Living in the Present; Loving the Past

Posted on February 8, 2014 by smaxreisert

A friend of mine passed away recently. He was an older friend, in his late eighties. He was a popular man in the Waterville area—a respected retired business owner, a generous contributor to many area nonprofits, an active presence around town.

As I sat there last weekend at the Mass of Christian Burial, I found myself thinking about my own grief and also thinking about lessons that I learned from Walter. One of those lessons is a good lesson for churches.

Though Walter loved talking about the past, he lived very much in the present. Despite tremendous loss that he experienced in his personal life, he lived with vitality in the present, able to hold his past lovingly while not be a hostage to that past.

As an adult, Walter experienced a great deal of success. He moved to Waterville when a business opportunity was presented to him. That business was a small one, but Walter got that business to grow in a big ways, and was able to live generously and in comfort in his retirement.

Walter lived very much in the present, making new friends of all ages. He was actively involved in philanthropic activities in the community, not just by writing a check. He was actively involved, working to help organizations that served children and the homeless. He had an infectious and easy laugh, and was completely charming and interested in people, in being in good relationship with everyone around him.

But Walter also loved talking about the past. He loved to share stories about his wife and their life together, and the family they raised. He also enjoyed talking about what Waterville was like when he arrived, and the wonder of moving to a community teeming with possibilities. But, then also watching the community decline.

Walter lived in the midst of two important dynamics that I think offer a lesson for churches—to live in the reality of the present, while speaking lovingly of a past, which has been left in the past. So many churches seem to live in the past, while also speaking suspiciously of the present.

The lesson is that good church people must find a way to embrace the present, to engage in good relationships with community in today’s terms. But, at the same time, churches must find a way to speak lovingly of the past, in a way that conveys an acceptance of the past as past.

My friend loved to reminisce about the past and to share wonderful stories, most of them happy but a few of them were sad. But they were stories of a life well lived and a life that continued to be well lived until he died. Walter wasn’t held hostage by the past. Instead, he found a way to bring his past with him into his daily life, balancing it with the present, with his seemingly constant array of new friends and new opportunities.

Churches, and the good people who are a part of them, should seek to learn this lesson and to live by it. The past doesn’t need to be completely left behind, but good church people must free themselves from being held hostage to a past that will never, can never, be made anything other than the past. And, to engage in the present, and all of the wonderful opportunities and new friends that are waiting.

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What Makes a Church?

Posted on January 25, 2014 by smaxreisert

Probably because Old South’s Annual Meeting is this coming Sunday, I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a church. At Sunday’s meeting, if I were to survey those in attendance, I would probably hear a lot of answers that include someone who “serves on a committee” or “a person who comes to worship regularly” or even “someone who’s on our member list” (whether or not they participate actively).

But, I’ve been wondering more and more about how we broaden our concept of what it means to be “church,” and how we tackle some of the really tricky questions, especially when it comes to this thing that we call a “congregational” church, which is what Old South is. How do we define “congregation”? How can we include people who consider themselves part of our church, even though they don’t come to worship (not even once in a while) or serve on a committee?

As I think about the very different ways through which people are connected to Old South, I find a wide variety of ties to the church. There’s one man who shows up in the office every December to drop off a check. I don’t ever see him in worship, but I know that he considers Old South to be his church. There’s a woman who occasionally comes to funerals, and stays connected through my weekly e-newsletter and sometimes through email correspondence, but I’ve never seen her in a regular worship service. We have a few people who actively participate in the bell choir, but only during “bell choir season” in Advent and Lent. I have an increasing number of people who read my columns that have been published in the local newspaper or posts to my blog. Some of these people actually reach out through email or an occasional face-to-face meeting. How much can we stretch the elastic of Old South church? Who’s “in” and who’s not? To what extent does the question even matter?

Then, there are those we find out through obituaries. “So and So” was a “long time member of Old South Church,” even though we’ve never heard of that person and can’t find them on any of the rolls. For some reason, though, they considered themselves as a part of our church.

Clearly, there’s a wide array of people who feel connected to Old South, but what does it mean for people to just feel “connected” to a congregational church, without really participating in the life of that church? And, perhaps even more challenging of a question, how much of my time (especially as a less than full-time pastor) should I spend keeping the connection with those who feel at least somewhat connected to the church (or perhaps are thinking, even just a tiny bit, about getting connected to the church) but don’t contribute to the financial bucket that keeps the church afloat?

