Getting Some Perspective, Part Two

Posted on May 18, 2013 by smaxreisert

Old South’s Sunday School experienced an extraordinary surge of growth in the 1950s. By the mid-1950s, the number of children enrolled exceeded 200. How to respond? Build a building, of course!

And, the Parish House was built and opened in 1957 on the lot across the street from the church building. That’s still where the Sunday School meets, though the numbers enrolled in the Sunday School now are tiny compared to that number from 1957 (on an average Sunday, we have between 4 and 6 children and youth). The church offices, including mine, are also located in the Parish House, as is the primary kitchen, and a fellowship hall that we use for committee meetings and church gatherings.

When the church celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Parish House in 2007, we sifted through a lot of the materials that were saved from the process, the building, and the opening of the new Parish House in 1957. One of the things in all of those materials that were put on display that struck me was the vote to authorize the building of the Parish House. The Sunday School was enormous and the pastor back then a huge proponent of the building project, yet the actual vote to make it all happen was remarkably close.

I’ve often found myself wondering: What did the opponents to the building see? Did they object to the expense? Were they concerned about the sustainability of the numbers in the Sunday School? Did they, in some way, recognize that the sudden burst of growth needed more time to show itself as permanent or temporary?

Unfortunately, we don’t have the notes from the meetings back then, but I find myself wishing that those in opposition had been able to gather just a little more support. Like other churches that built up or added on in the 1950s, we are hampered by a physical plant that is now too big for us.

This is especially poignant, and unsettling, when we realize that the great surge of growth of the 1950s really didn’t last long. Even in the very next decade, the evidence of decline was already apparent.

In our now too large spaces, we have a hard time recognizing that the amazing growth of the 1950s really had less to do with us, than it had to do with was happening around us in the culture of the United States. When everyone “went to church,” we didn’t find a way of sustaining that sentiment. My more cynical side wonders if we were spending too much time congratulating ourselves.

The big question that remains is: were we doing God’s work or the world’s work? Is it possible for those of us who remain to wrestle with the concept that maybe what happened in the fifties was actually not a very good thing because it drew us away from the work of Christ?

These are questions that must be considered, prayed over, thought through. They are critical to how we understand who we are and to whom we belong. Is our mission simply to fill our parking lot or is it to do the work of Christ, even if that means moving out of the buildings we can no longer afford?

Who are we and what is our purpose? This is the essential question, to be asked as if it’s never been asked before, and to see where it leads, how it lead us closer to the One we say we wish to follow.

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Getting Some Perspective, Part One

Posted on May 11, 2013 by smaxreisert

A few years ago as I was rummaging around in the Old South archive (a large, fireproof file cabinet in my office), I came across an old Old South newsletter.  At the time, the newsletter was called The Old South Messenger (it is now called The Chimes).  This particular issue of The Old South Messenger featured, on the cover, a photograph of a young girl, looking forlorn sitting with her chin in her hands and a long, frowning face.  The caption read, “I wish mother would take me to Sunday School.”

Inside the newsletter, there’s a prominent box with the words “Too Busy” and, in that box, this bold statement appears:  “Too many people try to satisfy their conscience by saying, ‘Too busy to go to church.’  This is an old excuse that is so out of date that it ought not to have any place in our lives.”

Any guess as to when this newsletter was published?  Sometime in the 1980s?  1970s?

Not even close.  The date of publication:  September 1923.

Many of us in the church seem to believe that the lower than desired attendance that we are experiencing is a new story.  Yet, it is not.  We think that the current declines are an anomaly that we must endure or conquer.  Yet, what seems more true is that the full sanctuaries that many of us remember from the 1950s and 60s (my memory doesn’t actually go back that far, having been born in the 60s, but I am told that the sanctuary was full back then), that is the anomaly.   In the great scheme of the life of the mainline Protestant church in Maine, the anomaly is the 1950s.

The fretfulness that most mainline church members experience is not only that our sanctuaries are much less full than they were forty, fifty, sixty, years ago, it’s that the great surge in mainline church attendance in the 50s was accompanied by expansions of buildings and physical plants.   These larger buildings not only feel larger, and lonelier, when occupied by far fewer people.  They are also a larger financial burden.

