In today’s lesson, Jesus heals a terribly crippled woman. One would think that everyone would be overjoyed for the woman. But no, the keepers of the law ranted.
Couldn’t this miracle have waited until the Sabbath was over? Why didn’t Jesus send her away with a promise to meet up with her later, when the law allowed for miraculous healings.
Jesus sets the leaders straight. The work is sometimes more important than the letter of the law. Lighten up, folks. The woman is healed. Let’s rejoice with her—not make her feel guilty for finally finding relief from a life-long ailment.
The synagogue leaders were actually a bit embarrassed. This visiting teacher had outperformed them. They feel fenced in. To applaud Jesus was to highlight their shortcomings. They don’t know how to react. They retreat to the letter of the law.
We can be flexible in our interpretations as long as the end is a godly end. The law should serve its own purpose. Healing the sick is a good purpose—lawful on any other day of the week.
There is strength in being able to bend—to stoop down from our high positions of authority and do some hands on good in the world. Flexibility within the law can be a way of keeping the intent of the law.
Today’s object is a stalk of asparagus.
Have a few so you can demonstrate a chef’s trick.
The bottom of an asparagus stalk is often stiff and stringy. Sometimes it’s white and you can see the tough parts. Sometimes it’s not so easy to see.
The base of the stalk is not tasty and it is difficult to chew. It’s rather useless, but that’s the way asparagus comes!
Cooks are faced with a few choices:
Cook the asparagus as is and let people figure out for themselves what’s inedible.
Make an executive decision! Chop off the ends arbitrarily with a chef’s knife.
OR
Use a chef’s trick. Just snap the end of the asparagus. The worthless part of the asparagus will snap off and you will be left to serve the tender and flavorful part the vegetable—the part that bends without snapping. The flexible part is the useful part.
If you are still inclined to be a stickler for using the whole stalk of celery, you can always throw the ends in the vegetable stock. It’s up to you. Use your best judgment when doing the work of the Lord.
So there, that’s our metaphor for today’s interpretation of God’s law.
1. Direct communication and commerce between produces and consumers.
This is so prevalent that it is today’s expectation.
Several times recently I’ve witnessed customers getting rough treatment from a salesperson. They are incredulous. So are the onlookers. They are mumbling to their companions.
What gives? Haven’t they heard of customer service?
There are still a few that haven’t. Sadly, they will always be with us. For the most part, corporate leaders know that they can’t simply ask employees to cite “policy” as a way to dismiss a disgruntled customer. The disgruntled have new power. Their story will be told around the world before nightfall.
The ability of everyone to tell their story to a vast audience has changed the business world. It’s made the business world a better place, I think!
What about Church?
Church relies on storytelling. It always has! Today, the storyteller is truly powerful. The filters are gone.
Church publications were once controlled by the people who could pay the enormous expenses for printing and broadcasting. No one outside an elite circle had a chance at being heard.
The costs are negligible today. That changes the nature of storytelling.
There is tremendous power in storytelling—whether the story is benevolent or critical. The Church can no longer rely on unhappy parishioners going home to sulk unnoticed.
That puts the same burden on Church leaders as business leaders carry.
We MUST deal with the problems and sensitivities that are raised among our members.
The Church has very little practice at this!
The standard reaction from the structured Church is to cite rules (which can be fickle) and expect the faithful to obey. End of story.
One of the strongest and most traditional hierarchies in the world is having trouble with this. Roman Catholic religious leaders are beginning to respond to world problems with their own sense of right. They are pledging their obedience to God more than to man. They have the attention of national media.
Hierarchical pronouncements carry far less weight and there is really no way in the modern world to stop it. But the Church will keep trying. They’ve been in this business a very long time!
They will be slower to realize what business is already recognizing.
The average church member increasingly expects his or her voice to be heard. Christians will be far less likely to accept “Because I’m the Father” reasoning when they start to weigh important decisions.
By the way, this is the topic of next Sunday’s Gospel. Read Luke 13:10-17. Compare Jesus reaction to the Church leaders who cited rules in response to his Sunday ministry.
This very same dialog is going on in today’s Church. And that’s a good thing. A godly thing.
