Discussions of crowd size have blanketed the news this past month. Friday’s crowd was small, and Saturday’s crowd was bigger, so we judge the value of these two ideas based solely on audience participation.
The Episcopal Church knows a thing or two about decreasing crowd sizes. Too often, our “success” and significance as parishes (and as a national church) are measured by large numbers and our average Sunday attendance. The average ASA for parishes across the country dropped from 60 in 2014 to 58 in 2015. We can’t dispute those facts. But what if we could provide more meaningful information, by asking alternative questions?
“The first significant wave of multisite churches started coming onto the North American church scene roughly two decades ago,” writes Warren Bird, director of research for the Leadership Network, capturing the history of this recent movement. “In the 1980s there were well under 100 and in the 1990s at most 200. During the 2000s growth increased at a rapid pace with the greatest number of multisites being birthed within the last ten years.” (Leadership Network / Generis Multisite Church Scorecard, 2014, p.5; download here.)
A multisite church is defined as one church that meets in multiple locations. This recent category in North American Christianity is the result of megachurches who, for various reasons, struggled with the question about whether to build an even bigger building or plant additional satellite campuses. The shift from mega-turning-mega is, I suspect, also a smart response to the larger demographic and cultural turn away from ‘big box’ anything and toward more boutique and locally-owned, locally-sourced products, Christianity included.
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This month we offer five resources to help your congregation get ready for Christmas. Please share this digest with others in your congregation and invite them to subscribe to ECF Vital Practices to receive Vestry Papers and this Vital Practices Digest in your inbox each month.
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What does it mean to communicate in a way that models Christ? How do we share good news with our friends, neighbors and strangers? In this issue of Vestry Papers, we invite you to consider how the sharing of stories can take on many different forms – conversations, pictures, videos or even performances. What they have in common though, is inviting others into fellowship, community and love.
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My wife and I recently spent a few days of vacation in New Orleans. Jackson Square is one of my favorite places on the planet, largely because of its collective and eclectic group of artists, performers, and tourists.
This time I happened upon a street magician that had a pretty lousy show, to be honest. But one thing he said at the beginning stuck with me. “The only thing I’ll guarantee you is this: by the end of our time together, you’ll be part of a circle of strangers all hoping for the same thing.” Maybe we’ll all be hoping this ends soon, I thought…
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Evangelism. Sharing our stories. Being comfortable talking about Jesus and the role faith plays in our lives. Making this easier – and also more difficult – is the array of resources available to almost all of us. At our disposal are tools to make our voices, our words, and even our images, heard and seen, across the room, across our communities, across the entire world. Today we offer ideas and examples of how Episcopalians are using their voices and their gifts to share their stories and understanding of their faith, using both the oldest and the newest forms of communication.
I hope the experiences and ideas of these congregations and individuals spark a conversation in your congregation:
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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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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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Episcopal Presiding Bishop Michael Curry new video is here. (3:58)
Note: The following is the transcript of the Presiding Bishop’s video message in English and Spanish.
We’ve been talking for a little over a year now about being the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement, and somebody recently said to me, “As a bishop, why don’t you paint us a picture, give us a picture of the Jesus Movement so that we can see it?”
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I never knew when it was going to happen. We could be standing in a check-out line at the grocery, or visiting a doctor, or ordering food at a restaurant, and my mom would look right at the clerk/doctor/waitress and say,
“A few years ago I learned a new ending to that old prayer, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep…’”
“Oh, yeah, sure.”
“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Thy LOVE be with me through the night, and bless me with the morning light. Isn’t that lovely? Isn’t that better than the other way?”
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Sometimes, when life hands you lemons, you have a chance to show love.
Between Friday night and Saturday morning, someone (or a group of someones) tagged St. Michael the Archangel Episcopal Church with graffiti. It wasn’t pretty. The doors were covered, as well as part of the sidewalk and entrance. Some of the messages were pretty raunchy.
No sooner had the rector, the Rev. Laurie Brock, sent out a message about the vandalism than parishioners showed up, rolled their sleeves, and began scrubbing. Had the cleanup stopped there, it would have been a story about the congregation responding quickly to an unfortunate situation.
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Amid the various back-to-school traditions of churches, one congregation has struck gold. They tap into the community’s strong support for the schools – and particularly for its athletics – by offering yard signs: Pray for a Pirate. Pray for a Titan. Pray for a Panther.
In the week before the special school kick-off Sunday service, the church’s front lawn is full of these signs – a powerful testament for passersby of the church’s connection to the community. Who doesn’t want to pray for young people as they return to school?
The church also invites a few student-athletes to speak during worship about the role that faith plays in their lives.
