2×2 has an unusually broad reach for a very small congregation. Our blog has made amazing things happen.
A local reader introduced friends of hers who are missionaries in the far north of Sweden to 2×2. They became regular readers and contributors.
They have been back in the states for a few months and asked to meet us.
The four of us had a lovely afternoon sharing mission stories.
Sweden is a traditionally Lutheran nation that has over the years become somewhat secular. Religion is respected, the churches are open, but large sanctuaries are far from filled.
Sound familiar?
Their mission centers on house churches. Many denominations use this concept in America with success. The church we visited with the largest attendance was a Presbyterian Church in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia. There were well over 200 at worship. We noticed in their bulletin that they had invitations to several house church meetings during the week. Two of them were in our neighborhood!
There is something attractive in the concept. Large gatherings can feel overwhelming. People lose the intimacy so important to faith-nurturing.
Lutherans have never been particularly strong on this idea, stressing the corporate nature of church even as their numbers steadily fail. It might be worth considering.
2×2 has some experience. We met in our homes for the first year and a half after being evicted from our property by the Southeastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. We enjoyed the experience but it was difficultt to have any outreach or influence. We felt isolated from Christian community—which was the whole idea behind locking our doors. In isolation, we were expected to disappear.
We took to the idea of visiting churches with enthusiasm and our Ambassadors enjoy our visits.
So much of Lutheran attention centers on property and there are advantages. A church property is like a large billboard—a visual presence in the community. But if anything good is to happen inside that property, it is up to the people to nurture it—and that often happens best in small community. A dichotomy!
So it was interesting to talk with people who use the house church concept to reach individuals and thereby begin building Christian community.
So far, 2×2 has concentrated on building community with its web presence. That, too, is an interesting experimental mission — uncharted territory, really. We’ll take all the ideas we encounter to see what might be most effective for today’s faithful.
The Transformational Tool the Church Is Waiting For
The Church is slow to understand Social Media and how it could impact the local congregation.
The fact is Social Media can benefit congregations—both large and small. It can do more. It can transform them.
Larger churches have more resources for exploring this new world, but the emphasis should actually be on helping small churches master Social Media. Their success will benefit the entire Church.
People like small churches. Most churches are small. Most small churches are struggling. Social Media could change this.
The power of Social Media, if unleashed, could change how we understand church and mission foundationally.
Church structure has been pretty much the same since Moses. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. With that command in mind for thousands of years, God’s people have gathered once every seven days for worship. The structure of Christian worship is built on the traditions of Jewish scripture.
It’s quite a heritage. Why change?
There are at least two reasons.
The number of people following the age-old traditions is dwindling.
For the first time in history, we CAN make significant changes.
Most church leaders view Social Media as additive. It’s something new they have to do in addition to all the things that already keep them busy. That’s one reason why they never get around to mastering new skills.
But Social Media can be so much more. It can be a game changer. It can turn church life inside out and connect congregations to the very people we have so much trouble reaching.
Look, for instance, at what is happening in the world of education because of the influence of social media.
The old model of education is to gather students around a teacher who lectures them. The students then go home and do homework to reinforce what they learned. Students who understand breeze through their homework. Students who don’t understand often return to the classroom to hear another lecture without mastering the foundations of the previous lesson. This model of education works for students with an academic mindset. It leaves a lot of great minds that think differently behind.
But now, progressive teachers are beginning to understand that the best lecturers in the world can present the lessons to students online. There is no longer any economic benefit to gathering students around one teacher to hear them talk. One excellent teacher can lecture a million students! Students can listen to the lesson before they come to class. They can repeat sections they don’t understand and search for additional information, if they are so inclined.
The role of “teacher ” changes. When the students gather together for the state-mandated school attendance, the teacher can work with them hands-on. The classwork (as opposed to homework) can involve debate and projects and individual instruction. Using this time to lecture is a waste!
How does this apply to Church?
