Redeemer Revisited: Part 2

This is the second post in a series that revisits the last five years of court actions involving the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (SEPA / ELCA) and member church, Redeemer in the East Falls neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pa.

Understanding the Legalities

Five years of costly and hateful litigation have shed little light on the legalities of the land grab in East Falls.

The courts are far from united in the various rulings in all the cases of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America against member church Redeemer in the East Falls neighborhood and carefully selected members of the congregation.

The early rulings were that courts have no jurisdiction in church affairs.

This first ruling was upheld by a split decision of the Pennsylvania Appellate Court. Two dissenting judges strongly supported Redeemer. If the law were applied, they concluded, Redeemer should be heard.

Keep in mind that all this litigation was just about HEARING the case. It has never been heard.

A similar case WAS heard at the very same time involving a Presbyterian denomination and a member congregation in western Pennsylvania. That judge took five days to hear the case and ruled in favor of the congregation. The ruling came five days after the Redeemer “no jurisdiction” ruling. This decision has held through the appellate process and was last heard at the state supreme level this April with a decision due any day.

SEPA wasn’t satisfied with their default win. They wanted Redeemer to pay more. They went after individual members.

They held the cards now and they fixed the deck. The ace up their sleeve is “Contempt of Court.”

Synod locked the members of Redeemer out of the church within 36 hours of the ruling. Redeemer members had no access to anything in the church. Synod (again with no consultation with Redeemer members) sued members for contempt of court for not supplying things we still think ARE IN the church.

If they couldn’t find something they were looking for, they could have asked. But no! Straight to litigation where they are immune from the law and church members are not.

Redeemer members are in the position of not being able to prove that the items are in the church building.

Note to other SEPA congregations: They are likely to use this tactic again. Protect your church leaders now.

In the Redeemer case, subsequent judges have shown growing sympathy for Redeemer.

First, let’s ask, Where were the clergy?

Clergy fled at the first sign of trouble.

The pastor who had been serving us for nearly two years when Bishop Burkat was elected and who was well-liked, disappeared after a private meeting with Bishop Burkat and a congregation (Epiphany) who had been in covenant with Redeemer and was sharing our building. That church never discussed breaking the covenant with us, but after a private meeting with the bishop, they announced they were closing. The pastor gave 10 days notice by email (not the constitutional 30 days notice.) He never planned to talk with us about his decision. He left the Synod.

Epiphany continued to share Redeemer’s property outside of the covenant for six months, rent free. They were never locked out!

Redeemer found a pastor to replace him. Redeemer hand-delivered to Bishop Burkat the congregation’s resolution to call him in November 2007. In February 2008, he had just encouraged Redeemer members to “stand firm” in our ministry. He visited the bishop’s office hoping to talk things through.

This pastor had shared with us that he had been trying to talk to the synod for a year and couldn’t get a return call or a response to correspondence. (We had the same experience!).

So now he goes to talk to the Synod about serving Redeemer.

He never sets foot inside Redeemer again.

He suddenly has an interim call in Bucks County.

Clergy are out of the way.

Next. Lay leaders.

Let’s make this quick! All lay leaders, having had no hearing with Bishop Burkat on the subject of closing the church, were dismissed by letter from the bishop in February 2008. She had promised to work with us just four months earlier at a meeting which closing the church had not been discussed. No grounds were ever cited.

OK, lay leaders are out of the way.

There is still the congregation to deal with.

We’ll tell you how that went in our next post.

Hint: Any claim that there was a process of mutual discernment is a lie.

02 Aug 2013

Ambassadors Celebrate

Homecoming and Coming of Age

Today was the end of our third year of Ambassador visits. We stayed home and had worship, followed by a party. (68 church visits, BTW)

It was an especially joyous day as one of members was home from nine months overseas. It was good to be reunited.

We actually saw each other several times this week, bumping into each other just like the old days. It was especially good to see our young people trying to reconnect.

SEPA Synod’s view of Redeemer was that we were a bunch of old ladies who would be dead soon enough. We wouldn’t have the energy to resist. Need money? Easy pickings in East Falls.

But Redeemer’s demographics were actually the youngest of any Lutheran church our Ambassadors have visited. It was not unusual for children to outnumber adults on Sunday morning. We had very few people who could be considered old.