I recently attended a workshop that challenged traditional notions of what it means to belong to a church, thinking about new, web-based notions of “parish,” incorporating Facebook, YouTube, and other social media. This idea is compelling to me, yet I wrestle with this very new, and multi-dimensional, notion of what makes a “congregational” church. The workshop, unfortunately, did not include a discussion of the financial end of things, but that’s important too. It’s great to be connected to a widening group of people, and to know that one’s ministry is meaningful to others. But, I’m already a less than full-time pastor—and the finances of the not so distant future are looking not so good.

So, I’m wondering a lot about what the future looks like. I think it’s powerful to think about a widening sense of “parish,” and to pull in a multi-dimensional approach to ministry. If Jesus were around today, I’m not so sure that he would have a Facebook page or a blog, but I’m quite sure his disciples would. But, the question remains: will I still be able to consider “ministry” as my profession, and not just my vocation? Will I be able to continue to make a living as an ordained clergyperson, or will I eventually need to have a different profession that pays the bills, with ministry happening on my own time?

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Church and Patriots

Posted on January 18, 2014 by smaxreisert

Like other churches in Maine, and perhaps in other places too, Old South is considering a change in its governance structure. We have too many committee slots for too few people, with some people taking on multiple roles on various committees. And, more than that, we have more committees that I can reasonably cover, especially now that I work less than full-time. Even though I don’t regularly meet with all of the church’s committees, there are still too many of them for me.

The change in governance that I’ve proposed, though, is much more than a consolidation of committees, it also reflects a recognition that Old South is in a different place than it once was. Perhaps in the distant past, worship and committee service, and for some singing in the choir, was enough to satisfy spiritual yearnings and a desire to do good work in the community.

Now, in ways that I find exciting and meaningful, Old South folk—though they are getting older and smaller in number—are looking for new ways of being church. They are talking about wanting to get to know each other better, wanting to engage in new paths of mission, and exploring their spiritual selves. Old South is also blessed with amazing musical talent, only a fraction of which is used on a regular basis. Last summer, for instance, one woman organized a ukulele choir and ended up with eight to ten people playing with her during a Sunday worship service in the middle of summer—a sure sign that it was time to try some new things at Old South.

We now have an opportunity to be about the business of reinventing ourselves—of transformation. Isn’t that what the church is all about?

Though I’ve learned in the past that this might not be a good idea, I can’t help but to compare our situation, in a small but significant way, to what’s happening with my favorite football team, the New England Patriots. Truth be told, my love of football, and my devotion to the Patriots, has become more complicated in recent years—the growing evidence surrounding the dangers of concussions, the Spygate scandal, the Patriots’ former tight end in prison for murder (and now the allegations that he may have committed other murders) . . . . These problems have caused me to squirm when it comes to football and the Patriots, but I’m not quite ready to cut them loose.

The Patriots play in the AFC Conference Championship tomorrow afternoon, against the Broncos. The Patriots have reached this place near the top of the AFC heap because of their ability to reinvent themselves, to deal with their very real and very significant losses in personnel, and to figure out how to effectively use the gifts and talents of the players they still have or can get their hands on, and to convince all of their players to work together, even when they must take on new tasks or a new ways of playing their positions—including their celebrity quarterback, who has been transformed from gunslinger to hand-off man (big throwing offense to an offense focused more on a running game).

The Patriots have stared reality straight in the face and they have responded—and now they are on the brink of yet another Super Bowl.

The picture, of course, is a whole lot more complicated. I’m especially mindful that the Patriots have a coaching staff that has a whole lot more power and authority than I have for making changes. And, I probably don’t even need to point out that football and church are very, very different things in almost all aspects of who they are and what they do.

Still, I think it’s worth spending a moment considering what the Patriots have done this season in order to keep winning (though churches cannot think of themselves in the same terms of “winning” and “losing”). Reinventing the team did not happen by accident or miracle. Reinvention happened because of hard work and commitment to the whole, even where some highly paid “star” players had to put aside their personal glory for the benefit of the team as a whole.

Churches like Old South can learn from this lesson. Our line-up is different than what we thought it would be. We’ve lost important “players” and some players, who we assumed would show up at some point, haven’t. Yet, we have the same old playbook, and the same old patterns of existence—despite the fact that clearly have gifts and talents that are not being put to good use and the old playbook is not especially rewarding. We end up doing what we’ve always done, and there is some comfort there. But, there’s also restlessness.