We are accustomed to the gathered people of God coming together once a week to worship and listen to the Word. The Word is presented by one person who may have spent a day preparing the message. The format is 20-40 minutes — way longer than the modern attention span. There is little or no actual exchange with the congregation (unlike the accounts of Paul’s preaching in the book of Acts). There is no way of reinforcing the message. Even the best sermons are forgotten before the Sunday dinner table is cleared!
Social Media can change this. It means changing habits or perhaps creating a new discipline.
News flash: Preachers do not have to wait for congregants to come to them!
There is no reason a preacher cannot interact with congregants (and seekers) every day of the week. Short, thought-provoking messages tied to the daily lectionary as well as the weekly lectionary can bring the congregation together on Sunday prepared to be more involved in worship. Worship and post-worship can become more hands on. The pastor may learn much more about the congregation he or she serves and new mission ideas and opportunities are bound to surface.
What could come from this is a new understanding of the talent that today is simply sitting in the pew. Congregants, with daily reinforcement, will make religion more a part of their lives. With daily inspiration, they are more likely to talk to others as they go about their work and family lives. When they come to church once a week, they will come not as passive listeners but as empowered, knowledgeable Christians who are eager to put their faith to work. They might argue with the preacher (just as the temple-goers in the Bible did). They might present new ideas or come up with new mission possibilities—which can then be addressed online during the week—for all in the community to read. It will expand a congregation’s witness.
For Social Media’s power to reach full potential, we must be willing to transform how we structure our expectations of pastors. Pastors and educators of pastors must be part of the transformation.
It may even change the role of seminaries. All the newly empowered lay people might see value in studying more about their faith—not necessarily to become pastors, but to become more involved and knowledgeable lay people.
Redeemer and 2×2 takes SEPA’s recent request for congregations to make multimedia presentations about their ministry seriously. It is a goal of 2×2 to conquer video for use on its website, so it was a welcome challenge.
We learned basic recording techniques and syncing sound tracks to slides. We added transitions. We’ve got a lot to learn, but we are happy with our start and will soon share our experiences with others.
Blogging may be good and it may reach all over the world. But the word of God says, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another . . . . ” (Hebrews 10 :25) and to my understanding I am going to church.
We have never advocated blogging as a replacement for Christian community. We see it as enhancing Christian community.
There is value in assembling as a people of God. Most of the people who read and correspond with us through our blog are active in such assemblies and send us many photos of their congregations.
Assembling as a congregation is not in itself an evangelism tool. The sizes of these assemblies are shrinking—big churches and small churches alike. Most are experiencing sizable decline. As they shrink, they are becoming protective of who they are. In a sense they forsake who they might become, if they actually had a way of reaching out.
The value of blogging is that you reach beyond the four walls of your congregation and start to learn about the people who are not part of your assembly—yet.
As for the people of 2×2 and Redeemer? We have been locked out our place of assembly by all the other Lutheran congregations in our region. This was an unnecessary cruelty and was designed to make taking our property, our offerings and possessions easier.
And still we attend church — sitting several times a month with the very people who condone this action—some actively, most passively. We worship, we pass the peace and sometimes commune with them. We listen to words read from the Bible that point to the wrongs of these actions. We have visited 60 happy and contented congregations who would rather not be bothered. We live the Good Samaritan story every day. The Levite and Pharisee pass us by.
We worship with others even when it is difficult to do, even when we are treated with only minimal hospitality and no recognition of what their communities have put our community through. We have abided condescending platitudes. We have also met some really nice people!
Congregations seem to find justification in their communal acceptance of wrong.
We still believe in local assembly and gather in our own “upper room” in a theater that has loaned us the space for three years while our church has persisted in vilifying our members to justify their leaders’ actions. We pass our locked church, a symbol of atrocity, every day.
We still get together once a week for worship and often during the week to work on projects or just enjoy one another’s company. We still help one another through tough times and celebrate good times. We still pray for one another and for the rest of the church that treats us so badly.
We agree with you! Go to church.
But beware! Just being there is not enough. The gospel—including the book of Hebrews—makes other demands on us.