It’s important that good church people understand and appreciate the wider and deeper issues that they face.  It’s even more important that good church people have perspective and a sense of the historical picture that goes back further than the 1950s.  We won’t likely find many answers to our problems in the past and I can’t imagine that any of us would wish for the dynamic that changed the tide from the not so robust church attendance of the 1920s to the full sanctuaries of the 1950s—the Great Depression and then World War Two.  But, we ought to feel a little less adrift when we look back at the last century and see ourselves as part of a larger drama, and to recognize that we share at least some of the same concerns and sentiments of the church of the 1920s.

With greater depth in our sense of ourselves and our past, we must also wrestle with a yet even more profound question:  was the anomaly of the 1950s, when our sanctuaries were full, more about us, our message and the Good News of God that we professed, or was it more about the culture, and the push in the culture that people attend church?  Is the anomaly of the 1950s a story about wonderful glory days of Christ or is it about a burden that led us all to fool ourselves into thinking that we were doing God’s work, when really we were doing the work of American culture and society?

More on that next week.

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The Value of Friendship, and the Church

Posted on May 4, 2013 by smaxreisert

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about friendship and, more precisely, the undervalued benefit of friendship and community. Our society, culture, and certainly the Christian church have long supported, encouraged and highlighted the value of family and the idea that the family is a critical, essential element of our collective lives.

All of this focus on family and family values stifles any consideration of other forms of relationship, especially friendship. This is a problem.

Protestants especially, who view only scripture as authoritative rather than both scripture and tradition, are on shaky ground when it comes to placing family at the foundation of all human relationships, and as a indispensable element in the expression of faith and love.

The New Testament is not, it turns out, especially family friendly.

Jesus never married or had children. Same for Paul.

The stories of the Gospels emphasize the value of friendship, over the value of family. The gathering of disciples forms a web of community through friendship. In the Gospel of John, the significance of friendship is captured in Jesus’ bold proclamation: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13)

And, in other parts of the Gospels, Jesus offers other striking statements regarding the value of friendship versus the value of family: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)

And, in Paul’s writings, he too makes startling claims regarding the problems of family, especially as spouses get in the way of service to Christ: “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion. . . . I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please her husband.” (1 Corinthians 7:8-9, 32-34)

Why then, do so many churches, even Protestant churches, insist on maintaining and emphasizing family as the foundational component of experiencing the fullness of life and faith? Why does the Church continue to equate church with “family,” instead of speaking of the Church as a community, a gathering of friends?

We, in the Mainline, would do well to move the conversation and emphasis from family to friends and community.

It is not only family that offers love, support and encouragement along life’s journey. In fact, for many people, the family is precisely where they have experienced abuse, ridicule and emotional and/or physical harm.

We, in the Church (and especially Protestant churches) ought to be more conscientious in how we speak and act, highlighting the value and benefit of friendship, as promoted in our holy scriptures. Jesus gathered in the midst of his friends. And, those of us who continue to gather as followers of Christ, ought to consider our own role as friends, of Jesus and of each other.

Friendship is not simply a nice thing, a mostly inconsequential feature in our lives. Friendship is, instead, a critical aspect of our life in the Church, a part of the underpinning of our experience of faith and love. More “focus on friendship,” instead of “focus on the family,” would provide new opportunities for lively and meaningful exploration of what it means to live the life of faith.

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Text Wrestling

Posted on April 27, 2013 by smaxreisert

For the past year or so, the organist of Old South and I get together every few months to plan worship. I choose scriptures and themes and then the two of us talk about what music—hymns, anthems, etc.—will support and highlight the chosen themes and scripture passages.

When I looked at what I had chosen, in advance, for the Sunday following the Boston Marathon bombings, I discovered that I had chosen the passage from Acts where Peter raises Tabitha/Dorcas back to life from death. I squirmed. I thought about changing it. I really didn’t want to talk about it.

What family that week who had lost a loved one—from the Boston bombings, or the explosion in Texas, or the earthquake in China, or any of the myriad places where death had visited—wouldn’t give anything to receive a visit from Peter, or someone like him, and to have their loved one brought back to them, alive? The passage from Acts struck me as difficult, unhelpful, and unfair. Now, it’s not that I think that much of the Bible is the paragon of fairness, at least in terms of how human society generally thinks of fairness, but the Acts passage really got under my skin as unreasonably unfair, if such a concept makes any sense at all.

Instead of dumping it, though, I kept it and spent about half of my sermon talking about how much I disliked the passage. Whether the event really happened, or it’s rooted in a rumor that got out of hand, or it’s really offered as some kind of metaphor, it doesn’t matter. I don’t like the passage. And, more than that, progressive/liberal Christians like me (although I’m still trying to figure out which “label” fits me best) must have the discipline and the fortitude to raise up passages like Acts and talk about how much we don’t like them, how much we struggle with them, how much they make us squirm.

