congregation – Page 2 – Salvaged Faith

the Church

Posted on January 15, 2010Leave a comment

Describe the nature and mission of the Church. What are its primary tasks today?

If the sacraments call us into the world, the church is the “us” that is called. In my previous paperwork, I talked about the church being the place where we come to know and begin to embody the Kingdom of God – but as I have grown in my understanding of the church, I realize more than ever that the church is not a place, but a people. It is the community in which we first participate in the means of grace and the Body of Christ that sends us forth in mission to the world.

I would heartily agree with our denominational vision that we are called to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world – but how we define “church” dramatically changes how we understand that mission. If the church is a people, then our task is not necessarily to get someone to join a particular congregation, but to invite them into the journey of faith – a journey that may never take them inside the four walls of a traditional congregational building. They may worship God with other believers in a house church, or study the bible in an intentional community of faith that meets at the local bar, or be a part of a new monastic community.

As I have been in conversation with emergent and missional theologies, I have begun to drawn a distinction between the church and the congregation, the church being the fullness of the body of Christ – not limited to a building, or a congregation or even a denomination. That is not to say that the congregation and denomination are unimportant. They are the institutional partners that provide structure and support for the work of the church in the world. But I think what is key is that the mission of the church lies outside of the bounds of any particular congregation or denomination. As I have taught this in my own congregation, we remember that the church is to embody the Kingdom of God in all that we do. We are the church when we are at work, when we are at play, and we are the church to each and every single person that we meet. We carry with us the faith, hope, and love that have sustained us in our journey and we invite others to be travelers on that journey with us.

Photo by: Jascha Hoste

emergingumc2

Posted on November 18, 2009Leave a comment

Perhaps a few too many days have passed since the event for me to recall everything clearly. I would have gotten to the blogging right away but a few things got in my way. I watched with much excitation the Iowa/Ohio State football game while I was waiting for my flight. Then I got up and did church Sunday morning. And then I helped move a friend. And then I was sick, sick, sick the rest of the day. Monday I was a zombie. And since then I have been playing catch up.

But there are some key things I want to get down before they slip away completely.

–ONE–

The church and the congregation are not the same thing. The congregation is part of the church, but the church… the Kingdom of God… the bride of Christ… is SO much bigger than the congregation – or the denomination. I knew that, but the way that we talked about the specific role of the congregation last week (public worship, teach core doctrine, care for congregation, institutional player) I realized both how limited that role is and also how important.

To be honest, as I look at my gifts for ministry – I am gifted to be a leader and a pastor within the congregation. I love worship and I want that worship to be available to all. I strive to be an institutional player in my community and build connections between my institutions and our schools and our city government and our state agencies. I’m a good ambassador in that sense. I’m a good representative. I have the gifts to care for people in my congregation – I did it this afternoon as I sat with a family around their dying father. I love to teach and I have the gifts and abilities to take complex ideas and help people understand them.

I also deeply feel called to be a part of small communities of people who are trying to live the gospel with each other. And I think in part what I realized this weekend is that I may not be called to be a leader of a group like that, but I am called to join one. I’m called to help create space for them to happen. I’m called to equip others to lead them.

As an institution, our congregation can be a hub for missional activity. I love that imagery. and I want to make THAT happen.

–TWO–

As a part of the conference experience, we were at Lockerbie Central UMC/Earth House. This is a church that has converted its basement into a vegan restaurant, its middle floor into office space and a coffee shop, and it’s top floor/sanctuary into a blank worship space and flexible auditorium/stage/performance space. I am in LOVE with the whole thing. I love the beautiful old stained glass windows and the homemade chai lattes and the organic fair trade coffee and the gorgeous hardwood floors and the fact that so many different types of people are trying to figure out their lives and their faith in that space. I love the fact that yoga classes and cooking classes and films about social justice issues and conversations about salvation are happening in the same space. I love that people enter that community (enter THE CHURCH) through all sorts of different venues.

I stayed with a young woman who come to the community in part because of a yoga class. And she worships there sometimes. She helps non-profits across the state find the resources they need personnel wise to be effective. And she’s finding community and hope and inspiration there at the Earth House Collective AND the Lockerbie Central congregation.

–THREE–

Our hosts coordinated homestays for many of us, and that in itself was a blessing. I got to know December, even if just for one evening of really deep and vulnerable conversation over a cup of tea. It was amazing to experience that and to know that there was someone, a stranger, who had a similiar story to me. It was a reminder of how small the world is and also a reminder of how powerful the gift of hospitality can be.