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So this will be a short post as we are in the throes of packing and the movers come later this morning – but I had one of those experiences that puts a few things in perspective. At 11:30 in the evening I ran to Walgreen’s to get some last minute essentials for our trip to Tucson. I have spent the day packing, cleaning out the garage, cleaning off lawn furniture, throwing away lots of trash, and more. So after 15 hours of that, I was not looking my Sunday best.
When I went in to the store, a young woman was at the counter. She was in soccer shorts and a t-shirt and seemed to be having a pretty animated though convivial conversation with the man working the counter. I got my few items and went to stand in line while wondering why her transaction was taking so long. I overheard her say, “It’s a great church!” It turns out she had been telling him all about her church – that’s what was taking so long. When she noticed that I was listening in – she asked me “Do you want to know more?”
I was taken in by her energy and said that I would. She explained that she goes to the Upper Room Church which was started in Dallas but has branched out to Denver. She loves it because it is focused on “The work Jesus did.” When I asked what that meant, she said, “Well, for example, we’ve all been out tonight going to places where the homeless gather at night and inviting them to breakfast tomorrow morning. No strings, just a meal and a conversation partner.”
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This past week you may have noticed herds of people wandering around neighborhoods, staring at their phones, and searching for something. Those somethings were Pokémon, and those people were trying to catch them in the mobile game Pokémon Go.
You can physically see the way Pokémon Go, barely a week old, is affecting the real world. Players are searching for, among other things, “gyms,” the game’s focal point for between-player competition. There’s a “gym” near me that is simply a tree in a park with no real benches or meeting spaces. Still, on a Sunday afternoon a dozen teenagers were there, at the tree, hanging out and defending the gym.
But what does this have to do with church?
Anecdotal reports from the game’s first week indicate that many of the game’s items are turning up in or near churches. Sanctuaries have unsuspectingly been tabbed as “gyms” or Pokémarts (where players buy virtual items for use in the game). In my neighborhood, it seems more than half of the landmarks in Pokémon Go are churches.
It’s not hard to imagine that well-meaning clergy and laity sitting in a church office might take a tone-deaf approach to a casual visit of a Pokémon Trainer (the name given to real-life players). That’s a wholly unimaginative and inhospitable way to treat our new Poké-visitors.
Instead, take a cue from this indie clothing store, which got into the spirit of the game by saying, “Come get your PokéBalls and previously rocked threads. Gotta catch ‘em all in style!” What if a church said, “Come get your PokéBalls with coffee and free wi-fi!”
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Editor’s note: With the 4 of July celebration.
We have found that when we take “us” out to meet folks where they are at—the result is usually a warm reception.
Last year, after seeing good responses to offering Ashes on Ash Wednesday at the college campus, and offering Pet Blessings near St. Francis Day at a local Animal Shelter day in the park—we began to look for other opportunities to go out and meet people “where they are at.”
So for the Fourth of July we did two things.
For July 3rd--we “bought” a spot for a booth at the downtown festivities known as “Light up Arlington.” We were there right alongside the other vendors of jewelry and back massages, restaurants and theaters. We had a display of various interesting “Episcopal things” like a thurible, a chasuble, a wooden labyrinth, a chalice and paten, prayer books etc. We also had a colorful tri-fold flyer that we had printed, there to distribute. And we had some little kids trinkets to give away.
For July 4th—we set up two canopies along the parade route and invited our church folks to come before the parade and join us for a short morning prayer service focused on prayers for our Nation.
Results?
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The first acts of Christian evangelism occurred while Jesus was still with us in human form. For example, consider the centurion in Capernaum, as told in Luke 7. He was a representative of an oppressive force that often terrorized people. Yet he was kind to those who lived under his control, building them a synagogue. Perhaps he was simply shrewd, showing calculated mercy to keep the peace.
Can you imagine approaching someone who has the authority to kill you to talk about your faith? Yet someone did tell the centurion about Jesus. I wonder how that conversation went…
“Centurion, I was at a synagogue in another town last Sabbath, and I saw Jesus heal a man with a shriveled hand! Maybe Jesus can heal your servant.”
“Why would this Jesus do that for me?”
“Well, I heard Jesus preaching too. He said we should love our enemies, do good to them, without expecting to get anything back. He said if people do this, our reward will be great, because we are children of God who is kind even to the ungrateful and wicked. He said we should be merciful, just as our Father God is merciful.”
What stirred in the centurion’s heart that made him understand the power and mercy of Jesus? I don’t know. But I do know that his faith came after someone told him about Jesus.
Today we have grown complacent about evangelism. Sure, if someone comes into our church, we’ll welcome her.
But what if that person lives next door and has a foreign sounding name and different color skin? Should we be politically correct and not risk offending him by sharing our faith story?
