that we pursue current processes of discipline in the courts of the church. It is right to pursue these cases to an appropriate conclusion. But, we cannot forever hold together a community that does not share core values and convictions. Our church culture will turn around when we recommit to making disciples who fully embrace the faith--catholic, Reformed, and evangelical.

How do we recover a biblical vision for the church? Personally and corporately, we must begin with genuine repentance, with godly sorrow over the state of our church. We must call one another to genuine conversion, knowing that authentic faith begins in a vital commitment to Christ. We must take seriously the whole biblical witness: redemption and general revelation, following the way of Jesus as well as trusting in the Word and work of Jesus. We must with discernment engage the larger culture, with the goal of transforming it, and not capitulate to its values.

Further, we must enter an intentional program of discipleship. Apostolic Christianity came to know this as the catechumenate, and it includes inquiry into the faith, initiation into the faith, imitation of Christ, investment in ministry, intimacy with the Spirit in the life of prayer, and initiative in the mission of God.

Our denomination teeters on the edge of the abyss of individualism and subjectivism. We have been shaped more by a culture that is sick unto death than by the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Yet in the face of the threat, we can discern hope. Moving out of nominal, cultural Christianity, we might once again experience the vigor of apostolic Christianity.

We must embrace discipleship as the preeminent calling within the PC(USA), for it is the disciple who worships, who receives the kingdom, who participates in the mission of God. Then we will experience the power, the faithfulness, the renewal God has in mind for his people, and we will be a clear expression of the wholeness of Christ Jesus.