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by Judy Gotwald

I recently reread Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. They were first read to me by my fourth grade teacher — a chapter a day after lunch. I read the books myself several times since. In my latest re-reading something jumped out at me. There was a reference to blue Sunday School tickets.

I was a child more than 100 years after Tom’s Sawyer’s time, but I remember blue Sunday School tickets. These were given to us as children as a reward for memorizing Bible verses. We memorized The Ten Commandments, Psalm 23, the Corinthians Love Chapter, The Beatitudes, etc. Ten assigned passages later and we would receive a red ticket. The tickets were to be collected and traded for a prize — a Bible or a pencil with a Bible verse or some other devotional knickknack.

Memorization was also a feature of our Vacation Bible School. Each year, we learned a new classic Christian hymn. I can still sing Built on A Rock, Beautiful Savior, This Is My Father’s World and several others by rote.

Memorization was an important part of our faith training. These words are etched in our hearts as we face life’s challenges.

But memorization is a dying life skill. Retrieval of information is so readily available, why clutter your memory with Bible verses or hymn lyrics?

The reason is that the memorized words become part of who we are — our culture.

I was impressed to visit a neighbor’s home one holiday. The large living room was crowded with lively chatter. In one corner, a man was playing the guitar for the pleasure of a few. Then he began to play When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. The entire family stopped what they were doing and with bowed heads sang the entire hymn — every verse — from memory. I have never experienced a more reverent moment in any sanctuary.

The Church should consider reviving the fine art of memorization. The blue tickets weren’t such a bad idea!

You can introduce the concept as part of a Children’s Sermon. Write a verse on cards and ask the children to say the verse together a few times. Give the cards to all the children, even those who do not read. Their parents can teach them the verse. Have the rest of the congregation join in. Have them take the card home and come back next week without it and repeat the verse by memory.

Here are 15 verses to start your memorization program. They are short — a good starting point and suitable for even very young children. Build up to the longer passages!

To find more verses just plug “Bible Verse Memorization” into your search engine. There are a number of sites with great suggestions.

• 1 John 5:3
  This is love for God: to obey his commands
• Proverbs 3:5
  Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
• Romans 3:23
  All people have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
• Psalm 145:9
  The Lord is good to all.
• Matthew 28:20
  I am with you always.
• 1 John 3:23
  Love one another.
• Psalm 118:24
  This is the day the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
• Psalm 136:1
  Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever.
• Luke 6:31
  Do to others as you would have them do to you.
• Philippians 4:13
  I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.
• Ephesians 6:1
  Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

A new chapter is about to begin in the continuing saga of Redeemer Lutheran Church in East Falls.

One year we are told we are closed by the bishop, who has questionable authority to take such actions without a congregational vote. We go on for some time. Then we are told by SEPA Synod’s legal counsel by fax that we are “officially terminated” — again, with questionable authority. We appeal that decision to the Synod Assembly who never votes on that part of our appeal. Then Synod Council, who has no authority to vote congregations closed, decides they need to vote to “officially” close Redeemer. Now, according to the community calendar in East Falls, Redeemer is OPEN and celebrating Christmas tonight.

No one told the people of Redeemer! No one invited the people of Redeemer! They have our mailing list!

None of the clergy about to celebrate Christmas in the sanctuary we built with love for the glory of God has shown an iota of concern for the people of Redeemer or East Falls. Sadly, neither have the congregations of the NW Olney Conference. We’ve seen nothing but arrogance from SEPA leadership.

While they are using the name Redeemer,  they do not represent the people of Redeemer from East Falls, whom they have sued as a congregation and as individuals in order to seize our assets.

The message of Christmas just doesn’t seem to be breaking through.

You cannot reconcile people from a position of arrogance. The message of Christmas is about God coming to Earth in human form, to suffer humility for the people. The people of Redeemer have seen none of that modeled by representatives of SEPA.

Shame!

SEPA Lutherans: if you want to reconcile with the people of East Falls, begin by knocking on our doors and acting like we are children of God. We haven’t gone anywhere, we’ve just been locked out of our church for two years and three months.

The notice in the Community News Calendar says All Welcome. Now that’s news!

The Sunday School in America was once the backbone of a neighborhood’s church and social life. It was not unusual for people to “belong” and enroll in Sunday School and not bother joining the congregation. At one time they had their own set of officers and controlled their own offerings and budgets.

Sunday Schools had class structures that were graded for the children and often segmented in some manner for adults as well — grouped by decades or marriage status. They adopted names like The Loyal Mizpah or The Busy Bees and met socially at least once a month with the entire Sunday School coming together for a pot luck or picnic less frequently.

On Sunday mornings, classes met in their small groups and then joined together for a closing with a mini-worship service. That’s why so many churches have open stage areas with classrooms lining the perimeter. The form of “beehive” architecture met the function of the day. The structure was introducing and practicing the concepts of worship.

Those days are over. Sunday School’s are failing. Their budgets and governance were turned over to the church governing board. When they exist at all today, they are provided for the benefit of the very young.

Eventually, the church’s failure to educate will affect the entire life of the church.

“Eventually” may be now.