A lot had changed in the eight years since Bishop Almquist nurtured that indelible impression and during which SEPA Synod ignored us.

And then another six years passed while Bishop Burkat tried to destroy Redeemer one way or another.

A funny thing happens in eight years, followed by six years (two thirds of the history of SEPA Synod). Our children grew up.

Since 2007. Redeemer’s cradle role members are now in first and second grade. Redeemer’s grade school kids are now entering high school. Redeemer’s high school youth are now entering graduate school or the work force.

Synod has been so focused on destroying the adults that they never stopped to think about how their actions in East Falls affect the children. Land and money remains their only consideration.

I’ll never forget the Sunday after Bishop Burkat followed four months of silence with a letter announcing she was closing Redeemer. Our last meeting with her had been all about working with Synod. She broke every promise made to us without a word.

Of course, when all this ugliness was going on, we did our best to protect our children. On this Sunday, following the edict (don’t believe the “mutual discernment” nonsense), two synod representatives appeared at worship. Rev. Patricia Davenport and the Rev. Lee Miller were sitting right beside the children as they gathered for the children’s sermon.

The children came forward wanting to talk. We usually let them talk during the children’s sermon. We typically asked them what was going on in their lives before we settled in for a message. This week they were upset. You see they had seen their parents crying. “Daddy got a letter and was crying,” one six-year-old said.

They were probably surprised and confused that on this morning, when they needed to talk more than usual, their concerns were deflected.

The sight of a parent crying, especially a father, is troubling to a child. We should have talked it through with the children right then and there. But then the people responsible for the family’s pain were sitting within arms’ reach. The word “smugly” comes to mind. They seemed clueless to what they were witnessing.

Awkward moments in worship.

But today the children are older. As we talk now, we make no attempt to hide anything from the young adults. At one point, I invited them to go off and enjoy kid talk.

“Nothing doing,” one boy said. “I’ve heard bits and pieces of this over the years, but this is the first time I’ve heard all this. This is really interesting.” And so we shared our story with a new generation — now old enough to vote in the church.

As the father told the son, I always thought that if our story were told, any reasonable person would side with Redeemer.

Lack of dialog has characterized this entire conflict. Reason has held little sway.

Redeemer is not closed. We are locked out of God’s House by SEPA Synod.

Our children still care about Redeemer. They will always know what it feels like to be shunned by their church leaders, excluded from the church that had once welcomed them in baptism, and how their parents were attacked in court for five long years.

We learned what they are doing. The young man who often helped lead Redeemer’s children’s sermons now holds a home Bible study. (Redeemer had no shortage of leaders and was grooming a new generation.) Another boy attends church with a school friend. Most remain unchurched as is typical of the membership of closed churches. Another falls back on his Quaker school upbringing. (A good number of Redeemer kids attended Quaker schools.)

Several families that were united at Redeemer are divided in exile.

Bishop Burkat was quite up front with her insistence that the memory of Redeemer be allowed to die. The church’s version of scorched earth policy. If the church was to reopen it had to have a new trendy name. The members of Redeemer could not play a leadership role in any “resurrection.” They would remain dead while SEPA searched for more compliant East Fallsers (good luck!) or shipped in outsiders.

She thought the death process would take six months. That was five years ago.

And now we know.

Redeemer’s spirit will live for another generation.

Let’s hope a resolution is reached that will restore our children’s faith in Christian community—for everyone’s sake. It’s high time.

Praise God for this special day.

28 Jul 2013

On Looking People in the Eye

Preferring to Work with Strangers

Today’s church is in trouble. Everybody in the church knows it. Some (fairly few) congregations are still large enough to get by without facing the new age but most churches are feeling just how tough the next two decades are likely to be.

The answer in our area of the church (the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) has been to check out on the people who have brought the church this far. They prefer to look for new faces to deal with—if they can find any. New faces will be easier to manage. They have no heritage at stake.

That was said to us at Redeemer in so many words by Bishop Claire Burkat.

White Redeemer must be allowed to die.
Black Redeemer . . . we can put them anywhere.

Beyond this, when it looked like the judge was going to rule in our favor, Synod scurried and wrote a proposal to the judge. The proposal was that they would reopen Redeemer under their control and our current members were welcome to attend but would not be allowed any leadership role.

