A Return to the Days of Muhlenberg

The Lutheran Church recently celebrated the 300th anniversary of its American patriarch, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg.

Muhlenberg was a German pastor who came to America’s East Coast at a time when its forests were first being cleared for farms. There were pockets of German settlers longing for pastoral help in establishing congregations that worshiped in their traditions.

Muhlenberg came to Pennsylvania and began founding churches. But he didn’t sit still. He planted churches all along the East Coast. Most congregations had only an itinerant pastoral presence, perhaps as little as once or twice a year. And they grew.

Ironically, after 300 years, we are at a similar time in history. The Lutheran Church is well-planted but its foundations are shaking. After a century of working to unite, we are subdividing. There is no unifying voice, no forum to bring us together.

Corporate thinking of previous decades may be responsible for the current crisis. As populations shifted to the suburbs, consolidation for economic benefit was favored. We began to measure our churches’ value by their ability to park cars.

We are learning today that the neighborhood church is vital. People want to worship close to home where the sense of community truly impacts lives and where they can make a hands-on difference.

But damage has already occurred. During the affluence of the 1980s, congregations that thrived through the hardships of the Great Depression, began to struggle. Part of the struggle was the need to fund a full-time pastor at higher levels of compensation than they had ever known. That in itself became the focus of church life . . . and it’s no wonder people became less attracted to church.

Small churches can survive this, but it will require fresh thinking.

Worship and mission must return as priorities. We have to think as creatively as our colonial foreparents thought.

It is time, once again, for the structure of the local parish church to change.

We must concentrate on the work that needs to be done, not the positions that must be compensated.

Clergy, it must be recognized, have a vested interest in the solutions they propose. Pastors deserve compensation, but looking for larger salaries from one congregation may no longer be possible as the norm. Churches that admit they cannot do this need alternatives. Locking church doors is NOT the answer.

Lay leaders must speak and be heard. Their forums are few.