7. The 1,700 Year Wedgie - Reflection by DS Catie

As I have gone around to churches for Charge Conferences, I have asked the question: if something happened tomorrow to all your church buildings, would you still be ___ church?  In every case, the group gathered together says yes.  The importance of that is not that they say yes, but the experience of saying yes, because in that moment they are affirming something important about who they are and who they can become, that they are more than their buildings. 

 

I have preached from Acts 2 more than any other text.  That description of the early church community says something quite tangible about what it means to be the beloved community, that is not about where we meet but who we are.  I have been on my own journey in trying to imagine that.  Some of us are working on a project that is classified as a new church start, but it is about reaching 20 somethings, and is not defined by a place.  I find that hard, as the steward of all things tangible in the district, to imagine a ministry without imagining a place, but what a great faith journey that is!  My sons play Xbox live, and I am aware that there is a sense of community when they gather friends, old and new, to play whatever the game is of the moment.  I can hear them as they talk, and for them, they gather with people they’ve never met, by my definition of having met face to face, and yet they meet in this video community; they get to know one another on a certain level, they experience something together, and it is community.  Not the beloved community, but community, and it pushes for me on the concept “church suddenly became a place you went to instead of a people you belonged with.”  My sons both have felt they belonged with the people at church, and those ties remain even as they go off to live somewhere else; I am not always so sure how they experience God in the midst of that.

 

The book asks us to wrestle with “what are the personal tensions you are processing as the church is transitioning from the center of culture to the margins of culture?  What tensions will this cause in most churches.”  I know all about the tensions it causes in most churches, and we can either circle the wagons until the last man or woman is standing, or we can open up, change the direction we are facing, reach out from the margins into the center of culture, redefine who we are as a church or the church and look for how we can be more than our buildings. We can take seriously the community of Acts and have that help shape and define who we are, what we do, and who we become.  It may take us out of our comfort zone, actually it is guaranteed to, and pushes us to reexamine what we know to be true, and yet there are core beliefs that remain to give enough stability that it is really not all that strange.  This last Saturday, 5 or 6 churches in the SF Valley  gathered together to put together Health kits for Haiti, over 1000, and we were the beloved community in that moment together; there were people there I never exchanged names with, but we belonged.  We were “defined as a people who”, and not “a place where.”

 

Chapter 5 (part: B “Moving Forward”)

From Stan Ferguson

In Chapter 5, in the section entitled “Moving Forward,” the author talks about a pastor who left behind his large church pastorate in order to minister to a couple of families in inner city San Francisco.  Referring to this pastor as well to as his daughter said, “Such people are all humble; they don’t rely on past experience or present ministry posts to define them.”  How do we compare?  Are we eager to get to Annual Conference to compare size?  For the large church pastor friend of the author, he did not settle on the large church as his goal for life.  “He didn’t talk about church,.  Instead he kept wrestling with the Kingdom of God.”

You can pastor a large church like a high powered CEO; but if you have not loved, you are nothing.  (I Corinthians 13:14)

How many of us are willing to reduce or eliminate our compensation packages and “start all over.”  Is the large church pastor willing to go to the small church, where with the experience of the past he can help the small church of the present see the Kingdom of God?  

The concept of working out of Starbucks like a branch office to meet new people within the community is very intriguing; but for the pastor who is over extended, how likely?  For the author,  he interpreted it as a “personal quest to be able to spend time with people outside the church.”  You know the ones, tax collectors, sinners and prostitutes.  All this because he “longed for something more.”

Who knows, maybe it’s time to forget our press and read how we are to humble ourselves like Christ (Philippians 2:8)  

5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
 6Who, being in very nature[a] God,
      did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
 7but made himself nothing,
      taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
      being made in human likeness.
 8And being found in appearance as a man,
      he humbled himself
      and became obedient to death—
         even death on a cross! 

 

4. U-Haul

I went to my new appointment full of hope and excitement.   I felt called to this congregation and was excited about what I knew of them. 

Of course,  you know how these things go: things turned out differently than I expected.  The church was in crisis mode and had been for a while.  Leadership was unsteady.  Staff was most all gone.  Bills couldn’t be paid the month after I got there. 

But I didn’t want to see it.  Because the one thing I didn’t want to do in my next church was a revitalization.  But here it was and I was faced with the question, OK so now what am I going to do?

I share this because sometimes we think, if I go to another church things will be better there, it won’t be so hard, the hours won’t be so long and people will be more friendly.  I do understand that there are bad matches between clergy and laity but in general I am a firm believer in the idea that the best congregation you are ever going to get is the one you are in now.   So learn to love them and join with them in listening for God.

Change is brutal.  It is much easier to just do what we always have and pray there will be enough for some young pastor in 10 years to turn around.  But my sense is there won’t be and those of us who are willing need to do this work now. 

Even if you have a lot of Milos and Mittens—.(I loved that story…). 

Even if you have no idea what to do first.

Even if you don’t think you have it in you.

So….what are the essentials needed to turn the church toward relevant, life changing discipleship?  What do we need to let go of in our own ministry to put our attention on these essentials?  What will you do to care for your own soul in the midst of the hard work of change?