When things get tough—

• when a pastor leaves without preparing the congregation,
• when an economic recession plays havoc with the budget,
• when demographics change but leadership strategies don’t,
• when volunteers stop raising their hands,
• when all of this affects attendance and offerings,

it is natural to seek help.

 

Often small congregations feel distant from their regional bodies—feeling off the radar—especially If they have had only part-time ministers for years and little interaction at the regional level.

 

Congregations seeking help are usually trying to find a way through a troubling time. That may not be what your regional body has in mind.

 

Puzzled lay leadership—often at odds, sometimes totally at sea—are tempted to look outside for help.

 

In come the consultants.

 

The Politics of Church Consulting

 

Congregations know their situations well. They may be less aware of how they are viewed by others, especially those they assume serve their interests.

 

 

Protocols and strategies to bring congregations to a decision to close are part of a consultant’s toolbox these days. They work with failing churches all the time. Sometimes, they are finding a way to make the best of failure. You may be just another congregation hesitating to face a dismal reality.

 

Read this recent blog post from a congregational consultant and notice the point of view and how often the congregation’s purpose is referenced as serving the needs of clergy and regional interests. Congregations are scolded for not giving up while they are viable! Looking toward their own sense of mission is depicted as selfish. Many small church lay leaders have experienced this ecclesiastic guilt trip.

 

Most churches entities—congregations, agencies, seminaries, and governing bodies— have a hard time with benevolence giving in today’s economic climate. Hungry eyes turn toward the weakest—most expendible in their reckoning.

 

 

 

How to Find A Consultant? 

 

Regional bodies can provide referrals. These consultants may be independent of the denomination, but they are likely to have some bias toward denominational interests that feed them referrals.

 

With parishes closing at record speeds, consultants are often clergy with no parish call. They talen additional training to serve as consultants known as interim pastors. (Some become interim ministers after leading congregations that failed.)

 

The advantage of having an interim pastor is they have close ties to your dominations. It is also the disadvantage. In many cases the interim minister is assigned with no congregational search process. They report to the regional body. Their role is different from pastoring! This can confuse lay members who may relate to them in the only way they know pastors. If you work with an interim pastor make sure your congregation is represented in talks with your regional leader. Insist that at least two congregational members attend any meetings. Make this expectation known from the start. While you are at it, try to have some say in the choice of interim pastor/consultant. (This was the recommended protocol when the interim pastor concept was developed, but it has been abandoned by some leaders. Read the writings of Loren Mead.)

 

Today’s congregations have another source. Professional church consultants are plentiful on the internet. How do you choose?

 

Do some research.

 

Know the background of the consultant. Are they familiar with your denomination or tradition? What is their speciality? Finance? Conflict resolution? Program Development? Mission?

 

Judge them by their website. If they understand the potential of the internet as a ministry game-changer, they will be using it!  Look for consultants that blog and demonstrate their understanding of parish issues from a congregational view.

 

Learn what they know about small churches. We are very different from larger, more corporate churches. Strategies that work for larger congregations can be folly in the small church setting.

 

Check their track record  

 

 

Talk to more than one person in any church you approach. Concentrate on finding references from lay leaders. This might take some online research or even a visit to the congregation. If you find the church closed within a few years, beware. 

 

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TRUE STORY: One church consultant boasted about success replanting a struggling congregation. She convinced the congregation to close—turning over all assets to the denomination and excluding existing members from decision-making roles. The denomination canvased the neighborhood to rally a founding membership of nearly 100 members. The church reopened under a new name with considerable pageantry.

The consultant was eager to replicate this success.

A congregation considering her proposal visited the congregation she referenced. They found, barely ten years later, its membership had dropped considerably and had an average worship attendance of only 20.

This consultant had served only one congregation—a large suburban congregation—for five years before beginning a consultant’s career.

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Beware of what you say.

 

Point of view is a critical factor in working with a consultant.

 

Consultants look at congregations from a management point of view.

