Our busy ambassadors needed somewhere close to visit this week so we returned to Zion, where we had visited two years ago. One ambassador returned on her own for a mid-week service, so technically this was our third visit to Zion.
Things have changed a bit at Zion. They have a new pastor, Rev. Sozinho Alves, from Angola.
As we entered their organist was reviewing hymns with the congregation in preparation for worship. He was teaching the hymns, sharing his vast knowledge of church music as he familiarized the congregation with what was to come.
Robert Camburn knows our Ambassadors because he is a resident of East Falls. He and two of our Ambassadors once worked at the LCA national headquarters in East Falls. He stopped what he was doing and came to greet us, pronouncing my name like a Fallser. From the day I moved into East Falls and the mailman asked me if I was one of the East Falls Gotwals (not Gotwald), I have had to accept my new name—even from my Fallser husband. It always makes me smile.
We saw today a church very like Redeemer.
First. They have a color bulletin similar to Redeemer. Large print format. Smaller churches can do this because they don’t need to print dozens and so the expense is not formidable. Just like Redeemer there was a puzzle on the back for the little ones.
Attendance was up from our last visit—about 27. Similar to Redeemer. The congregation was quite diverse and seemed acclimated to diversity, worshiping as one. There were two rows of young people and at least one baby. Good age representation.
They still operate a school as Redeemer was about to when Synod made this impossible.
We had two native African pastors working with us. They have one.
Our visit to Zion proves the point we have been making in recent posts that small churches are best situated to take on the SEPA’s stated mission goal of diversity. Larger churches tend to take the separate but equal approach. One group meets at 10 am—the second, usually newer group, meets at 1 pm—something like that. Smaller churches can bypass that while larger churches retain that model for years—sometimes never becoming one.
It also proves that Redeemer was not a legitimate target for Synodical Administration. We’ve visited many congregations with statistics the same or lower than Redeemer’s. The ruse of Synodical Administration was about property and assets and never about mission potential.
Olney has two Lutheran churches and at least one other (Mt. Tabor) just across the boulevard.
From Roosevelt Boulevard to the Montgomery County line, East Falls and the largest geographic neighborhood in Philadelphia, Roxborough, has just one small ELCA congregation located on a crowded back street. SEPA has taken the assets of Grace, Epiphany and Redeemer. They have put nothing back into these neighborhoods. SEPA has abandoned this part of Philadelphia — still fairly well to do, working class and professional neighborhoods, making sure they got the resulting wealth — which they squander on a hierarchy that is largely unneeded in the modern world.
Getting back to Zion, the people were all friendly and talked to us. This has become rare. Most of the 54 churches we have visited do little more than say hello and never engage in conversation.
The members of Zion seemed unaware of what is going on just two neighborhoods away from them.
They graciously gave us the altar flowers, which we sent home with the ambassador who SEPA Synod shamelessly is content to allow to personally suffer the consequences of their interference in East Falls to the point that she is threatened with losing her home and retirement income. She will celebrate her 79th birthday this week. Sixty-two of those years were spent in selfless service to her congregation and some to the national church. Being a Lutheran in East Falls is thankless.
And that’s the way SEPA likes it.