More to the Story
There’s more to this story however. Denominations used to put a lot of money and effort into providing resources for their member churches. They expected their constituency to buy their publications and curriculums without question.
Congregations now have easy access to publications and services from an endless array of sources—many of them FREE!
Denominations will have to compete for market share. They will have to see their constituency as reaching beyond the faithful—who may be more faithful than loyal!.
Three Redeemer Ambassadors set out on a new adventure this Sunday morning. We hadn’t been in this area for a year or so. We never plan our trips before the prior Saturday afternoon, so it’s always a surprise to us.
Redeemer is not closed. We are locked out of God’s house by SEPA Synod.
We read their Trend statistics and website thoroughly before our visit. This was very interesting to us. It is one of the many enigmas we encounter on our visits.
Redeemer was falsely represented to the Synod Assembly and in court as having only 13 members (they counted only our white members). Our situation in the courts, without any opportunity for us to witness otherwise, has been repeatedly termed “dire.” We were not operating with a deficit budget. Synod was!
Our true statistics laid beside Immanuel’s make us look rich indeed. We had an endowment three times theirs in 2009 and more than 15 times theirs in 1997. Legal fees dealing with the Synod in 1997 and 2008-2013 ate up a lot of our resources. The Synod has cost our community dearly and they aren’t finished with us yet, we suspect.
Immanuel’s membership and attendance are dropping at the same rate as most other churches. In contrast, Redeemer was growing. We accepted 52 members in the 18 months prior to Bishop Burkat’s interest in our assets. They didn’t count. “White Redeemer must be allowed to die. Black Redeemer . . . we can put them anywhere,” said Bishop Burkat to our stunned East African members—some of whom had been members for a decade. Some were born and baptized into our faith community. As one young lady commented at the time, “This synod is great on supporting Tanzanian ministry as long as we Tanzanians stay in Tanzania.”
A difference is that Immanuel has a pastor. SEPA strategy in dealing with Redeemer was to isolate us from the standard relationship of church/synod. Bishop Burkat chased two of our pastors. Bishop Almquist chased one and refused to help us find a replacement for six years.
In 2008, we had just presented a resolution to the bishop to call the pastor we had been working with successfully for seven months. After months of trying to reach the bishop to ask for an assignment without so much as a returned call, he suddenly was given an interim job in the northern frontier of the Synod. Redeemer continued to find our own leaders. One of them was with us this morning.
This was our Ambassador’s 70th visit.It amazes us that more than a third of the churches we visit are no stronger than we, but they still felt comfortable voting to take our property.
They are in the same boat. We’ll hand them an oar! We’ve been down the rapids that they are about to take!
We are very familiar with the challenges they face.
Astronomical utility bills. Immanuel is already soliciting contributions for an anticipated $10,000 winter heating bill. Ours was $8000 when we used the building daily and about $6000 when we heated the building only a couple of times a week.
Enormous insurance bills. These bills are crippling a lot of small churches— the price we pay for living in a litigious society (including church culture).
Changing demographics. We actually solved this problem!
They have a two-story educational building with a gym. We had one without the gym. It was a good source of ongoing revenue for us until SEPA Synod interfered. Redeemer was very much self-supporting.
I asked why they weren’t hosting a school. It seemed to be an obvious solution to their financial problems. The building, a member shared, isn’t handicapped accessible and they couldn’t open a school without that. They said it was just too costly to make it accessible.
If this is the only thing keeping a church from worthwhile programs that would contribute to their mission and ministry, one might think that all churches, through their hierarchical interdependence, would find a way to help older congregations solve this problem. Instead, our leaders wait for their older neighborhood churches to die so they can benefit from the spoils. They discourage the use of equity to solve problems. They offer no solutions. This relieves every church’s burden of supporting hierarchy and gives them a false sense of strength and prosperity. They sit smugly in their buildings, like spiders in their webs, waiting to assume the resources of older churches. Their buildings are up to code only because they were built more recently.
Redeemer’s school, by the way, was handicapped accessible. We were trying to renovate it to bring other things up to date, but the biggest expense in making it accessible had already been met. This is a resource to our church and community that has been squandered by SEPA.
Immanuel had just finished a week of Bible School and remnants of the busy week were still adorning the walls. About 45 children attended, the pastor said.