 

Your members are likely to be trusting and willing to share their passion for ministry. They will be surprised when their candor is interpreted in ways they never intended.

 

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TRUE STORY: The regional body recommended a consultant to a small church where a pastor had recently moved on, leaving a divided congregation. The pastor had used his influence in the regional office. As a result, the congregation had become suspicious of their own regional body. In this atmosphere of distrust, the turnout for the meeting with the consultant was low.

The consultant saw a disinterested membership. The congregation knew that wasn’t the case but gut impressions are difficult to change.

The consultant was surely given some background about the church—from the regional body’s point of view, which they learned from the axe-grinding pastor.

The congregation was interested in reaching new populations in their changing neighborhood and asked the consultant for advice, eager for a fresh start.

Towards the end of the discussion, one church member sighed. She was 85 years old—a pillar of the congregation. She had unsuccessfully invested a lot of energy in healing the fractious relationship with the pastor. She was understandably tired. After her long sigh, she commented. “I just want the church to be here for me when I die.”

Of all the optimism expressed at the meeting, guess which comment headlined the consultant’s report to the regional body—and later, the regional body’s assessment of the congregation’s potential—and continued to be quoted for years. The spin, based on this comment, was that the congregation couldn’t see past their own selfish needs and should close.

The congregation that had asked for help forging a future felt betrayed.

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Making the best use of your consulting dollars.

 

It is good to enter any relationship with a consultant slowly. If your chosen consultant is traveling to meet with you, consider having a first meeting with your governing leadership online (Skype, for example). This may eliminate travel costs and reduce the hourly billing.

 

Prepare your congregation for any meeting with the consultant. Provide a detailed agenda. Your consultant will then be working with a prepared and engaged membership. There is less chance of your congregation feeling blind-sided.

 

Make sure your consultant is working for you. 

 

Compare the work of consultants to the work of advisors such as coaches, physicians/therapists, or counselors. By tradition, and in some cases by law, they work for the entity that pays them. Consultants should be working for the congregations that pay their bill even if they are referred by the regional body.

 

This is often not the case.

 

If you want your work with the consultant to be confidential, make sure you say so up front.

 

Consultants Can Be Wrong

 

Consultants make mistakes. There is danger in following management fads. The problem: it is hard to recognize fads until time proves them wise or foolish.

 

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TRUE STORY: A small church in the 1960s was busting at the seams with activity. A developer donated a few acres of undeveloped farmland sitting on a hill visible from the main highway just outside the village. The congregation drew up plans for a new larger facility. The regional body sent a consultant to review the plans. He nixed the plans saying the new building had to be on the main highway barely 100 yards from the donated land.

The church never relocated.

The community shifted. The congregation’s site, once prominently situated, is now a little-traveled side street. The donated land, still overlooking the major highway, sits in the middle of a huge housing development.

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Consultants in the Modern Age

 

Make sure your consultant is living in today’s world.

 

Today’s small congregations are living at a time when much can be done with little. We should not despair. New opportunities abound.

 

Internet skills level the playing field. Many consultants discourage internet ministry. Why? Because many pastors lack modern communication skills. An understanding that the internet ministry is vital is lacking in Christian ministry. They cite ineffective results largely because skills are lacking. The internet, properly used, is a powerful ministry game-changer.

 

When interviewing consultants, ask questions about internet ministry. Find someone with strategical social media expertise to ask the questions. If the consultant puts you off,  It is a sign that modern communications techniques are not part of their experience.

 

Finally, wait at least a month before you fill out any evaluations forms.

 

Have you ever had a service provider ask you to fill out an evaluation before they leave—before you know whether or not their work is any good? Wait until you’ve tested their advice before praising it!

 

A Little Pep Talk

 

photo credit: zeligfilm ESoDoc 2012 – Session 1 via photopin (license)

It’s the Ninth Anniversary of an Ugly Day in Lutheran History

The disciplines of religion and history rarely mix.

First, theology gets in the way. Anyone can find justification for any whim by finding a crack between the lines of Scripture.