Don’t forget the teachings of love, forgiveness and reconciliation. Don’t forget the admonition to go into the world and make believers of all.
Blogging has made this possible for every Christian.
2x2virtualchurch is the web project of Redeemer Lutheran Church in East Falls, Philadelphia, shunned by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. They view us as too small to fulfill any mission purpose and seized our property and locked out our members.
2x2virtualchurch is now two years old. We started knowing very little about the web but it seemed to be a logical and viable mission opportunity for a congregation raped of its heritage.
It’s been a voyage of discovery.
We’ve documented our growth statistics before but in the last month we began to add new dimension to our ministry.
About a month ago, businessesgrow.com (Mark Shaefer’s marketing website) featured a 2×2 guest blog.
That blog was picked up by five other major blogs including a couple of business web sites and two Christian Social Media web sites. (These are the ones we know about!)
Yesterday, we received a request to participate in a podcast for a Christian Social Media site. At the same time we are about to launch our first multimedia video.
This is all within a few weeks!
So the progression has been:
2011: Readership grows from 1 reader per month in February to a few hundred per month
2012: Readership grows from an average of 20 readers per day to 50 readers per day
2013 to date: Readership grows from 50 readers per day to an average of 90 per day and more than 4000 per month
This makes Redeemer and its 2×2 ministry the congregation with the widest reach in SEPA Synod—which declared us to be closed and unfit to manage our own ministry in 2010. (They wanted our property.)
The lessons to be learned from our ministry:
Prepare to give a solid year of dedicated work before making any value assessments. 2×2 started to gain momentum when we started posting daily in the summer of 2011.
Post frequently at least three times a week.
Look for interests that aren’t being addressed. We discovered a demand for object lessons for adults that draws daily traffic to our site. Churches are also looking for easy dramas—plays that don’t require a lot of costumes and rehearsals. We are trying to figure out how to offer music!
Your audience is the world once you begin using the web. You can write for just the people who live near you but don’t close the doors on interesting opportunities. We have many stories to tell of how our ministry is impacting the lives of Christians thousands of miles away in surprising and exciting ways.
Be helpful to your readers. Our free resources geared to small congregations drives our traffic.
Cast a wider net when fishing for men. Most church web sites are all about them. They may succeed locally with this approach, but they will be missing mission opportunity.
Don’t look to professional leadership to have the skills needed to forge the way in this type of ministry. They have been busy learning other things. Turn it over to lay people.
Don’t rely on hierarchical support. They are not likely to understand the potential of the web. They were born of an era when church structure was locally focused with distant oversight. This is not likely to change without a major reformation.
Don’t expect accolades for your success from the greater church. Again, they frequently don’t understand the web and are still assessing congregational viability by 1950 standards. It will be five years at least before they realize what they are missing. By then things are likely to have changed still more.
Don’t expect regional bodies to admit their weaknesses.
Where to from here?
2×2 has gained credible blogging skills. We will now look to be adding more video and podcasting and more helpful resources for small church ministry and world mission.
We hope to cooperate with other local ministry efforts, offering our expertise to their causes.
We’ve grown a bit “like Topsy” but we will now become more intentional in creating our ministry plan—something Redeemer was always good at!
We have achieved this success on a $0 budget as our hierarchy claimed all our offerings at the same time it challenged us with legal expenses. We now have a readership base that can monetize our ministry. The economics of scale will allow us to do this at prices far lower than traditional publishing and we will remain dedicated to providing most resources for free as part of our mission.
There is a lot of hard work in learning all these new mission skills. We will be glad to share our experiences with any church interested in diving in!
What kind of content should congregations include on their web site?
Social media rules the internet and content is king!
There is untold power in using social media, but churches tend to lose interest in using the power at their fingertips.
Take some time to review typical church websites. Big church, small churches . . . they are all pretty much the same. They provide little more than basic information. They are called “brochure” web sites.
Typically, the opening page lists worship times and has a few photos of the church on Easter or Christmas.