Being a Christian isn’t about having everything come easily and neatly, uncomplicated and simple. It’s sometimes about hard things too.

Our Holy Bible is not a textbook, nor is it an answer key to all of life’s difficulties. It doesn’t answer all of my questions. Some questions remain, and that’s not only okay, but it ought to be more out front of who we are and what we do, in the more liberal/progressive church. Questions, struggles, pointing to passages that we don’t like: these are all vital aspects of living faithfully.

We haven’t done ourselves any favors over the years, ignoring these difficult passages or declaring that faithful people must simply accept them, as a matter of faith. Plenty of people have left the church just for this reason. And, for those who remain in the church, our faith is stunted by these attempts at pushing away the difficult and complicated. People are intelligent enough, it seems to me, to be able to handle a little complexity.

We discover, especially when disasters happen, big or small, that a simple faith based on a limited engagement with biblical texts leaves everyone unfulfilled. No wonder people have left the church.

It’s time to turn the tide, to engage in difficult texts. We should not expect that such discipline will lead to tidy answers, but a fuller and deeper conversation with God—a faith that truly feeds the spirit and encourages the soul.

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Thoughts on the Boston Marathon Bombing

Posted on April 17, 2013 by smaxreisert

Someone on the news talked about how special Patriots Day is in Boston—and now it’s special in a way that no one wants. In Boston, Patriots Day is a special day. While most of the rest of the country is back to work on a typical April Monday, Boston comes alive with celebration. Sure, Maine and the rest of Massachusetts also observe Patriots Day and take it as a holiday. But, in Boston it is decidedly different. It’s a big party.

For several years when we lived in Cambridge, my husband and I had friends who lived along the Marathon route in Brookline and every year these friends hosted a Marathon gathering. We spent a lot of time outside at that annual event, cheering on the runners—the fastest, elite runners first, but then the other runners too, the ones who would get no television coverage. At best, they would probably beam when they found their name listed among the finishers of the race, in tiny print in the newspaper. Those runners might not have received much press coverage, but they were cheered on. It’s one of the amazing these about the Boston Marathon—that normal people run, and normal people stay by the side of the road and cheer them on, sometimes long after most people, and certainly the media, have stopped paying attention.

One of the first things that struck me, when I found out about the bombing on Monday, was that it took place so far into the race, when only the “normal” people would be finishing the race, the people whose only glory would be accomplishing a personal goal. And, on the sidelines were other normal people, cheering on friends and family, and strangers too. Because that’s what you do during the Boston Marathon when you are in Boston.

I find myself weary—weary about another act of senseless violence, and weary that it was not the only act of senseless violence on Monday (in Iraq alone, 55 people were killed in bomb attacks on Monday and over 200 were wounded), and weary about the constant meaningless chatter on the news, and even weary about the defiant pronouncements that the Marathon will go on next year (of course it will).

The horrible event on Monday provides lots of reasons for hope, with so many people jumping into action in so many different ways to help and respond. On balance, it seems that the goodness of humanity outweighs the badness. It is here that I believe we must be most vigilant. We must remain compassionate, hopeful, loving. We cannot allow evil acts to drag us down into a place of fear and hatred.
Frederick Buechner once offered this perspective on the world: “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” (Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith)

I would add: a) don’t be full of hatred, and b) don’t get weary.

Today, I’m trying very hard—and praying for the grace and strength that I need.

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Hope in Worship

Posted on April 13, 2013 by smaxreisert

During Lent at Old South, we engaged in a little “spring cleaning,” thinking about aspects of our church life that are very meaningful to us, that we want to keep, as well as things that are no longer meaningful, that we are ready to get rid of. We focused on worship, the church’s mission statement, our mission programs, etc.

One of the things that came out to be especially meaningful is worship. Many people, not surprisingly for Old South, commented on the music. For a church our size, we are blessed to have so many people with the gift of music. People also commented on the feeling of community at Old South, that they feel supported and encouraged. And, then there was one little surprise regarding how people felt about worship: they like the sermons. And more than that, many commented that they like the “thought-provoking” sermons.

I wasn’t completely surprised to find a few comments regarding sermons; I do get positive feedback on a fairly regular basis. But, I was surprised by how many people included “sermon” when they thought about what is especially meaningful for them in the worship experience. This wasn’t multiple choice, after all. They could write whatever came to mind.