Then tradition gets in the way, followed by human nature. It makes life easier to just follow the leader.

Perhaps Christianity’s biggest failing is the tendency to never, ever revisit the past. New ministry initiatives are touted in the unchallenged church press. When they fail ten years later, no one notices.

Leadership gaffes happen every day on many levels. Even small missteps that appear to affect few can have long-term consequences. The Church won’t notice. Individuals and neighborhoods do.

Christians are suckers. We like to play nice. We like to believe that leaders have pure motives. It can be hard to tell.

Christians are sucked in by language. How do you question the proposals of leaders who preface every presentation with “After prayerful discernment”?

The Church rarely revisits its actions. Nothing new. The Crusades are still remembered as noble warriors gallantly fighting for the faith. Most were patsies for rulers, hoping success would earn status and land at a time when the common people had no way of achieving either. Result: Christianity and Islam are still at loggerheads centuries later.

Most church gaffes are more isolated and smaller—bad choices. They, too, can have long-term effects that go unexplored, thus paving the way for replication of bad ideas.

Here is the story of one such monumental gaffe. It is the story of the ELCA’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

Take a break here and read the story.

In this true story, a bishop comes into office facing a financial crisis. Deficit spending has gone unchecked for years. Where can money be found when even affluent churches are no longer giving at needed levels? The Great Recession is on the horizon. Money problems everywhere! AAAUUUGGH!

Things could have been worked out except for the ELCA’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. The bishop didn’t want to work things out. She wanted what this congregation owned—everything. Standing in the way were two things: Lutheran law and the membership of the targeted church.

Where were the clergy that should have known better? Where were other congregations that could be (and some have been) in the same position? Prayerful discernment steps had been taken and

The events of this day, moved the still new issue immediately in the courts. This created an “us against them” environment with leadership using every power to defeat a small congregation.

The six years of legal actions resulted in a decision which has the potential to overthrow all Lutheran tradition and jeopardizes all lay leadership:

The result of this one day in church history puts every congregation and every faithful church member at risk if they dare to defy any decision of church leadership.

It is worth revisiting on the ninth anniversary.

PS: As a result of this decision, all members of Redeemer Church were locked out their building. The property was seized by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod and sold after standing empty for seven years. The popular, 25-year-old, Lutheran-related day school closed and the educational building was razed for townhouses. The sanctuary, never desanctified, is being gutted for apartments.

Ironically, the neighborhood is experiencing a renaissance. The property Lutherans provided at considerable sacrifice for mission and witness at the main corner of town is now gone, Mission for Lutherans in all Northwest Philadelphia is all but abandoned. Oh, and we started our online ministry which has a wider reach than most Lutheran churches that took from East Falls what is not theirs.

Whew! We just survived one of the most divisive elections in our young nation’s history.

 

The challenge now seems to be for newly elected leaders to unite a divided following. There is always another election to think about.

 

Despite passionate differences, our nation is likely to survive. The challenges facing the Church might be more formidable.

 

Oddly, small issues are surprisingly lethal to both congregations and denominations. Peaceful resolution is something church leaders preach but have difficulty practicing. While small issues are problematic, large issues are catastrophic.

 

Perhaps comparing Public Leadership and Church Leadership can shed light on why the Church struggles with leadership on both clergy and lay levels.

 

 

Bill Maher, host of Real Time with Bill Maher, interviewed President Obama recently. One of the topics that appeared to be nearest and dearest to the comic’s heart was the topic of religion—or more precisely atheism. He questioned President Obama on the role of religion in politics.

Maher is an atheist who feels treated as a minority in society. He seemed eager to promote his position by citing statistics he feels reflect a growing number of atheists. One statistic he quotes has to do with the number of people who check “none” when asked to identify with religion.

There may be some confusion.

“Nones” are not necessarily atheists.

Many “nones” are a growing group of Christians who believe in God but feel shut out by today’s church. In this case, “none” means they feel they don’t fit in. They may very well be passionate about faith.