It’s the restlessness that we must pay attention to, for it is in that restlessness, I believe, that we will encounter the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst. And, though our average age may continue to climb and our numbers may continue to shrink, we may very well find, and experience, new life, and whole new wonderful way that God is speaking to us and beckoning us to be the church we are called to be.

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Righteous Anger

Posted on January 11, 2014 by smaxreisert

A few weeks ago I went to see the film Philomena, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I finally figured out why.

Philomena is based on the true story of an Irish woman who, as an unwed pregnant teenager, was left at a convent that took in women just like her and subjected them to hard labor in return for the service of taking them in when no one else would. As many of these women experienced, Philomena’s young son was taken from her and offered for adoption.

In the film, Philomena, now a much older woman played by Judi Dench, sets out to find her son. Her companion on the journey is a world-weary former BBC reporter, Martin Sixsmith, who, until he was fired, was not interested in telling “human interest stories.” But, he needs a job and this brings Martin and Philomena together for an odd, but touching, traveling “buddy” movie.

When the full extent of the injustice visited upon Philomena is made clear, there is a very moving scene where Philomena offers forgiveness for what was done to her. But, Martin is not prepared to forgive. He is very angry. Philomena, though, will have none of it. She dismisses his anger. She would rather forgive.

I’ve been struggling with this one aspect of the film. Philomena’s ability to forgive is extraordinary, but the dismissal of the anger is unsettling to me—probably because I share some of that anger. It’s not that anything remotely like what happened to Philomena has happened to me, or anyone I know, but the Church—Roman Catholic and Protestant— suffers in an important ways, still today, from the sins of church leaders of the past. Though certainly not all of the reason, but part of the reason, for the missing people in the pews of my church, the entire swaths of generations of people who do not attend church, can be traced back to the harm of priests, ministers, and nuns of the past.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve heard from quite a few people who are searching—searching for church, or some kind of spiritual community or connection to the holy. These people have reached out to me because of my occasional columns in the local paper or because of this blog or they’ve stumbled upon Old South’s webpage or Facebook page. They are drawn to the words that I write, the ideas that I try to convey, and so they reach out with questions.

Almost all of these people have had—either directly or through a family member or friend—a bad church experience. All of those bad experiences involve religious leaders—ministers, priests, nuns. All of the bad experiences involve terrible harm to the soul, and sometimes the body too. How is it possible that a trusted religious leader can tell a child that a parent is ill or has died because of the weakness of that child’s faith? How can trusted a religious leader abuse children, take advantage of trust, for his own needs?

These abused individuals left the church, but then there is still a place of searching in their lives, there is something missing, a connection that they want to make. Somehow, they discover the words that I write on a regular basis and wonder if it could be true: Can a Christian church really be an open, nonjudgmental, loving place? Can a religious leader really be trusted, can take seriously the emotional needs of those in the leader’s care?

And, though I try—sometimes in person or more often, through the power of email—to convince them that, yes, a Christian church can be an affirming, loving place with no judgment and with religious leaders who will not take advantage of them or their children, it is almost impossible to get these people to come to church more than once or twice.

The scars are deep, powerful, and abiding.

So, I find myself angry, righteously angry—at religious leaders of the past, ministers, priests, nuns. I am angry at those people who have harmed so many, and have left those people searching, still with deep wounds. I realize that the nuns who took in Philomena, and other young women like her, were offering help in a way no one else did, but how could they go so far in damaging those young women,  even in adulthood, and the children they bore?

And I’m not just angry for what those religious leaders did to these individuals, I’m also angry for the damage to the church that’s been left in their wake. I serve a church with a population of people under fifty that is tiny. Now, there’s a range of reasons why this is—and lots of those other reasons I’ve written about in the past—but part of puzzle is the damage of religious leaders of the past, and the harm they have done to individuals that  caused those individuals to flee the Church. The harm is not just upon the individual but the corporate body of Christ.

I find Philomena’s ability to forgive remarkable, but the language of anger is also an appropriate voice. While forgiveness is powerful, it is not the only response that can propel important change. Anger is also essential, especially anger from within (which, in the case of Philomena is not the case, as Martin is an atheist).

