A few weeks ago we gathered in Alexandria, Va., for the Missional Voices Oneday gathering, where we focused on liturgy, music, and the missional church. Dr. Jim Farwell, the liturgy professor at VTS, discussed the intersection of mission and worship. “There is no such thing as a ‘missional liturgy,’” he said. “Because all liturgy is missional.”
What the Church does (or should do) is all missional. But I think too often we forget that.
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Congregations everywhere are concerned with their growth. There are books, magazines, and inspiring speakers who all share strategies for growth, and church leaders diligently listen, plan, and implement. This is a good thing. It is important that church leaders be diligent and intentional about growing their communities. It is also important, however, that the growth of congregations be not only numerical but also spiritual.
I hesitate saying this. I know many churches who use “spiritual growth” as a crutch for excusing their lack of growth in the areas of evangelism, formation, and leadership development. As with most things in life, it is not one thing or the other. Growth in a congregation, a sign of life and vitality, is about all kinds of growth at the same time. Spiritual growth is not measured by the increase in warm feelings, nor by engaging in passionate discussions about religious matters, but it is measured by the way a person, or church, lives. Living in Christ and bearing fruit to God’s glory is a mark of discipleship (John 15:4-8). And how is this expressed? Through our love—again not an emotion but an action, loving our neighbors as ourselves, seeking to serve Christ by serving our neighbor, and serving the least of these (Matthew 25:40).
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Years ago, in a pastoral liturgy class at General Seminary, I learned what is still one of my favorite words. Anamnesis is the name for the part of the Eucharistic prayer where we tell the story of how we came to be saved through Jesus’ death and resurrection. An- is the Greek prefix for “not” and amnesis is a close cousin of the English word “amnesia.” Anamnesis is the “not-forgetting.” It is the not forgetting the price that was paid, the not wiping away the uncomfortable parts of the story, the not protecting future generations from how bloody the whole thing really was.
I spent several weeks in Germany this summer. It was mostly just a really fun family trip, full of adventures and good laughs and beautiful views and a certain amount of beer drunk before noon (totally socially acceptable in Munich, I swear). There was the time when my daughter was convinced there was a snack car on the train and it turned out to be a toilet. There were the creepily large day-glow paper mache bunnies wearing shorts and holding soccer balls that adorned our low budget rental apartment. So many family inside jokes to last us until we get to travel together again.
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This post is about efficiency, for sure, and it’s about a pretty small, seemingly insignificant part of congregational life, but I’m also a believer that paying attention to the little things – and with an eye toward greater efficiency – is a great way to pastor the whole community.
Here’s the problem we were facing: every week, our parish administrator, together with me and our music director, created drafts of the Sunday bulletin and got them to our inboxes by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest. There was one bulletin for 8 o’clock, another for 10:30am. Both had announcements and information, the same calendar and same scriptures, of course. One had music, the other did not. When all the edits came in, bulletins were printed, folded, stapled, and set out for the various worship services.
Sounds like life in most every parish church, I’m sure.
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Our leading evangelist is not a Baby Boomer with conversational skills honed by the Dale Carnegie school of making friends and influencing people. It is not a latchkey Gen-Xer, earnest to please or a freewheeling Millennial breaking from social media to be social.
Nope. Our leading evangelist is a 92-year-old woman with white hair braided into a ring around her head.
I have never seen newcomers enter our church—on Sundays, at spaghetti suppers, for Bible studies, or community gatherings—without Fran making sure to welcome them. And somehow, she never makes her greeting seem forced or awkward. She gives a full-mouth smile, perhaps places her hand on an arm or shoulder, and introduces herself. Then, often, she asks, “So, tell me your story.”
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"Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness." Many Episcopalians strive to accomplish that with each use of our beloved liturgy. We enliven the treasured words with beautiful music that inspires us to, "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord!"
In between our soaring Sunday worship services, how is your congregation helping people become familiar with Individual spiritual practices designed to draw us closer in relationship to our triune God? The power of these practices was discovered hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years ago.
