Creating Some Extraordinary Time During Ordinary Time
A few years ago, when Redeemer still had a building and a pastor to call our own, I commented at a worship meeting that Pentecost was way too long and Advent was way too short.
Advent, especially among Lutherans, is the sacred cow. Christmas and Easter customs will change with the times more easily than Advent. This is when we pull out all the do’s and don’ts of Christianity.
Knowing that—and being accustomed to being ignored by clergy, the guardians of all things liturgical—I expected absolutely nothing to result from my comment.
I was surprised when our pastor enthusiastically agreed.
Energized, the worship committee added a couple of weeks to Advent. Pentecost didn’t even notice.
This gave us more time to teach the important things that belong only to Advent and get lost in the hustle and bustle of Christmas.
For the first time, we could actually learn some of the beautiful but eerily unique tunes that go with the pre-Christmas season and are never sung during any other season. They get short-changed in modern society when many Christians will only be attending worship once or twice during the four weeks of Advent. They tend to be known only by people who sing in choirs. Now the whole church could be the Advent Choir.
We were also able to add some of the cross-over Christmas hymns (heaven forbid) before Christmas, when all the world (except Christians) are singing our songs.
It gave us an opportunity to delve into the rich and poetic texts of the prophets as opposed to concentrating on the Gospel.
We got to visit with all the personalities of the Advent story, giving more attention to Elizabeth and Zacharias, Joseph, Isaiah, Hosea and all the prophets—some of whom are silent in certain lectionary years. John the Baptist and Mary might feel a little jealous, but they’ll get over it.
This custom, somewhat unique to Redeemer, led us to begin offering our Adult Object Lessons for Advent last week, nearly a month in advance. Two were offered last week. Look for two more this week.
There’s plenty to talk about. Now we have more time!
It doesn’t hurt to be prepared for the season of preparation!
The ELCA’s new presiding bishop wasn’t speaking to us in her editorial published in November’s The Lutheran.
After all, the Lutherans of East Falls were shut down more than four years ago. We don’t exist.
The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, courtesy of courts who didn’t take the time to hear the issues, now owns Lutheran land in East Falls. They’ve kept the doors locked and the security system (which they installed) turned on for four years, while they worked very hard to destroy any semblance of the faith in our part of Philadelphia. Meanwhile, they have done nothing with the land they coveted for more than a decade.
But now, we have a new presiding bishop. I mean they have a new presiding bishop.
Her name is Elizabeth Eaton. She’s been part of the Council of Bishops for some time, so she has surely heard all about us—at least one side of the story. That was enough for her predecessor. Will she follow the same course? Hands off any dispute between congregations and regional leaders? Let local Lutherans twist in the wind?
Will she have a grasp of what is going on in the several synods that are living beyond their means and violating Lutheran polity while they prey on small congregations?
Time will tell. The Lutherans of East Falls are prayerful if not hopeful.
We are busy being Lutherans whether or not Lutherans accept us.
Bishop Eaton wrote in one of her first addresses to greater American Lutherandom:
We are church together. There is no way that the churchwide organization or synod offices can be with the saints and be present in the communities where our churches are planted. The local congregation does that.
But there is no way that the local congregation by itself can run camps, train leaders, engage in disaster response or accompany global companions. That is the work we do together as synods, agencies, colleges, seminaries and the churchwide organization.
We are church for the sake of the world. We have experienced God’s extravagant love in Jesus. We want others to know that love too. That is what motivates our evangelism and our work to make the abundant life promised by Jesus a reality for the most vulnerable.
This view reflects an “old order” view—the one taught in confirmation classes across the country for decades.
But the world is changing.
2×2 has discovered that the statement we printed in bold is no longer true in the emerging world. In fact, the strength of the emerging church will be that the local congregation can do a great deal without “federal” oversight.
Congregations can run camps (Redeemer had one). They can train leaders (read 2×2). They can respond to disasters that more organized efforts are inclined to overlook!
2×2, the remnant of Redeemer, was appalled and deeply moved by the church bombing in Pakistan. One reason this touched us so deeply is that we had already been in conversation with Pakistan’s church leaders through our website for more than a year!