The judge sidestepped all the issues and ruled that he has no jurisdiction in church affairs. The appellate court ruled in its dissenting opinion that if the law were applied, Redeemer’s arguments should have been heard.

SEPA has hidden behind this dubious win and interpreted it as having free reign. In fact, they have free reign as long as members do not exercise their constitutional roles in running their church. The courts don’t want to do this job for you.

The problem with this conflict is that from the start, SEPA refused to deal with members. If they were to have any presence in our community, they wanted it on their terms with different people, who we can presume would thrive as long as they voted the right way.

Seth Godin addresses this modern phenomenon in our society in today’s post.

When we want to deceive or lash out, it’s easy to do. Hey, there’s always someone else we can start over with, relationships and even reputations are disposable. We don’t have to look you in the eye, it’s dark in here, and we’re wearing a mask.’

He calls this approach “an experiment in fake.”

It turns strangers into actors on a screen, and sometimes we help them, but often, we become inured to their reality, and treat them with a callousness and indifference we’d never use in our village.

Recently, I was cleaning out the home of a deceased pastor. I found a folder on a prominent table. In that folder was The Lutheran article about the life and death of one of the founding leaders of the Lutheran Church in America, Dr. Franklin Clark Fry. With it was an article from Time magazine that called him “Mr. Lutheran.” There was also a bulletin from his funeral.

Then on June 6 of this year, someone from this pastor’s family called me to honor Dr. Fry’s “glory day.”

I was surprised that anyone would recall a death of a church leader in 1968 and that they would think to call me. I am only remotely connected to Dr. Fry. His grandchildren are my cousins. But I was struck by the power of his leadership and influence. I’d heard plenty of stories about him as I grew up—mostly about how he insisted that congregations and clergy follow the rules. He would meet personally with people when he could have mailed a letter or picked up the phone.

His leadership had lasting influence.

That influence is waning as Lutheran leaders exert less and less power with more and more force.

The people they lead are treated as expendable. If you don’t think so, try disagreeing.

When this happens in the church — an institution that is supposed to matter — things get phony fast.

Our leaders no longer know the people they are leading. They never deal with them. They use clergy as intermediaries. They don’t respond to mail or email. They speak to us through letters and email blasts and call it “mutual discernment.” They deny us voice and vote in Assembly and rely on no one enforcing the rules—or even knowing what the rules are.

They are afraid to look their own people in the eye.

As Seth says. When you look people in the eye, you own the results.

You want to resolve things in East Falls? Look us in the eye.

photo credit: pcgn7 via photopin cc

22 Jul 2013

A “What If” Good Samaritan Story

You all know the story of the Good Samaritan—how the authorities of society, the priest and the Levite—passed by the man in need.

Here is a new —only slightly different—scenario to ponder.

What if the priest (the first to run away) was actually the person who robbed and beat the victim?

What if the Levite (the keeper of religious law) were the interdependent church entities of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)?

What if the victim was a little church in East Falls?

We have one question for SEPA Lutherans (and the whole ELCA) on this upcoming Good Samaritan Sunday.

Who is your neighbor?

We know who our Good Samaritans are and thank them.

12 Jul 2013

Amazing Faith—Five Years and Counting

Our worship gathering started a little blue today. We Redeemer members are tired of being ignored or looked down upon at best and demonized at worst. Our members walked through our worship doors this morning fed up. We allowed some time for complaining.

Our members have plenty to gripe about. This month, we enter our sixth year of persecution by the leadership of the ELCA. We’ve been treated very badly and the courts, which are beginning to sympathize with us, still must defer to the original court ruling that says the church has to settle this themselves. The dissenting opinion that sided with Redeemer seems to be gaining support as court actions continue.

The Church is powerless to fix its own problems. They seem to be unable to practice much of anything that they preach. What good is any church that when put to the test is totally impotent? That’s the ELCA.

We soon put our problems aside, learned a new hymn and began worship. By the end of the service and our discussion of the amazing faith of the centurion, we were in a better mood.