At Old South, the worship experience is meaningful to a lot of people. But, I also have the sense that this is something that is mostly taken for granted. The feeling is that it’s supposed to be this way, so we don’t spend much time talking about it, or doing anything about it, or sharing it.

During a couple of committee meetings that have taken place since Easter, I’ve talked about the information regarding worship and have encouraged people to think and pray about how we might move the positive experience of worship to a new place. Can we find ways of sharing our experience more widely? How do we express our love of worship outside of the worship space? Are we able to appreciate that our good feeling is more than an individual experience, that it is a communal experience and perhaps worthy of more attention?

As I’ve discussed this information, I’ve noticed that many of those who are listening, are also thinking—and maybe even beginning to think in new ways. Exciting.

There are lots of people out there who have no idea what worship is, what it’s like or even why we do it. All they know are the jokes about boring sermons.

Maybe it’s time to get re-acquainted with some of the basics of what we do and why we do what we do, and why we are still doing what we do. It still has meaning. And it shouldn’t just be taken for granted. It should be shared.

There is hope in our common experience of finding meaning in worship. There is hope in figuring out how to share what we’ve found.

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The Road to Emmaus

Posted on April 5, 2013 by smaxreisert

Some of my favorite Bible stories are post-Resurrection stories—doubting Thomas, the breakfast of fish and bread (both stories from John). My favorite is the Road to Emmaus story, from the Gospel of Luke.

In the story, two of Jesus’ followers are heading out of Jerusalem, on the Sunday after the crucifixion, on their way to a place called Emmaus. Though the text does not say why they had set out for Emmaus, we can guess that they probably thought the story was over, that Jesus was gone forever. He had been crucified on Friday and had not been seen since, despite the news that the tomb had been found empty.

As the two followers walked along the dusty road, they talked about the events that had taken place in Jerusalem. At some point, Jesus himself “came near.” The followers did not recognize their friend and their teacher. They thought him to be a stranger.

The stranger asked to share their conversation and the two followers—one named Cleopas, but the other unnamed—talked about the terrible events that had taken place.

And, then the stranger, beginning with the story of Moses, shared with them what was contained in the scriptures. Still, Cleopas and the other follower, failed to recognize their friend and teacher.

When they arrived at Emmaus, the stranger looked like he was planning to continue his journey, but Cleopas and the other urged him strongly to stay and to eat with them. After all, it was getting late in the day.

As they sat at the table, the guest took the bread, blessed it and broke it, and gave it to them. And as they began to share the meal together, there came a burning in their hearts and they recognized the risen Christ. And, as soon as they recognized him, he vanished from their sight.

This wonderful story offers many lessons. Two of those lessons are especially important for Christians in this Easter season.

The first is that, we don’t always recognize Jesus Christ, even when he’s very close to us. The Christian writer Frederick Buechner has wondered if Cleopas and the other follower had a hard time recognizing Jesus because they really had never truly recognized him during his earthly life.

Those of us who identify as Christian and for whom the Christian faith is vitally important, must acknowledge that we sometimes have difficulty recognizing the risen Christ in our midst. At the beginning of the story, Cleopas and the other seem to have been looking for a magnificent, special effects kind of event on that Sunday morning, the third day after the crucifixion. But that didn’t happen, and though there were tales of the empty tomb, the two followers walk away, perhaps to get away from what they perceived as unfulfilled promises.

Even though the risen Christ “came near” to them and shared conversation about the events and what was contained in the scriptures, the two followers still could not come to that place of recognition. Recognition is sometimes—maybe often—difficult. The risen Christ comes to us in unexpected ways and in unexpected places.

The other important lesson is that those wonderful moments of recognition, those epiphanies in our lives of faith, are fleeting. We cannot hold onto them as precious jewels. As soon as that burning in their hearts came, and they recognized the risen Christ, he vanished from their sight.

Moments of epiphany feed us for a moment, but then we must continue the journey to the next place. Moments of recognition are brief, and do not contain all of the truth of Christ’s presence.

Our spirits are fed, but yet we are also drawn further into the story. Easter isn’t simply about the amazing news of resurrection, it is also about the continuing journey of discovering what it means to follow and to recognize our Risen Savior, who bursts through the tombs of our lives and beckons us to follow, often in ways that do not conform to our preconceived notions.

The challenge of Easter is to open our hearts and our minds to the unexpected nature of God’s presence with us.

