We have not advocated that churches, as a body, rely on Facebook. Our main reasons are the intimate nature of Facebook and the need to monitor it, both of which we think present challenges for churches and are best managed individual to individual — not institution on behalf of an individual.
But the fact is, most of your church members are probably on Facebook. We can advise and encourage individuals to use Facebook in a loving way — which will strengthen Christian community on or off the Social Media grid.
HeartYourChurch web blogger, Jason Stambaugh, shared his experience on Facebook when he recently reported the death of his mother. We extend our sympathy to Jason and his family and thank him for sharing with us and so many other “strangers.”
Jason’s blog post is an intimate account of his feelings on “pressing the button” to share his personal tragedy. It is worth a read.
He ends his post with four suggestions on the use of Facebook when sharing personal news.
(1) Like the post and leave a comment. By liking and commenting, you are helping to circle that person and their family with love.
(2) Share the post or link with your own personal message. I shared a link containing information about my Mother’s viewing and funeral. A handful of people reshared that link with a personal message about my Mom. Not only did I appreciate that they were helping me spread the word, I really enjoyed seeing what they had to say.
(3) Send the person a message. With so many likes and comments flowing in, it was hard to keep track of what everyone was saying. About a dozen or so people sent me Facebook messages that I received directly, like an email. They were easier to read and keep track of. If you have something you’d really like to share with the bereaved, send them a message.
(4) Do something. Follow up your like, comment or message with an action. Whether it’s attending the viewing or funeral, sending a card or making a casserole, it will mean a lot to the person and/or family. The follow-up action makes your words “mean” something.
The last point is the most important. Facebook in the Church cannot replace the loving touch, the soft shoulder, the warm embrace, a hand held in prayer or the sympathetic tear. It sounds so old-fashioned, but we must remember to send a card, flowers, or deliver a hot-dish to the family—and attend the funeral.
Our Ambassadors have visited 43 churches in the last 18 months or so. We’ve been to large churches and small. We’ve heard 15-member choirs with paid section leaders and small churches with small choirs and solo musicians.
The worship experience isn’t fashioned to compete, but our Ambassadors can’t help but observe. There is a big difference in the worship experience in a church with more than 50 in attendance and the many smaller churches we visit.
We have found some of the most creative and enriching worship experiences in congregations with less than 30 in attendance. Our last two visits were prime examples.
Tabernacle Lutheran Church in West Philadelphia has a great pianist who led a breadth of musical selections throughout a two-hour service. He was in sync with the pastor and the choir and shifted seamlessly from liturgy to Gospel music and hymns to anthems with additional meditative offerings. Except for the quality of his work, you might not be aware of his presence, it so complemented the worship experience. A third of the worshiping body was robed and singing in the choir. The congregation was actively involved, often singing along with the choir. Members of the congregation rose to offer lengthy prayer petitions. The service was an expression of the people in every way.
St. John’s in Ambler also had a wealth of music throughout the service, led by a small combo of flute, piano/cello, organ and a cantor. Sections of the liturgy were sewn together by musical interludes that were frequent and beautiful, diverse and appropriate. Worship was not rushed but evolved at a pace that the entire congregation seemed to find comfortable. By the end of the service, half the congregation had taken part in worship leadership.
In several small churches, lay members even filled the pulpit. At. St. Mark’s, Conshohocken, a school teacher read her own meditation. At. St. Michael’s, Kensington, a lay leader read a sermon prepared by the pastor but delivered with her own passion. She deftly addressed the children in a hands-on children’s sermon.
In our experience, congregational singing excelled in smaller churches. In larger churches, the collective voice of the people was often drowned out by organ power. (Organs were installed and designed with full sanctuaries in mind — rarely the case today!)
Larger churches often featured the standard three/four hymns and an anthem with appreciative congregations that were comfortable with a structure that asked little of them.
Why does the small church worship experience often stand out?
Small numbers may make it necessary for churches to nurture skills that might be hidden in larger churches, where paid talent makes the worship choices.
The small church worship experience is owned by the congregation. The members of small churches are accustomed to stepping forward to provide leadership. Such initiative might be impossible in large congregations.
