Palm Sunday in Media

Redeemer Ambassadors decided not to miss Palm Sunday. We hopped on the Blue Route and were in Media in less than 30 minutes.

Reformation, Media is the 57th SEPA congregation we visited.

We attended the second service and found a packed sanctuary. Empty seats were few. There were probably around 200 in attendance. As seems to be common these days there was a lot of moving around in the back of the church.

First Communion for six young people and the tradition of Palm Sunday brought people out.

We spoke with two people and found we had something in common with both. The first woman we spoke with told us about her mother’s work in a mission hospital in Madras, India, in the late 1920s and 1930s. One of our Ambassadors was born in the southern India mission fields at the same time. His parents were missionaries there for 25 years. The second woman we spoke to was introduced as being from the western part of Pennsylvania. Two Ambassadors have roots in the same town. She knew the pastor of our church. In fact, we lived in the same house as her friends!

Try as they do, SEPA cannot disconnect Redeemer from our heritage.

The adult choir was strong and led the traditional singing of The Palms. It’s our tradition, too. Our organist always balked at playing it. He considered it unsingable. One of our former leaders, not known for her voice, finally told him, “If I can sing it, you can play it.” He played it.

Their music director chose excellent music for two choirs. Their adult choir did a dramatic anthem —almost theatrical.

A five-member children’s choir — all girls — did a nice Natalie Sleeth number. We used a lot of Natalie Sleeth anthems as hymns at Redeemer. She was a great church musician.

Reformation did an abbreviated version of the Passion Story but left out the Psalm and Epistle. The voice of Isaiah was heard, though.

They used three Palm Sunday hymns. The version of Ride On, Ride On in Majesty in the new Lutheran hymnal is deadly and the congregation sat it out along with us!

It was explained to us afterward that some elements of the service are traditional for them and were not included in the bulletin. We understand the importance of tradition and miss our own.

Reformation has a “bridge” pastor, the Rev. Arden Krych. We encounter interim pastors, mission pastors, and bridge pastors. Bridge pastors, it seems, are post-interim pastors — a second stage of “interimness.” We continue to believe that the interim minister process is a symptom of a growing clergy body seeking flexibility in their careers. Their needs are in contrast to the needs of congregations who are encouraged to seek “settled” relationships with pastors.

Redeemer was not part of any such process. Not our choice. Bishop Almquist broke the contract we had with an interim pastor in 1997. We were left on our own for most of the next decade. We found our own “between calls” pastors.

We know now that this neglect was intentional. A step toward closing our congregation. It is actually a stated policy of Bishop Burkat who advises church leaders to not waste time and resources on congregations that will close in TEN years. Ten years of neglect will close a lot of churches!

We hope Reformation has better luck with “the process.”

Reformation owns a nice tract of land. They acquired adjacent property and cleared some old homes.

We liked the flexible seating—chairs, not pews. We also liked that name tags were available for members and a good number were wearing them.

Someone introduced us as from a closed church. We corrected them. Redeemer is not closed; we are locked out of God’s House by SEPA Synod. It’s time for SEPA Synod to revisit their thinking in regards to Redeemer and our community as we have continued to grow even under oppression.

Locked out and shunned by SEPA, we took our ministry online. We are experiencing exponential growth. We doubled and then tripled our growth over the last six weeks. Redeemer now has a greater reach than any SEPA congregation. We now have almost 1400 visits to our website every week (nearly twice the average weekly attendance of SEPA’s largest church). We continue to grow — just as we were in 2008 when SEPA coveted our property.

There is more economic potential in open churches than in closed churches. (Click to Tweet)

If there were ever any questions about our ability to survive (and this was never discussed with US), they are now debunked. Had SEPA worked with us (as they have falsely claimed) we’d have money to share and a new model for ministry that might help other congregations.

A lot of churches talk about transformation. We have done it!

SEPA’s actions in East Falls and Roxborough have resulted in almost no Lutheran presence in the largest geographic neighborhood in Philadelphia. In addition, they leave a horrendous legacy for future Lutherans to overcome.

Reconciliation is the only answer, but reconciliation takes dialog. There has been no dialog with our congregation since 2007.

Now would be a good time to resume.

And so we continue to visit all the congregations who voted (against their own governing rules) to take our property. We meet a lot of good people who are generally unaware of their churches actions. That’s a shame.