The cauldron of the London Olympic games was beautiful—a pleasure to view even far away on television. It outshone the Olympics itself!

It was comprised of copper petals, carried into the stadium by children of the world and assembled to be lit not by one famous athlete but by seven child athletes whose names will be remembered—at least for the time being—by only their families and friends. The children are left to dream of the day when they might compete and their story might be recalled. “She was one of the seven children to light the cauldron in 2012.” Such is the thing of dreams.

For all its beauty, the cauldron debuted to criticism. It wasn’t what people expected. It wasn’t big enough. It didn’t tower over the games. Where was the power? Where was the big statement?

Criticism waned as the games were played. It’s beauty overpowered the nitpicking. The petals grew on us!

The cauldron story usually ends when it is extinguished. But this Olympic Cauldron will live on all over the world as the petals are disassembled and sent home to each participating country.

It was never one big urn of fire—the same but a little bigger than the games of previous years. It was the assembly of individual flames that gave it power and beauty. It was powerful because it was  thought through beyond the power of big. It will live in memory far longer than the cauldrons that were attempts at the colossal.

Well done, London.

You do not become a “dissident” just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society. —Václav Havel—Living in Truth, 1986

The members of Redeemer have been living the unhappy lives of “dissidents” for the last five years. Redeemer members were forging a new ministry, doing what we thought was right (as the most recent judge pointed out to Synod). We were cast out and attacked by the Church to which we were and remain faithful.

The ELCA has created its own little world complete with its own rules—made, revised, and broken with regular and accepted ease. It has claimed immunity from the law, which might force it to follow its own rules. Meanwhile, it uses the law against its members.

It has become a lethargic source of benevolence, existing primarily to support itself, coat-tailing the efforts of secular organizations, with diminished vision and no sense that it actually can be a force for good—if it dares.

ELCA Congregations and their regional bodies are constitutionally interdependent. Consequently, each congregation has its own little culture — which one might think leads to diversity. It doesn’t.

Congregations are in many ways clones of one another. They hold worship services which are similar, become involved in similar causes in the community, acquire professional leadership with the same training. Some are larger than others. Some are more effective than others. Size has little to do with effectiveness.

In the world of the ELCA all is happy — the better to attract new members and create economic stability to attract people to professional service. The relationship between congregations and regional bodies is often little more than employer/employment agency.

When things go wrong, the true character of the Church becomes evident.

The ship of the ELCA has no keel. When rough waters threaten there is no leadership to steady it. Taking a stand might be politically dangerous, threatening a leader’s value to the employment agency.

In recent years, the domination lost 10% of its congregations in a doctrinal dispute. Church leaders remained relatively silent. The response: revise the rules to make it harder for congregations to leave.

Tough economic times have brought out the worst in Church leadership.

In the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod (SEPA) and several others, church leaders have been running roughshod over member churches to acquire property and wealth. Similar stories emerge from several synods.

Congregations have, for the most part, remained silent as their regional bodies attack sister congregations. This may seem like the safe route, but it leaves all church members vulnerable. All the resources of 150 or more congregations are available to attack an individual congregation. The attackers control the forums for appeal making the efforts at democratic involvement ludicrous.

Those who challenge are labeled and attacked personally to discourage others from taking a stand. The attacks continue long after there is any hope of further monetary gain. Hatefulness defies reason.

Havel wrote about this too.

Some people have the souls of collaborators and others the souls of resisters. Collaborators aren’t simply the active supporters of a system’s oppressions. They are everyone who tacitly accepts injustice without a murmur. They confirm the system, fulfill the system, and validate the system; they are the system.

We, the unintentional dissidents of SEPA Synod, visit church after church that voted against their own governing documents to take our property by force. From pulpit after pulpit, we hear Scripture that teaches that treating one another so hatefully is wrong. We listen to sermon after sermon, explaining the scriptures correctly. Failure to seek peace, reconcile and forgive is wrong.

We see no one able to act.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America gathers statistics from congregations and publishes a searchable database on the internet. It is called the ELCA Trend report. If you a looking for a church within a certain radius, all you must do is plug in your zip code and the distance you are willing to travel. A list will pop up.

The list contains the name of the congregation, its address, phone number and web address if available.

We plugged 25 miles into the radius and a long list of congregations came up, stretching into New Jersey. We are quite familiar with the list. We’ve visited nearly 50 of the congregations.

The first thing we like to do when visiting is review the congregation’s web site to find the time of services and learn about their ministry in advance of our visit.