–FOUR–

I’m really struck by the difference between the inclusiveness of what the public congregation should be and the exclusiveness of a committed group of disciples who are trying to live the gospels. I’m not sure if this quite came into focus for me completely until this morning as a sat around a table with pastors from other traditions. I had said something about our open communion table and realized how sharply that contrasted with my LCMS colleagues. Ironically, I was at the same time arguing for committed exclusive discipleship groups. We were having a discussion about the limits of God’s kingdom, and I realized the beauty of the Methodist/Congregational structure. We can HAVE the absolute openness of the Kingdom in the congregation, in the sacraments, in worship, in teaching… everyone is welcome. And then we can invite those who want to take deeper steps into discipleship groups. The problem with a lot of churches with rigorous discipline is that it creates and us vs. them mentality, you are in or you are out. If we instead have a partnership that lets us know all who believe are in, and then invite everyone to go deeper, we get around some of that exclusivity.

What I am trying to figure out is how to translate that back into my institutional congregation. I believe we have the structure within our language already. We have baptized members and professing members – and TECHNICALLY professing members should be people committed to living out their baptismal vows through specific practices. And if someone decides they aren’t ready to commit to those practices, they can still be baptized members of our church! Really, what that takes is for us to take our vows seriously and to seriously hold one another accountable AND to value baptized membership in a new way. To realize there is a difference between those who follow Jesus and those who are disciples. Ideally, everyone would be a disciple. But not everyones ready. Not everyone’s ready to take that risk – but they still believe.

what kind of shepherd will I be?

Posted on October 10, 20092 Comments

Earlier this week I found the Internet Monk blog and in particular this article about sermons. Most of what was said was very helpful advice, but one thing really struck me.

In the discussion especially there was a lot of talk about how long it takes to prepare a sermon. My first introduction to this question was from my homiletics professor – an esteemed preacher in the Black church tradition who told us it should take 40 hours to prepare a sermon… 20 hours in one week spent preparing and writing, and 20 hours the next week rehearsing and memorizing the text to be performed. (yes, performed). To which our obvious response was: where on earth is your time for your pastoral duties?

Photo by: Terri HeiseleHe comes from a very different context than I find myself in. In his tradition the preacher is called – and then the preacher equips the laity to do the work of the church. The elders care for the congregation, the preacher speaks God’s word.

On the other hand, in the discussion on Internet Monk there were quite a few people who were deeply concerned about the time we spend preparing sermons. One of the more common themes is that we need to spend even less time working with translating a text and reading what other “shepherds” have thought about it and get out there and spend more time with the sheep.

Perhaps I fall somewhere in between. I might spend some time mulling over a text – reading it, researching it, reading commentaries, but I also try to spend time thinking about the text with my community. We have a weekly lectionary study both in my congregation and with other pastors in our town. And then whatever happens during that week is framed by the texts that surround us for that week. I often will find sermon illustrations in potlucks or news from the days between Sunday and Sunday. I can’t really and truly count how long it takes me to prepare to write – because it happens in all sorts of ways. I might spend a few hours on textweek.com researching. But I’ll spend hours reading blogs, watching the news, listening to npr, talking with people in the church, reading the local paper, playing games with my youth, praying for situations I know about… all of that is preparation for what I say on Sunday.

Then comes the writing. On a good week, the writing happens quickly. One warm sunny afternoon I sat down and wrote the manuscript -one shot, straight through – on a picnic table in the time it took my friends to shoot 18 holes of disc golf (an hour +). And then I played the next course with them. Sometimes it happens in fits and spurts – with ideas coming here and there, phrases coming to me in dreams that I desperately hope I remember in the morning, paragraphs being written that then have to be woven together and edited and cut.

I almost never rehearse my text. I take a full manuscript into the pulpit but I tend to write my manuscripts as I would say them. I had lots of terrible experiences with outlines and extemporaneous speaking in high school – trust me, I need a manuscript. That being said, I never read my manuscript – I talk to and with my congregation. I may speak the words on the page, but they come from somewhere beyond the page. And I don’t let the page limit what I’m going to say or what the Holy Spirit wants to do. If I could get those past experiences out of my mind, perhaps I could be freer to do the work of prepartion and write an outline and trust that the Holy Spirit will help the work I’ve done and the Word of God to come across. But I’m not there yet. I still need my “blankie.” On the other hand, I feel blessed that I have been given a gift that doesn’t require me to spend countless hours rehearsing and memorizing – time that would take away from my family, my own sabbath time, and my congregation.