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“After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, 'The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, "Peace to this house!" And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, "The kingdom of God has come near to you."
-Luke 10
So I'm sitting on the floor of the Phoenix airport, near the gate, waiting to board. It's crowded. The plane is delayed. Folks are grouchy. I'm wearing jeans and an old shirt so no one knows I'm an Episcopal priest. Incognito, I can be as cranky as I want without impeding the spread of the gospel. I'm focused on my laptop, in my zone. But for some reason I look up to see a guy in a clerical collar. He's got a big nametag that says chaplain. And then I recognize him. He's the Bishop of Arizona.
I'm not sure I'd ever met him in person, but he's well known and well regarded in the wider church. We have some mutual friends. So I yelled to him, "Hey, Bishop." I introduced myself, told him what I was doing in town (I was leading a vestry retreat for one of the local parishes) and mentioned the folks we knew in common. Having done with all that, I asked what he was doing.
He told me that he asks each of his clergy to spend time serving as chaplain somewhere in the community, usually one day a month. The venues come in great variety. He said that if he asked his clergy to do that, he should do it too. So he clears the bishop's calendar (loaded with meetings about meetings about the next meeting) and spends one day a month practicing a ministry of presence in the airline terminal of all places.
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“It is not enough that we love God. It is not enough that we love one another. We must also love the world for whom Christ died.”
George Bernard Shaw once wrote:
“If some enterprising clergyman with a cure for souls in the slums were to hoist a board over his church door with the following inscription: ‘Here men and women after working hours may dance without getting drunk on Fridays; hear good music on Saturdays; pray on Sundays; discuss public affairs without molestation from the police on Mondays; have the building for any honest purpose they choose on Tuesday; bring the children for games, amusing drill and romps on Wednesdays; and volunteer for a thorough scrubbing down of the place on Thursdays, he could reform the whole neighborhood.”
I believe George Bernard Shaw saw the church’s greatest need as well as its unlimited potential. My friends, if the church of Jesus Christ becomes what it was created to be, a place that truly seeks freedom and wholeness for God’s children, we must come together in unity.
So where do we begin?
We begin by acknowledging who we are. We are the body of Jesus Christ. We are temples of the living God. We are the company committed by a covenant and a cross. The writers of Leviticus knew that is where we must begin. The Lord speaks to Moses in the second chapter of this book of priestly laws and says to him, “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: ‘You shall be holy, for the Lord your God am holy.’” (Lev. 2:2)
The people of Israel never forgot who they are, though from time to time they needed a little reminding. That is how they have survived as a people for three thousand years under every possible adverse circumstance.
Whenever the church has forgotten who it is, it has lost its vitality and lost sight of its mission. However, our strength is renewed when we are rooted in our dependence upon God. And we dare not stop here; it is clear that Christ calls us to be more than a shrine. As we know, the church is not a place but a people – a people bound together in love and mission.
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“We see God in you!” proclaim the people of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Lebanon, a small city in rural central Indiana. This “people of prayer uniting in one Spirit” live the Gospel through many ministries rooted in heritage, such as a community garden and bee hives, and even the ancient tradition of the labyrinth.
But something modern is buzzing here too. It’s posted on the door leading into the sanctuary: a QR Code. Whatever gave them that idea?
Vicar Christopher R. Beasley says it really isn’t all that revolutionary. QR codes are seen everywhere these days, conveniently providing additional information to anyone with a smart phone or tablet. For instance, museums post QR codes loaded with facts about exhibits.
So in 2014, Fr. Christopher placed at St. Peter’s door a QR Code linking to the bulletin for the day. People can scan the code as they enter to download the entire service, including liturgy and hymns. He says the reaction has been positive as people see that technology can be seamlessly integrated into worship.
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The healthy church has a fundamental orientation: outward. Leaders don’t ask, “What do our members want?” Instead, they ask, “What does the world around us need?”
Leaders understand that a missional mindset is the heart of all church development. New constituents, for example, are rarely attracted by better and better worship. They want to know what a congregation stands for and what it is doing in the world for others.
Transformative leaders aren’t necessarily more adept at reading the signs of insider moods and keeping people satisfied. They are focused on sending constituents into the world, where they will transform the world and, in the process, be transformed themselves.
Spiritual development leads inexorably to mission, not to deeper and deeper conversations within the body. Jesus sent disciples out to serve. Stewardship development springs from crossing the wilderness, not from reading a clever slogan. People give to mission, not to facilities or salaries.
Younger adult ministries aren’t centered in worship, but in building houses, doing mission, putting lives on the line.
Mission isn’t a line item in the budget. Mission is people going out into the world to serve others. To do that mission, leaders and constituents need to engage with the world as it is and to give what they have to give.
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