Sometimes people outside the Church can see the bigger picture most clearly. That’s Redeemer’s experience, too. Many of the people who have been most generous in helping us have no church affiliation. Church people look the other way. Silence and inaction is all we’ve seen from SEPA congregations.

Redeemer has maintained our community. We are poised both financially and administratively to resume our ministry in our own community with our own resources.

If our situation was so dire—as SEPA falsely claimed—we could not have maintained our ministry for more than a few months. We’ve continued to grow our ministry for the last four years!

Our ministry was not the reason for the conflict in East Falls. SEPA Synod’s failing finances are the cause. Six years later, they are still in pretty bad shape. Redeemer is holding its own!

02 Jun 2013

Risk Taking in Today’s Church

SEPA Leadership Encourages Risk-taking

At the 2013 Assembly of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod, Bishop Claire Burkat exhorted member churches to take risks. Start small. Just take one risk in mission.

I beleive in risk-taking.

Many of the risks that need to be taken in the Church are long overdue.

The climate of SEPA Synod is not conducive to risk-taking.

If congregations are to take risks they must be assured that failures

will not be used as excuses for hierarchical seizure of everything they own.
will not cause them to be excommunicated from Lutheran fellowship.
will not put their personal welfare and that of their families in danger.

SEPA cannot provide these assurances.

Consequently, risks will not be taken.

The biggest obstacle? Involuntary Synodical Administration.

Involuntary Synodical Administration, now so common that it is referred to by the acronym ISA, did not exist in the founding documents of the ELCA. The Articles of Incorporation still forbid it.

ISA is the determination of the bishop that a church cannot survive. The Synod assumes all cash and property assets. Trustees are appointed. They serve the bishop’s interests, not the congregation’s. It is theft by constitutional tweaking.

The original constitutional statute allowed for synodical administration only with the consent of the congregation and as a temporary measure.

Synodical Administration was intended to be a tool to help struggling congregations overcome difficulty. Congregations were part of the process—the Lutheran way. Help was offered, but assets remained owned by the congregations.

Involuntary Synodical Administration is a monstrous contrivance.

The Synod’s model constitution has been tweaked to negate the promises made to the congregations when they joined the ELCA.

Consequently, congregational polity, precious to Lutherans, no longer exists in SEPA Synod.

Too bad. Congregational polity encourages risk-taking.

Without congregational polity every congregation must consider what big brother or sister will do if their risks fail —as measured by the bishop not by the congregation.

If congregations are to take Bishop Burkat’s advice and take risks, they should seriously review and revise their own governing documents.

Taking risks, after all, is risky. You could fail.

Failure leads to knowledge which can then be put to new ministry use. Innovation is usually the result of multiple attempts that failed.

But in the world of SEPA, failure of any sort, as measured by no one but the bishop (who has minimal knowledge of congregations), leads to long-term Lutheran assets lost to short-term synodical needs.

Here’s what I know about SEPA and their ability to accept congregational risk-taking:

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was a small urban congregation facing the same challenges many small congregations face. The founding members who predated decades of urban unrest were dying off. The landscape for ministry was changing dramatically and at a faster pace than the “settled” Church had ever encountered.

This congregation had resources. A founding member had left an endowment with the stipulation that it be used for ministry in that neighborhood.

That endowment had already been an attractive target for s financially troubled synod, but that had been resolved eight years before. However, the memory was still fresh. The Synod refused to follow the call process after the resolution. They were betting that without help, the congregation would fall apart. SEPA need wait only a bit longer to get to the assets.

This congregation had unusually strong lay leadership. The absence of professional leaders had actually helped develop the congregation’s sense of mission. They knew they had to serve a multicultural neighborhood. Without the burden of salaries, they were free to engage pastors for specific tasks as needed.

Money was not yet a problem, but it was clear that it would become a problem if congregational leaders didn’t address the needs of the future immediately.

The congregational leaders spent six months drafting a plan. They consulted pastors, real estate experts, an accountant and a lawyer in drafting a five-year plan. Funds were needed to bring facilities up to modern standards. The congregation was willing to risk a third of their property for a short-term mortgage that might catapult them into a solid future.

The congregation had been renting its educational building to a Lutheran agency, but the congregation knew that this was no longer in their interests. The property had more potential for congregational ministry if the congregation ran its own school with the important added benefit of being able to witness in mission as the Lutheran agency was unable to do.