This is a joy of small church ministry. Everyone can grow. The experience is the responsibility of the people. The result is spiritual growth. There is growth in other ways, too. The congregation becomes tolerant of the imperfect, forgiving of miscues, and encouraging to the early efforts of the timid. Worshipers begin to recognize their fellow worshipers in a broader dimension, experiencing their offerings of expression.
Perhaps, what the Church needs is more SMALL churches and a way to better plan to make their good work known!
Palm Sunday is a favorite Church Holiday at Redeemer—perhaps even more than Easter. Many of our young members traveled to visit family on Easter. Palm Sunday was our day to celebrate with Christian family with a stirring worship service, followed by a festive congregational dinner.
Our members love Palm Sunday music and joyous Hosanna anthems and the singing of the old relic hymn, The Palms (over the protests of our youthful organist).
We enjoyed our Hosanna Day, an important psychological part of the Holy Week saga.
This year, Palm Sunday falls on the first Sunday of the month, when Redeemer members, while locked out of our church, worship in our own neighborhood.
But our Ambassadors want to be with others on Palm Sunday.
We set about looking for a church that did more than hand out palms fronds and sing All Glory, Laud and Honor before plunging into the Passion Story for 90 minutes—a pshychological mood swing that doesn’t really work in the worship setting, no matter how hard we try.
This is a new development in liturgical practice—the brainchild of theologians who asked,”Why not combine Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday?” but didn’t take the time to answer their own question.
This was probably an attempt to compress the Holy Week experience into one worship service for the vast numbers of people who do not attend Holy Week services.
The triumphant entry into Jerusalem is now given a few opening minutes of worship. The Passion Story overshadows it by its sheer length. When we leave church on Palm Sunday, we are already experiencing the agony of Good Friday.
There are many good reasons to keep Palm Sunday pure.
We need Palm Sunday. We need the joy and the longing for salvation. We need to revel in the day—the whole day. Musicians need to have time to soar with anticipatory excitement. Children need the physical expression of joyous movement. We all need to sing and pray Hosanna! We need to enter Holy Week in joy! It’s part of the Passion Story!
So we vagabond Lutherans of East Falls may end up celebrating Palm Sunday by ourselves. But at least we will be celebrating Palm Sunday!
Have you ever noticed how the restaurant server has a knack of asking if everything is to your liking just as you’ve filled your mouth with a forkful of tough meat?
Similarly, the car dealer might call and ask how you are enjoying your new car a week into your purchase, not three months down the road, when you really know something about the car’s performance.
People want to hear kind words and good things about their work. Churches and church leaders are no different. They tend to identify happy souls and and engage them. The unhappy are neglected and eventually will not be in church at all.
There are more people not in church than in church!
Our faith and Christian relationships are precious. Once broken, repairing them is costly and difficult work.
Churches work hard at seeming to care. Leaders seek agreement and talk about their successful relationships, while the discontented are given labels that muffle their voices.
Church leaders talk about processes of “mutual discernment” — the hottest buzz words in the church at the moment.
Often, the process of mutual discernment has the regional body unanimous on one side of the fence and the congregation unanimous on the other side of the fence with neither side reaching to open the gate. Yet reports will tell of the process of mutual discernment that resulted in a one-sided decree.
Lay people may have to put up with this on the job. They will feel differently about it in church where they are the shareholders.
Dealing with discontent is a steady and ongoing process and involves sincere, dedicated communication. Discernment is a process of listening and responding. It is hard work. To claim a process of discernment, while neglecting the necessary work, is dishonest.
If congregants sense that their concerns don’t matter, they have a remedy. It’s a multistep process.
They complain publicly.
They complain bitterly in private.
They keep their billfolds in their pockets.
They stay home.
They continue to complain, but not in church.
The earlier the church intervenes and shows true concern, the easier the process of reconciliation becomes. Left unchecked, discontent will spin out of control and damage the whole people of God.
Discontented Christians have their grievances steadily on their minds. Their faith and way of life are under attack. They may no longer be attending church, but they are probably talking to their neighbors and friends at the bowling alley and grocery store. While pastors are feeling warm and cozy, surrounded by their closest supporters, the foundation of the community they are serving is eroding in forums they cannot control.