As I think about both ends of that spectrum – both the preacher who sees it as their responsibility to take care researching and preparing to proclaim a text… and the shepherd who may use few words on a Sunday but sees their primary job as spending time caring for the flock, I wonder about how to find a balance that does not rest solely with the person of the pastor.

What I’m worried about is that maybe the protestant tradition has overemphasized both the shepherd and the preacher models. Sunday worship is seen as the time where we come and listen to a sermon (for better or for worse). But even outside of that time, the congregation looks to me to speak the word to them – whether in bible study, or in administrative board meetings or during worship. While I’m not the preacher in the same way that my homiletics professor is in his congregations, I have become a shepherd that leads the sheep, rather than the shepherd who in a more eastern understanding walks with the sheep.

I am not called to be a figurehead or a dictator. While I am a natural leader, my ministry is to be a servant. I am called to empower my congregation. I am called to give them voice – to help them hear the Word of God that lives amongst us all. I am called to listen to the stories of people who walk through my church doors and to the stories of people who would never set foot in the church on their own. People like the young man who came with friends to help me move a couch on Wednesday afternoon and then came back to youth group the next night and then felt comfortable enough to ask me for help when he needed it later in the week.

Maybe a first step is bringing worship back to the table instead of the pulpit. Making communion a part of our worship every week – making it the focal point of worship every week. I know my congregation is resistant to that idea – but I wonder what doing it for even just a season might do to change minds.

A second place to begin is changing the way I work with teams/committees in my congregation. I want to spend a lot more time working one on one with the leaders and a lot less time talking in meetings. I need to help people claim their voices and their gifts, and (something that is really hard for me) not fill the silence in a conversation or the void in leadership. I need to wait and pray for God to bless someone to emerge. Because my people are not sheep… they are children of God who are called and sent just as I am.

Can you be Christian outside the church?

Posted on September 28, 2009Leave a comment

Can you be a Christian outside of the church?

Depending on how you hear that question, two different things might be arising to your mind.

On one hand, Can someone who doesn’t come to church be a Christian? Can you be a Christian outside of the church?

Or on the other hand, Can you and me continue to be Christians during the hours and the days of the week that we aren’t in the church? Can you be a Christian outside of the church?

Both of these are very important questions. And we think that the answers are fairly simple.

Let’s take the first one. As people who show up every Sunday morning, it frustrates us that there are people who claim to be Christian but never darken the door of the sanctuary. I think a big part of us really wants to answer NO to that first question. The church is such an important part of our faith journeys. It is where we worship God. It is where we learn about our faith. And yet we could all probably name people in our lives who do not go to church and yet are good people – people who even claim to believe in God.

As I thought about people I know who fit that description, I thought about my mom whose work schedule varies with the wind and who is either working or sleeping on Sunday mornings. And about the young couple I married this summer who can’t find a church home because the bride is a nurse who works the weekend option. Yes, they could have different jobs – but they don’t. They are where they are, whether by choice or by chance.

In many ways that’s actually the same story that we find in the book of Esther. Esther was a young, beautiful Jewish woman who found herself in difficult times. Her people had been conquered by the Persians and because of her beauty and virginity she was brought into the King’s court.

Her uncle wanted to protect her and ensure that she had a good future and so he ordered his niece to deny her family and her racial background. And after twelve months of purification this young, insignificant woman from Israel suddenly found herself as a queen of Persia. There in the King’s court, she was no longer allowed to practice her religion. She had given up her traditions and her upbringing. In fact – as an interesting note – the name of God is not mentioned at all in the entire book of Esther!

She was in a position of power, of success, and yet was completely outside of her religious heritage and upbringing. She left it all behind.

While this might not seem like the best role model for our children, we keep the story of Esther in our scriptures because of her faithfulness even outside of what is “ acceptable religious behavior.” Throughout the story there is an idea that she is where she is, doing what she is doing, for a reason…. “for such a time as this” as her uncle Mordecai puts it.

Because when the fate of her people is in danger, she puts her own life on the line to approach the king and to rat out his most trusted advisor. She speaks the truth in a time when it would have been expected of her to keep silent and still today, the Jewish tradition celebrates the feast of Purim in remembrance of her act of courage and faithfulness.

As a pastor, I absolutely want everyone to find a home here in this congregation or in another congregation. I want to make sure that as the church, we make every opportunity to encourage our brothers and sisters to be a part of a congregational life. Let me be clear… I’m NOT encouraging you to go home and tell your family, “Pastor Katie said it was okay for me to skip out on church.”

