When I was in college I was made to read a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. His premise is that in the world of science there are paradigms, and that every so often, the paradigms change. For example, as best we can tell, from the beginning of humankind’s observation of the universe until the sixteenth century, the paradigm was that the earth was the center of the universe, and everything else revolved around it.

Enter Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus takes a look around the universe and says, no, the sun does not revolve around the earth, the earth revolves around the sun. Today we take for granted that the planet earth is a microscopic speck in the vastness of the universe, with its billions of stars and galaxies and planets and black holes and quasars. But imagine living in the sixteenth century and hearing for the first time of Copernicus’ theory. I’ll bet there were some interesting discussions in the market and in the grounds of the castle and around the family dining table. We know there were some heated discussions among the church hierarchy, who thought this stuff, this new paradigm, was foolish nonsense.

It took awhile for the new paradigm to sink in. As it almost always does. Think of the various paradigm shifts of more recent times. A hundred years ago the paradigm of travel was that if you needed to go somewhere, you walked, rode a horse, or went by boat. Today you still might walk or take a boat, but the new paradigm is drive, fly, or take a train. When I took high school chemistry I was taught that every element was composed of molecules which consisted of atoms made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. We were not taught about hadrons, leptons and bosons. We were taught a little about Einstein’s theory of relativity, which itself represented a paradigm shift from earlier physics.

You get the idea. A new paradigm results when it is demonstrated that the old one no longer corresponds to the known facts or no longer works. For a year or so there has been a new paradigm of entering Lynchburg General Hospital. While they are constructing the addition, you have to enter at the Terrace level.

As if we haven’t noticed, as if I haven’t been saying in one way or another in sermons and newsletter articles and elsewhere, we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in Christianity in the United States, and probably in the world. Loren Mead, founder of the Alban Institute, a sort of religious think-tank, says this is the second paradigm shift in the history of the church.

The first paradigm, which he calls the Apostolic paradigm, was that the culture surrounding the early church was either indifferent or hostile to the church. This meant the mission of the church was to serve and convert the world. The first generations of Christians saw their task as carrying on the work of Jesus by healing the sick, caring for widows and orphans, and telling others the good news of God’s saving grace. They did this mostly right where they were, in their local communities, because it was there they found people who needed hope and healing.

This paradigm began to change in 313, when Constantine, Emperor of the Roman Empire, was converted to Christianity. He made his new faith the state religion, such that everybody became a Christian. It took a while for this to take root, but once it did, this paradigm stayed in place all over Europe for centuries. Still today, in some nations, a particular church is state-supported.

Mead calls this the Christendom paradigm. Under the Christendom paradigm the mission of the church changed. There was still some degree of caring for the needy near at hand, but now the only "heathens" were people who lived beyond the borders of the Empire. Therefore the job of the church and the state was to work together to "convert" those people "out there."

That’s the philosophy behind the Crusades of the Middle Ages. It’s the philosophy behind the missionary movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We Disciples of Christ, being good Bible-based people, looked at Jesus’ instructions to his followers in Acts and sent our very first missionary to - where else - Jerusalem! Many of us grew up hearing of the heroic efforts of our missionaries in Africa and Tibet and China. And yes, we still have missionaries in foreign countries. But today they tend to be teachers and health care workers and such. Remember that nowadays more people go to church every Sunday in Africa than in North America.

Mead says we are now in between the Christendom paradigm and a new paradigm. Stanley Hauerwas and Will Wilimon say they mark a Sunday in 1963 in Greenville, South Carolina, as a notable date in the crumbling of the Christendom paradigm. On that occasion the Fox theater was open for the first time on a Sunday. Today we generally think of the "blue laws", whereby everything was closed on Sunday because that was the day for church, as being quaint. But the fact that we think that way is another sign of the changing paradigm. We no longer believe, I hope, that the church and the government need to walk hand in hand. We no longer believe, I hope, that the only people who need help and who need to hear the gospel live in a foreign land.

The Christendom paradigm said a congregation of a thousand members was exceptionally large. Now we see congregations numbering in the thousands and tens of thousands. The old paradigm said much of the mission of the congregation was to raise money to support our overseas evangelists. Now our mission field is next door and across the street. The old paradigm said worship had to be at eleven o’clock and had to be done according to long-established ritual. Now worship is at different times and in many different ways, from long-established ritual to Christian rock music to the cowboy church.

The Christendom paradigm is giving way to something new because there are new facts in evidence. No longer should church and state march together to conquer and Christianize the rest of the world. No longer do we need to have our evangelists preaching in Africa and China. There are Africans and Chinese who do that. No longer can we assume that everybody in America is a God-fearing Christian and church-goer. The Christendom paradigm is going away because the world has changed and because the old ways no longer work for everybody.

I know what some of you are thinking. But it still works for me, I hear some of you saying. And that’s how it is during a time of paradigm shift. Rarely if ever is the old paradigm immediately and completely cut off. The old lingers for a period of time, because it does still work for some people. And we in the church need to be aware of and sensitive to that.

But neither can we ignore the fact that we are definitely in a time of shifting paradigms. And the new paradigm has not yet become clear. Will megachurches, and theater seating and Starbucks in the lobby (not the narthex) be the new paradigm? Will it be more and more technology and louder and louder music? There is already a counter movement, called the emerging church, which features a return to some aspects of more traditional Christianity, but packaged in contemporary form. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. And it may be that the new paradigm itself will be diversity - megachurches here and there, alternative worship in places, some combination of traditional and contemporary and cowboy elsewhere. Nobody knows.

But one thing looks very certain. The old forms, the Christendom paradigm, is fading away. It is fading in part because our situation is now more like that of the church in the first century than that of the twentieth century. Our culture as a whole is largely indifferent, maybe not hostile, but largely indifferent, to the church. That means the congregation is again the focal point for mission, but not just to raise funds for overseas work. We are again the front line unit for the spread of the gospel and for carrying on the work of Jesus.

Well, that’s the introduction to this sermon. But take heart, the conclusion is very brief. I have been saying that one element which seems to be important during this in-between time is that the people in healthy, vital congregations see themselves as gifted, called, equipped, and sent. We’ve already looked at the first three. We may see ourselves as having all sorts of gifts, as having been directly and clearly called by God, and being extremely well equipped. But if we do not go and actually do something in the name of Jesus, if we are not sent, the first three don’t matter.

All Christians, by virtue of their baptism, are ministers. Our ministry is wherever our passion to spread the good news meets the needs of others. Wherever our passion, that is, our gifts, our calling and our being equipped, meets the needs of others is where we find our ministry. It may be doing something for and with senior citizens. Children. Youth. Care of the environment. Helping the handicapped. The hungry. Those in need of housing. The list goes on and on. Our ministry is where our passion for a particular something joins our compassion to meet someone’s need. Gifted, called, equipped, and sent. Because we are on the front line of mission. Because the paradigms are changing. Because that’s who we are as followers of Jesus.