For anyone who finds this blog, who has experienced directly or indirectly, the harm of church leaders, I encourage you to come back and to raise your voice from within. The body of Christ needs you.

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What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

Posted on January 4, 2014 by smaxreisert

In late October of 2008, during a trip to Europe, my family and I spent a week in Rome. During our stay in “the Eternal City,” we visited a special art exhibit of the artist Giovanni Bellini. Bellini was an Italian Renaissance painter, active in Venice in the 1400s. Our visit to this exhibit was not exactly on my Rome “to do” list, but my daughter had become enchanted with Bellini’s work and was excited by the possibility of seeing lots of his paintings all in the same place, which just happened to be when we were in Rome.

For the most part, those of us who visit art museums, experience art in a sort of isolation. Even the world’s largest art museums can boast only a few pieces by any one artist. The Bellini show in Rome provided a rare opportunity to see a wide range of paintings from one particular artist’s long career.

As I made my way through the exhibit, I was struck by the clear differences that were apparent in paintings that shared a common theme. If each of the paintings were viewed alone, the differences may have been impossible to appreciate. But, with similar themed paintings grouped together, the subtle differences were striking.

The most amazing part of the exhibit for me was a collection of Bellini’s Madonna and Child paintings (of which there are many). The subtle contrasts were hard to miss among the gathered paintings, which normally were scattered far and wide in museums around the world.

Most of the Madonna and Child paintings featured a gentle and serene Mary and a cherubic Christ Child. But, a few of them offered some interesting twists on the familiar theme. One of them in particular stood out for me, a painting entitled Madonna with Trees. This piece featured a Mary with eyes that might be described as casting a sidelong glance toward the Christ Child, as if she were asking herself, “What have I gotten myself into?”

Many Christians through the centuries and even today have probably asked themselves the very same question. If they haven’t, they probably should.

What have I gotten myself into?

To follow Christ is a challenging proposition. During the Christmas season, we can sometimes fall into the nostalgia trap, experiencing the season at a distance, gazing at cute manger scenes with only a sense of sentimentality, of the memories captured by the special season with its familiar music and stories. Even biblical accounts of the holy season can become just part of the routine.

But, we really ought to be asking ourselves, “What have I gotten myself into?”

Christ did not come into the world just so that we could have a nice holiday with lots of lights and special music at what is normally a dark and dreary time of year. Christ did not come into the world just to give us a pat on the back for our comfortable lives or beautiful churches or the bit of charitable giving we offer before the end of the tax year.

Christ came to challenge, and to share the love of God in a radical way. Though we have no way to know exactly how Jesus came into the world (even the stories in Matthew and Luke are remarkably different and don’t line up very well), we observe at Christmas the Incarnation of God in the form of a vulnerable infant. What an amazing way to experience and understand the Creator—an opportunity for wonder and awe indeed.

As yet another Christmas recedes into our memories, we Christians ought to take one last look, perhaps even a sidelong glance, and allow that sense of wonder to capture our imagination as it never has before and to challenge ourselves to ask the provocative question of faith: “What have I gotten myself into?”

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The Year (Almost) Without an Advent

Posted on December 28, 2013 by smaxreisert

Like many churches in Central Maine, Old South had to cancel worship for the two Sundays before Christmas—Advent territory. For the first of those cancellations, a raging snowstorm rolled in at exactly the most inconvenient time, making travel to and from worship hazardous. The second of the cancellations involved an ice storm, and a much longer and sustained period of even more hazardous travel.

The first Sunday “snow day” was, I have to admit, kind of fun. My family and I had breakfast together. We puttered around the house and watched television shows that we rarely get to watch, like Meet the Press and a Rick Steves travel show.

But the second “snow day” was not nearly so fun. I didn’t even make it through the first ten minutes of Meet the Press and Rick Steves was off to a place in the world I don’t plan to visit. So, I got to work—lots still do to get Christmas Eve organized and I had to work out a “plan b” for the delivery of Giving Tree gifts, etc.

Puttering around my house on these Sunday morning “snow days,” got me to wonder: is this what the “spiritual but not religious” people do every Sunday morning?

On Sundays when the weather isn’t a problem, the SBNR probably get out and do other things—the gym, sports, brunch, household chores.

But, is that it? Is that enough?