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Most of us have been taught to avoid triangulation in communication, but it can be a valuable tool for promoting peace and justice. Triangulating by asking Jesus to “re-speak,” through the power of the Holy Spirit, words we are unable to receive is good triangulation. The gift of learning at our Lord’s feet is always available to us through scripture and prayer, and daily life becomes a dialogue of faith when we give ourselves to God in this way. These dialogues of faith often become the foundation for raising voices of advocacy.
The diocesan Commission on Peace, Justice, and Racial Reconciliation is working to organize voices of advocacy that promote reconciliation, restoration, and healing, and I am grateful to be a part of this work. Seeking to better understand human systems that produce dysfunction and despair has been part of my training as an anthropologist. Now, as a priest, I understand that Jesus calls us to faith that sees beyond the landscapes our brokenness and sin have created. Christian advocacy is about seeing a horizon of hope through the eyes of our faith and asking Jesus to use us as his ears and heart and hands.
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The leadership of a congregation is responsible for creating a vision, that is, developing a plan that enables the church to respond to the future in a creative manner. Given all the demands of a parish, it takes great discipline to attend to the future but the clergy and vestry need to ask the hard questions such as: What are we called to do in the name of Christ? Who is our neighbor?
Once God’s dream for a church takes shape, the response is naturally to get rather excited and to start making things happen. The leadership will probably share these dreams at a parish meeting and assume the work of communication has been done. There is also a natural assumption that the parish knows about the plans and is ready to get started.
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In the October Vital Practices Digest, we offer 5 resources for planning a spirit-filled retreat for your vestry or other leadership team, with the 5th a resource to help establish year-round stewardship in your congregation.
It’s easy and free to connect with more great resources for your congregation. Subscribe to ECF Vital Practices to receive Vestry Papers and this Vital Practices Digest in your inbox each month.
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The day moves along. I’m editing and answering emails, troubleshooting a print delay and catching up with coworkers, when a Post-it note jolts me back. Michael, it says, in purple ink. Check on status of the Advent app.
Without warning, I’m thrust back into grief, remembering that Michael can’t check on the status of anything anymore. He died suddenly about a month ago. He was 46. And it wasn’t fair. Isn’t fair.
Of course, death doesn’t play by the rules and only take the old, those who have lived long and fulsome lives. Sometimes it snatches a father and husband, a talented graphic designer who after a lifetime of searching found a place where his work was his ministry, his gifts an offering.
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The title of this post may seem contradictory. But I promise you, it’s not. We’ve spent several weeks here talking about ideas. We’ve talked about paying attention to the things that grab your attention, about sharing and building on ideas with others, and about adapting others’ good ideas for our contexts. Like any series, this one must come to an end.
And like any good idea, it actually has to be put into practice for it to mean anything.
The patent for the common mousetrap design was filed in 1899. We’re still using that design more than 110 years later, but everyone keeps trying to build a better mousetrap. The US Patent Office receives more than 400 new mousetrap patents every year, and has granted more than 4400 mousetrap patents since 1899. There’s no shortage of ideas. But fewer than 20 mousetrap designs have led to products that have actually made money. The problem isn’t generating ideas; it is overcoming the obstacles and executing your new idea.
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Quite often, Episcopal churches do not think of themselves as “nonprofits” or “charities.” While their exact words might vary, congregational leaders seem to ascribe to a view that churches are fundamentally different:
Nonprofits are secular organizations out in the community providing food or healthcare to people who have fallen on hard times, providing enriching cultural activities to our residents, or providing educational programming for children. Nonprofits are the recipients of our Christmas offering and are partners on our annual day of service, but WE are different.
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Who doesn’t like a good worship service? Fortunately our Episcopal liturgy allows us the flexibility to be very creative in our worship expression. While our clergy has the primary role in designing and delivering these worship experiences, there are many roles for the laity in enabling our weekly and special services.
A real concern for many lay leaders is how to have a lively spirit-filled worship when there is no permanent clergy presence. And if there is clergy how do you provide input without the feeling of overstepping boundaries?
