2×2 has been in steady contact with the Christian church in Pakistan for nearly two years. Today they sent pictures of the carnage in one of their churches. 85 dead. 150 wounded.
They are asking for practical help: food, clothing, medicine. I asked for specifics of how help could be sent and am waiting for an answer. Look for details in a later post.
(Also, our friends in Kenya are only a couple of miles from the mall siege.)
Let me make a bold statement. The problem with transformational change is leadership.
Transformational change is ALWAYS the result of leadership—usually the dynamic leadership of just one person.
In the church, we look for that leadership to come from the ranks of clergy. That hasn’t been happening in recent decades. With few exceptions (our apologies, Pastor Muhlenberg) it may never have been the case.
Church leaders tend to be suspicious and get territorial when leadership comes from the ranks of laity. Although Lutherans believe in the equality of clergy and laity, we don’t often practice it.
Synods in particular get really nervous when lay leaders show leadership that isn’t following clergy. In our experience, they plot to remove their influence. That’s supposed to make it easier for pastors but it just results in distrust. Everyone can see what happens to lay people who exercise leadership. So no one leads.
The Nature of Leadership
Leadership is not one person issuing orders to a loyal and obedient army of followers. Leadership —especially transformational leadership— is usually one passionate person who is tenacious enough to reach the heart and soul of other leaders. Those leaders can then organize pockets of leadership known as a movement. These movements can empower the longed-for transformation. It doesn’t really matter who takes credit. We can be sure it won’t be the laity.
Do some research and find out where the Vacation Bible School and Sunday School movements got their starts. Here’s a hint: it wasn’t by clergy. In fact, Sunday Schools often had a governance entirely independent of the rest of the church. Separate bank accounts. Separate officers.
It is time to look anew at religious education. It is good time because education in general is in the throes of reinvention.
The State of the Church Leadership
Here’s what we have learned from our 73 Ambassador visits.
Most of the people attending worship today are over 50 years old. This is true in large and small churches. Many (most in our experience) have no children present in worship. Some have a few very young children. Older children, youth and young adults are scarce. Even the larger churches we have visited have confirmation classes that are half or a third the size of 40 years ago.
These are very important statistics to any denomination that wants to still be around in 20 years. Yet they are not recorded in the ELCA trend reports. There are racial breakdowns but no age statistics. There are worship statistics but no education statistics.
Congregations are not the only thing aging. Most of the pastors we encounter are also over 50 years of age. In 73 visits, we have encountered only about five pastors under 50. A growing number are second and late career students, which means that they are less experienced in church leadership and more inclined to be followers.
2×2 is concerned about the state of our church (the one which kicked our statistically young congregation out the door).
Where Do We Look for Change?
The proposed remedies to decline have been remarkably similar and ineffective. Adult education became adult forum. Sunday classes became limited to ages 10 and under. Vacation Bible School is now limited to about ten hours of instruction, again for the very young. Confirmation is often a right of passage that often ends the young person’s religious training. We try to interest youth by joining forces to create Youth Ministry. The involvement in these programs is heaviest among suburban youth who have parents to cart them around. City youth NEED neighborhood efforts as youth are often on their own for transportation.
As brilliant as our young Lutherans may be, there is only so much ten-year-olds can implement into their lives that will carry them to their senior years. Faith must be nurtured.
Every year, we lose more of the knowledge base among the laity that was fostered 40 and 50 years ago. Increasingly churches are working with people with no religious tradition or a weak religious tradition and being led by less experienced professional leaders as well.
Krypton Community College
2×2 is cooperating with such an effort as hosts of Krypton Community College which holds it first meeting October 1. We will be one of 10,000 groups meeting on this day in this ambitious experiment, a project that grew from the passion of marketer Seth Godin. If you think that’s an odd place to look for thought leadership consider the influence of the Kahn Academy, now backed by Bill Gates.
We hope our involvement in this experiment will lead us to a long overdue renaissance in religious education.
The failure of the modern church may very well lie in the failure of its ability to teach.
It’s a big problem! We are going to start talking about it next Tuesday with others with a general interest in education—not necessarily religious education—to see if we might find some answers. You are welcome to join us. Drop us a line for details. creation@dca.net
Next Tuesday, October 1, at 7 pm, 2×2 will be one of 10,000 hosts of Krypton Community College.
This is an experiment in education organized by internationally known thinker and entrepreneur, Seth Godin.