I found myself missing Advent, and missing worship—missing the dimension of my life that is grounded in church, in the gathered community of God’s people who struggle and strive to be serious about faith. I could have done some of the things that we would have done in church, at home. But I knew it wouldn’t even remotely be the same.

There are times when going to church gets to feel a little like its own routine, but the two weeks that we missed worship during one of the most important seasons of the year, I realized that there’s something about worship, and about church, that is important—foundational— in connecting meaningfully with faith. Worship connects me to the holy, a sense of the sacred that is beyond me, in a way that is different than other settings. There is something important about gathering with a group of people, who are taking time out of their own busy lives to connect to faith on a deeper level. There is something about the intention of being together, knowing that the holy too is in our midst.

Advent, like Lent, has a special quality because it is not something that is marketed heavily in the dominant culture, as the holiday that ends the season. Though Christmas gets heavy attention, the season of Advent is for those who go to church, those whose faith is an important component in their lives.

When we don’t have worship, something clearly is missing—something that an Advent ritual at home cannot completely capture. Especially during a season when the big holiday, Christmas, is so dominant, so omnipresent, I realized how much I missed being present to Advent, with people who share a common faith, but also bring something different to the faith.

This weekend’s predicted storm is not expected to arrive until Sunday afternoon. Thank goodness. I’ll be glad to be in worship Sunday morning, and I’ll be thinking about my new awareness of what this all means, and how it might be shared.

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Lessons in the Holiday Season

Posted on December 14, 2013 by smaxreisert

One of the best literary Christmas pageant scenes is in John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. What makes it so great, of course, is that it is so funny. And, what makes it so funny is that everything goes wrong.

The long-time director of the annual Christmas pageant of Christ Church in Gravesend, NH is the wife of the rector and former stewardess, Barb Wiggin. Mrs. Wiggin had a lock-grip on the pageant—from staging, to casting, to costuming and so on. She even had strict demands on the child who would play the baby Jesus, requiring that the infant not even shed a tear.

Every year, the pageant went off without a hitch—until Owen Meany came along. Owen is a diminutive nine-year-old boy with a ruined voice, a little too smart and wise for his years. And, a bit of a control freak himself.

After years of putting up with Mrs. Wiggin and her disciplined and predictable Christmas pageant, Owen decides to undermine her authority and to stage the Christmas pageant how he saw fit—mostly following the “scripture” of “Away in the Manger.” The culmination of all of this is that Owen manipulates his way into the best part in the pageant—the baby Jesus. From his place in the center of the action, Owen then finds a way to direct the whole thing.

On the night of the big production, on Christmas Eve, everything goes wrong. The pageant ends in a shambles.

In the church in which I grew up, the pageant on Christmas Eve was probably the biggest service of the year, the sanctuary packed full of parents, grandparents and other family members of the pageant participants. It, too, was run with tight control and efficiency. It was a well-oiled machine.

When I got a call in December of 1996, asking for my own newborn to play the baby Jesus, I knew just what to expect, even though I no longer attended that church. And, it all went off without a hitch.

The directors of the Christmas Pageant at First Parish Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, in Wakefield, Massachusetts had never met anyone like Owen Meany.
I’ve directed plenty of Christmas pageants myself, although I’ve never stuck to one script year after year. I am certainly relieved when everything falls into place, neatly and on cue, but I must admit that I wonder about the need to keep the story of Christmas so well-ordered.

It seems clear that the story of the very first Christmas was anything but orderly and neat. A last minute trip to an unfamiliar place for a very young, and very pregnant, woman. A man who may have thought about quietly leaving the young woman, when he found out that she was pregnant and they were not yet married. No room at the inn. A stable probably full of smelly animals. And, then that crowd—shepherds from the fields and strange men from far away bearing gifts that were anything but practical. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. What about diapers, a rattle, a pacifier, some infant clothing?

The story of the first Christmas, and the season of Advent that precedes it, reminds us that God rarely works with the same efficiency and predictability of someone like Barb Wiggin. And, that is a wondrous thing.

So, when you are finding this holiday season a little (or a lot) hectic, your mind scattered, things getting a little out of control—take heart! It may be the perfect time to be present in the moment—God may just be bursting into your life in a whole new way. God may be seeking to be born in your heart as never before.