“Nones” have been hurt. They may feel labeled or excluded. They may feel judged or marginalized. They may feel bullied by church leadership. They may disagree passionately with views voiced by clergy without an equal platform to speak. In the case of our church, our denomination locked our entire congregation out in a land grab. Many of our members are lifelong Christians who are now “nones”—by edict of a bishop that wanted to benefit from the value of our land.

“Disenfranchised” may be the better word.

The growing number of “nones” should concern denominations. However, denominations are often too busy plugging the dike of membership loss to address the problems that cause the leaks.

Clergy were once able to shape church policy, but recent troubles have increased the numbers of sycophants—an oddity among Protestants and especially Lutherans who owe their identity to leadership that showed no fear in challenging the church of its day. Luther fought hierarchy in an age when church leaders actually wielded power in society. It’s harder to challenge power that exists in a system that has little power outside its own carefully defined worlds. It is much easier to discourage malcontents and keep the dwindling number of happy people happy.

Those in the church who don’t want to spend their lives whipping dead horses find it easier to adopt the label “none.” It’s sad. The church’s loss. The church needs to be challenged from time to time.

Small Churches Are Next Year’s Seed

Today, I’m referencing a post from Christianity Today’s fairly recently appointed blogger, Karl Vaters, on small church ministry. He covers many of the topics we discuss here from the clergy point of view, while 2×2 usually addresses the lay experience.

Voters correctly points out that denominations play favorites with larger churches—an oddity since as many as 80% of all churches are small. We are like one big family—eight of the ten children are stepchildren.

There is only one reason mainline denominations emphasize mid-to-large churches. A church of 300 members or more theoretically provides financial security for professional leaders. In a sense, the primary mission becomes the support of leadership. But small churches provide unparalleled mission opportunity.

All churches start small. Most churches stay small. Most talk about growing but know that they will never be big. When they think of growing it is more in terms of being better able to serve where they are. They aren’t looking to migrate to the suburbs and the luxury of parking lot space. They want to witness where they are.

There was a time when small churches could expect to find adequate professional leadership. Today, not so much.

I was reminded of this over the weekend. Redeemer Lutheran Church’s property was seized by the ELCA synod and sold to a developer. There was a never a congregation vote as required. They plotted to bypass their own rules and locked out the congregation.

We are still here and still have a sense of mission.

Our denomination has a bad case of arrested development. They are stuck in a time warp that dates to the social changes of fifty years ago. Churches were among the leaders of the urban exodus known as White Flight. Some congregations simply relocated to the near suburbs. Others lost their younger members as they set out on their own. Denominations were ill-equipped to provide leadership for changing neighborhoods. They still are.

Make no mistake—changing neighborhoods are now the norm—everywhere.

Our locked out congregation was part of a neighborhood festival this weekend. With the help of volunteers, we restored our 30-foot wooden sliding board for the community Oktoberfest. We also had a bake sale and this gave us an opportunity to talk to new neighbors and visit with Redeemer veterans.

One Redeemer member recalled a search for a pastor that had to date to the 1960s. She told of how the congregation showed the parsonage to a candidate. The parsonage was a row house on Midvale Avenue — one of the most beautiful blocks in the neighborhood. These houses sell today in the mid $300,000s. The candidate said he could never live in row house and likened it to living in a slum.

Most of Philadelphia lives in row houses.

Clergy often look for calls that promise a lifestyle they envisioned when enrolling in seminary. If their heads have been filled with suburban prejudices about cities, the city can be viewed as undesirable.

A funny thing has happened since the turbulent 60s, 70s, and 80s. City neighborhoods are now viewed by young people as the place to be. Our neighborhood—East Falls—is booming!

Saturday’s crowd was young. Many of them shared their faith experiences and their hopes for a long stay in the city. There is great potential for ministry. But the potential has been largely squandered by leadership that made decisions about our neighborhood with self-interest in the forefront.

Our situation is not isolated. The same leadership that squandered Redeemer’s ministry just “celebrated” the closing of St. Michael’s in neighboring Mount Airy—one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in Philadelphia.