An entire congregation of 250 worshipers (larger than most congregations in our affluent part of the world) was targeted by suicide bombers. More than eighty were killed. Twice that number were seriously injured. That creates a congregation of shell-shocked and mourning families. That leaves an unusual number of orphans and an unusual number of adults recovering from war-caliber wounds. The world of over-organized religion has barely taken notice.
We looked to the national church to see if we might latch on to global relief efforts—the Old Order Lutheran way.
We found none.
In fact, we’ve heard no mention of the Pakistani problems in the churches we visited since the attack—not even a passing reference in the Prayer of the Church.
Lutherans are carefully selective in their world view. This is nothing new. I was on the staff of The Lutheran Magazine back in the 1970s when Cambodia was a killing field. I remember arguing that we ought to be addressing this.
Cambodia was not on the Lutheran map then. Pakistan is not on the Lutheran map now.
2×2, Lutherans unfettered by Lutheranism, has befriended the church in Pakistan. We are a modern congregation that knows that individual churches have enormous individual power if they use the tools of the modern age.
We sent some relief money. A drop in the bucket for their needs, but they wrote numerous thank you notes.
The Pakistani Church is asking for warm clothing for winter especially for the orphaned children. They need jackets, sweaters, hoodies, fleeces, shoes and socks.
We are just a little congregation without much access to families with small children who might have hand-me-downs to share.
But we can put the word out. There is no harder place, or perhaps more important place for Christians to maintain voice in today’s world. Our very faith is being put to the test in a world that is pitting Muslims against Christianity by forces that don’t really practice either religion.
The victims are the children.
The future of Christianity in these hard places for Christians is also with the children.
If your church can help gather clothing, call us for the address. For the safety of the Pakistani church leaders we will not publish this information.
We already have an effort in Michigan taking up the cross! We’re doing what we can!
This is an opportunity for Christian love to shine.
Here is a photo of the Bible class recently started for the children of the besieged church.
2×2 has been experimenting with Social Media as a ministry tool for nearly three years.
During this time, Social Media made significant strides in gaining stature in every walk of life. When we started our experiment, many in the business world and nonprofit worlds were still not sold on doing more than hosting a barebones website as their nod to the modern world.
It’s safe to say at this point that every business or service sector is now ready to admit that Social Media is here to stay and that smart operators are investing in their web presence beyond their static website. It’s all but universal. A major holdout is — you guessed it — the Church.
The Church remains outside looking in, unable to fit the new way of doing things into their outdated structure.
Here is the status of the congregations and social media in our experience.
2×2 is a project of Redeemer Lutheran Church in East Falls. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America claimed our land and decided four years ago that they are better stewards of our resources. While the property provided for mission by the Lutherans of East Falls remains idle and locked to all mission, the people of Redeemer have continued their innovative ministry with visits to other churches and experimentation with Social Media.
This is what we’ve seen in our 76 church visits to half the churches in our synod. (Some churches we visited house two ministries.)
About 90% of the Lutheran churches in our area have some sort of website. It is amazing that there are still ANY churches that have NO web presence. It gets easier every day and costs less than $50 per year.
In today’s world, a congregation’s failure to provide basic information online is advertising that they are not invested in evangelism. Failure to have a website is akin to a hospital staff “calling a code.”
Of the 90% that have websites, there are less than 5% using their site for more than a brochure about their church—the ALL ABOUT US approach to Evangelism. There is practically no inbound content—content that would attract seekers and is designed to be helpful to OTHERS as opposed to tooting the congregation’s horn. It is commendable that people in their neighborhoods can look up worship times and see who the pastor and staff are, but they are missing the true value of having a website—evangelism.
A few pastors have attempted blogs. Most quit after a few posts. The pastor at St. Andrew’s, Audubon, is one of the few pastors who seems to be ready to lead the church in using the web as an education and evangelism tool. One church, St. Michael’s in Unionville, invested in a modern web presence but opted to outsource the development of content—so it has a generic feel to it. It would probably be worth the investment of having a dedicated social media leader on staff to get full benefit of their investment. Trinity, Lansdale, hired a part-time communications director. That’s a step in the right direction.
A few churches actively use Facebook to create community. Most tend to use their Facebook page as a bulletin board.
Practically no churches use Twitter. Twitter has a great track record of “finding” people. This is a tool that is greatly misunderstood but which could very much benefit ministry.
SEPA Synod is trying to use Facebook but they haven’t been getting much traction. Interestingly they posted an article yesterday.
