Movin' On Out

Today I ran across a provocative blog entry by Marcia Myers, who studied in the M.Div. program at Princeton Seminary the same time I did, and now serves the PC(USA) as director of the Office of Vocation.

Reflecting on the growing national dialogue in our denomination about the need for Presbyterians to think outside the box with respect to ways of growing the church - part of which is the much-heralded 1001 New Worshiping Communities challenge - Marcia encourages local congregations not only to reach out, but to move out.

Yes, move out.  Right into the places in our local communities where religiously unaffiliated people gather.

"If you build it, they will come" may have worked for Kevin Costner in the film, Field of Dreams, but that's about the only place it works. Far fewer people these days are looking for a church community with which to affiliate than has ever been true in the past.

They're not going to come to us. We've got to go to them.

That's one of the hardest insights for those of us who lead established churches to wrap our minds around. Most of us grew up in a world in which the church was a respected organization in society. It was natural for us to assume that church membership offers such abundant advantages that a great many neighbors in the larger community think kindly of the church and would be honored to become a part of it.

Dream on. For growing numbers of our neighbors, those days are over. And they're not coming back.

Here's Marcia's response to this new reality:

"I think about all of the energy and hours we spend in church and on internal church activities. What would it be like if Presbyterian leaders – ruling elders, teaching elders, and everyone – were turned loose to be the church instead of run it?  What would it be like if we invited our neighbors to join us in being church rather than inviting them to “come to church”?  What would it be like if we worshiped in multiuse crossroads facilities through which people (believers and non-believers) come and go regularly so that the walls between “church” and “life” were very porous?"



If she's right about that, the question then becomes: "How on earth do we lead a bunch of tradition-minded church officers to think not in terms of the congregation's glorious past, but rather its beckoning future?"

How, indeed? What do you think?

The Open Door

The 220th General Assembly is unusual in that its Sunday-morning worship was not in the familiar cast-of-thousands, stadium-style format.  Rather, local congregations of Pittsburgh Presbytery invited their ecclesiastical visitors from afar to come worship with them.

This morning, along with two others – my roommate, Paul (stated clerk colleague from Elizabeth Presbytery), and Doug (campus minister at Eckerd College) – I drove to one of the churches not on the official list.  Turns out, the only reason this church hadn’t rolled out the red carpet along with others from Pittsburgh Presbytery is that, at the time the local arrangements committee was putting the list together, this congregation didn’t have a Sunday morning service.  They used to meet only in the evening.

You’ve probably figured out by now that this bunch is “not your father’s Presbyterian Church” (to paraphrase that old car ad).  The Open Door is a self-described “missional church community.” It meets in a churchy-looking building that is, technically, no longer a church.  It’s a former Baptist Church that’s now a community center, from which the Open Door rents space on Sunday mornings.

In many ways, their worship looked and sounded familiar.  It followed the typical Presbyterian order of worship, although in a very informal way.  While there were no hymnbooks, the words projected on the wall came from traditional hymns.  The singing was accompanied by a single guitarist (I understand this isn’t always the case, and that they often sing other songs besides).  Still, this decidedly younger crowd did fine with the traditional hymns, which are obviously part of their repertoire.

The sermon by Pastor B.J. Woodworth – who on this sweltering summer day was clad, like most of his congregants, in baggy shorts and a loose-fitting shirt – was on the Kingdom of God, and was quite good.

The Open Door folks are pretty mission-oriented (true to their motto).  Today’s service included the laying-on of hands – not to ordain officers, but rather to commission several interns who are working in an “urban farming” vegetable-garden project.

The Passing of the Peace was something else altogether.  The actual “Peace-be-with-yous” were over pretty quickly, but the interlude continued for probably 10 minutes, with folks moving around to visit with one another, fetch cups of coffee, etc.  Obviously, fellowship is a big part of what this church is all about, and the boundary between worship and the rest of congregational life is pretty porous.