Fancier church websites run some javascript and have photos fading in and out. Happy kids. Happy families. Choirs. Activities.
The links from the home page point to bios on clergy and staff and lists of programs offered by the church.
Somewhere there might be a nod to a mission statement or a Bible verse or two.
Job done. “We’re on the internet.”
This type of website may do no harm, but it doesn’t help a church stand out. Your members will take a look now and then. But the community and the unchurched are unlikely to ever stumble upon your church web site unless they are newcomers planning to spend a few Sundays church-shopping.
Your web site can be so much more!
But how? Where to you start?
The “brochure” web site is a start. But as soon as you can, attach a blog to it. It can be part of the same web address or it can be separate.
The blog has many advantages. It is easy to update. You won’t need to outsource this. The content you create for the church blog, will reflect your congregation’s personality. You might even find that the discipline of blogging will shape your congregation’s mission.
Filter the jargon. Don’t assume that your audience knows about church.
Show that you are part of your community. Include articles about secular organizations that share your mission. Link to their sites. Advertise events at the public library, local schools and parks. If your members are active in a local charity, ask them to write about their involvement. True, the focus is not the church, but the church will have positioned itself as being a spiritual hub in a vibrant community. Newcomers looking to learn about all sorts of things in your neighborhood will find your website — even when they weren’t looking for a church.
Have multiple voices. This is tough for churches. Church is accustomed to the pastor being the voice of the whole congregation. This was once a necessity—back when clergy were the only educated people in town. That is long ago, indeed. Have your pastor introduce other contributors, so there is a sense of teamwork and shared authority. The world expects this in the secular world and the unchurched are likely to find it welcoming in the religious world. Don’t exclude youth. They understand the power of the web.
Feed your lambs. Provide some spiritual food. The temptation is to reprint the sermon. There is nothing wrong with this — except it is not likely to be effective. One sentence excerpts from a sermon would be more effective. You might even ask your congregation to tweet a thought from the sanctuary as the sermon is being delivered! One-minute videos (easily produced with a smartphone) would also be good. Present this content so that it can be tweeted or shared on multiple social media channels.
Revamp the newsletter. Another temptation is to post a 16-page PDF of the congregation’s newsletter. This creates a barrier. Readers will think twice before down-loading the PDF. Only members are likely to do this. Pull the articles out of the newsletter and feature them as posts. You might find you have no need for a newsletter!
Serve. Provide links to organizations that can help troubled people. Does your church support a food pantry or shelter for homeless or abused people? Do you know of senior centers, day cares or counseling or support groups? Post that information on your web site. The organizations do not have to be church-sponsored or religiously affiliated. People looking for help don’t care about that. They might remember where they found help . . . and tell others. (It’s a good idea to ask permission. That step creates a contact for you with your neighborhood. Make friends. They might link to you!)
Teach. The Sunday School is all but dead. But people still have an interest in understanding their faith. Have a monthly theme and post something small about that theme each day. The modern attention span is short. A paragraph or two is sufficient. Done well, these snippets might lead to a live event where you can meet people.
Curate. Link your readers to interesting photos, articles or videos you find online. Have them open in a separate window so your readers don’t lose you. You will be not only sharing the Good News but you’ll draw some search engine traffic.
Help other churches. What? Isn’t that self-defeating? No! It’s called goodwill. Don’t be afraid to tell your readers about interesting things going on in other churches. They just may reciprocate.
Comparing SEPA’s Largest Congregation with the Church SEPA Says Doesn’t Exist
What do Trinity, Lansdale, and Redeemer, East Falls, have in common?
We both engage with more than 700 followers each week.
According to Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Trend reports, Trinity, Lansdale, stands alone among Southeastern Pennsylvania churches in numbers. It has nearly 5000 members and an average worship attendance of 725. Most other large churches in SEPA — and there are only a few — average around 400.
Most SEPA churches are much smaller with about 100 or fewer at worship (many much fewer). ELCA Trend measures only membership, attendance, income and expenses (in various configurations).