It starts:
Friday Food for Thought: What does an institution due [sic] faced with red ink and a dwindling, aging audience? Keep true to its core while driving innovation, embracing the possibilities of technology and reaching out to new audiences.
They pose this question and then point readers to a video clip from CBS’s 60 Minutes about the Metropolitan Opera’s solution to a similar challenge.
We know very well SEPA’s solution to their own question. They ignore congregation’s that innovate, sue their members and claim their land for their own enrichment.
It’s interesting, however, to see that they recognize innovation outside of their own sphere.
The challenge to virtually every congregation is in recognizing that Social Media has value requiring expertise that should be compensated. Frankly, Social Media will go farther to reviving ministry than even the best organists/music directors, education directors or even (dare we say it) clergy, in many cases.
Every month that goes by without any attempt to move all congregations in this direction is time spent talking about innovation and doing nothing to make it happen.
This is probably why innovation is so slow. In business, success depends on innovation and reaching people. Even CEO’s that are resistant to change can look at the numbers and make decisions that will keep their organizations viable.
In the Church, however, clergy play a leadership role that can go on for many years while the statistics of their ministry fail, without any pressure to change—until it is too late and the congregation can no longer pay clergy salaries. Then the congregations are seen as the failures. The clergy move on to somewhere they can continue doing things the same way until the money runs out again. When that gets too frustrating, they sign up for interim training.
Most clergy have no training in media. Failure to have these skills today is like not being able to read! Any church that calls a pastor who cannot use modern tools and is resistant to anyone else using this is doomed to status quo or failure.
Unfortunately, the role of Social Media director of communications director is likely to be seen as competitive with the role of clergy. So nothing will change.
Then there is Redeemer’s ministry—which SEPA was united in working for the last seven years to destroy. Redeemer stands alone in having made the investment in true innovation. Our work has positioned our congregation to truly lead in creating a platform and funding source for small congregational ministry.
We discovered that using Social Media IS transforming. It is not an optional “add on” but will shape your community and your potential. Church will be different. Ministry will be different. It is likely that the differences will be what the doctor ordered a long time ago!
We could help SEPA congregations join in our success to the benefit of all. But that would require that SEPA recognize Redeemer. Heaven forbid!
2x2virtualchurch doesn’t get a lot of online engagement. But people do contact us. We get direct emails and sometimes even phone calls about our posts. When I encourage readers to comment on site, they say it’s too hard from their mobile phones—which tells us something about how the world gets their information today! Easier to use that phone to autodial us!
Friday’s post drew a phone call that raised an interesting question. It is a question that no one has probably thought about, because there was little need.
The sermon, always central to Lutheran worship, is very ineffective for the purpose of spreading the Good News. Yet it is a focus of our expectations and budgets.
Most churches say something in their mission statements about reaching beyond that limited audience. Yet finding a way to do that has been a challenge, despite the tools in our modern hands.
Sermons—even great sermons—aren’t going to do it! Our post began exploring ways to maximize a congregation’s investment in providing a weekly sermon to a shrinking, limited and static audience of people who are predisposed toward the message. Our reader raises this question:
Who owns the rights to the sermon?
The caller is well-versed in both the corporate and church publishing worlds, especially the higher end of the Protestant Church. She commented that in the corporate world, if the corporation subsidizes the creation of content, the corporation owns the content. We are guessing the church world will argue that the pastor is self-employed and therefore owns his or her words.
I am self-employed but I know from experience that my clients consider my work to be their property. I often know that I have legal rights to the work product, but usually decide to not argue with clients. I value the relationship and the next job above the value of past work and insistence on accepted professional rights.
All this thinking may belong to the past—when publishing was the business of publishers. Today every evangelist or entrepreneur must publish if they hope to succeed. Hair dressers, chefs, dog trainers, roofers, lawyers, doctors—everyone will publish.
What roadblocks will congregations encounter when they try to get more mileage from their considerable investment in spreading the Good News? They will have to get content for their evangelism efforts. Can they rely on the cooperation of clergy? Will everyone be stepping on toes? Will congregations seeking to call pastors insist their candidates understand modern publishing? They should.
The question probably enters no one’s mind now. As it is, very few pastors publish. Those that do are likely claiming all royalties without anyone questioning who subsidized the time they took in writing the book.
