The Squandering of Legacy
Consider the Amish
I grew up where the Amish were always around. On my walk to grade school, I waved hello to Amish men working on a barn. In my college dorm, i often awoke on weekends to the clip-clop of Amish buggies.
The Amish are a religious community that is what is—and is what it was. They don’t spend weekends traveling to seminars to discuss “transformational ministry.” They know who they are. They broadcast who they are in their lifestyle.
No one dares to suggest that they don’t have a right to exist because they are comparatively few in number. In Pennsylvania, exceptions to laws are allowed to accommodate their beliefs. Obamacare? The Amish have their own health system. (The experts say it is a pretty good system, too!).
What the Amish have is legacy. Their small community passes on its customs from generation to generation.
Other religious denominations attempt this with mixed success. The Roman Catholic Church has some commonality in legacy in its longer list of sacraments and rituals.
Many Protestant denominations have sacrificed legacy in a quest for “full communion” with other denominations. Full communion has no real benefit to anyone but clergy. It creates a deeper pool for employment opportunities — but even that pool is growing shallower.
Generally, it has made us forget our roots. Roots help us tell our story. Telling our story helps us grow. As clergy seek “full communion,” lay people are left to remember our legacy.
Historically, Lutherans were proud to empower the laity, teaching an equality of “call.” This is being forgotten as our clergy commingle with clergy of more hierarchical denominations. There is an attempt to remember. The Lutheran agreement with the Episcopal Church ends with a page of disclaimers—but that list is rarely read! Meanwhile, we call it “full.” It isn’t. Perhaps we should call it “almost full communion” or “conditional full communion ” (which is what we always had!). Calling it “full” when it is not is a bit dishonest and misleading.
Lutheran church structure is set up for independence from hierarchical thinking. We call it “interdependence.” Sadly, no one seems to know exactly what this means.
Historically, Lutherans were huge in mission and social service. It was not unusual for a congregation to “adopt” or support individual missionaries and carefully follow their work. Now every congregation in a synod is assigned the same region in the world. Our assigned region is Northeast Tanzania. Ironically, that was the country of origin of many Redeemer members. Here in America, they were evicted from the Lutheran church.
Efficiency can squander legacy.
Lutheran social service efforts began to adapt to the secular world. The motivation was to serve more people and to have federal funding available for their work. Lutheran congregations today tend to support secular mission efforts with no attempt to link their message to their work.
This adaptation squanders legacy.
Our congregation, Redeemer, rented our educational building to a Lutheran agency to run a school. We had to remove Christian art on the walls because they accepted federal funding. This always bothered us, so we were eager, when the opportunity arose, to restore our own Christian School where we could serve our community without neglecting our mission. Our synod claimed our school property. It has stood empty for four years.
Small churches excel at retaining legacy. We may walk to the church door, passing the tombstones of our ancestors. We can remember the lives of the memorialized names on the church window. We don’t need a brochure in the rack to tell us who we are. We know.
This does not mean a congregation is living in the past. It means we are building on our past.
When managerial-minded leadership walks into a small church with a cookie-cutter mission plan that inevitably points to closure or consolidation, they squander legacy.
More egregious is the contrived notion that churches must be closed, names changed, signage removed and reopened under the control of outsiders to advance ministry. This is nonsense. It serves a denomination’s desire to control congregational wealth.
This thinking is behind church math where 2+2=1. Church leaders decide to merge churches to achieve economy. It often results in a drop in participation and income. Where two groups were getting by, if not flourishing, they end up closing both for a total loss of mission and temporary gain, perhaps, to the denomination’s purse. They have squandered legacy.
While it is not to be worshiped in itself, legacy provides a structure that has evangelical value. People like to be part of something with a history. It will affect their participation and giving.
New people are going to be watching to see how a denomination respects its very long past. It reveals our respect for the future.