Tuesday will be the first session of an initial four-week course. The class or session will be about an hour and will discuss a few of Seth’s writings related to education. That’s the starting point. We’ll see together where this goes.
Seth plans to follow up with more four-week courses centered on works other than his own.
2×2’s interest, of course, is in religious education or faith education, although participants in our group will be coming from many different backgrounds and will add their own experiences to the topic.
It’s high time the world of religion interacted with others!
If you are local and want to participate, you are welcome. Jot us a note and we’ll get you details. creation@dca.net
There are more scenes in the story than most parables. We have the earthbound scene featuring the unnamed rich man and the named poor man, Lazarus. But the story moves to the afterlife with Lazarus rewarded in heaven and the rich man suffering eternally in hell. The story is not complete, however, without the depiction of dogs!
We’ll start with a detail from one depiction.
Artists have great latitude in depicting the story.
Here are two paintings from two artists, both born in Antwerp and active as artists in the early seventeenth century. One is by Bartholomeus van Bassen. He was an architect. You can guess which painting is his! The other is by Frans Francken. You see, artists can’t help but include themselves in paintings! The story by van Bassen’s brush is a vehicle for his love of architecture.
One hundred years earlier, Albrecht Altdorfer painted this story in amazing and bizarre detail. Find the monkey. Also note how perspective often is used to indicate importance. The rich man and his wife are so much larger than the servants even though they are in the background. You can spend some time exploring this painting . . . and that’s what the artist had in mind.
This more modern depiction concentrates on the climax of the story.
Here’s a link to the Huffington Post’s artistic slide show of abandoned churches around the world. Pennsylvania has more than it’s fair share within this collection.
The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America could create its own slide show of their locked and deteriorating houses of worship.
This parable is one of the most memorable to me from my childhood. I had an old Sunday School paper given to me by an elderly church member that showed poor Lazarus with the dog under the table. The image spoke to me and I thought a lot about this story with its other rich images—the rich man enduring the agony of Hades and the poor man seated comfortably with honor in heaven.
The definition of a parable, taught to us as children, is “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.”
The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is a story about how we value wealth. When weighed against the danger of losing our place in God’s kingdom, how important are our possessions?
That’s a big subject. How do we cover such vast territory with an object lesson?
Let’s consider one of the most valuable things in the world—something we are accustomed to having provided to us for free.
Drinking water.
Our object is the $2 bottle of (name your favorite brand) water.
Bottling individual portions of water for sale changed the way we view and value everyday drinking water.
Water was once provided for free in restaurants. You didn’t have to ask. Water was placed before you. Now you not only have to ask, you ask at the risk of the upsell. “Would you like seltzer water or (name the brand)?” You can sense the disappointment when you say—tap water will be fine.
I once stayed in a hotel where they had in the room’s minibar $6 bottles of water imported from Scandinavia. H2O is H2O, still one of my companions just had to sample it.
Since water is now sold in easy to carry containers, you see them everywhere. Whoever cleans your sanctuary is liking to collect a few bottles from the pews—unheard of 20 years ago.
Professional performers who might have hidden a cup of water to wet their whistle between numbers, position a bottle of water in plain sight. Product placement!
Teachers report that students feel they must have water with them in the classroom. “Stay hydrated” is a popular mantra. “Very important” usually follows the advice.
The offer of water was once an expectation of hospitality. When I was a child, hiking in the country, it was not unusual to be offered water as we passed a farmhouse.
Water fountains were once frequent appointments in public buildings. It was so important to all human beings that even if we didn’t want to share, we provided separate fountains for the people we were looking down upon — the Lazaruses of our day. “Whites only” or “Colored” signs were attached.
We have a new set of nuisances or problems all because of bottled water (including disposing of the used bottles). Because it now has a measurable value to us, we now think about water very differently. The common tin cup hanging by the well is no longer good enough for anyone.
Owning our bottles of water makes us part of our culture. We feel rich and accepted when we are always armed with H2O. As common as water is, we have made it a commercial status symbol.
That immediately affects the way we share. We are tempted to keep our purchased bottles for ourselves. Let everyone buy their own bottles of water.
And yet, water is something none of us can live without.
How important is it for us to have water? How important is it for us to reach heaven?
The rich man is begging for the opportunity to leave Hades for just one day to warn his brothers to share their water.
One Sunday, a year after Redeemer members were locked out of the Lutheran Church, one of our members commented in frustration during our fellowship after house worship.