Two members of the congregation already experienced in childcare took the training necessary for licensure. The school was projected to bring in $100,000 annually to the congregation’s ministry within two years. Meanwhile, other sources of income were also identified and a stewardship program was implemented.

Previous pastors were not comfortable in multicultural settings. They promised to find help but reported regularly, “There is no one.” When the last pastor left, the congregation found excellent, qualified professional leaders within a few weeks.

52 members joined in the first year and there was every indication that this was only the start of a vibrant new ministry.

Meanwhile, the congregation presented the mission plan to Bishop Claire Burkat along with a resolution to call one of the pastors who had already been working with the congregation successfully for seven months.

There were risks, but there were strong indications that the risks would pay off.

Bishop Claire Burkat accepted the resolution and ministry plan and promised to review them. She also promised that the congregation could work with the Synod’s Mission Developer. Four months passed with no communication from anyone in the bishop’s office.

Was there to be a period of discussion and review of the 24-page mission plan? Would the bishop make suggestions or offer help?

No.

Bishop Burkat abruptly sent a letter to the congregation announcing the church was closed and all assets were to be assumed by her office (which had recently announced they were within $75,000 of depleting every available resource).

The risks quickly escalated with law suits and personal attacks on members that continued for five years. Although Bishop Burkat wrote to clergy that all issues are settled, the fact is the case is still in the courts.

If Bishop Burkat truly believed in risk-taking, she could have taken a chance on Redeemer’s carefully crafted mission plan. She could have joined interdependently in a carefully calculated mission adventure that was already succeeding. She could have taken credit!

Bishop Burkat couldn’t risk Redeemer’s resources slipping from syndical control twice in one decade. Some of the motivation was SEPA’s own financial needs. Power and pride also entered the picture.

Risk-taking does not happen in this atmosphere.

Lay members are sitting ducks for abuse. Clergy will protect their standing.

If SEPA congregations truly want to be risk-takers for mission, they must revisit their constitutions and make risk-taking a little less risky.

Redeemer is still ready to take risks.

We’ve been pioneering mission while SEPA has been attacking us. There is nothing stopping Redeemer’s mission plan from being implemented even today.

SEPA prefers the expenses of locked churches to the expenses of mission. They spend more than $170,000 a year keeping those doors locked. Taking a risk on Redeemer’s mission plan would have cost them nothing (and it was already succeeding!)

There is more mission potential in open churches than in closed churches.

There is more economic potential in open churches than in closed churches.

23 May 2013

Ambassadors Visit St. Andrew’s, Audubon

Beautiful Pentecost Service

We weren’t the usual Ambassadors but three Ambassadors from Redeemer spent this Pentecost at St. Andrew’s, Audubon.

St. Andrew’s pastor, the Rev. William Mueller, writes a blog. He is the first pastor of now more than sixty we have encountered to make any attempt to reach out regularly on the internet. Kudos. Here’s a link.

This is the first church website (excepting Redeemer, East Falls) to use blogging as the focal point of a web presence. It looks like they have tried both Twitter and Facebook with less frequency, but at least they are trying. Both Twitter and Facebook are harder to maintain and require a lot of babysitting. That’s why we favor blogging as a starting point for churches wanting to use social media.

It looks like St. Andrew’s started blogging in March and kept at it pretty regularly through April with activity dropping a bit in May. We hope they keep it up! We’ve been at it for more than two years. Our experience is that it takes at least six months to begin to see results. Things move remarkably quickly when you start blogging more than three times per week. (We now, after some 750 posts, have as many as 4000 readers each month.)

Pastor Mueller’s sign-off is reminiscent of one of Redeemer’s former pastors. He often ended his pre-internet sermons with “See you at the Acme.” Pastor Mueller signs off with “See you at church.”

A friendly man greeted us as we came through the door and told us about their ministry to the homeless in Pottstown. He was the only member to speak to us. He told us about their group of guitar enthusiasts who center a ministry around music.

Music and the arts are key elements in worship at St. Andrew’s. They recently produced The Wizard of Oz. They are justly proud of their modern stained glass windows and their altar cross.