The attention and availability of children are torn by the structure of today’s society. They drift between the homes of Mom and Dad. Some have as many as eight grandparents to please, if you count the active “step” relationships. In addition, society no longer protects Sundays. Stores are open and young parents and teens are staffing them. Schools schedule events on weekends with no consideration for the increasingly diverse faith demands of their constituency. As one public school basketball coach told one of his students who protested a Sunday morning practice, “Prayer isn’t going to improve your jump shot, son.”

So what’s the Church to do. Let’s start by recognizing it’s our responsibility. We have to start teaching and the only way to begin may be during the church service.

That will require the Church Service to open the dialog a bit. Some pastors have begun to pose questions during their sermons and sit back to allow discussion. We experienced this in one of our Ambassador visits. An older woman sitting near us turned to explain, “He thinks we are discussing his sermon. We’re not!” Another added in an apologetic whisper, “He’s been here only a year. We don’t have him trained yet.”

Teaching during the service may require some retraining on many levels. A good place to start is within the framework of a children’s message. Congregations are more likely to accept some experimentation within this context.

Our Ambassadors have witnessed several approaches to a children’s message.

• The fallback children’s sermon platform is the object lesson. An object is presented and the pastor ties it metaphorically to the message of the day. The younger the child, the less likely object lessons have much meaning. Children think more concretely.
• Some pastors simply strip down the message they are about to give to the adults. These are often awkward and easily dominated by the enthusiasm of the children who are happy for the attention and a chance to participate, but haven’t a clue what the pastor is talking about.
• Another approach is highly scripted and usually involves the use of puppets. The puppet sermons we have witnessed have been very well crafted and performed with a solid message, but they tend to lack any interaction with the children or congregation at all.
• Sometimes a lay person presents the children’s message. It may be a parent or a school teacher accustomed to talking to children.
• The children’s sermon is often no more than a short talk. Sometimes the gathered subgroup joins in prayer.
• In about 80% of our visits, the children were dismissed from the rest of the service.

These tend to be the most common structures of a children’s message delivered within the structure of a church service. In our next few posts we will explore ideas for maximizing the teaching value of a children’s sermon and how to begin involving (and teaching) the adults.

Change in the Church is painstakingly slow. When things are going well, there is no need for change. When times are challenged, as they are today, the need for change is shouted from the pulpit.

The Church really wants things to stay the same. This is just as true at the denominational level as at the parish level. We all long for the day when 100 or more people came together on Sunday morning and put their offerings together to pay for one pastor’s leadership. We called this the “viable” congregation.

Church became more expensive as the costs of maintaining property and professional compensation packages began to rise at the same time attendance began to drop.

It is the collapse of this economic model that inspires the cry for “Change!” Otherwise, we’d be doing ministry the same old way. In fact, we are! Change is demanded in theory, but discouraged in practice.

The wall standing between the Church and the future is its past. Congregations are first judged by their ability to meet the needs of an outdated economic model before they can implement any change.  And so things slowly grow worse.

At one of our Ambassador visits, a pleasant young lady gave a report to the congregation on her first visit to a Synod Assembly (the annual business meeting of all congregations in the synod). She was in obvious awe of her experience and made a spirited presentation. She was especially impressed with meeting the bishop, whom she described as “the person who makes it all happen.”

She is wrong. It is not the bishop who makes ministry happen. Fueled by the Holy Spirit, it is the people in the congregation — the people who risk their time, talent, faith and resources to serve their Church. If they are lucky, they have good professional leaders to serve them, but many congregations today toil to provide the same basic ministries to their communities with much less professional commitment then they had in the past.

The denominational answer to the challenge is to attempt to manage change from afar. This is a failing proposition as evidenced by the number of church closings that result.

Strapped for cash, leaders are tempted to examine neighborhood ministries for signs of failure that might justify seizing congregational assets. Small churches find themselves planning their future with their eyes constantly glancing over their shoulders.

Unfortunately, protecting financial and property assets has become the overriding mission of the Church. We are forgetting that the will and spirit of the faithful are also resources to be protected.

Congregations must be empowered.

A better approach would be to create an atmosphere that ENCOURAGED risk taking and SUPPORTED and REWARDED new initiatives. But the congregational outposts that have the most potential for encouraging growth, are given only platitudes. Encourage multicultural ministry. Discourage bullying. Etc.

Good ideas! How?

The Need to Take Risks

The Church faces other problems as well — some economic, some societal, some theological. None can be effectively addressed without risk.

2×2 addresses some of these problems in our virtual ministry, just as we once did when we had physical resources — which were seized by our denomination, just as we were beginning to make significant progress.

Our experience gives our sister congregations reason to fear.

The Church must acknowledge that the economy has made ministry difficult. This does not mean ministry must end. It means resources must be spent differently with ministry as its goal.

The problem is not going to be solved with caretaker ministries and forced church closings, which do nothing but reward the hierarchy at considerable cost to the community of believers.

The standard approach of the church to any significant challenge is to acknowledge it and pray. And often that’s where the problems stay — in our thoughts and prayers. Action does not follow.

Change will not happen without individual congregations sticking out their necks and trying new ideas. New ideas cost money. Congregations must be free to use their resources without fear of denominational interference. A few failures can be expected before results begin to show.

This is a foundation of Lutheran polity. We must be free to Act Boldly.