There are new statistics that will mean more in the emerging church. Churches don’t have to worry about collecting the data. The internet tracks results for you. This is where Redeemer is breaking ground no other SEPA church seems to be seriously exploring.
Redeemer is no longer listed in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Trend reports, although the congregation never voted to close. We’ll take that up with the ELCA later.
Redeemer was growing quickly although we were still among the SEPA churches with fewer than 50 in average weekly worship attendance—the only engagement most churches measure. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod seized Redeemer’s property and locked our doors in 2009—something about inability to fulfill mission. (They approved a $275,000 budget deficit at the same time they claimed our property.)
There was plenty to question at the time, but no one did. There is more to question now!
Redeemer has continued its ministry without our property. There is no rule that a congregation must own property.
Locked out of God’s House in East Falls, we took our ministry online with our blog, 2x2virtualchurch.com. We now have an average weekly following approaching 800 in new traffic and about 150 who subscribe to our site daily. We engage between 1000 and 2000 readers each week.
Redeemer may have the largest engagement of any SEPA congregation! The potential for effective mission is huge.
While the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the ELCA has tenaciously tried to destroy our ministry, we adapted — and grew!
2×2 is written with lay leaders in mind. Our experience as a small church is that lay leaders are the innovators in ministry. Most have part-time pastors. Growing churches is not part-time work. The passion of lay people (an undervalued resource) is keeping many churches going.
Small churches need resources that don’t rely on paid skills.
We had an additional challenge. Redeemer is multicultural and multilingual. No single age group dominates. That means we can’t just turn to a choir or a youth group or a Sunday School class to create interesting activities. We developed materials that could be adapted to any eclectic grouping.
When we still had our building we posted these resources on generic ministry websites.
Two years ago we began posting them on 2×2.
We posted an Easter play Redeemer performed for all East Falls churches in 2009. It was downloaded 300 times last year and 3000 times this year.
This tells us how we can further serve the large audience of small churches. Search engine analysis shows us that people are beginning to find our content by specifically plugging in terms specific to our site (“2×2 Easter play” — not just “Easter play).” Our content is gaining a following.
We post at least two features a week which congregations can adapt. Early in the week we post an object lesson intended for adults based on the week’s lectionary. Mid-week we post an analysis of art that complements the week’s theme. These can be adapted to multimedia presentations that some churches now show before worship (just as Redeemer did). We will continue to build on this foundation.
In addition, we offer our experience in using social media with dozens of how-to posts.
One large church recently wrote to us: “A lot is written about social media and the church, but you are the only church actually doing it.”
In all likelihood, Redeemer has the widest reach of any church in SEPA Synod with followers all over the world. We engage with them one-on-one. We share ministry problems and successes and rely on one another for prayer.
What does this mean for ministry in East Falls? It means our worldwide reach can now benefit our local ministry. We have a new potential source of funding for ministry.
Redeemer always was viable despite SEPA’s self-interested reports. Our day school, locked since SEPA interfered, would be generating upwards of $6000 per month. (That’s nearly $300,000 of squandered potential over the last four years.) The web site could begin to generate several thousand a month within a year of nurturing—plenty of resources to fund a neighborhood ministry without a single coin in an offering plate.
Redeemer has never had more potential.
If mission is the goal in East Falls (and it is definitely our goal) the best potential for ministry is to make peace with the Lutherans who have steadfastly maintained and grown mission during the last six years of conflict. The property should be returned to Redeemer. This would be in keeping with Lutheran polity.
Our journey has been a leap into the future of the church. We could still be a small neighborhood church serving a few, focused on survival and paying a pastor—as is the case of so many small churches.
We’ve learned that it is possible for a small church to grow. We are very aware that 2×2 can grow beyond our own vision.
Meanwhile, the largest church in SEPA and Redeemer, the largest online church, are both fulfilling their mission with impressive results.
God is doing something new at Redeemer, East Falls.
The strategy and tactics of love are the backbone of most storytelling.
Here is the standard scenario.