The biggest eye-opener for me, though, was personal. Two of the worshipers were dead ringers for our son and daughter, both twenty-somethings.  Not only did they look like Ben and Ania, they also dressed like them. (Readers who have met our kids will probably be able to pick these young adults out in these pictures.)

Knowing that, at this stage of their lives, my kids – whose names remain on the roll of the church I serve for the sake of good old dad – don’t make congregational worship a regular part of their week, it was a powerful thing for me to see their döppelgangers so actively involved here at The Open Door.

It made me wish there were an Open Door worshiping community in their neighborhoods, so I could point them in that direction.

Maybe we’ll just have to start one in Point Pleasant.

A statistical presentation at the General Assembly this afternoon reported that the average age of Presbyterians is 60 and climbing. Obviously, we’ve got to rethink some of the things we’ve long been doing in worship.

It’s becoming more and more evident to me that the future of the denomination is in church-planting efforts like The Open Door.  So, what are we waiting for?

Encouragement from Cuba

Some Monmouth Presbyterians may remember Edelberto Valdes Fleites, a pastor from the Central Presbytery of the Presbyterian and Reformed Church of Cuba.  Edelberto itinerated among churches of our Presbytery several years ago, as an International Peacemaker sponsored by the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program.  Some of us also had the opportunity to meet him in Cuba, as well, on mission trips our Presbytery conducted in coordination with the Central Presbytery.

In addition to serving as a pastor, Edelberto is currently Executive Secretary of the Central Presbytery, with which we continue to be in mission partnership.

I just saw Edelberto's name in a Presbyterian News Service article, in which he was being interviewed about signs of hope he sees for the renewal of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), growing out of the denomination's 1,001 New Worshiping Communities emphasis.  This view of our church from an overseas vantage-point is worth reading. Here's an excerpt:

What did you do in Cuba when it became difficult to be a Christian? 

First we did everything we could to give our churches tools to help them live our faith in the world and be willing to pay a price to be a Christian. We produced many theological documents about how to live in a socialist society, trying to have our church be strong in its faith in the here and now, rather than thinking about life in heaven. We discovered that if you want to be a Christian, you have to live it by actions, instead of just talking about it.

What did you feel as you read about the 1,001 new worshiping communities, which you refer to as “signs of hope”?

I felt that the Presbyterian Church isn’t wasting time, resources, and life discussing items that aren’t important. It’s as if the church decided to be an alive church, instead of a comfortable one that waits for people to come. It is good to hear of these communities that are involved with people, searching for them, walking with them and the problems they have. To me that is a sign of hope. I visited PC(USA) churches five times. Often I found buildings with lots of stuff, nice conditions to work with, but without passion for people. I could feel that.

What would you like to say to these new worshiping communities?

Be encouraged, continue on! I share with you my strength and hope, that you are becoming like Jesus, who walked on the roads many times, being close to people’s problems, giving them holistic healing.

What kind of experiences would you talk to them about?

The experiences we had here when we couldn’t talk openly about our Christians faith in our schools, jobs, or even in our families because it could be the beginning of serious problems. But we survived as a church because we decided to serve Jesus by serving the people. Not with good speeches, but with actions that declare the Christian faith is more than words.

Tell me more about the meaning of your last words “go ahead” and the exclamation points?

In the Old Testament, when Moses was with the people in front of the Red Sea with the Egyptian army behind them, God told him, “Tell my people to walk!” It sounds like a crazy phrase, but if you think about it, many times life paralyzes us. It is so good to know that God is pushing us to continue struggling even when we are surrounded by bad situations. Isn’t that the meaning of resurrection?

It's the Water, Not the Container

(Writing my annual Pastor's Report for our church's Annual Report booklet, I decided to do something a little different this year.  Because I'm describing challenges facing every congregation in these days of rapid change, this will have some interest for others beyond the Point Pleasant Presbyterian Church...)

There’s an old joke shared among those who know the Presbyterian Church well – although you can actually pull out our denomination’s name and drop in just about any other: “How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?”

“Did you say... CHANGE?!?!”