Will pastors value relationship over work product? Will they argue that Jonathan Edwards published his sermons for his own benefit and therefore they have the same rights? I don’t know the answer, but it is something to think about as congregations — like everyone in the modern world — realize that they have the power and need to publish. Publish or perish, for real!
These will be refreshing legal battles after the church has wasted so much of its resources in arguing about physical property, land, and monetary assets. Maybe church leaders will at last realize that their message is a major asset!
This is a game changer. It can be the salvation of the small church. If we make it a contest, all will lose. Congregations should think about this now before their regional bodies start to tweak their constitutions to favor them and the clergy. Clergy are a pretty big voting bloc in that regard.
Congregations must become involved in any upcoming debate. They may have to spark the debate or watch decisions made for them — and not in their favor!
This has happened before. The Lutheran Church in America (the predecessor body of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) forbade congregations from publishing. It was seen as competition with the national church publishing houses. Now there is no way to stop congregations from publishing.
Denominational leaders will be shooting their mission in the foot if they start to legislate these rights in their favor, but they’ve been doing this in their lust for land for years.
Congregations, think about this now! If your next pastor is uncomfortable with publishing and uncomfortable with others in the church becoming involved in publishing, they will be unprepared to bring your congregation into the future.
Redeemer’s website/blog, 2x2virtualchurch.com, is about to log its 40,000 unique visitor in its 30-month history. We’ve grown from 2000 visitors our first year to 13,000 visitors our second year and are well on our way to surpassing 30,000 visitors this year.
2×2 has grown by offering content. Our editorial mix is one third about Redeemer’s unique ostracism from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Being quiet only fuels the notion that it is OK to treat congregations this way. We have to speak out.
Another third is devoted to commentary about the future of the Church, which we think will suffer less from member apathy than from a failure of church structure to adapt to modern times. Still another third—and the third that drives traffic—is our resource offerings geared for use in small congregations (most congregations).
You see, first and foremost, we are a church, a people shunned by the church of our heritage, but a church all the same.
2×2 begins each week with two resource features: 1) an object lesson geared to adult learners but often adaptable to all ages and 2) a study of art or poetry/prose that is spiritually enriching.
Seven hundred readers find our spiritual content every week as unique visitors. Another 200 follow our content through social media.
We have other features, too. We have written extensively on the topic of social media and the church and have gained national and world recognition. In the topsy turvy world of the 21st century we are beginning to be noticed locally, long after readers from far away began following us.
We respond to people who write to us and have formed an interesting network of Christian alliances all over the world—impossible 20 years ago. We believe this ability to connect directly will change evangelism forever. Geography will become less and less important to viability.
Our exploration of social media has been self-guided—brand new territory for everyone. The church is very slow to realize that using social media will spark the transformation they seek.
We have used no gimmicks in growing our following. No contests. No email opt-ins. No special offers. We just plod along as volunteers with no budget, figuring things out for ourselves.
As we enter 2014, we will begin exploring more methods for intentionally growing a church website and following as a mission model.
What holds Redeemer back is the strained relationship with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod, who, hungry for our property and endowment funds, stopped seeing our congregation as children of God. We were an obstacle to their goal of taking our property.
We tend to be no better than way we treat the least among us.
If your church is exploring internet outreach and would like to learn from the 2×2 experience, let us know. We are always ready to share.
Meanwhile, we will spend the next two months establishing some hard goals for our 2014 ministry, which continues in spite of four years of locked doors and lawsuits as our only connection to the church which took $2 million of property and cash assets, reasoning that they had better uses for our resources. They have spent the last four years mowing the lawn of a locked church.
I have been blogging on behalf of my congregation (Redeemer Lutheran Church in East Falls) for nearly three years. It has become a discipline which has created many interesting mission opportunities for our little church without a building. It is something our members follow and discuss when we get together. It is our church blog.
There is always something new to learn! In 2011 we inched our way up from one visitor each month to 500 a month. In 2012 we improved our statistics about tenfold and doubled that again in 2013. We have used no gimmicks or strategies—no Facebook ad campaigns, no contests or elaborate opt-in schemes. We just created and posted content almost every day.
But how do our statistics measure? I had no idea.