Musical offerings were varied and rich from a solo (“Day by Day”) to a bell choir prelude of a hymn which had been running through my head all week, prior to today’s worship, (“Oh, How I Love Jesus”) to still another prelude or introit (“This Little Light of Mine”). The choir anthem brought a smile, the tune was borrowed from Les Miserables. Much of the music was modern but the final hymn was by Hildegard of Bingen, dating back a thousand years. Great breadth of church tradition. This was the first church we’ve encountered in a long time that sang the psalm. (Redeemer always sang the psalm.)

The opening hymn was one Redeemer often sang in Swahili. I was surprised that four years after all of us were locked out of our multicultural church that I still remember the Swahili words. I sang them. The organ was so loud no one could notice and it felt good. Besides, it’s Pentecost, a day for many languages.

St. Andrew’s confirmed ten young people today in a nice ceremony. Even though our visits are totally random, we’ve encountered several confirmations and this was the largest group of youth.

The church was well-attended with families of the young people filling several pews.

The ceremony featured family members participating in the laying on of hands. Two of our Ambassadors, both pastors, compared that to how they conducted confirmation. They liked the custom, although one commented that he considered confirmation to be the young people standing on tbeir own in their faith—as they may have to some day.

How well we know!

The sanctuary is wide with two rows of long pews. For the first time in many visits, the ushers actually passed the plate. It seems like many churches are afraid to let go of the plate, requiring worshipers to reach across several people. This is always a bit awkward and kind of insulting. It felt good to be trusted to pass the plate. (We didn’t take anything of yours!)

There were about a dozen children present for a children’s sermon delivered by the Christian Education director. This is the first we’ve seen children at worship in a while! I doubt the children understood that the balloon represented the Holy Spirit. Object lessons appeal more to adults. They seemed to still be interested in last Sunday’s sermon which apparently focused on their Ascension stained glass window. One child commented, “We were going to say goodbye but we never did.” That seemed to stick with them!

Pastor Mueller gave a sermon that was interesting to us. He spoke about church persecution and mentioned this also in the prayers.

Once again, we see a disconnect. Why is it that SEPA clergy do not see what is happening at the hands of their leaders in East Falls as bullying and persecution?

82 men, women and children are locked out of their church home—built and paid for with their offerings and the sacrifices of their families. Allegations are made but never documented or discussed with the congregation. Although court accusations reference “church discipline,” no matters of church discipline were ever raised with our congregation. We were paying our own way and had a very active and innovative ministry, with which no fault was ever found. SEPA claimed every available asset with no discussion whatsoever. They used our assets to pursue us in court. They are still looking for more. They stripped Redeemer members of all rights within the Lutheran Church, also with no discussion and no constitutional basis. They vilified our people when we dared to stand up for our faith — as our church taught us to do when we studied for confirmation. Our clergy were intimidated and left. This was designed to leave the laity lost and vulnerable. Instead, Redeemer’s lay leaders (which included two retired clergy) picked up the pieces and successfully grew our church community with no expectation of pay. SEPA personally attacked individual church members in court for five years, putting us in a position where we couldn’t just submit; we had to stand up for what we thought was right. Court accusations of fraud never held up. The latest judge repeated with exasperation, “Where’s the fraud? They were doing what they thought was right. Where’s the fraud?”

The Church persecutes its own.

Well, at least St. Andrew’s prayed for the persecuted, even if they don’t recognize us in their midst.

The Holy Spirit at Work in East Falls this Week?

In other Redeemer news, two leaders of Redeemer’s community music programs chanced to meet three times this week.

SEPA is not the only religious authority raping East Falls Christians of the use of their sacred property! Hierarchical need and greed are running rampant. St. James the Less was locked to members about eight years ago. SEPA locked Redeemer in 2009. St. Bridget’s Roman Catholic School just down the street was locked in 2012. Their leaders thought this fairly healthy school should bolster a struggling church a couple miles away. Both ended up closing.

We discussed how to restore Christian music education for the children of East Falls. Hard to do without property, but we hope not impossible. Redeemer had hosted a community children’s choir and summer music camp and St. Bridget’s School had a strong musical tradition. Our worship leaders had worked together before.

Three chance meetings in three days! Perhaps the Holy Spirit is at work this Pentecost!