By and large, churches don’t handle change very well.  That’s because an important part of what we do in the church is preserving tradition.  Everyone knows that.  On any given Sunday, a significant portion of worshipers have chosen to come because they’re dismayed at developments they’ve seen in the world around them, and are wishing to hold fast to time-honored beliefs and values.

Who can quarrel with that?  I certainly wouldn’t.   

Sometimes, though, we confuse the packaging with the product.

Is it the tune of a familiar hymn that’s truly important, or the spiritual experience it calls to mind?  Is it the expectation that men will wear ties and jackets to worship, or is it their determination to approach God with respect and reverence?  Is it using the same sort of offering envelopes our parents used, or is it using whatever giving method is most consistent with the way we manage money today?

A thirsty traveler rescued from the desert will accept a drink of water just as readily from a tin cup as from a crystal goblet.  It’s the water that’s the thing, not the container that bears it.

It’s all about discerning the difference between the container and its contents.

During the past year, it’s become increasingly clear to me that an era of change will soon be upon us in this congregation.  We’re not unique in this.  Churches everywhere are learning not so much that change will one day come to their neighborhoods, but that it’s already arrived.

This calls for adaptations in our basic approach.  For years, churches have comforted themselves with the familiar line from the film, Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.”  The assumption behind that bit of Hollywood-manufactured folk wisdom is that large numbers of people out there are peering in our windows, looking for a church to join, and if we simply work hard and “do church” better than others, they will choose us.

There’s only one problem with that way of thinking.  Fewer and fewer people today are looking for a church to join.  Period.  Like it our not, the style of spiritual seeking in our culture has shifted from communal to individual.  It’s all about a person’s individual quest for meaning.

If a seeker encounters congenial friends along the way, so much the better – but to most, it’s not essential.  If one church “has it all,” providing a one-stop spiritual shopping destination, that’s a fine thing.  But most people won’t see it that way.  To them, grazing from church to church, picking here and choosing there, likely fits the bill much better.  And that doesn’t even take into account the explosive growth of first television, and now the internet, as spiritual destinations – bypassing most traditional bricks-and-mortar churches altogether.

The younger generations we’ve traditionally counted on to come back to church to get married, then return a while later to have their children baptized, then eventually sign up for Sunday School, aren’t showing up in nearly the numbers they have in the past.  In part, that’s simply because there are fewer of them out there: the average age at marriage has risen precipitously in the past decade or two.  But it’s also influenced by the nearly universal reality of two-paycheck households, and by the fact that it’s rare for both parents in such a household to have the same day off, and for that day to be Sunday.

The 1950s stereotype of the nuclear family of working Dad, stay-at-home Mom, and 2 or 3 kids all coming to church together – in a world where not much else is happening on Sundays – simply doesn’t exist anymore.  It was becoming less true for my own generation, the Baby Boomers, as we were growing up – and it’s certainly no longer true for our children, who are not only fewer in number, but who (because of that deferred-marriage thing) just aren’t looking for their grandparents’ church.  Not now, anyway.  Not at this point in their lives.  And, very likely, not ever.

So, “If you build it, they will come” just doesn’t make much sense anymore.

What does make sense, then?

Something we’ve always known to be true, but that we’ve somehow, in all our program-building busyness,  managed to push to the back burner: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” It’s Jesus’ “Great Commission,” Matthew 28:19-20.

Notice Jesus doesn’t say, “If you build it, they will come.”  He says, “Go out into the world, and I will go with you.  Always.”

He doesn’t even tell us where we must end up.  He just says, “Go.”

Friends, if Point Pleasant Presbyterian is going to continue strong into the future, we’ve got to figure out how to go out into the world again – and not even the world as a whole.  Our local community would be a fine start.  It’s called mission, and it’s not what you may think.  It’s not a matter of contributing money so people can do the work for us.  The sort of mission we need to discover is something we can only do ourselves.

A great theologian once wrote, “The church exists for mission as a fire exists for burning.”  Please pray that the Holy Spirit will kindle such a fire among us anew.

What do you think?  Is this an accurate description of the spiritual landscape today?  What would you add, from your experience?