Church closings have their own rituals and liturgies. Clergy dress to the nines and process down the aisle in celebration of—well—failure. A lot of nice words will be bandied about, but they are celebrating failure—their failure.

When mission opportunities are served to today’s leaders on a platter they haven’t the slightest plan where to begin.

Then there are those of us who stayed. We are here today, ready for mission. Our leaders took our seed assets (their seed assets, too)—endowment funds and property. They squandered the physical assets that Lutherans of East Falls sacrificed to provide for the future. They viewed lay members as enemies rather than local leaders.

Good stewards protect seed assets!

 

Here is an interesting quote.

 

We may be a century-old company, but we need to move quickly, take risks, fail fast and behave like a startup to keep winning. …until recently our management could make every decision in the headquarters. Those days are over.

 

The quote is from Jeff Immelt, the Chairman and CEO of GE.

 

What he describes applies to most organizations in the modern age. If you are not embracing the mindset of a startup and not prepared to perpetually live as if starting over, your survival is in jeopardy.

 

What good news for the church!

 

Most churches are small and have been struggling to find a place in a fast-changing world that still idealizes “large.” All small churches should be well-acquainted with the start-up mentality. They have probably been living in start-up mode for decades.

 

The problem is that this has been seen as undesirable, a challenge, or interpreted as congregations in death throes. In reality, what small churches faced decades ago was a harbinger for what was to come for all churches. They/We were on the frontline of learning to deal with fast-paced change.

 

Today, we are coming to understand every organization faces the challenge of change. Fundamental change.

 

Back to the Cities

Read the entire post surrounding this quote from GE’s leader. You’ll find more good news. GE is moving from the comfort of the suburbs to vibrancy of the city.

 

The city is no longer viewed as a wasteland to be avoided. The illusion of the city as festering with crime and poverty is suddenly stripped away. GE wants to be where the hospitals, research, and universities are. Immelt calls it “an ecosystem made by and for innovation.”

 

This movement (and GE is not alone) reveals where the Church has made major blunders. The church wrote off its urban neighborhood churches when the suburbs began to attract young home buyers. In the best cases, they neglected the cities and country, providing status quo leadership. They call it caretaker ministries. In the worst cases, they provided next to no leadership and either strong-armed the congregations or eroded the lay leadership to get the desired result—a closed church with the property and financial assets benefiting the regional body and the suburban mindset.

 

So here we are four decades after the great migration from the cities to the suburbs.

 

What is happening? City neighborhoods are once again seen by today’s young people as desirable. They are moving back to neighborhoods like East Falls in Philadelphia. They are determined to stay and not take off when the oldest child is school age. They love being close to the cultural choices and diversity that differentiates city from suburb. They are passionate and vocal. They have discovered the power of the internet.

 

We are seeing this in East Falls, where the newcomers to our neighborhood are so dedicated to making East Falls a neighborhood where they want to stay that they started a competing civic group with Facebook pages dedicated to the issues that concern them. It is exciting to watch.

 

But our denomination is behind the eight ball. They followed other denominations and worked the last two decades to close congregations, making sure any remaining wealth went their way.

 

The strategy appears to have backfired. The regional bodies are now stranded in the suburbs by decades of cloudy vision and poor decisions. The land and endowment funds that could have helped them regain a fold hold in the city are gone.

 

The city is once again right down their demographic alley. But they have sold the land—dirt cheap in many cases. They have spent the endowment funds that were given for ministry in these neighborhoods and squandered them on their own survival.

 

Now, if they are to regain a presence in the city, they will have to shell out at least five times their short-term windfall. Mission in the city has been made all but impossible.

 

The article interviewing GE’s CEO is part of a series. It goes on to talk about how GE is working to change its culture. They are working to create an environment where every decision need not be dictated or blessed by the management. Employees are encouraged and empowered to share insights and act upon them quickly—without years of jockeying to be noticed and approved. They are accepting that failure is to be expected somewhere along the way.