Yet, there were no children in church. There’s a challenge for them.
Redeemer, on the other hand, often had more children than adults in church. Many of our new members learned of our church through our six-week summer programs and day school.
The people were quite friendly. Many approached us for conversation. Even the pastor, The Rev. Gerald Faust, talked to us a little. (This is unusual!).
There were about 50 in church. They seemed to like to keep to a schedule. The organist announced that they would truncate the opening hymn, because the announcements were longer than usual.
Their Education Chair gave a talk about their various education opportunities which seemed to be extensive. They are preparing for their Fall Rally Day. We hope they can get some of those VBS families interested.
One of our Ambassadors was happy that they used the hymnal (LBW and WOV) and not the bulletin for worship. It’s his pet peeve. The hymns were all familiar. One was our Vacation Bible School hymn years ago and I still know it by heart. (Each year we memorized a different standard hymn.)
Singing was strong. A seven-member choir sang an offertory.
They sang the Lord’s Prayer at the appropriate time. It’s not the first time in our visits that the Lord’s Prayer was sung, but we have encountered a church where the pastor refused to allow the singing of the Lord’s Prayer during worship! Redeemer did this on special occasions. Maybe that’s what bugged the bishop! 😉
The sermon was about division in the church in keeping with today’s lectionary. Sometimes we think the point of this passage gets lost. Division is to be expected. We are not asked by Jesus to lie down and let adversaries walk over us. Instead, we are encouraged to be prepared. Redeemer was prepared!
The most amazing thing about the sanctuary was not noticeable until we turned around to leave. There is a beautiful mural on the rear wall, painted by a woman and member, now deceased (see above). Their own Violet Oakley! (She painted murals on the walls of the Harrisburg state capitol and on church walls in our neighborhood.) Small churches are filled with talented and passionate people.
One of our Ambassadors is an architecture buff and commented on the older Sunday School area, now a fellowship area, at the rear of the church. This was common church architecture in the 1920s and was part of the Sunday School movement. Classes would meet in partitioned sections around the perimeter and the partitions would open for a closing ceremony. It’s a good concept, but the numbers in Sunday School rarely support it any more.
We wish this good-spirited congregation the very best as they celebrate their 125 years in September. We encourage them to find a way to open a school, so they can concentrate more on mission and less on heating and insurance bills. There has to be a way!
As we left the pastor asked us to sign the guest book. We did. We assured him we are loyal Lutherans.
In today’s world we don’t quite know what to do with small. There is the temptation to crave the huge. Bigger buildings. Bigger numbers.
Big translates as accomplishment. Leaders need to see growth. When church leaders aren’t racking up statistics in their own denomination, they begin to stress ecumenical dialog. They have to achieve something somewhere even if their years of work don’t mean a thing.
The ELCA worked at this long and hard with the Episcopal Church. We finally achieved “full communion.”
This achievement means absolutely nothing to lay people. Nothing. But lay people footed the bill for all the meetings, talk and time spent by our leaders.
The achievement is a symptom of desperation. With this little shot in the arm, church leaders now have more potential pulpits to fill and a broader field from which to recruit candidates to fill our seminaries.
Even that doesn’t seem to be working very well.
We’ve sacrificed our autonomy for very little indeed. Why would anyone interested in Lutheran ministry care or want to submit their credentials to the Episcopal Church for approval?
All of this created an illusion of influence.
While all this dialog was going on, small churches in both denominations were struggling to find their way in the world of big. They were doing it pretty much alone.
Increasingly, no pastors wanted to serve them. The work was too hard. The professional recognition wasn’t what they sought.
This is frustrating to dedicated small church pastors. They often adopt a “just leave me alone to do my ministry” attitude. They don’t have much to worry about. The regional body is likely to leave them alone until they need the small congregation’s assets.
Most churches — a healthy majority, something like 80% — are small communities. Only about one or two percent are mega churches. Not many more are corporate churches. Regional bodies, who rely on congregational support for their existence, are happy when congregations can report memberships in the thousands. It means more for them!
But the body of churches who created these hierarchies consisted mostly of congregations with a few hundred members. They created these governing bodies to support them, not ignore them.