“I just don’t understand why they want a church without us in it.”
That comment sparked our Ambassador visits. “Let’s go ask them” was the response.
The commenter was Marilyn. That was three years ago.
Marilyn Popp loved being a Redeemer Ambassador. She truly enjoyed the church visits, especially the history of the congregations and the church architecture.
Marilyn was a retired city school teacher. She had intentionally followed a difficult calling. She wanted to work in the city schools from the moment she entered West Chester State College. She taught in Philadelphia’s roughest neighborhoods during the most turbulent years in urban America. She often talked with affection of the children who had passed through her life and was always delighted when she encountered a former student.
Her experience in the toughest schools gave her a commanding presence. Her voice carried. There was no such thing as a whisper. She had a sense of how things ought to be done and insisted that when we enjoyed fellowship after church in a restaurant that she personally place the tip in the waiter’s hands.
Marilyn was frugal, spending as little as possible on herself. We were all surprised when she returned from a trip recently with a new dress. She justified the extravagance. “It was made in America, it was the only one in the store and it happened to be my size.” It was certainly meant to be!
Marilyn came to Redeemer in 1997. She and her husband attended a concert we hosted at holiday time. Her home church, Jonathan Pritchard, had already closed. Unless something changes in the ELCA that’s what city Lutherans have to look forward to — one church closure after another. It’s sad enough when congregations agree to close. It’s tragic when the decision is forced on them. It causes all city Lutherans to weigh just how much they are willing to put into churches that can be seized at any moment.
She immediately felt at home at Redeemer and joined after her husband’s sudden death shortly thereafter.
She brought with her a passion for Victorian hymns. Most hymns are Victorian hymns. She especially admired Blind Fanny Crosby. Blessed Assurance.
She had her own mission project. 2×2 purchases more daily devotional booklets than we need. Marilyn mailed them out quarterly to friends—always with a note. She also had a group of people, many much older than she, whom she visited, took to events and prayed. She was delighted to learn the Lord’s Prayer in German, so she could recite it with one such friend.
Despite being one of our older members, she embraced the use of Swahili in worship and often climbed the stairs into our sanctuary saying Asante sana Jesu.
Every offering she gave to one of the churches we visited included her handwritten note: From Redeemer. As far as we know, all the churches accepted them. We must exist!
Marilyn was a worrier. She worried about things big and small. One of our friends wrote, “I’ll always remember Marilyn as a worrier with a smile.” She still worried that the SEPA Synod might allow our pipes to freeze or that the lights would be left on. She longed to once again enjoy worship in our church home. She was not one of the members of Redeemer targeted personally in SEPA’s lawsuits but she fearlessly attended all the hearings.
Marilyn has no more worries. The mother of the Redeemer Ambassadors died today.
Funny, the lights in the church were left on.
Redeemer, with no official pastor to call, rushed to her home to comfort her daughter. We are still a church, you see.
It’s at times like this that we, the people of Redeemer, are the most angry and that we feel the hurt of our exclusion from our church the most. It’s at times like this that we are most aware that we live in a church without a conscience and a very selective heart.
Marilyn should not have spent the last four years locked out of her church. Our people should be able to rally in our own neighborhood to comfort her family and celebrate her life.
But we have to make do—alone.
Every minute we are not thinking of Marilyn and her family we will be thinking about all the churches that couldn’t care less about the people they are hurting—all the churches that have spent four years waiting for someone else to do something.
Rest in peace, Marilyn. You were a great ambassador.
Too bad—we still don’t know why other Lutherans want a church without us in it.
Wish we had an answer. Meanwhile, put in a good word for us!
Redeemer’s Ambassadors took a Sunday off. We each had personal plans for the day.
Today I was entertaining one of my oldest friends.
She is visiting Philadelphia for only the third time in her life. It was her first visit outside of center city. She came to attend a four-day meeting being held in East Falls.
Having her as a house guest was a little intimidating. Her mother had been my home economics teacher in high school. But my fears that my house-keeping and hospitality would not be up to snuff were groundless.
We met when we were twelve, when my father, a Lutheran pastor, changed parishes. We sang together in church and in school—girl’s trio and choir. We were friends through college. We hadn’t seen each other in more than a couple of passing encounters in nearly 40 years.
We lived in a small town—farming, coal and steel country. We were friends in both church and school. Many of our school teachers were church members, so the lines were always blurry.