Today I saw a recommendation for a utility that analyzes a website in comparison with others in a similar field. I think it does this by analyzing key words and results of key words. How would three years of work stack up in an independent, purely statistical, algorithmic review?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Nevertheless, I started exploring.
The results are amazing.
2×2 is in the upper 20% of most church social media ministry categories and is NUMBER ONE in the category of church blogging. The lowest we ranked in any category was 47%.
Within the next two weeks we will tally our 40,000th unique visitor. We now have about 200 readers everyday (about half unique and half followers).
We are putting our four years of exile from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to good use. What we have learned could help many! Statistically, we may be the largest church in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod — measuring modern statistics!
But we are shunned. Our skills, our loyalty, our faithful mission, and our people are worth nothing in the ELCA. Our property and the protection of the people who created this mess are priorities.
Lutherans teach that the church is not a building. The church is the people.
But Lutherans don’t really believe what they teach. They have our building and evicted the people. They declared us closed—with no consideration for the people. A new church is now worshiping at the same time we once worshiped — right across the street from our locked building—proving that ministry is totally possible in our neighborhood.
But we knew that all along.
Will the ELCA ever see us as viable?
Not without some help.
Redeemer is not closed.
We are locked out of God’s House by SEPA Synod.
Today, we can learn from Jewish neighbors and colleagues.
A problem with religion in general is that we all live in our own worlds. We approach problems as if they are unique, threatening only to what we in our self-imposed isolation are doing.
In fact, most churches, denominations, and faiths face the same challenges.
We just don’t identify the challenges correctly.
We all live in the same world with the same changing demographics, the same societal changes, the same economic dilemmas.
Churches die before they can adapt. They die because they are chasing the transformational dream. They die because they are encouraged to change while lacking the tools or structure that will foster change.
It is time to admit that the emphasis of the of last 20 years has been wrong. Churches do not need to transform. We don’t need to change who we are or our message. We DO need to adapt to the world we all live in if we hope to reach the world we live in.
What we need to pursue is adaptive ministry.
The Church’s two-decade old quest for transformation has failed because we all have been looking at each other, waiting for someone else to do the transforming. We isolate the few successes—without really analyzing why they were successful or waiting to see if the success is sustainable. We try to copy one trendy methodology after another.
The last thing we would think to change is the structure of the Church. Heaven forbid!
This approach blinds the church to truly adaptive ministry.
Rabbi Hayim Herring addresses this in his blog today. He talks about many of the things 2×2 discusses—the need to reach people where they are in ways they can actually relate—and sustain.
He calls it “building a platform.” Platforms are structures!
What is an organizational platform (and I can highlight only a few dimensions in this space)? A platform is an enabling space for people to interact and act upon issues. An organization that becomes a platform enables individuals to self direct their Jewish choices and express their Jewish values within the organization’s mission. That is a radical shift from organizational leaders directing people how, when, where, why and with whom to be Jewish—in other words, the dominant paradigm of more established Jewish organizations and synagogues!
Becoming a platform is also a mindset. It means embracing the desire of individuals to co-create their experiences, opt in and opt out of Jewish life, do new things and old things in new ways-of course, within the organization’s mission. This mindset operates within the building, outside of the building, on the website, and anywhere else. It also requires a much more creative and intentional use of technologies to tell individual stories and organizational stories and a redefinition of professional and volunteer leaders’ roles, new governance models and even new professional and volunteer positions.
There is little need for traditional church structure in today’s world. People know this. Church leaders don’t. That’s why churches, large and small, are failing. That’s why the population in the sanctuary is quickly aging.
This failure of the Church to adapt its structure will continue to strangle the breath from the Church. If we can adapt structure, we can avoid a sure and certain death.
Redeemer was leading the way in this regard—still is. We didn’t really know that we were building a platform—but we were!
Redeemer was doing many things in ministry right. We hadn’t gotten there without stumbling a few times, but we had learned a lot in facing problems. We had identified a niche ministry that was growing quickly. We had faced the economic challenges of small church ministry head on. We came to realize that associating with just one pastor was impeding ministry—limiting us to one vision while sapping our resources. We had found pastors willing to work within the new paradigm that was needed for success, while our regional body had only one position: there were no leaders willing to serve us.
The ELCA, while stumping for transformation, couldn’t deal with transformation when it bit them on their Achilles heel. Ouch! What was that?