It’s funny how quickly our priorities shifted. Large churches simply didn’t exist a century ago. This modern phenomenon was a result of post-war America population boom and affluence. So much of our lives began to revolve around the car and parking lot.
It’s too soon to tell, but the large church’s role in the timeline of church history might be a cameo. Large churches are struggling, too. The last ten years have seen many of them decline by a third or half. It’s too soon to say they won’t revive, but the downward trend is a decade old now.
We are all struggling and so the attention tends to go to the larger churches. Large church ministries are applauded and noticed. They are successful at doing the same things smaller churches have always done but in plusher surroundings and with less struggles to pay the basic bills of life and with more professional services available.
Even with all this going for them, they are not cauldrons of innovation.
Meanwhile, small churches get the scraps of hierarchical attention. That’s a mistake.
The greatest potential for innovation is in the small churches. They are beehives of activity. Small churches will experiment and brainstorm our way into the future. Because we know we have to.
We are likely to do this without being noticed and with little more than condescending support from the church bodies.
Keep at it small churches. Share your ideas. Talk about your successes and don’t forget to share your failures. Failure in an important ingredient in the recipe for success.
We are going to have to support and inspire one another.
This, of course, would be made all the easier if regional bodies did not interpret incremental failures amid broader success as justifying land and asset grabs.
We are reading the book of James slowly and carefully with online teacher Jon Swanson. This great little book that almost didn’t make it into today’s Bible (church leaders didn’t care for what it said) is filled with down-to-earth wisdom.
Today we read James 3:13-17.
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition,there you find disorder and every evil practice.
But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.
What kind of wisdom do we see in our Church today? (Pastors we’ve tried to talk to have been uniform in their response: We have to trust the wisdom of the bishop.)
Lutherans believe the autonomy of a congregation is powerful and so congregations own their own property. Their ministries are controlled by lay government—not clergy. Clergy have influence but not control.
Our founding documents call this interdependence. Congregations depend on regional and national bodies to provide competent church leaders. There was a time when they depended on them for other things, too—managing foreign missions, social services, and providing educational and worship materials, advice and inspiration.
In the new information age, these roles are significantly diminished. Local parishes sense that hierarchies are less effective—a financial burden that is crippling to small church ministry. (Most churches are small.)
National church and regional bodies are totally dependent financially on local churches (not the other way around). Under their prescribed interdependence, congregations have no financial obligations to the regional body or national church. Congregations can vote with their pocketbooks.
In fact, in 2010, when there was a great doctrinal rift in the ELCA, some regional bodies promised their member churches that their offerings could be set aside and not sent on to the national church with whom they were unhappy.
It is hard for churches with hierarchical traditions to understand. But it is foundational to Lutheran thinking. Regional bodies exist to facilitate ministry.
In the world of church this is called “congregational polity.” It is protected by the founding documents of the ELCA and individual synods’ Articles of Incorporation. These are rarely read. They state:
Bishops cannot convey property of a congregation without the consent of the congregation.
Synod Assembly’s powers are limited by the Articles of Incorporation.
There is no right to seize or vote on congregational property.
Interestingly, predecessor Lutheran bodies went even further. Synods were not allowed to own property at all. They knew it would change the mission of church leaders. This is a deeply rooted concept of Lutheranism—one of the bugs in Martin Luther’s crawl.
Today Synod Assemblies are unfamiliar with their governing rules and polity. The last few years of cozying up to denominations with different polities have obscured our awareness of our own tradition. The ranks of OWLs, Older and Wiser Lutherans, are thinning. When asked by our trusted leaders to vote on another congregation’s property, we may assume we have that right. We don’t.
This happened in 2009 in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (SEPA/ELCA). They voted to take the property of Redeemer in East Falls, a small but viable congregation with an endowment fund.
Redeemer has among our members a pastor who spent a sabbatical researching the early history of the ELCA. He showed us the founding documents. They said this was wrong.
Property is not necessary to ministry, but property has advantages.
Property provides continuity from generation to generation. A physical presence is a a ministry tool. With property you can invite, teach, host, serve. With property you have a financial hedge against a few difficult years.
Redeemer has been ministering without property for four years. We have a very influential ministry worldwide, but we could do so much more locally if our property had not been taken from us.