We walked a lot of East Falls together during her four-day visit. We walked through the parks, along the Schuylkill River and Wissahickon Creek, the various campuses (college and high school) and I showed her the churches. Her meetings were being held at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, the church Bishop Burkat helped in ministry at the same time she was trying to take our property. I showed her our locked building. The lights were left on, so it was easy.
As we talked with people we met during her visit, she still identified me as their preacher’s daughter. Some things in life I’ll never be able to shake.
We attended a performance at the playhouse where Redeemer began its ministry in 1891 and where we now hold Sunday morning worship. My friend worked in summer stock theater, so she was interested to see the local theater club. We talked with fellow playgoers. Whenever we encounter anyone from East Falls, the topic of Redeemer comes up. Some things SEPA will never be able to shake!
My friend commented at the sense of community she experienced in East Falls.
We are that. Our people and our history mean something to us. That’s something the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America cannot understand.
For them, East Falls is all about how much money they can get from us. Our people—our history—our passion for ministry—are obstacles to them. We are just in the way.
Pity!
Here’s an idea. We can take SEPA representatives on a similar tour. We’ll walk you around our town. We’ll show SEPA where our members live and where we got our start. We’ll share our history and our personal faith journeys and what has happened to our members since we were locked out of the Lutheran Church. We’ll introduce you to the people SEPA has taken advantage of. We’ll share our mission plan—yes, we still have one!
Maybe then, you’ll know something about us. Maybe you’ll see us as people, fellow children of God. Maybe that will prompt some right actions and justice in the Lutheran Church.
The foundation of interdependence is the local congregation. From this foundation comes the talent and resources that support the second interdependent entity (the regional body or synod) and the third interdependent agency (the national church). Entities 2 and 3 cannot exist without Entity 1. Entity 1 can exist without the others, but relationship with 2 and 3 is expected to make the local church stronger and more effective.
Regional clergy often feel a loyalty to the third expression, the National Church. Are they part of the regional expression? Are they a branch of the national expression? Are they beholding to their regional leader? Are they most loyal to the leaders and congregation who issue their call?
There is spillover in the role of the regional leadership—especially the office of bishop. They are elected by and serve the regional churches, but they are close to the national expression. A sort of old boys’ and girls’ club. They know each other and regard each other, but have no clue what they as individuals are doing in their 65 little corners of the United States. Since the highest authority in the ELCA is the regional Synod Assembly, they never find out. At some point the ELCA should review this. It is proving to be a bad idea. Leaders are taking advantage of this weaknesses for their own enrichment.
Lay leaders don’t fit into this structure except on paper. Our constitutions provide the laity considerable control over local ministry—the first of the three expressions and the one that funds the other two!
In practice, regional bodies are taking on powers to unilaterally strip local authority at whim. There is no effective way to check this. Synod Assemblies get their information from the synod office. They don’t have any way of investigating issues independently. In our Region, they haven’t even tried. Their decision in our case was based primarily on gossip—generated by SEPA leaders.
But still, the management of the local congregation is in the hands of the lay people. That’s the way it’s supposed to be in Lutheranland. Lay leaders stand between the people in the pew and the long arms of the clergy which branch from the national expression.
The work of the middleman is to inspect and recover. If your restaurant gets lousy fish from the boat, you don’t get to serve it and proclaim garbage in garbage out. No, your job is to inspect what you get, and if necessary, change it.
That’s a big responsibilty. When we get lousy guidance from the regional or national office, we have an obligation to say “Wait a minute.”
Lay people must constantly inspect the information passed down to them—double check it, so to speak. We cannot trust that clergy have our interests in mind. It’s been clear in far too many cases that they have their own interests or the regional body’s interests in mind.
Many lay people individually are more than qualified to ask the right questions. Some lay people need to learn these skills. A responsibility of lay people is to make sure their congregations foster these skills among future generations.
Fostering an environment where questions are expected and encouraged is a challenge. Management is always tempted to believe that things run most smoothly when there are no challenges. They are wrong. Challenges, ably and readily met, make a wonderfully creative environment. We have a way to go before we achieve this.
It doesn’t take much for wrong teaching to take hold and change the character of the whole church.
Our Ambassadors occasionally come across such wrong teaching. One pastor preached to the people that they shouldn’t turn to God in prayer for little things that they can do themselves. Save God for the big things, she preached.