Boy sees girl or girl sees boy. They want to get together. (Strategy) They plot to be together, surmounting one obstacle after another until they are happily and forever in each other’s arms. (Tactics)
Is this not like the longed-for scenario of church work?
In the Church, achieving togetherness (oneness with God) is the strategy. Tactics are the methods used to reach this goal.
Too often in church work, we employ tactic after tactic with no clear strategy. Strategy starts to stray — usually in the direction of making a traditional budget.
We write mission statements to remind us that the strategy of the Church is to reach God’s people with the message of love.
What follows should be an examination of tactics. Too often it is simply putting into place the tactics of the past.
Typical tactics include:
Membership drives
Pot luck dinners and seasonal festivals
Visitation
Worship innovations
Educational and social opportunities
Newsletters
Sermons
Service projects
There are new tactics that the Church has not yet conquered.
Social media
This contains a host of sub-tactics — blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, podcasting, video, etc.
But what is the strategy?
The message of the church is love. The strategy never changes.
The strategy is engagement.
Jesus engaged people.
He approached them as individuals.
The woman at the well
The midnight lesson with Nicodemus
The paralytic by the pool of Bethesda
He engaged them in groups.
The wedding guests
The disciples
The multitudes on the mountainside
The people in the temple
The family of Lazarus at the graveside
Once engaged, Jesus employed tactics.
Miracles
Rituals and observances
Personal conversations that often had a supernatural nature
Teaching
Storytelling
Protesting (clearing the temple)
Service (blessing the children, feeding the hungry, curing the ill)
We must emulate these tactics. We must teach and serve, pray and worship. We must do some things in a traditional way and we must do many things in more modern ways. To some extent we must do them simultaneously because we live in transitional age.
A common tactic employed by regional bodies is to close churches on older memberships — expecting elderly members to assimilate into other congregations that might also be forced to close within a few years. This is a cruel and dead-end tactic because it has lost view of the overall strategy of the church. The strategy of engagement has been overtaken by the strategy of economics.
The rut which is engulfing the Church is that we have become accustomed to people coming to us. We expect this and even demand it—without success, but we keep doing it anyway! This expectation is becoming less realistic with every passing day. The problems we face today are because the tactic of neglect has been employed for decades.
And so we must adjust our engagement tactics.
If people are not going to come to us, how are we going to reach them? How do we engage God’s people today?
In the story of the good Samaritan, the religious people (the priest and the Levite) find reasons to pass by the poor soul who has been robbed and hurt. In each case, their failure to act with compassion is prompted by fear for their own hides.
It is the Samaritan—the outsider, the person at whom the religious people of the day would collectively thumb their noses—who offered help—ongoing help, not just a quick fix.
We lived the Good Samaritan story this week. We needed help. One of our good members faced the imminent loss of her home and income due to the reign of terror inflicted on Redeemer and its members by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Our little church, which SEPA insists doesn’t exist, rallied.
We asked for help from churches who helped create this situation. They were prayerful but unhelpful. It’s so easy to find excuses to do nothing.
“We’ll pray for you” is the universal excuse of SEPA Lutherans. Their prayer, we suppose, is that someone else will fix the mess they created. How tiring all that prayer must be!
We went to unrelated Lutheran churches. We don’t do that sort of thing, was their answer.
At last we found the help we needed. One local church who has been helping us for the last four years offered major assistance with no expectation of return. A church some 200 miles away (and smaller than Redeemer!) both contributed and guaranteed what we couldn’t raise locally. Four individuals also helped graciously. As far as we know, only one has any church affiliation.
Two of them used the same phrase: “A wrong has been done and it must be righted.”
And so little Redeemer, raised the money we needed to satisfy Redeemer’s debt—twice what SEPA expects to pay. This debt would never have been a problem to anyone if our school were operating for the last four years and contributing to mission and ministry in East Falls. But SEPA, hungry for our assets, interfered with and ruined our 25-year relationship with a Lutheran agency and stopped us from opening our own program. They have kept the doors locked on both the sanctuary and school for nearly four years—no ministry is better than a neighborhood church they can’t control.