What is eluding many in the Church is that there have never been more forums for the discontented.
It was never more important for the Church to learn to deal with people who have a beef with them.
Wise church leaders spend time with the discontented. That’s where church growth will happen. That’s where the strength of the future Church lies.
Look for the rose in your crown of thorns. It’s what reconciliation is all about.
Redeemer’s Ambassadors visit St. John’s in Ambler, just off the main drag in this suburban community business district.
We discovered a delightful small church that reminded us of our own. Even the layout of the sanctuary and fellowship hall were familiar to us.
Attendance was about the same as Redeemer with only two children, but there was talk in the announcements of some youth activity.
Hudson and Freda helped with the blessing of the stuffed bears to be given to needy children.
The service began with the distribution of stuffed bears and a small stack of prayer shawls. The stuffed animals were cared for throughout the service, blessed during the prayers, and gathered for presentation with the offerings. The bears will be given to children as part of St. John’s support of Interfaith Housing. It is hoped that the children can cherish and love the stuffed animals and feel the comfort of the congregation’s blessing. The prayer shawls were passed throughout the service to each member.
The service music was excellent and accompanied by various combinations of flute (Cindy LeBlanc), cello and piano (Jim Holton) and organ and included both hymn renditions and some classical themes. Christine Djalleta served as cantor, led singing, and sang Softly and Tenderly as an offeratory. The amount and breadth of music reminded us of a Redeemer service, the only difference — no Swahili words!
The pastor’s sermon (Sandra Ellis-Killian) was an interesting mix of Scripture and Shakespeare.
All members were welcoming and ready to engage in conversation.
They were looking forward to a busy week or two as Easter approaches and were planning for a Maundy Thursday meal (much like Redeemer’s Green Thursday tradition). They were also planning a labyrinth mediation walk at a nearby church and a commemoration of the 14 stations of the cross.
We enjoyed robust fellowship and were interested in the after church Bible Study on Isaiah, led by a lay member, but we slipped out to return home.
It was nice to be in a church that “felt” like Redeemer. There is beauty and power in small churches like St. John’s — and Redeemer.
Go to that link and you’ll also see information on the upcoming Social Media Success Summit 2012 which is scheduled for the the month of May. Learn all about latest trends in Social Media without leaving home! The Summit makes more than 17 hours of learning available at your convenience. Hour-long webinars are held live, scheduled usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout the month of May. All sessions are recorded for unlimited review for the next year! Transcripts and slides are also available. It’s a great way to join the Social Media community.
No travel! No hotels! No restaurant bills! Can’t beat it!
Two members of 2×2 recently attended a speech by the Rev. Al Sharpton, community, political and civil rights activist. Sharpton commented that though he is often asked to speak at celebrity funerals he usually refuses. He said he doesn’t want to eulogize another “irrelevant life.”
“If you want me to speak at your funeral give me something to work with,” he implored.
His words were harsh and the crowd was shocked. Sharpton deftly turned shock to inspiration and people were soon on their feet applauding. His intention was to motivate. His message: It isn’t good enough to sit and enjoy the blessings of difficult battles won by our foreparents. We must continue to fight for justice. That fight requires personal sacrifice.
Many Christian congregations today are threatened by similar irrelevance. People come to worship. People come for fellowship. People come to hear the Word. Some token projects might be undertaken—dollars paid for someone else to do the work or take the risks. When it comes to making personal or collective sacrifice for a difficult but meaningful cause, the line that forms is very, very short.
The Church, despite the power of its message, is often an irrelevant presence in our society. We sit back and enjoy the protected status of the Bill of Rights and do nothing with it. In many cases, a committee might be formed to draft a Social Statement that is adopted at a biannual assembly—and then mothballed.
Throughout the year, we honor a host of saints, many of whom are little more than names to us. Lutherans believe that we are all saints and sinners. The value of examining the lives of a few notables is to remind us that faith requires commitment and sacrifice. Yet the lessons are rarely learned.