What we should do, however, is not jump to conclusions about why someone might be outside of the congregational life. In this story from Esther you don’t see the local rabbi knocking on the palace door wondering why Esther isn’t at synagogue. What you do see is her uncle Mordecai, quietly watching her, encouraging her, praying for her. He encourages her to use her time and her position to do good. He shows her that she can make a difference because of where she is.

And we too can do this. We can encourage our family and friends in their work and their play. We can point out and celebrate the ways that they experience God’s kingdom in their daily lives. That nurse who works on the weekends is bringing God’s love and healing to people who are in their darkest moments… that is a noble task and as her friend, I can remind her of that. And I can pray for circumstances to change so that she is able to join us. Those parents who are carting their kids off to soccer games and football games on Sundays need to know that we love them and care about them and that we hold them in our prayers as they work to raise their children in the world today.

There are absolutely things that we miss out on if we try to live our faith as a Christian outside of the congregation. We don’t get to share in the public worship of God – which centers our hearts and minds as much as it praises the one who made us. We don’t find opportunities for learning about the faith very readily outside of the congregation or have as many people to talk about the scriptures with. But just like Esther was still able to follow God in the midst of her circumstances…. our brothers and sisters in Christ are not cut off from God just because they are not here in church with us this morning. In fact, if we understand the church to be the people of God, rather than this building – perhaps they aren’t outside of the church at all. We can carry the church to them – through our actions of love and encouragement.

In it’s weekly feature: Pastor, Talk to Me, a website I frequent (Lectionary Homiletics) has a feature where church people are invited to ask questions about the weekly sermon texts. In many ways – it’s what we try to do with the Round Table Pulpit.

One particular story from a parishioner struck me. She talked about how she needed to support and serve the others in the world who God uses and shares that last Sunday a beloved member of the church was injured and could not attend worship. She describes her congregation as a small church with limited technical abilities, but then goes on to tell how she held up a cordless phone throughout the worship service, so that the member who was home could participate and interact with the rest of the congregation through hymn singing, prayer concerns, and passing the peace. Just because she wasn’t in the church building, didn’t mean the church was very far from her.

Which leads me to that second side of the question.

Can WE be Christians outside of the church?

I know that there are days we are so concerned about who is in and who is out, so prideful that we are here, that WE forget to take our faith with us outside of the congregation.

In fact, I think something that many of us practice is “two hats theology.” We wear one hat when we pray, when we come to church, when we are around our Christian friends, but when we go to work, or go home, or turn on the football game, we put on our other hat.

I was talking with a friend last night during the Iowa game… during the part of the game when things weren’t going so well for our beloved Hawkeyes. And this friend of mine who is a new father said that he had already gotten in trouble for cursing in front of the new baby. It was hard for him to censor himself because he had his football hat on!

This two hats theology makes its way into our lives whenever our business practices lead us to take advantage of another person, or our political choices lead to less equality and less justice.

Two hats theology makes its way into our lives whenever we push back on the urgings of the Holy Spirit because we are too busy to respond.

In fact – we are so busy with the other things in our lives that we push church back into the “discretionary time” of our lives.

What is discretionary time?

This doesn’t work so well in a congregation in which we have a lot of retired persons, but lets say that the average person is working 40 hours per week – and let’s say that you probably need another 50-60 hours each week to maintain your home, family, health, school, etc. You eat, you watch your kids and grandkids play sports, you shower and clean. Add in another 50-56 for sleeping. That takes up 156 of the 168 hours available to any human person during the week.

So, typically the church tries to take those 12-15 hours of “discretionary time” – “free time” if you will – that you have available in the week and we say: let us have that.

We ask you to give up 2-4 hours on a Sunday morning. We try to get you to join small groups and to serve through the church. But at the same time, other volunteer groups are also vying for your time. When all is said and done, you might only put your “church hat” on for 5 hours a week.

But what if we tried to think about what it meant to be a Christian in all of those other hours of our day? What if the main thing about being Christian isn’t how much time we give to the church, but how we seek God in the other 160 hours of our week?

Here is where we find help from the words of Jesus. Because the disciples are struggling with this exact thing. In our gospel reading from today, John notices another person casting out demons in Christ’s name and the disciples tried to stop him because he wasn’t one of them, because he wasn’t healing people on sanctioned “Jesus time”

They are so concerned with the fact that they are the “in-group” that they stopped believing anything good or holy could happen outside of their little band of followers. But Jesus urges them not to stop these good actions. “For no one who does a deed of power in my name will soon be able to speak evil of me.”

And then comes the line that turns our modern sensibilities upside down. Whoever is not against us is for us.