Regional bodies have serious problems of their own and they have only one way out—getting fewer lay people to give more. If that doesn’t work, take it.
That’s what they did in East Falls. They took what did not belong to them, attempting to destroy ministry to salvage structure. It hasn’t worked very well.
Redeemer’s transformation continues. Our online ministry teaches and involves people who would never bother with Sunday School or religious education. We are discovering our own world view—not waiting for a national church to point out needs and remedies to select problems. We continue to pursue the economic challenges of all neighborhood ministries and we think we have some answers. There is no reason to lock the members of Redeemer out of Church life—except the desire for our assets.
We have built a platform. We work at it every day. We work at it with no help from the structured church. We have learned a lot about ministry in today’s world.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, for the most part, is not listening. They are worried about their retirement years. Their ears are growing old, their eyesight is growing dim. But we, their faithful children, still love them.
Today marks the fourth year that the members of Redeemer have been locked out of our sanctuary by order of Bishop Claire Burkat, bishop of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (SEPA / ELCA).
Four years ago, on this date, the Rev. Patricia Davenport came to our church on Sunday morning and oversaw the changing of locks. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy!
Today I drove past our locked church and noticed that the streets were uncharacteristically parked full. Bishop Claire Burkat had criticized our church for having no parking lot. “A church with no parking lot cannot survive today,” she said. We explained that parking had never been an issue at Redeemer, but the truth did not serve her purpose. Bishop Burkat’s argument was self-serving nonsense. Many of the churches we visit have no parking lots, including Saints United, where we visited this morning.
There is a reason the streets were parked full this morning. Across the street from our sanctuary, a new church was holding its first service in the public school auditorium. Apparently, the lack of a parking lot is not deterring them. The doors were wide open an hour before the advertised worship hour and people seemed to be plentiful.
We are disappointed. While the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has sat on its hands in mission for four years, two other churches have begun meeting in our neighborhood. Epic meets at the local movie theater. and now Authentic Life Ministries is meeting next to our empty sanctuary. In addition, a Presbyterian branch holds house worship in our neighborhood.
As for Lutherans—nothing.
All the excuses Bishop Claire Burkat gave to justify her lust for our property and endowment funds are pretty well blown away. SEPA’s behavior in East Falls was a covetous land grab. They will always have difficulty establishing a church in the neighborhood where they spent four years suing church members. Perhaps they think the rest of East Falls doesn’t know about them. They do! We still live here. People will not be lining up to come to a church that sues its own members.
If the ELCA wants a Lutheran presence in this part of Philadelphia, where two Lutheran churches have closed in the last ten years, our doors have been locked, and the only remaining church is barely alive, they should start talking to the members of Redeemer and working with us for a change. The last six years of costly legal battles might have been avoided had this been attempted earlier. All their nonsense excuses—parking, demographics, no clergy willing to serve— are proving with each passing day to be pitiful.. They wouldn’t listen to their own people. Now other denominations are taking advantage of their failures. Talk about LOSE-LOSE scenarios!
But then, despite their rhetoric about wanting a word and sacrament church here, they tipped their hand in 2008, when they offered our property for sale to a Lutheran agency behind our backs.
It’s never been about mission. It’s always been about money. When money from live churches isn’t rolling in, create some dead churches and take their properties. A strange economic stimulus program, indeed!
Redeemer’s Ambassadors took a Sunday off. We each had personal plans for the day.
Today I was entertaining one of my oldest friends.
She is visiting Philadelphia for only the third time in her life. It was her first visit outside of center city. She came to attend a four-day meeting being held in East Falls.
Having her as a house guest was a little intimidating. Her mother had been my home economics teacher in high school. But my fears that my house-keeping and hospitality would not be up to snuff were groundless.
We met when we were twelve, when my father, a Lutheran pastor, changed parishes. We sang together in church and in school—girl’s trio and choir. We were friends through college. We hadn’t seen each other in more than a couple of passing encounters in nearly 40 years.
We lived in a small town—farming, coal and steel country. We were friends in both church and school. Many of our school teachers were church members, so the lines were always blurry.
We walked a lot of East Falls together during her four-day visit. We walked through the parks, along the Schuylkill River and Wissahickon Creek, the various campuses (college and high school) and I showed her the churches. Her meetings were being held at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, the church Bishop Burkat helped in ministry at the same time she was trying to take our property. I showed her our locked building. The lights were left on, so it was easy.