Well, it was properly appealed, wasn’t it?
Do SEPA Lutherans realize that they never voted on our appeal in 2009? We appealed Synodical Administration. A totally different question—worded by the synod—was presented at the time of the vote. SEPA voted to take our property. Bait and switch. Read the 2009 minutes. You’ll have to dig. SEPA posts minutes from only 2010 on!
Do SEPA Lutherans realize that in 2010, SEPA Synod Council took it upon themselves to vote Redeemer closed without any input from Redeemer? Do they realize that Redeemer was never informed of this decision (which the Synod Council constitutionally has no authority to make)? We only know because we googled our name.
What’s done is done.
Question: What do our interdependent congregations do when mistakes are made?
This still lies in the hands of congregations.
Redeemer has a constitutional right to challenge the 2010 decision of SEPA Synod Council. We intend to formally make that request within the next few months but we will need a fair forum.
SEPA congregations have an opportunity to revisit their actions in East Falls.
It is not too late to make this right. It takes the courage to say, “Wait a minute. What did we do? How do we move forward?”
This seems to be beyond the scope of our Sunday morning confessions.
If SEPA Lutherans do not care about their actions in East Falls, they might think about the effect their actions or non-actions have on other member congregations.
Redeemer is visiting all the churches that voted to take our property. We’ve been to 69. Many face the same treatment within the next 20 years. With SEPA’s self-proclaimed power to seize property, fueled with persistent deficits (a $250,000 shortfall last year and $275,000 the year they took our property), there is no incentive to help small congregations. Hierarchical survival is in jeopardy. They play the “wait for them to die” game.
Without responsible clergy and involved congregations, SEPA government has the power to rule by intimidation. They even seem to enjoy it.
The Redeemer situation has proven that they are not afraid to abuse power. They use their protected status and the secular courts to bypass their constitutions. And while SEPA clergy and congregations looked the other way, hoping to not be touched, the courts have changed Lutheran polity. Now, SEPA congregations own their property only as long as SEPA says so. As Bishop Burkat has written in reference to the land in East Falls—it’s the property formerly occupied by Redeemer. In her mind, we never owned it.
The churches of SEPA could have stopped this. They still can.
Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
The gospel this week is kind of tough to understand. Read it a few times and you may conclude, “I guess you had to be there.”
Jesus speaks with tired frustration to his disciples. The Crucifixion is looming. He can see it coming. He’s been preparing his followers, but He tires of their inability to understand what is so clear to Him.
He is apprehensive. Why aren’t they?
So Jesus take a few desperate stabs at preparing the faithful for the difficult days that He knows are coming not just in His life but in theirs (and ours) as well.
He delivers an unpleasant message.
What? The church will not be a group of happy campers forever?
Here’s a possible way to demonstrate the various points that Jesus touches upon.
Have a young person come forward wearing some sort of sports gear. Just a helmet can work—or a baseball cap and bat. Choose a sport that your congregation relates to— football, baseball, hockey. Make sure that your model appears ready to play. That’s why a helmet is better than just a jersey. Idle fans wear jerseys. You want to create the sense that your guy or gal is ready for action.
We’ll use football as an example.
Ask your people to identify what they might expect when they see someone wearing a football helmet.
Answers might be fall weather, cheerleaders, rough talk, hot cider in the stands. Surely someone will say something about the battle they hope to witness. This is your opening to talk about teamwork and division, peace and competition. You can talk about the pressures of competition and the mission of winning. Mention the fear of defeat or even the fear of pain. And there is always the hope of a glorious victory.
All of this was probably on Jesus’ mind when He spoke the words of today’s gospel.
You can continue this discussion as long as you like. Lead its direction. Talk about strategizing within the team and the tensions that might result. Jesus is telling us that working together can be hard!
Foreshadow next week’s lesson and talk about the umpires and referees (judges).
We know all of this will happen from the moment we see players appear in uniform.
And if we don’t, Jesus wants to know why we can’t see what’s right in front of us.
By the way, how is your church’s teamwork these days?
Today our Ambassadors set out early to visit a namesake church, Redeemer, in Bucks County.
One of our Ambassadors passes this church often to visit family and noticed over the years that they recently improved their property by building a new sanctuary.