Here is an amazing fact. Thirty of the congregations within 25 miles of our area (excluding NJ) have NO WEB SITE. Many of them are congregations with mission status which means the synod has some oversight of their ministry. (Redeemer, the church SEPA claims is too small to minister, has two web sites! This is one. redeemereastfalls.com is the other)

Where do people go today when they are looking for a restaurant, doctor, school, specialty store . . . church? To the internet.

There is no excuse for any church to ignore the potential of the web, even if it is simply to publish their address and worship times. A simple site can be set up for $25 a year and would take just 15 minutes to publish. With templates readily available, the most basic effort can look professional.

Congregations without web sites are advertising their inability to evangelize in today’s world.

Why would congregations not take advantage of the web?

• Lack of knowledge. It’s a lot easier than it used to be.
• The thinking that the web site is for current members and current members aren’t interested. Web sites are more for potential members than members.
• Expense. They think it will cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. It used to! But not anymore. You can have a web site for $25 a year.

If you need help, call or write 2×2.

No excuses. Get on the web!

For centuries the Church has allowed the clergy to direct mission. It worked for a while, especially when church professionals were willing to labor in the field for little compensation and the people they served were uneducated. The rewards in those days were in the commitment to the Lord and His service. Tax law even recognized the sacrifices of clergy and created special rules to lessen their tax burden.

That level of commitment is rare today. Church professionals have negotiated salaries that might still be low compared to the corporate world but which are far better. They still have tax advantages.

The current state of decline in the Church has been influenced by this shift. Congregations must work harder and members must sacrifice more for less leadership. The laity have become valued for what they can contribute.

There are solutions but they require de-emphasizing the reliance on professional leadership. Empower the laity. They, for the most part, are still willing to labor without monetary rewards. They may even be eager to make a difference. In this day and age, they are educated and have leadership skills which they use in the secular world.

There is one hitch that will keep this from happening. Empowering the laity means less power for clergy.

Ministry was never supposed to be about power. It was supposed to be about service.

The biggest advantage to empowering the laity may force a return to that thinking.

Who Should Plan Worship?

The fallback thinking is that pastors or organists plan worship.

Let’s look at worship planning from the small congregation’s point of view.

If a congregation can afford only part-time pastoral help and they allocate a good bit of that expense to sermon preparation and worship planning, they are paying for church maintenance, not church growth. For small churches, this may be a waste of resources.

Here is a bit of news. Anyone can plan worship. 

Lay people attend hundreds of worship services, but they don’t think about leading them.

The food is placed before us and we eat. If we like the food, we come back for more. If we don’t, we become less involved.

This common scenario detracts from worship. Over time and among a people who are less and less educated in church, people fail to realize the purpose of worship.

Worship is about praising God—not satisfying worshipers. Nevertheless, if worshipers are organically involved in the planning, God will be glorified by a joyful worshiping community.

Many denominations have an established structure that facilitates worship planning.

Liturgical churches usually follow a lectionary, which means that scriptures and themes of weekly worship are already laid out following the traditional church year that begins in Advent and ends after Pentecost. The previous link takes you to the lectionary on line. If you want to have a reference book for your lay leaders, here’s a link for a print version of the Common Lectionary.

This is how pastors plan worship. (Anyone can do this).

• They read the lessons and then review the structure of the worship service.
• They find hymns which augment the theme. Sometimes this is all that happens.
• Going beyond that, worship planners can look at the language of the liturgy: the confession, prayers and responses. There are resources which provide pre-written changes in wording and ideas for novel expression. There is no law against writing your own. (We recommend Sundays and Seasons. This link is for the current year which is nearly over. The first Sunday in Advent (December 2) will be here before you know it! Here is the link to plan for 2012-2013 using Sundays and Seasons.)

As long as worship planning is the province of paid professionals, this is what will happen week after week.

Stop and consider the talents of the worshiping community. How can they add to the worship experience. Do you have school teachers who can tell a children’s story? Do you have dancers, musicians, writers and artists? Are there banner makers and printers? Are members involved in social service ventures that need to be embraced by your community?

When lay people become involved in worship planning, there will be answers to these questions.

People will  come to understand what is going on in a worship service and how it relates to the full mission of the church. As they become involved, they grow in realizing that they can lead. New leadership skills will transfer to other arenas of congregational life.

The hardest part is getting started. Ask for help. Be prepared to teach as you get started. See what happens! 

photo credit: dtcchc via photo pin cc (retouched)