As we talked with people we met during her visit, she still identified me as their preacher’s daughter. Some things in life I’ll never be able to shake.
We attended a performance at the playhouse where Redeemer began its ministry in 1891 and where we now hold Sunday morning worship. My friend worked in summer stock theater, so she was interested to see the local theater club. We talked with fellow playgoers. Whenever we encounter anyone from East Falls, the topic of Redeemer comes up. Some things SEPA will never be able to shake!
My friend commented at the sense of community she experienced in East Falls.
We are that. Our people and our history mean something to us. That’s something the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America cannot understand.
For them, East Falls is all about how much money they can get from us. Our people—our history—our passion for ministry—are obstacles to them. We are just in the way.
Pity!
Here’s an idea. We can take SEPA representatives on a similar tour. We’ll walk you around our town. We’ll show SEPA where our members live and where we got our start. We’ll share our history and our personal faith journeys and what has happened to our members since we were locked out of the Lutheran Church. We’ll introduce you to the people SEPA has taken advantage of. We’ll share our mission plan—yes, we still have one!
Maybe then, you’ll know something about us. Maybe you’ll see us as people, fellow children of God. Maybe that will prompt some right actions and justice in the Lutheran Church.
Today, was our 73rd visit to a congregation of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod (SEPA) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
Redeemer’s Ambassadors never know what to expect when we set out on our Sunday morning adventures.
We visited Worship in Spirit and Truth Lutheran Church or Worship Center (we’ve seen it listed both ways) in Yeadon (just outside of West Philadelphia). We found the doors were open, but the sanctuary was empty.
We had checked the web site before setting out. The service was listed for 10 am. We had run into a detour and were afraid that we were a little late. In fact, we were only two minutes late.
We could hear a praise band practicing and one of our ambassadors caught a glimpse of three musicians, but otherwise there was not a soul in sight.
We looked around the narthex for a few minutes. The sign on the narthex wall said WORSHIP 10 am. The Ambassadors took a quick vote and decided not to hang around waiting for the unknown. We were concerned that another ambassador was planning to come independently, but since he is never late, we soon set out. This morning would be a Fellowship Sunday.
On our way to the parking lot, we passed the pastor and his wife (at least they seemed to match photos from the web site). They were just arriving. We said hello. But there was no turning the Ambassadors around at this point. It was clear that worship was not going to begin anywhere near on time, and we are a restless bunch.
Last week, when we visited Redemption in NE Philadelphia, there had been an announced change in worship time that wasn’t on the web. We waited an hour for the service to begin, but we waited with other people. The pastor talked with us for a while and explained why there was a mix-up. This morning we had no idea what was going on.
We retired to our favorite local diner and discussed the gospel lesson of the lost sheep.
We were disappointed.
Spirit and Truth’s ministry interested us because their story was told to us when SEPA was trying to find a less messy way to acquire our property five or six years ago. We wanted to see their ministry for ourselves.
This is what we did in Yeadon, they said. The existing church (Trinity) had only a few old ladies left as members, they explained. The old ladies voted to close. We had a grand closing service to provide them closure. Then we reopened the church under a new name a few weeks later with new management—synod. They called the church a mission development church. Rev. Patricia Davenport (who was part of the Redeemer fiasco) canvassed the neighborhood for four or five years. SEPA rechartered the church in 2005 with 179 charter members. But the new charter would forever list the church as a church with mission roots (which we are guessing Trinity didn’t have). This is a bigger deal than it may seem. Read on.
For this strategy to work, it was explained, all memory and ties to the past must be severed. They make it sound likes this is to aid mission. It’s not. It’s about legally acquiring certain congregational property rights.
Spirit and Truth’s web site history begins: In 2000, the Trinity Lutheran Church of Yeadon, PA closed. That’s all folks. Trinity is history. Spirit and Truth rose from its ashes. The saints of Trinity would soon be forgotten.
This was the new flagship strategy of Bishop Burkat when she took office in 2006. Redeemer was to be the first of six churches to benefit from her innovative leadership—or so their lawyer stated in court.
This is why Spirit and Truth is sometimes called a Church and sometimes called a Worship Center.. Worship Centers are synod-controlled. Churches have rights. Unfortunately, those rights have been watered down (with muddy water) in recent years.