God doesn’t usually come to us in predictable, contained moments. God doesn’t come to us in those efficient, “well-oiled” routines of the season. God comes to us in surprising and amazing ways, in the unexpected. So this Christmas season, prepare your heart, and your head, for the new ways that God is seeking to be born in your life.

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Lessons I Should Have Learned in Divinity School #2: More Physics

Posted on December 7, 2013 by smaxreisert

Newton’s law of motion: an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion.

My last blog entry focused on momentum, and how that concept finds its place in a discussion regarding church congregations, especially in a place like central Maine.

This week, I focus on the other side of the law of motion: inertia. This is also an important concept with which church people must contend, if they are serious about wanting to keep the church going, and to keep sharing the Good News in a robust and meaningful way.

Why is inertia important to my work with a small congregation in central Maine? Inertia takes on a couple of forms, regarding those within the flock and those outside of the flock. Today, I’m mostly thinking about those outside of the flock, but have thought about joining the flock.

I write an occasional column for the Saturday religion page of the local newspaper. These columns sometimes garner a fair amount of response. On several occasions, I’ve heard from people who report that they do not currently attend any church, but they have been thinking about coming to church—they are either looking for a new way of exploring their spiritual side, or there is something from a former church experience that they miss. Most of these people are not interested in the more conservative churches that usually dominate the local Christian landscape. My column has intrigued them, by asserting a clear Christian faith, while also offering an openness that is not found in many of the other churches in the area.

From time to time, someone who has read one of my columns actually shows up for Sunday worship. And, sometimes they even show up another time. But, then it stops. Except for one person, I don’t think anyone who has come to visit under these circumstances has ever attended more than once or twice.

My theory about what is going on here goes back to Newton’s law of motion: an object that is at rest tends to stay at rest.

It’s very difficult for someone to break his/her routine, in almost every aspect of one’s life. For someone who is not in the habit of attending worship on Sunday morning, I believe it is extremely difficult to alter that behavior—even when a person wishes to alter her/his behavior. Even when a person is looking for something along the lines of Christian community, it is a substantive challenge to motivate them to fundamentally break from the habit of not going to church. After all, many of these people are busy people and the thought of adding a new thing to their personal routine is a lot to ask, and is often too complicated to do for more than a week or two.

This is important for church folk to recognize and understand. To break the law of motion that an object at rest tends to stay at rest requires work and an awareness of the obstacle at hand. Good church people must become more aware of certain laws of motion, and human behavior, in order to share their story, and the Good News, in ways that others will find not only compelling, but will inspire a dramatic change in routine and behavior.

The bottom line is that the laws of physics are hard to break, even when we are talking about an “object” that is a human being. Physics may seem a long way from theology, but we see physics at work, though we may prefer not to. But, our own continued refusal to appreciate the laws of physics contributes to our decline. In essence, we need to break our own inertia, and then learn how to effectively, prayerfully and joyfully break the inertia of others.

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Courses that Should Be Offered at Seminary/Divinity School #1: Physics

Posted on November 23, 2013 by smaxreisert

Over the course of my almost twenty-five years in parish ministry, I’ve accumulated a long mental list of the gaps that exist in my divinity school education—not simply courses that I failed to take, but courses that should have been offered, but weren’t, and should have been required for anyone thinking about parish ministry. The first gap that occurred to me early in my career and keeps popping up as an obvious absence in my vast treasure trove of knowledge is not some special niche of theology or period of Christian history. It is plumbing.

Theology, Church History, Scripture, Pastoral Care and Counseling, all are important subjects that a good pastor should take as part of a divinity degree. But, to be the pastor of a small church, one must also have other skills— things like plumbing, small engine repair (when the lawn mower or snow blower breaks down), accounting, electricity.

Through the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking about another subject area that turns out to be woefully lacking in my divinity school experience: physics. In particular, I’ve been wrestling with a certain concept from physics—momentum. Now, I haven’t taken physics since high school (in college, I fulfilled the lab science requirement with geology, which is not at all useful in my work as a pastor). But I’ve been thinking a lot about momentum, which I’ve been reminded by the wonders of the internet goes something like this: momentum = mass x velocity.

Why have I been thinking about momentum? In Maine, especially among the old Mainline churches, we have a momentum problem. The momentum is moving against us, that is. It’s not just that not as many people go to church these days, or that the state of Maine has the oldest population in the country, or simply that Maine has the lowest percentage of people who self-identify as Christian (27% according to one survey). The problem we have is that the movement, the momentum, of community behavior is moving away from us.