20 May 2013

Achieving Diversity in the Church

The road to diversity. Who has the map?

How does a denomination reach diversity goals when diversity is so difficult to measure?

Here’s what probably won’t work:

assigning a pastor who brings along personal friends who fit diverse criteria and adds them to a congregation’s membership roster without going through the constitutional membership process.
pigeon-holing already diverse populations and directing them to churches where you think they will be happier.
assuming that individual personal worship preferences are dictated by skin color or ethnicity.
assuming that one congregation can serve only one demographic—the one they served 40 years ago.
trying so hard to appeal to new populations (that might not even be local) that the long-time supporters feel like strangers.
locking out an already diverse community, which has made major contributions to the denomination, with a stated goal of replacing them.

Each of these tactics was tried by SEPA leadership at Redeemer. Each failed.

What does work?

consciously welcoming whomever walks through the door.
consciously creating a fellowship that draws newcomers in. (Just setting up a coffee urn and snack table isn’t enough.)
empowering all to invite others. (Find a way to model this to make it part of your congregation’s personality.)
providing a quality worship experience despite numbers. (This doesn’t mean hiring a lot of professional musicians. It means nurturing the worship experience, not always going with the obvious, expanding the experience so that there is something for new worshipers to connect with and something for older members to own and cherish.)
expanding or changing the worship experience incrementally, not all at once.
fostering participatory worship every week. (Let go of the reins. Really engage worshipers and give them a leadership role in planning worship.)
not forcing old ways on new people.
not forcing new ways on old people.
using repetition. (Introduce new elements slowly and repeat them often until they are accepted.)
re-examining the “givens” in our worship life to determine if they are understood and appreciated by the current group of worshipers or if a change might make an overall difference. (Example: Are an opening hymn, sermon hymn and closing hymn enough musically? Is the frequency of communion attracting people or keeping them away? Would shorter or longer sermons be appreciated? Should children be excused for most of the service? Is the time of worship interfering with attendance?)
listening to newcomers to understand their worship preferences.

Redeemer used these methods with success. We didn’t know all this when we started. We worked at it. We made mistakes. What we learned from mistakes makes us more certain of our success.

We hope our experience serves as a roadmap.

13 May 2013

Measuring Diversity in the Church

“We Are Diverse”

One of the more frequent exclamations coming from SEPA Synod Assembly is the boast, “We are diverse.”

Just keep saying it and people might believe it.

Diversity in SEPA Synod is an illusion. Cloaks and mirrors.

The Synod Assembly is rigged to display diversity. Congregations are given extra votes and representation if they can prove diversity. A small church with darker skinned members can have more votes than small pale congregations.

Ecclesiastic gerrymandering also distorts gender and age. Most churches have a predominance of women in attendance, but congregations are required to send one female and one male member . . . creating the illusion of gender equality.

From the number of youth present at the Assembly, you’d think our churches were filled with energetic and engaged young people. They are not.

Diversity Within Diversity

When addressing diversity, the Church tends to fixate on skin color. Skin color alone, is broader than black and white and diversity is so much more than skin color. Skin color is easy to see and count . . . and so we do!

Redeemer’s Ambassadors have visited more than 60 of SEPA’s 160 congregations, We began our visits in the city where racial diversity is likely to be more prevalent than in the suburbs. As we continue our visits, reaching into the suburbs, we doubt we’ll see more diversity than we already have. So far, we haven’t seen much!

We see many white congregations with a few assorted “others” and a few black congregations with a few assorted “others.” Of all the congregations we have visited we can count only about five that have a substantial representation of people from different racial or ethnic backgrounds. Each of these was a smaller congregation.

This includes Redeemer — who SEPA has excluded from Lutheran fellowship for five years. Redeemer had grown to be very diverse. We were diverse racially, culturally, linguistically, ethnically, economically, philosophically, and in gender and age.

Our diversity didn’t earn us extra votes. In fact, we were denied any voice or vote in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (SEPA ELCA) by decree of the bishop—a flagrant denial of congregational constitutional rights.

SEPA attempted to divide our congregation along racial lines. SEPA reported only our white members in reports to Synod Assembly. They further decided for our black members where they ought to go when they claimed our property—as if our black members were somehow too feeble to determine for themselves where they’d like to worship. It was OK if white Redeemer just disappeared. In fact, that was the plan.