That began to resonate but it isn’t scriptural. It sure sounds good. But it is wrong. God is God. He wants us to come to Him in prayer. Our biggest problems are a hangnail to Him. It is somewhat presumptuous to believe that we have ANY power that is not gifted to us through Him. We need to stay in touch with God so that we remember that!
Wrong thinking can spread to wrong acting. We are seeing this today in the mis-interpretation of powers.
Bishops, aided by their synod councils, who together face economically trying times, look for answers. The answers they are finding are often outside their governance. If there is no one to point this out, they can help themselves at severe harm to others and their own mission. Get away with it once, the second, third and fourth times are so much easier—even acceptable for the lack of challenge.
What do we, as part of an interdependent church, do when one interdependent expression becomes predatory against another interdependent expression?
The only thing that can stop this is knowledgeable and independent thinking among both clergy and lay people.
That’s the challenge of today’s church.
We’ve been to Synod Assembly. We’ve seen pastors walk in, register as required, and walk out, leaving the decisions to others to make — right or wrong.
We’ve been to Synod Assembly where no one asks questions. No reason to. The answers have been laid out for the Assembly to rubber stamp.
We’ve been to Synod Assembly where serious and costly mistakes have been made because delegates follow when they should be leading.
The work of the middleman (lay leadership) is to inspect and recover. It’s a big job but somebody’s got to do it.
It’s actually the laity’s constitutional role. It’s supposed to be shared with clergy, but that hasn’t been effective. They need their jobs!
Let’s start doing a better job. It may be tough at first. It certainly hasn’t been easy here in East Falls, where the dangers and pitfalls are on display for all churches to see. (You’re welcome!)
If we don’t do our job under the grand scheme of Lutheran interdependence, it will all fall apart. Laity are Lutheran inspectors—the best safeguard to—
Leadership in the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)
I remember an encyclical of sorts published about 14 years ago by our synod, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod (SEPA) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). The message was circulated by Bishop Almquist, who had just been reelected in a very close race. The message quoted a letter from a pastor congratulating him on his reelection.
It read something like this: “We elected you to lead, so lead.”
I considered this at the time to be a kind statement in support of the bishop. But still, it raised lingering questions. Surely, he had many congratulatory notes. What was the bishop trying to tell us in sharing this one?
Was it on the order of “See here! I’m the bishop and you will listen—and at least one person agrees with me on this!”
Was it an invitation to the faithful to become engaged? If so, how?
Why was this personal note of congratulations being distributed to everyone?
Actually, there was something a little unsettling in the sharing. That’s why I remember it 12 years later!
We (the Lutherans of East Falls) didn’t see any leadership during Bishop Almquist’s second term. He had told us on the eve of his reelection that if we didn’t accept the pastor he had chosen for us there would be no pastor for us for a very long time. We had no called pastor for the six years of his second term. We were never sure how to follow a leader who had written us off!
This didn’t help us with the successor bishop who had served under him and who adopted his prejudices.
SEPA refused to provide leadership. They were waiting for us to fail.
We followed our local leaders. That seemed to be threatening to the bishop’s office. They wanted to put their own leaders in charge—leaders they could control, leaders who would replace local leadership, leaders who would accept the philosophy “don’t waste time or resources on congregations that will fail in ten years.”
What does it mean under Lutheran “interdependence” to lead? What does it mean to follow? Are local leaders subservient puppets to the regional office?
The polity of the Lutheran Church gives significant power to the local church—powers that are being tweaked away by constitutional revisions that are in conflict with the founding concepts of the ELCA.
Local leaders, too, have the support of the people who vote for us. As it is now, local leaders can be replaced at the whim of the bishop. All congregational rights can be stripped by edict. There is no place to turn for independent redress of grievances.
Aren’t we all supposed to be following the Good Shepherd?
Doesn’t that guide our leaders and our followers more than selective notes from supporters?
If local leaders are following our regional leaders and we think they are wrong, do we not have an obligation under the Good Shepherd’s leadership to try to set things right? Is this concept not central to all Lutheran thinking and history?
Bishop Almquist served for 12 years. The current bishop, Claire Burkat, is in her second 6-year term. That’s about four fifths of the entire history of the synod and the ELCA. They have pretty much led without challenge—excepting that of the good Lutherans of East Falls and a handful of churches who successfully left the ELCA.
The biggest fault found with us was that we dared to challenge. One mark of good leadership is the ability to deal with opposition with respect and love. We have seen neither.
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.
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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