The small sanctuary appeared to be reasonably full with at least 70 worshipers, although we didn’t really count. We were sitting toward the front.
They are a congregation that has just come through a transitional period. Not much was said but we sensed that they are emerging from a difficult time. They seem to be happy with the pastor they are calling. From all appearances it seems to be a good match. The Rev. Nathan Krause is probably the youngest pastor we have encountered in our 69 visits. It is rare to encounter a pastor under 50. I can recall only one or two others. We hope that his years of service are a breath of fresh air for the whole church and not just at Redeemer, Jamison! He will be installed in September.
Post VBS Sunday
Today’s service was feeding off a very successful Vacation Bible School week. The talk reminded me of the atmosphere of Bible School from my childhood. There were about ten children under 12 in worship this morning. There were about 50 involved in their five-day Bible School. Most impressive, though, was that nearly as many adults had been involved in the event as was evident in singing the VBS songs at various points in worship. It was a joint congregational effort. The oldsters were helping lead the youngsters in the songs with hand gestures. There were also a good number of youth and most (about five) were involved in leadership roles as ushers, acolytes or communion assistants.
In general, the atmosphere was friendly and happy, similar to the experience we had in Secane a few weeks ago. It’s worth mentioning because it is not that common that people seem to be engaged and open with everyone present, including visitors.
They have two music directors who jointly led some of the singing. One specializes in a bell choir which provides music about once a month. The other is organist/pianist. This morning they pumped the congregation up with upbeat Bible School songs. One man called out during announcements that a men’s chorus was going to rehearse after church. We haven’t run into that before!
Redeemer was close to the Keystone State Boychoir which had our young men singing through high school. It’s a good concept! Sounds sexist to modern ears, but the fact is men like to sing together and they are more likely to participate in mixed choruses throughout their lives if they have a tradition of male group singing. Good luck!
This church has an excellent chance at thriving through the next generation.
Pastor Krause led a very good children’s sermon which was not limited to tots but included all elementary and younger. That’s good and we’ve seen that only a couple of times before. The tots learn from the older children. He did not use an object (Yea!) but engaged the children in talking about the message which reinforced the Bible School theme.
More court actions took place this week and more are expected. It isn’t enough that the Synod claimed our property and all our congregation’s assets — now they want punitive damages for our members who led the congregation in a successful attempt at “being strong.” We grew our ministry while we were locked out of our house of worship while we were shunned by almost ALL the other churches in SEPA Synod. We did this with no budget and no property. (SEPA thinks we are dead.)
We were supposed to die by edict. We are still alive and stronger in mission than ever! We took our ministry on-line and reach 1000 readers from all over the world every week! We come up first in the search engines for several topics! Still we go unrecognized by SEPA leaders who talk about innovative ministries but don’t know one when they see one—because Redeemer doesn’t look like the church THEY think we should be—and we had this endowment while they have (still) a significant shortfall in funding.
So the message of the day was difficult for us to sit through — although we know it was well-intended. I fought walking out to tell the truth. We are just looking for a little practicing of what we preach from our sister congregations.
We know it’s not easy. We’ve lived under synodical aggression for the past SIX years.
I must confess that the children’s sermon was so upsetting to me that I didn’t hear much of the adult sermon. The other Ambassadors discussed it over brunch. All I remember is the reference to Hebrews.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Nehemiah Remembered
On the way out of church we passed many of the posters from Bible School. The first featured Nehemiah. The story of Nehemiah resonates with Redeemer, East Falls. Nehemiah’s worst enemies were church leaders who didn’t want to see Nehemiah, on his own, with no organizational sponsorship (except that of a foreign king), succeed in rebuilding the temple walls. After all, church leaders had failed to lift a stone in decades. Nehemiah’s story, with all its conniving and intrigue is Redeemer’s story. Read it!
A good portion of the book is a list of names of all the people who had anything to do with rebuilding the walls. Skip over the names if it helps you get to the meat of the story, but when you do, think about how nice it is that someone recorded their ministries! Thousands of years later, they are remembered — long after anyone knows how to pronounce their names! And long after the walls they carefully built were plundered again.
Ministry is an ongoing struggle! How well we know!