 

Can this advice help churches?

 

photo credit: Metro Manila from Mandaluyong via photopin (license)

This study, published in Christianity Today, addresses the effectiveness of church governing boards. It has some interesting findings.

Here are the highlights of the findings, but there is much more to gain from studying the entire document.

• Board members were chosen by someone other than the lead pastor.

• Policies were in place—and the board had the ability—to ask an underperforming staff member to resign.

• The board was able to challenge and correct a lead pastor when necessary.

• An active strategic planning process was in place.

• Time and energy were devoted to assessing risks and opportunities.

• The board guided the staff with strategic—but not tactical—input.

The study also found that governing boards are more effective when they have more power.

The study would be helpful in training board members.

But Love of Power Is the Nourishing Soil

Did you ever hear of Redeemer Lutheran Church in the East Falls neighborhood of Philadelphia?

 

The bishop of the regional synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, known as the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod, planned that by now the universal answer would be “Redeemer what?”

 

Bishop Claire Burkat was elected bishop of this struggling body of Lutherans in 2006. She set her sights on closing Redeemer from the outset. She wanted us gone—forgotten.

 

Two reasons:

1. At the time the synod routinely approved significant deficit budgets and made up for the lack of operating funds by targeting congregations for closure. (In recent years they adopted a policy of balancing the budget. Now they just report shortfalls at year end.) This practice is made difficult but not impossible by governing rules that forbid the bishop from taking authority over church property without the involvement and consent of the congregation. It is possible because courts hesitate to get involved in church matters—truth, justice and the American way. In addition, synod governing bodies do a poor job of maintaining constitutional decorum. Checks and balances only work if people speak up!
2. Bishop Claire Burkat had co-authored a book about leading regional bodies before she became bishop. The book, published in 2001, was widely used in training regional leaders in several denominations. Now she was a bishop and could test her theories.

 

The result was a disaster all around. Her theories rely on ignoring the function of bishop—to foster mission and provide leadership support for both clergy and congregations. She concentrates on the health of the regional body — not the health of the congregations the regional body exists to serve. She also relies on the constitutional checks and balances to be ineffective. She got that last part right!

 

Her theory involves intentionally grooming congregations for closure—the opposite of the reasons bishops are elected. She advocates intentional neglect, placing pastors with given instructions to help the existing members but to wait for them and the congregation to die.

 

This is a deceptive lure—like feeding the congregation Quaalude— to bring congregations under synod’s power. No congregation thinks their pastor is there to watch them die.

 

Her theories clearly run against the polity of the Lutheran denomination she was elected to serve. Lutheran polity gives congregations ownership and oversight of property and endowment funds.

 

Bishop Burkat followed her own teachings. Mission, as far as professional leadership was concerned, was totally abandoned in East Falls in what became a power struggle—an unnecessary power struggle. Redeemer had several retired pastors among its membership and capable lay leadership that successfully grew the church while the synod thought we were waiting to die.

 

Our assets were the goal. Power was the weapon.

 

A pastor friendly with our congregation in 2006 reported to us that the bishop announced in a meeting at the national church headquarters: “I have the power to close that church and I intend to close it.”

 

Leaders who start with the assertion of power are not likely to consider working with the people they have declared as opponents.

 

But at least we were warned. Even so, we were labelled, our lay leaders vilified. The abuser was fully aware no one was likely to question her perceived power. Other congregations and all pastors depend on her good graces.

 

Similarity to Power Crimes

The controversial verdict in the Stanford Rape Case reminds us of the travesty in East Falls.

 

Rape is a crime that is rooted in the need to exercise power. There are many similarities—the minimizing and vilifying of the victims, the legal attacks on the victims, the use of constitutional rights to protect the abuser while victims have every detail of their personal lives raked over.

 

I read  the witness’s moving statement at the sentencing.

 

Take away the sexual nature of the crime. The words express the way we at Redeemer feel—and will always feel. That means forever.