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Death and Life

Posted on March 30, 2013 by smaxreisert

A few years ago, I chose a Lenten theme that focused on the “death of the church as we’ve known it.” For all of the Sundays of Lent, I walked the congregation through the various stages of grief. I talked about the many losses we had experienced, and wove them through denial, anger, etc. through to acceptance. On Easter of that year, I tried to highlight the joy of new life, not just for us as individual Christians, but for us as a church.

For most of the season, parishioners politely listened and tried to absorb some of the messages. One of the more effective messages I was so sure of, was the Sunday when I paraded out an old rotary phone, a typewriter, a record turntable and asked a provocative question that went something like: “We don’t use these old things anymore. Why do we insist on having worship, and much of the rest of church life, look and feel almost exactly how it did fifty years ago?”

There was an awkward pause. Someone finally spoke up and admitted to still using a rotary phone. And someone else said that they still use a typewriter and still another person looked completely perplexed and seemed to try to ask, “How does anyone listen to music if they don’t have a turntable?”

There are ways in which the church is stuck in the past because at least some of its members are stuck in the past.

At Old South, I struggle sometimes with how we embrace “new” things, while still being welcoming and accepting of those who have not embraced new things. E-mail, for instance. For me, email is not a new thing, yet I have several active members of Old South who do not use email. I make some attempts at keeping them “in the loop,” but it is increasingly difficult.

At the end of that Lenten journey through the stages of grief, one of my older parishioners who has been a member of the church for a very long time, came in to meet with me. She had in her hands the church newsletter piece that I had written introducing the theme; I could see that it was all marked up. She was upset. Why, she asked, did I insist on being so negative? Why, in my right mind, could I ever choose, over such a long period of time, to focus on such a depressing subject?

Yes, death is negative, and difficult. But, as Easter people we must confront the ways of death in order to experience the new life that Easter brings. Jesus didn’t go directly from the triumphal entry into Jerusalem right to the glorious experience of resurrection. Death, and suffering, happened in between.

Many mainliners, especially in places where lots of other aspects of life are undergoing significant change and loss (the population and economics of Central Maine, for example, are very different than they were fifty years ago), have a hard time seeing themselves in the throes of the reality of Good Friday in what’s happening to the church that they love.

But, we are in a Good Friday time, with all of the confusion, pain, heartache and heartbreak, and actual death that comes with it. But, our faith teaches us that new life will come. We have a hard time trusting that message, though, and more than that, we struggle to cling to the old ways—as if we can resist death, as if our beloved friend can stay with us, despite the slowing heartbeat.

In this holy time of year, my prayer is that Old South, and churches like it, will begin to find ways of moving faithfully through the lessons and the reality of the stories we highlight at worship—these challenging, painful, but ultimately wonderfully joyous, stories of Jesus Christ and his early followers. Somewhere in there, though painful as well, is our story, and it pulls us into something very much alive, but unexpected, and new.

Happy Easter.

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Embracing Our Identity and Status

Posted on March 23, 2013 by smaxreisert

Last year, my husband, son and I attended the bar mitzvah of one of my son’s closest friends, Gabe. Gabe had clearly worked hard to reach this point in his life and to accept the new responsibilities that were conferred upon him during the service.

In her remarks that were made directly to Gabe, the rabbi acknowledged, unabashedly, the minority status of Jews in Central Maine. She counseled Gabe that he may find himself the only Jewish student in his school. And, with that minority status came responsibilities and opportunities. The rabbi encouraged Gabe to serve as a good role model and to be prepared to speak up, to speak for justice, for instance, and to be prepared to share something from time to time about what it means to be Jewish with people who may have absolutely no concept of Jewish belief or practice.

I found the rabbi’s words and counsel to be wonderfully refreshing.

I wish we in the mainline church, also in Central Maine, could adopt a similar posture. Instead of wringing our hands almost constantly about the low numbers of people in our pews and trying to come up with new ways of luring people in, I would like to see us at least try to accept and embrace our minority status and to explore how we can better outline and speak about our identity as a minority group in the community.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t be extravagantly welcoming of new people, and to continue to find new ways of expressing our hospitality, but I am concerned that we pin far too much of our identity on how well we do in luring new people into the fold. And, it’s not just the congregation that does this; I know I’m guilty as well.

To embrace our minority status, as more progressive Christians, would offer an opportunity to do more work in outlining what is truly meaningful for us, and to articulate our identity in a more robust way.