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One of the best trainings I’ve had for parish ministry was the year I spent as assistant copy editor for my high school yearbook. My job was to write short, snappy, sometimes witty, often engaging captions and stories. Doing so became a fairly straightforward craft, and I learned this has its own internal logic: jump in with content, maybe a quick opening line, make sure there’s a verb up front, and say who’s who.
Every week I spend time, perhaps more time than I thought I would, organizing, revising, pitching, and writing copy. I’m not talking about blog posts or sermons, articles or reflective pieces. I’m talking about ‘blurbs’ for the bulletin, newsletter, website, and social media posts. I’ve come to believe that this is an important skill, and one that should require some investment on the part of church leaders.
So what does that announcement in your bulletin or newsletter, on your website or Facebook page say, anyway? Here are five suggestions for refining the message.
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When Facebook feeds are filled with political vitriol, when newscasts are rated NC-17, when loved ones who espouse a different opinion want to convert you, pray.
This election season, perhaps like no other in recent memory, has left many speechless. Whether you back Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, we can find common ground on the lament that the campaigns have been ugly and the hate on both sides deep-seated and frightening.
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It’s the time of year when, in many churches, lay people encourage us to participate generously in the annual giving campaign. As we listen to their “stewardship minutes,” our thoughts may wander from, “Where did I put that pledge card?” to, “Wow, what a beautiful faith story,” to, “I’m so glad I wasn’t asked to speak!”
On the surface, stewardship messages remind us to find, complete and return that pledge card. More deeply, they are invitations to prayerfully consider our own response to God’s abundance.
Episcopal priest and author Gerald W. Keucher words his invitation like this: “Put your money where you want your heart to be.” In his book, Remember the Future: Financial Leadership and Asset Management for Congregations (2006), Keucher challenges:
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A Grow Christians blog post by Nancy Hopkins-Green
The other day, I was sitting at a table with a group of parishioners when a mother asked, “How do we teach and model stewardship with our kids in a digital age?” Speaking specifically about her desire that her children establish the habit of tithing from an early age, she spoke of the challenge of what to do when the plate is passed on Sunday mornings, when she and her husband give to the church online.
I have very distinct memories of my own experience of being taught to give at an early age. My parents had their offering envelopes – and so did I. Instead of participating in common worship with the adults, we had a small worship service as part of the Sunday School class. Included in that service were the small brass offering plates. My box of offering envelopes were provided to help me learn giving. Each envelope was divided into two sections: one for the church, and one for mission and outreach.
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Music has always been a struggle in our Spanish service at St. Mary’s. As we have slowly built membership in our largely low-income neighborhood, we are not anywhere close to generating the kind of offerings that would fully support the clergy time that goes into the service, much less paying a professional musician. We’ve tried different things over the years -- a priest with a guitar or piano, a capella singing, some paid musical help. In recent years, we’ve come upon what I would argue is the best musical situation yet: bartering for band music.
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Why give? Why do people of faith give their time, talent, and treasure in service to God? This month, our Vestry Papers articles each offer a response to this question. Included are congregations rebounding after a painful split and the different approaches taken to help make them feel whole again. Also shared are details of a Latino/a congregation’s practice of year-round stewardship, as well as a process individuals or congregations might use to cultivate their own personal giving practice.
I hope the experiences and ideas of these congregations and individuals will spark a conversation in your congregation:
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For most of my ministry, people have been wringing their hands about the decline of mainline churches. From my first days of service as a priest, I heard people say that we’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The image prompted a cartoon in six frames: As the ship disappears into icy waters, one could hear words from the top deck, one word per frame: We’ve… never… done…it… that…way.
I’ve wondered about the decline. Does it have to do with style of music or liturgy? Is it due to a lousy spirit of welcome? Is it about formality among the frozen chosen? Does it have to do with divisions on social or political issues? Or with indisputable hypocrisy, with shortcomings and abuses by church leaders, too many to number.
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