SEPA presented their sanitized intentions to the courts in 2009. They left out the part where they tipped their hand by trying to sell our property behind our backs in 2008.
Their plan included a stipulation that was not acceptable to Redeemer. None of the existing members could play a leadership role in the Church of the New Name. We could do no more than attend. We found no constitutional basis for disempowering local leadership and no reason to go this route as we had plenty of existing and developing lay leadership. The proposal was, in our view, a way of gaining control of our property by getting influential church members out of the way and scaring marginal members and pastors into submission.
There are three problems with this strategy.
Problem 1
There is no evidence that the strategy works. While Spirit and Truth grew for a few years under Rev. Patricia Davenport’s leadership, it has been in significant decline since she left in November 2007. Within three years of her departure their average attendance was less than half what it was in 2008 (and statistics were not reported in two of those years). Their statistics had dropped below their charter membership just a few years before. It was during these years that the great Yeadon experiment was starting to fail that Pastor Davenport and Bishop Burkat were trying to take Redeemer down the same road.
If leadership is dependent on clergy, then consistent leadership seems to be pivotal to success. There are no guarantees in today’s church that mission-capable pastors are going to be available long-term. Therefore, relying on clergy to be the sole provider of mission leadership is foolish.
Spirit and Truth’s ELCA Trend Report has current membership at 136 with average attendance of 35, but if you add up the itemized membership column, the membership comes out to only 70—about 12% smaller than Redeemer. Redeemer’s cash and property assets were more than four times theirs. Yet they got to vote on our property. We didn’t.
Thirteen years have passed since SEPA tested this new strategy.
Looks like Redeemer was smart to be wary.
Problem 2
Redeemer was not anything like Trinity in Yeadon, the predecessor of Spirit and Truth. Their members agreed to the arrangement. We were given no choice.
Our membership was statistically young. Only three or four of our 82 members were over 70 (just over). While Bishop Almquist waited six years (2000-2006) for our older members to die, we had actually become a young church. In 2007 the new members led a membership drive which resulted in 49 new members. Most of our newer members were young families and with a good percentage of young unmarried people and young couples from a wide variety of backgrounds joining. We were growing quickly. No reason to act like we were failing when we weren’t.
We didn’t need a new entity with a new name and Synod-approved leaders. Synod did.
Problem 3
Many churches don’t realize this:
If you allow your congregation to be listed as a mission development church, you lose important constitutional rights.
The Synod gains rights to the property and disbursement of assets if you vote to close.
The congregation loses the right to withdraw from the Synod to join another Lutheran body with their property. EVER—even 100 years from now.
The Synod wants churches to have mission status—even for a short length of time—to constitutionally secure the property for their future enrichment.
This strategy puts the control of assets in their hands. It also puts success or failure in their hands—since they now control all aspects of ministry. That’s why SEPA needs knowledgeable lay people out of the way. That’s why Trinity, Yeadon, was encouraged to close and deed the property to Synod before new outreach began. SEPA needs old churches to close to gain rights to property. It has nothing to do with mission effectiveness being hindered by previous ministry or history. It’s about creating new entities to secure property ownership under mission status. All those new church members in Yeadon may not know that they no longer have the rights the old members in Yeadon had.
Very sneaky, indeed.
We can only wonder why the current residents of Yeadon are considered less able to run their own church than the previous demographic of Yeadon. Redeemer was dealing with a new demographic too. Our members, mostly from well-educated professionals from East Africa, were viewed as unable to manage their own affairs without synod’s help.
And all of this is why SEPA’s dealings with Redeemer have been secretive, underhanded, vindictive beyond reason and litigious. They don’t want people to really know what’s behind their “mission” strategies.
Redeemer has members well-versed in the church constitutions. We knew it was not in our ministry’s interest to give up our rights as Lutherans. SEPA was the only beneficiary of the plan.
SEPA would have to find another way to take possession of our property—and they did. But it has been an ugly unChristlike LOSE-LOSE situation. It is an embarrassment to our denomination.
The Ambassadors didn’t attend a worship service today. We don’t know what went awry.
One thing we know:
Redeemer leaders were always ready for worship at the appointed time.
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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).
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On Isaiah 30:15b
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