Please scroll down and post a comment.  I'd love to hear from you.

Save the Last Dance for Me

Here I am in Minneapolis, a couple of days in advance of the General Assembly. The Association of Stated Clerks, our national professional organization, is having its annual meeting. It's good to meet with my colleagues from other presbyteries and synods, share war stories and generally talk with each other about how to do our jobs better.

This morning we heard a presentation by the Rev. Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly. Gradye's always got his analytical eye set on developments in the larger church. One statistic he shared with us got my attention, more than any other.

It seems the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted a research study a couple of years ago, in which they queried Americans about their religious practices. The Pew researchers found that, of those who attend religious services at least annually, half these people - 35% of the general public - "say they regularly or occasionally attend religious services at different places, aside from when they are traveling and going to special events such as weddings and funerals." That's only slightly less than the number (37%) who report attending the same house of worship consistently.

Gradye called that statistic to our attention by pointing out that, of all the people we could realistically expect to be sitting in our pews on any given Sunday, just over a third "shop around" on a regular basis, when it comes to religious services.

Wow. So much for denominational "brand loyalty." So much, even, for loyalty to the congregation of which these spiritual buffet-browsers are members (if, indeed, they're interested in settling down and joining a church at all)!

I'd be interested to know how many of the sheep in our fold at Point Pleasant regularly graze in other pastures. Sure, I know of a few cases where the husband is from one religious tradition and the wife another, and they divide their time between two different churches. That, I can understand. Sure, there are some who skip out on summer Sundays to attend the nearby summer chapel that gives tall-steeple preachers the sweet deal of a week of beach vacation in exchange for a recycled sermon from their "greatest hits" list. Some others enjoy, from time to time, wandering north a few miles to sample the old-fashioned camp-meeting flavor of Ocean Grove's Methodist conference center.

Yet, as Gradye suggested to us, these numbers go way beyond the occasional summertime dalliance. The folks the Pew researchers uncovered, in such large numbers, may typically go to one church for the music, another for the preaching, still another for the contemporary service, and so on - with some even dividing their time between a church and, say, a Buddhist meditation center.

My late mother-in-law was one of these. A former Roman Catholic and, after that, a sometime Presbyterian, she liked to sample anything and everything spiritual. She used to describe herself as a "roamin' eclectic." Her tribe may be more numerous than many of us suspect.

Does this mean we've simply got to work all the harder to build congregational loyalty, and keep it - even as we're swimming upstream against a powerful societal trend? Or, should we just throw in the towel, declare "it's not our grandfather's church" anymore, dump our classic Calvinist high conception of the church and get used to the way things now are?

There are no easy answers to questions like these, but they call to mind the lyrics of the corny old pop song:

"But don't forget who's takin' you home
And in whose arms you're gonna be
So darling, save the last dance for me."

Reaching Out Online

When the Apostle Paul set out to grow the church, he relied on the best technology available to him: papyrus and pen for letter-writing; his stentorian voice, strong enough to be heard by large crowds; and ships equipped with the most up-to-date nautical gear to transport him (and his voice) to distant cities.

We’re not so limited today, of course – which is becoming even more true as the full impact of the computer revolution becomes evident throughout the church. By some estimates, as many as 75% of church members are now online (a figure that’s likely even larger in our part of the country, with our excellent broadband and wireless connections).

The possibilities for outreach are multiplying rapidly – especially if the goal is to reach the younger generations.

Even though none of us were tapping on personal-computer keys before the late 1980s, we can now speak of successive waves of digital technology. (Ask today’s high-schoolers which is their preferred mode of communication, email or texting, and you’ll get the idea.)

Lots of books are out there, advising churches on how to communicate in this brave new world, so it’s always nice to find a good article that’s free. You can read the article, “Moving Online: Faith Formation in a Digital Age,” by Julie Ann Lytle of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts online, or click on this link to see the page on which it was originally posted (scroll down to “Latest News”).

What’s your church doing in this area that’s been working for your people? Click on the “Comments” link just below, and let us know. Let’s get a discussion going!