Daniel Ellsburg, who leaked the revealing and controversial Pentagon Papers, made a profound statement. His actions defied the law. They also exposed wrong and hastened the end of the War in Vietnam.
Ellsburg was on his way to or from a court hearing. A reporter stuck a microphone in his face and asked the question, “Mr. Ellsburg, are you willing to go to prison for this?” Ellsburg’s ready response was, “Wouldn’t you go to prison to help end this war?”
Ellsburg was named by his opponents in power at the time, “The Most Dangerous Man in America.”
Which of our congregations can claim a similar honor?
Is there any injustice so wrong that we are willing to go to prison to make things right?
Are we prepared to take risks to benefit the downtrodden?
Are we prepared to take action when the injustice is within our own Church?
Pastors often lament that only a small portion of their congregations’ adult membership participates in Christian education. Why is that? Dedicated Christians should be thirsty for knowledge!
Perhaps it has something to do with the top/down structure of the church. Maybe lay people are just tired of being talked at in the church setting. This may need to change if Christian education is to become a life-long learning process.
The entire church banks a great deal on the value of a seminary education. How much knowledge candidates bring to their seminary experience is variable. Some have very little church background. Those three or four years of religious training send pastors into parishes as authority figures. In many cases their authority is now over lay people who have faithfully attended Sunday School from the age of two, Vacation Bible School, First Communion Classes, Confirmation Classes, youth ministry, listened every week to more than a thousand sermons, faithfully read devotional books and in all probability tallied ten thousand hours of teaching religion to various age levels.
Yet the church often ranks a pastor’s knowledge as superior.
If a congregation’s leadership structure is all wrapped up in top/down leadership, it is no wonder that many adult lay people resist Christian education options. Many pastors resist further Christian education once they achieve ordination!
At church camp one year, the chaplain was telling the story of Christ’s appearance on the Road to Emmaus. He was talking about the two men who were joined by Jesus as they traveled and invited Jesus to spend the night with them. A camper spoke up. “The Bible doesn’t say ‘two men.'” The chaplain disagreed and turned to the Scripture for proof. Lo and behold, the camper was right. The Bible identifies the gender of only one traveler, Cleopas.
An amazing thing about Scripture is that there is always something to be learned by everyone.
Churches must foster learning by celebrating the discoveries of all its members and leaders when they delve into Scripture. The educational model of Adult Education might be better approached as communal learning.
As equals serving an omnipotent God, we have the greatest chance of understanding the deepest teachings of the scriptures—together.
This topic is drawing a good bit of search engine interest, so let’s address it.
2×2, comprised of members of Redeemer Lutheran Church, East Falls, has visited 42 Lutheran churches in the last 18 months. (We have been able to do this because our denomination locked our congregation out of our church and stripped us of any status or voice in the ELCA as it claimed our property and endowment funds.)
We found the status of children and youth in worship to be shocking.
In most of the churches we visited, the number of children present was few to none, with even weaker statistics for youth.
Most churches are fashioning the worship experience for adults only and dismiss children very early in the service.
This was new to 2×2 because children were always very much a part of our worship and were part of our growth spurt in 2006 and 2007.
We’ve been reading another congregation’s chronicle of their growth which parallels the Redeemer experience.
We are going to compare some major points from this book with our experience over a series of posts.
The first is the experience with children in worship. The book is Scattering Seeds: Cultivating Church Vitality by Stephen Chapin Garner and Jerry Thornell of the United Church of Christ in Norwell, Massachusetts.
When this church began to rethink its ministry, children worshiped separately from adults.
2×2 Ambassadors discovered that this structure has become popular in Lutheran churches in the Philadelphia area as well. This goes against Lutheran philosophy which values the concept of corporate worship being the expression of all the gathered people of God.
We suspect that this key concept of Lutheranism has been abandoned for trendy reasons.
Parents want children to have Sunday School training but do not want to attend education offerings for adults. Answer: teach the kids while the parents worship. Kill two birds with one short hour of church commitment.
The long-term drawbacks of this practice are many:
Children first encounter worship at an age when it will all seem foreign.
Children will get the idea that worship is for other people.