We spend so much time considering the numbers that I feel that a big part of our identity is found in our numbers, especially the numbers of our past. Yet, in our former days we must acknowledge that our full sanctuary had more to do with the culture as a whole pushing people into churches and that there wasn’t much else to do on a Sunday morning, and less to do with a healthy and strong articulation of what it meant for us to be Christian.

To explore and embrace our minority status is an opportunity to discover anew what it means to be Christian. In these days when the dominant definition of “Christian” is not what we practice at Old South, it is even more important that we—at Old South and churches that are like Old South— figure out what we mean and then to learn how to express what it means for us to be Christian.

I’ve begun to notice some movement in this direction when it comes to Old South’s Open and Affirming statement. The statement was passed, unanimously, in June of 2008. But since it passed, the church has struggled a bit with how to live the statement. We say we are “Open and Affirming,” but we have a hard time acknowledging that most people in the community have no idea what that phrase means. So, the question is for us, how to we express our Open and Affirming status?

At recent church meetings at Old South, this topic was taken up with meaningful enthusiasm. People shared ideas and thoughts about how we can live out our statement in a more obvious way. This was a good sign. It helps not just with this aspect of who we are, but it begins that community discussion of what it means for us to live as Christians in this time and place, rather than simply looking at who we are through the lens of the past.

My “hope in the wilderness” moment for this week is to be thankful for these small signs of movement, of exploration of our identity, of noticing that some of those sermon messages of the past five years are finally taking root in fertile soil.

There is responsibility and opportunity in exploring who we are in this time and place, and to be connected in new ways to the movement of the Spirit—and to do that as a community. To embrace and explore our minority status is not to be fatalistic about our future, but to experience the hope that our faith always brings—even when there’s just a very small group huddled up near the cross. There’s always hope. We are always an Easter people.

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Church, Spirituality,and the Convenience Factor

Posted on March 16, 2013 by smaxreisert

A few weeks ago, I encountered a conversation between two women at the gym.  It was Ash Wednesday and both women were talking about how to get to church that day.  They didn’t seem to want to go, but it was clear that they recognized that they needed to go, that they were required to go.  How were they going to fit it in during a normal, busy day in the life of their families?  And, even more than that, could they find a way to get to church just late enough that they could get those ashes rubbed on their foreheads, but then not have to be seen in public for the rest of the day?  And, how about their children?  How could they keep them from being seen in public with that smudged stain on their foreheads?

It was an interesting conversation to overhear.  And, it’s similar to other conversations or comments that I hear, one way or another, from other people.  I have a few families who have found their way to Old South over the last few years, but eventually they drop away.  Life is just too busy.  Church doesn’t fit anymore.  And, more than that, the practice of religion has become the expression of a requirement, instead of an experience of spiritual refreshment.

I’ve noticed in my work in the church that people in the church generally explain away the ever-shrinking presence of people—especially people under the age of fifty—in church by observing that families have a lot more choices for activites on Sunday mornings than they once did.  Sports practices, brunch, even grocery shopping are all available on Sunday mornings.  Families do those things, instead of church.

What’s missing in this observation is that younger and middle-aged adults make time for things that are important to them, amid the myriad choices available to them.  It’s not that the government requires that people bring their children to sports practices on Sunday mornings.  Families make that choice.

The hard thing for those still in church to admit is that families are choosing not to go to church on Sunday mornings.

But, even as families make choices that either do not include church, or choose church only when required by the faith, I have observed in my conversations with people in the community—at the gym, at the grocery store, etc.—is that people do yearn for spiritual refreshment and spiritual connection.  They just don’t know where to turn or how to fit it into their lives in a way they feels manageable.

I wonder sometimes if it’s time to set up a little spiritual drive-through window—a little something that will offer a little more convenience for those whose lives have become just too busy for worship on Sunday, or Saturday.

One of the biggest challenges for churches, especially mainline churches like mine, is to explore ways that we might offer spiritual refreshment that is both meaningful—and worthy of someone’s time—and manageable.  And to do this without judgment.

This is hard, though, and we should admit to that too.  For churches like mine, a congregational church that invites and expects the participation of the congregation, that values highly the central place of the ministry of the laity, we need to be open to—gasp—new ways of doing things and new ways of being church.

Our job is not simply to preserve how we’ve always done things, as if the church is like a museum, but to share the good news and to open our own selves—individually and collectively—to the transformative power of that good news.

We should worry less about the survival of our church buildings, and engage more in the health and vitality of the gospel in our midst, and to live, truly, as people who have experienced the joy and love of God.

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