In my brief refresher of momentum as a concept in physics, I was reminded that both “mass” and “velocity” are important. Take a large truck and skateboard moving at the same speed. The large truck has the greater momentum than the skateboard, even though they are moving at the same speed.

Where I live, in Central Maine, the momentum is with the non-church-goers. There are simply more of them—they have more mass—than those who do go to church. This is especially true among my own peers—adults somewhere around the age of fifty, college educated with good jobs, with children at home, etc. It’s not just that most of them do not go to church. There’s something much bigger, and more troubling to someone like me, at work.

Momentum. In talking to and spending time with my peers who do not go to church (and there are a lot of them) I’ve found a kind of movement in their becoming more distant from the church. There’s a few of these people who went to church when their children were very young, but now they not only don’t go, there’s a momentum to their distance from church—something having to do with mass and velocity.

I’ve been reminded in my little physics refresher of Newton’s first law of motion: an object at rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion.

This is an important lesson for pastors and church folk, especially in a place like Central Maine. It is simply not enough to try to employ new ways, or old ways, of attracting new people and visitors. We need to find ways of interrupting the movement—the momentum—that is moving away from us. This should lead us to very different ways of interacting with the community around us. Yet, my concern is that good church people have a hard time, and will have a hard time, with what is required to “interrupt” the momentum that is moving away from us. Mainliners tend not to be interrupting kinds of people.

But, if we care enough about what our faith and our church mean to us, we are called to understand and appreciate the dynamics of the community in which we live and exist, even when what’s happening is not what we would wish. The momentum is moving against us. That is our challenge.

If the love of God is what we say it is, then we should accept the grace and the courage to respond and to be the kind of interrupters that we must be in order to share the good news of God’s love and hope, for us and for all people.

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Churches and Millennials

Posted on November 16, 2013 by smaxreisert

The Washington Post’s “On Faith” section recently ran a piece entitled, “5 Churchy Phrases that are Scaring off Millennials,” by Addie Zierman. The phrases Ms. Zierman identifies are these: 1. “The Bible clearly says . . . “ 2. God will never give you more than you can handle.” 3. Love on (e.g. “As youth group leaders, we’re just here to love on those kids.” 4. Black and white quantifiers of faith, such as “Believer, Unbeliever, Backsliding” 5. “God is in control . . . has a plan . . . works in mysterious ways.”

I’ve read other columns and blogs that say about the same thing—that people who go to church, and are usually over the age of say, 50, say not only unhelpful things, but things that younger people find stupid. These unhelpful and stupid things are causing younger people to steer clear of Christian faith communities—to leave them or not start going to one.

Let me say loud and clear: not all church people say those things. In fact, I, along with many of my fellow churchgoers, find those phrases just as problematic as Ms. Zierman and her peers do.

While I can’t guarantee that no one in the church that I serve ever utters one of those dreaded phrases, it’s rare to hear them. And, in all of my—many—years of church going, I’ve never once heard anyone say “Love on” in any context. If I did, I bet I’d be “creeped out” as well (a reaction described in the column).

Millennials:  the church, and Christians, may not be as bad as you think.

Reading Ms. Zierman’s piece led me to two thoughts:
1. Churches that lean to the more progressive end of the Christian theology and practice scale need to be louder in speaking up about themselves, and to make it clear that they are generally not in agreement with other Christians who seem to dominate the media landscape, or at least those who are often used by the media to characterize Christians. There’s a reason why most cities and towns have a line up of churches along Main St. and a variety of churches around town—Christians don’t all agree with each other. In fact, there’s a wide variety of theological perspectives and Christian practice among churches even in the smallest of places.
2. Millennials need to stop making assumptions about churches and Christians. Just because one church is full of people (or perhaps just a few very loud people) who make all kinds of unhelpful and/or cringe-worthy theological claims, it doesn’t mean that all churches and Christians say the same things or think the same way. Millenials need to employ a more thoughtful and discriminating approach when thinking about Christianity and the ways in which Christians gather. I am sure that “millennials” don’t appreciate being lumped all together into the same pot, with all of the same assumptions being made about them. They need to offer the same courtesy to others—you know, something like “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Churches, and millennials, should follow the old adage, as well as its reverse, to practice what they preach, and to preach what they practice.

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