SEPA Synod took our property under questionable legality. A court split decision ruled in their favor, saying the courts could not be involved in church issues. The dissenting opinion pointed out that the legal arguments seem to favor Redeemer and the case should be heard by the courts. In five years, court room after court room, the case has never been heard.
We have always claimed that SEPA’s interest in our property was entirely a result of their failing finances and mission—not Redeemer’s.
This week is further proof.
We’ve been saying in our posts on social media that the power in the church is shifting. There was a day when congregations had to band together to provide services and perform effective mission. Individuals now have the power to do much more on their own. Support of hierarchy is more expensive than effective.
Redeemer (and yes, we do exist) proved that this week.
Don’t get us wrong . . . we appreciate prayer. But we appreciate even more those who help find answers to prayer.
Thank you to all who cared enough to do more than pray. You are a living parable.
2x2virtualchurch.com has been an experiment in using social media in the realm of religion. We started in February 2011, following a WordPress how-to book.
Wait a minute? I just wrote “we.”
2×2 is a “we.” Our members subscribe, comment on posts (usually off line), suggest direction and lend support. We get together every week and discuss 2×2’s direction. But the writing on 2×2, for the most part, is an “I” job.
One thing I’ve learned about social media—it is hard to write that word “I.” I posted for nearly a year without using it. I was thinking about “we,” so I thought it was the fair way to represent our mission.
However, in this journey of discovery as an online ministry, we/I have discovered that the word “I” is more powerful than the communal “we.”
“We” can become a crutch. The person saying “we” can say with confidence almost anything. There will be someone in a group that thinks that way. The more and louder you speak, the less likely those that disagree are going to speak up.
“We” can be an excuse for thinkers with ideas that aren’t fully cooked. It becomes an army of phantom support — like the Wizard of Oz. Pull back the curtain and what do you see?
“We” can become theologically lazy. “Well, if that’s what everyone else thinks, they must be right.”
It can take centuries to undo the sometimes tragic results of “we” thinking.
This is especially hard in church work. Church/congregations are communal in nature. We are used to expressing ourselves as a group. That’s what church hierarchy is about—making sure the voice of the church is authentic to the word of God.
The practice began with authentic concern but has morphed in the modern world (and probably long before the modern world) to being a shield—protecting influence and sanitizing the behaviors of church leaders who we all know are just as human as everyone else—capable of sacrifical love, tempted by selfish interests. It becomes crippling to the millions of church thinkers who don’t have a platform in the church — unless they blog!
When we consider the consequences the power the word “I” carries in church work, it is no wonder we refrain from using it. A Martin Luther or his modern namesake—King, a Ghandhi, a Bonhoeffer don’t pop up until things are really, really off track. Saying “I” in the “we” society of church can make life’s journey pretty rocky.
2×2 has learned that “I” is a more powerful word than “we.” The more personal our posts have become in recent months, the faster our traffic has grown. Admitting that I am one person within the group that sponsors 2×2 (Redeemer Lutheran Church, East Falls) is honest. People connect to individuals more easily than to groups. Online readers appreciate honesty. They’ll keep you honest, too! A writer thinks twice when he uses the word I in the sentence.
In two years, 2×2 has grown from one visitor per month to 2500 per month, doubling its monthly average in the first two months of 2013. (We suspect little Redeemer, has become the congregation with the biggest following and widest reach of any church in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America —SEPA/ELCA.)
There is power in the vulnerability of the word “I.” That one letter is difficult, at first, to type. The advice was always there in the how-to books: write as an individual. It takes a while to become comfortable with the idea that yes, these are MY ideas. I am putting them out there for others to criticize. It becomes powerful when others add their 2¢. The “we” that “I” serve in writing this blog starts to make a difference.
That’s how we all grow in faith. By practicing the “I” word. And remembering that every “I” is a child of God. Every “I” that is part of Redeemer matters. That’s the story I tell.
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.
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).
2×2 Sections
Where in the World is 2×2?
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