“White Redeemer must be allowed to die. Black Redeemer . . . we can put them anywhere,” Bishop Burkat said in 2007.

Truth be told, there was great diversity among both our black and white memberships. We had African Americans, East Africans and West Africans. The Africans spoke many languages—French, Swahili and various tribal languages. We had white members born in England, Germany, Asia and America. We had regular visitors from India, France and South America and students from East Falls’ three universities.

We don’t count.

Do Some Research

You don’t have to visit as we have to get a true picture of diversity. Just add the numbers in the parish reports available on the ELCA Trend site. The demographics of Lutheranism are very white and very aging.

Our visits reveal that most worship services are typically attended by women over 65.

More often than not, there are no children present in the sanctuary for worship. Children’s choirs, a rarity, tend to be very small and very young.

Youth are scarce. It will be 20 years (if ever) before the few young people will come to be of an age to support the church financially in the manner of previous generations. They will be saddled with college debt.

Leadership has a hard time recognizing reality when they look across the Synod Assembly and see the hand-picked representation that gathers to decide the future of the church.

SEPA has often chosen to let congregations die, providing minimal services for as long as 10 years rather than help congregations when a little help might have made a big difference.

This should be a serious concern to SEPA. Two decades could decimate dozens of congregations. It may be too late and far more costly than if this had been addressed 20 years ago.

Some Parting Questions and A Plan

Should diversity in the Church be measured at all if there is no way of recognizing it?

Is diversity so important that we create false impressions? What is to be gained?

We are one in the Lord.

The fact is diversity will soon be the new norm in most neighborhoods. We are ill-equipped to serve the changing population.

Lest you think we criticize without venturing solutions, check out vbsaid.com. It outlines a plan which 2×2 would love to sponsor and pioneer. It could help the many small, aging churches reconnect with their neighborhoods.

We dont want to see any more Lutheran property in the city, provided by the sacrifices of dedicated lay members, permanently sacrificed to plug short-sighted budget holes.

The plan requires cooperation within the church and between various expressions of the church, but we think it is worth the effort and will benefit all. Right now, all these expressions are struggling in isolation.

We know the perfect hub to implement this program. Midvale and Conrad in East Falls.

12 May 2013

Winning Friends and Gaining Influence in East Falls

SEPA has had control of Redeemer’s property for nearly four years. It sits there unused— vacant with its paint peeling. Unused property in an urban neighborhood is quickly claimed by dog lovers.

Redeemer occasionally had to remind the neighbors that the yard is used by children. Mostly they respected that. No big deal. But now it’s different. When we worshiped this Easter on the sidewalk we watched one dog owner after another shortcut through the yard.

The people of East Falls were quite upfront at the Community Council meeting SEPA attended more than a year ago. SEPA was putting their best foot forward, trying to impress the locals with their concern for the neighborhood—something they failed to show their own supporting members in East Falls. Rev. Pat Davenport was all charm as she gratuitously asked the community what they would like to see on that corner. The members said, “a dog park.”

The absentee landowners are now peeved. Ever-accustomed to wielding a mighty arm without resistance, SEPA now resorts to signs on every corner. Signs on the signboard. Cardboard signs propped up on folding chairs (at least they haven’t taken ALL our folding chairs).

Clearly, they mean business!

They warn the neighbors that they don’t intend to clean up after their dogs.

That should make mowing the yard very interesting.

Their attitude toward dogs is similar to their attitude towards Redeemer’s people.

East Falls is not going to take well to it.

Sometimes neighbors just have to put up with neighbors. If SEPA ever wants to open a word and sacrament church in East Falls — as Rev. Davenport claimed, but we doubt — they should adjust their attitude. Fallsers have a long memory. As new owners of old East Falls land they are already, in East Falls vernacular, considered “squatters.” (And in SEPA’s case, they are squatters who showed no mercy on the people of East Falls in pursuit of our community’s riches for their gain.)

A little advice from Redeemer on how to get along with your neighbors:

The only thing that draws more flies than dog dirt is honey.

It isn’t Redeemer members you are dealing with now. It is all of East Falls.

04 May 2013

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