 

The bishop coyly calls us Former Redeemer as if we just disappeared because she says so. We still live, serve and worship in the neighborhood her leadership “raped” for our property.

 

Like Emily Doe, we faced a legal system that minimized our congregation. The courts never heard our case. The final ruling reflected not that the synod and bishop were within their rights but rather that the courts could not stop them—the bill of rights and all. It is up to the church to police itself—unlikely in a hierarchy immune from secular law.

 

This excerpt from an article in Christianity Today describes how the people of Redeemer feel. The way we will always feel. You don’t just move on when you have been abused as we have.

 

One thing certain. The failure of the other member churches to address our situation guarantees that the thinking and methodology will continue to define the synod’s relationships with its smaller congregations. And most churches are getting smaller.

From a post in Christianity Today by Lindsey Bever—June 4

Quoting the witness statement:

“My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me. You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today.”

Like a hound with a bone, she wouldn’t let it go. She demanded justice. Emily Doe’s powerful example could mark a new era for victims of sexual assault. She’s carved the long, hard path to justice. Emily said words that thousands of others could not. She said words I could not say.

When I read her statement to her rapist, I grieved I had not the same fortitude, the same clarity of my innocence, to press charges against my rapist. Like so many other victims, the wall between my assault, my pain, my violation, seemed insurmountable. I was not equipped to scale it.

Maybe they wouldn’t believe me. Maybe they would blame me. Maybe it was my fault—didn’t he say so himself, afterwards? “Too pretty to resist,” he whispered. Maybe it wasn’t worth it, to be raped again in court, exposed, violated, vulnerable to penetrating questions. Maybe it was best to keep silent and try to move on. Maybe it was best to let it go.

But the thing about letting it go is that it never goes. You can’t escape your own body, your defiled body. You can’t discard it or exchange it or undo what has been done to it. Like ruined, wasted Tamar, we carry the desolation of our violation for the rest of our lives, and our silence, our shame, allows our rapists to go free.

The case of Emily Doe could be a watershed moment if more sexual assault victims follow the path Emily Doe bravely forged. We must refuse to accept blame for sexual assault any longer. Half of perpetrators believe their victim is “completely at fault” for the assault. Sixty-two percent of rape survivors “attributed the most blame to themselves.” For perpetrators, it is easier to assign blame than it is to accept responsibility for reprehensible behavior. For victims, it is easier to accept blame than it is to admit one is a victim, stripped of power and dignity. We must trade in our shame and silence for truth.

The case of Emily Doe could be a watershed moment if the public would finally open their ears and eyes to the experiences of rape victims. Her case, presented online and in and black and white for millions to read for themselves, underscores the deep violation at the heart of uncountable other stories of abuse that so often go unheard or get deemed untrustworthy.

Throughout the Scriptures, Christians are urged to pursue justice and defend the defenseless. The mother of King Lemuel urged him, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly, defend the rights of the poor and needy” (Prov. 31:8–9). And in Jeremiah, “‘He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?’ declares the Lord” (22:16).

Emily Doe found her voice. Redeemer has been denied our voice in the church. We will always seek justice—because that is another mission of the Church.

 

And what came of six years of litigation and hateful behavior?

 

We are all losers.

 

Our congregation lost our building and our offerings. SEPA lost a church that was growing (fivefold in three years) and overcoming challenges all congregations face in diversifying. Since they sold our property and squandered our endowments, the synod will have a very difficult future serving in our area of Philadelphia. Really, that’s a pretty big deal! Northwest Philadelphia has a population nearing 200,000—a small city in itself with almost no Lutheran presence.

 

And guess what is happening in our urban neighborhood. The demographic shifts that SEPA cited to justify their actions to the rest of synod have reversed — big time.

 

Young professionals are moving back into the city and embracing urban lifestyles. SEPA is no longer in a position to influence mission in the fastest developing, youngest neighborhoods in their region.

 

(Demographics is a euphemism to hide prejudice and justify inaction. The gospel message is for all.)