Today, as we Redeemer Ambassadors head out on our 69th church visit, I came across this. I suspect I found this at this link in my snippet folder where I cut and paste things for some unknown future use.
Thomas E. Frank, a seasoned observer of church life, writes about turning to ethnographic practices of listening as a way to escape what he perceived to be market-driven perspectives prevalent in church-improvement literature. He found most of that writing to be largely prescriptive, tending to depict a congregation “as a franchise in a service industry, completely missing the remarkable imaginative life of a community of persons who stay together over time, practicing a faithful way of life together.” As an alternative approach, he favors a disposition toward ethnography that “honors this particular congregation, the one right in front of me, the one I am serving.”
Ethnography is a descriptive act that is not for the sake of sharing best practices of exemplary congregations alone, but, more significantly, to help readers see their own contextfrom a new angle. “The soul thrives on contemplating difference,” Frank writes, “for if I see your place and symbols clearly, I can see my own more distinctively as well.” In addition, he says, “Imagination is sparked by the juxtaposition of opposites, the collision of difference.” Laying distinct worlds side by side can sometimes allow an unexpected view to emerge.
Our visits reveal remarkable similarity from church to church. The similarity is often in the leadership. The personality in the congregation is often revealed in interactions with the people.
That’s also where most churches come into conflict.
Deep down inside most pastors want to have successful ministries that fit some sort of imagined ideal. The people will love their sermons and eagerly volunteer to do whatever leadership determines needs to be done. Parents will bring their children to church-sponsored programs and events. Church council leaders will listen to a pastoral report with waiting accolades. The neighborhood will want to come and join this wonderful community that centers on their leadership. Who wouldn’t!
Lay people populate this imaginary world. But they are real, live people—not gingerbread men. They have their own sense of what an ideal church would be. Some of their ideas are shaped by long association with Church. Increasingly, the church serves a world that is unfamiliar with its teachings and customs.
The temptation is to take these groups of people called congregations and tell them what’s what. Mold them. Whip them into congregational shape—all the easier for the next pastor, any pastor, to work with.
Result: conformity.
This is a market-driven approach. Create a product (church) and sell it.
What happens with this approach in the market? All IPods are the same. You might have a choice of black or white! What an IPod can do will soon be copied by every other manufacturer of similar products.
And so churches become rather cookie-cutter in nature. It doesn’t matter where you go to church. You’ll be limited in your expression of faith by the structure of conformity.
More’s the pity. When things are all the same, only people who are comfortable with “same” fit in. That excludes a host of people.
Continuing the quote:
Even though you may be a leader in your congregation, you should learn to occasionally practice being an observer, listening closely to the people in your congregation, at times withholding your immediate response in order to slowly and carefully tease out a full description of another person’s way of seeing things. As Frank says, “Paying attention is . . . a spiritual discipline that not only centers one’s life but opens the way to entirely unanticipated dimensions of experience.”
Perhaps you will find yourself stepping back for a moment to really pay attention to a person who typically drives you crazy. Instead of retreating to a time-honored response, you may just pause, listen, and turn to wonder about the story that lies beneath a strongly held belief about the salary of the youth pastor or the designated parking space for ushers. You may even go poking around to see if you can unearth the story. In given a listening ear, the story may release its power into a form more accessible to being used by God’s Spirit.
Join Bishop Ruby Kinisa as she visits small churches "under cover" to learn what people would never share if they knew they were talking to their bishop.
Undercover Bishop will always be available in PDF form on 2x2virtualchurch.com for FREE.
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For bulk copies, please contact 2x2: creation@dca.net.
Contact Info
You can reach
Judy Gotwald,
the moderator of 2x2,
at
creation@dca.net
or 215 605 8774
Redeemer’s Prayer
We were all once strangers, the weakest, the outcasts, until someone came to our defense, included us, empowered us, reconciled us (1 Cor. 2; Eph. 2).
2×2 Sections
Where in the World is 2×2?
On Isaiah 30:15b
Be calm. Wait. Wait. Commit your cause to God. He will make it succeed. Look for Him a little at a time. Wait. Wait. But since this waiting seems long to the flesh and appears like death, the flesh always wavers. But keep faith. Patience will overcome wickedness.
—Martin Luther
The Letter of the Law