If there is a gap in children’s education from the young elementary years and adolescents, teenagers will be entering church at a time in their lives when they are most critical of institutions and adults around them.
The adults who teach the children never get to worship.
The adults leading worship are distanced from their congregation’s educational offerings.
Adults attending worship do not participate in learning and are less likely to grow in faith and church commitment.
The worshiping body continues to be designed around the preferences of adults and fails to mature and change with input from younger members. It therefore becomes more archaic, which might not be noticed by your congregants, but will be noticed by visitors or children attempting to become involved at a later age.
The Scattering Seeds church decided to change this and stopped offering classes during worship. They encouraged families to worship together.
Pastor Garner tells of his congregation’s initial resistance. The parents complained that it was a strain to get the family out the door on the one day of the week when they wanted to enjoy leisure. (He also notes that one of the biggest complainers had no trouble rolling the kids out at 5 am for hockey practice on Sunday mornings.)
Another reason: parents want to leave religious nurturing of their children to others. Martin Luther would be rolling over in his grave! He taught that religious instruction is the primary responsibility of parents and wrote his catechism to help them.
Still another reason is that many adults are uncomfortable with religious education. They view their confirmation as graduation from religious learning.
The Scattering Seeds church is still working at this, reporting mixed results with significant early successes.
Worship was a bit more chaotic at first as children got used to participating. After about a month, families with children had settled in. Children knew what was expected and adults developed a tolerance for the occasional fussy child.
Their biggest success was that youth were soon part of worship. As children matured they felt comfortable taking on new roles in worship and continued to attend after their confirmation.
The most difficult hurdle, they report, was accustoming adults to the idea that they, too, should participate in religious education.
2×2 had discovered many of the same things. Our children often outnumbered adults in worship and were comfortable in many leadership roles. It was not unusual for children to volunteer and let adults know they were ready for more responsibility.
Adults met for worship during the week. At first it was the ladies of the church but men were beginning to stop by and participate as well.
Scattering Seeds reports that their new mantra, Education for All and Worship for All, is making a difference in their church growth and has even resulted in higher giving.
Anyone with adolescents in the house has witnessed the scene where two or three young people are huddled in the rec room, each with his or her own cellphone or laptop, intently texting or instant messaging each other. Their eyes never meet unless something strikes them as funny and then heads fly back with youthful, exuberant laughter. Hearing that volcanic laughter rise out of silence will take adults by surprise. It is representative of just how engrained social media has become in the lives of more and more people.
Pastors can use social media to reach their members and some may enjoy it. Be careful though. Social media such as Facebook are very public and people are still very private on matters of personal faith. A scan of some congregational Facebook pages can reveal all kinds of unsettling personal information.
Nevertheless, Social Media is a tool and according to this article, some pastors are starting to use it. As interesting as this article is, the comments that follow add more dimension, noting that it is not unusual for congregational social media to attract worldwide attention. That realization must be kept in mind at all times!
2×2 uses blogging as the hub of its social media outreach. We “meet” on the blog and correspond by email. We have befriended congregations in Pakistan and Kenya with weekly exchanges of news and mission. We ask permission before publishing anything about our friendship on our web site. We also have regular exchanges with churches across the United States and Australia. Few of them are of our own denomination, but that hasn’t mattered.
We don’t do this on Facebook. It’s too public and freedom of religion hasn’t reached every corner of the world.
It’s still a bit odd. There is a feeling of privacy when there really is none. An innocent exchange could cause trouble.
Worldwide dynamics are going to change the church. Congregations no longer need to wait a year or two to hear a Temple Talk from a sponsored missionary home on furlough. They can follow the work and ministry daily online. This will be a strength of the emerging church. Ironically, it will weaken the structure of the church while it makes the church stronger.
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.
Print or Kindle copies are available on Amazon.com.
For bulk copies, please contact 2x2: creation@dca.net.
MISSION INSPIRATION OFFER
A visual and biblical guide to help congregations define their missions.
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).
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
We have not advocated that churches, as a body, rely on Facebook. Our main reasons are the intimate nature of Facebook and the need to monitor it, both of which we think present challenges for churches and are best managed individual to individual — not institution on behalf of an individual.