We tend to think about that in the opposite way. If you aren’t for us – if you aren’t actively supporting what we are doing, then you must be against us. You must be the enemy. It’s how we respond to foreign policy decisions, it’s how we respond to competing business interests. It’s how we think of our time.

If we aren’t in the church, if we aren’t doing something for the church – then we must be doing something against the church. We must have to put our other hat on – the worldly hat – until the time comes when we can get back into that sacred building again.

But that’s not what Jesus says. Jesus says if you aren’t against us, you are for us.

Jesus doesn’t care about what time church is or how many hours you spend in this building any more than Jesus cares about who is included in his little band of disciples. His goal isn’t to build the congregation – it’s to transform the entire world!

And so he’s a lot more interested in the things we are doing with those other 160 hours of our time during the week.

How are you demonstrating your faith during the core time of your life? How can you wear your church hat in those areas? How can we demonstrate our faith in the other spheres of our lives – in our families? In our work? In our schools?

The disciples are troubled because they see people acting outside “the church” – outside of what they believe to be the prescribed boundaries of their community. And Jesus’ response? Go and do likewise… I don’t care if you are in or if you are out… if you follow me, you’ll follow me wherever you are.

Go out into the world and serve me. Serve me as you cook supper for your family. Serve me as you prepare expense reports for your business. Serve me as you take mail to the post office. Serve me as you knit a blanket for a friend. Serve me…. And then come back to this place each week – to this congregation – and find rest and comfort and strength, so that you can go back out there and serve me again.

Can you be a Christian outside of the church? I pray that we all might take up the challenge.

the limitations of congregations

Posted on September 26, 20092 Comments

The following is something that Taylor Burton-Edwards presented at our School For Ministry here in Iowa this spring, and I was reminded of it again through a series of posts about how we nurture disciples and can we do it in the church.

What really strikes me is that we use the same words to describe a variety of different entities, so let me first of all define some things:

the church: for me this has never been a building. it is the Body of Christ – the hands and feet of Christ – made up of you and me and all other followers of Jesus. This is not limited to a denomination, or even a congregation.

the congregation: a local institution and community of believers.

With that subtle distinction to guide us, here is what TBE says about congregations:

Basically, the congregation as we have known it all these years (over 1400 of them!) was and is designed to be a PUBLIC form of Christian community that does the following, and really not much else:

The public worship of God

Teaching the basic doctrine of the faith

Providing some means for caring for each other (pastoral care, fellowship groups, and the like)

Being a good “institutional player” for the good of the larger community

Those are the things, and really the ONLY things, the congregation AS congregation, is designed to do.

Making disciples– committed followers of Jesus who are growing in grace and holiness– is not on that list…

For many centuries in many places, monasteries and extra-ecclesial “societies” took on that role.

In England in the 18th century, Methodism did that.

In both, it was understood that BOTH some kind of congregational life AND some kind of accountable small group life were essential for people to grow in holiness and discipleship to and mission with Jesus. So those early Methodists weren’t trying to rethink church without congregations and the signficant facilities they had to do what they did– public worship, teaching, care, and being institutional players. Rather, they were trying to rethink church by ADDING structures that ALSO helped everyone in those additional structures ALSO grow in holiness of heart and life.

As I work on my sermon right now, I’m wrestling with the question – How can you be a Christian outside of the church… but this discussion reminded me that the question really is “How can you be a Christian outside of the congregation?”

I’m not sure that as followers of Christ we ever exist outside of the church – but so often in our language we speak as though the church is something you must join and something you must go to. Really, we are thinking about the congregation.

I see immense value in the congregation and the tasks that it brings to the world. But we have a whole big chunk of our lives that exist outside of the congregational life. When we limit our faith to the congregation, we limit our faith to Sunday mornings… or Tuesday night bible study… or Thursday youth group.

What I am more interested in is what the church is doing outside of the congregation. Where are we demonstrating our faith in the other institutional homes of our lives? in our family? in our work? in our schools? Where can we look for guidance in these other areas of our lives?

The lectionary readings for this week give us examples of faith in action without the “congregation” – without the institution or “in-group.” Esther has actually put aside her religious practices in becoming the queen, and yet we describe her as faithful. The disciples are complaining about people acting in Christ’s name outside of their little band of followers and he chastises them (again) and urges them not to put a stumbling block before anyone who wants to act in his name.

The way I take those texts: There are lots of faithful people out there who aren’t a part of our congregations – who aren’t a part of institutional Christianity.

Our job in response is twofold: First, to encourage them in the good that they do like Mordichai encouraged his neice, and in the process we might invite them into our congregational life. Second, we should be challenged to learn from them new ways to be faithful Christians outside of the congregation.