June 14, 2012

Outside Our Walls

Yesterday's blog post, "Pulling the Plug," shared the experience of a congregation that made the decision to stop doing things that aren't working. Easy to say, harder to do, especially when you have an expectation of what church is 'supposed' to look like. 

Today, I'm sharing a blog by Mike Kinman, dean of Christ Church Cathedral in St. Louis. Mike shares his practice of sharing 'church' with people in a nearby office building.

CCC outside our walls -- Noonday Prayer at One Met Square

Today at 12:05 pm, as I do every Wednesday, I led a brief noonday prayer service on the ground floor of One Metropolitan Square. It's a 10-minute service adapted from our Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. It includes a psalm, a Gospel reading with a two-minute silent meditation on a question I pose after the reading (today we used the parable of the mustard seed from Mark, and I invited people to ask Christ to make them receptive to God's word taking root in their heart and great things coming from it), the Lord's Prayer and a time for open intercession, prayer and praise.

We've been doing the service for more than a year now. The group that comes is fairly small (12-15 regulars, average weekly attendance is usually around 6-11) and fairly diverse (from a law partner and lawyers to a maintenance man and one of the guys who shines shoes in the lobby). During Lent we get more people. During the summer, fewer.

I began the service at the suggestion and with the help of Jack Danforth, after a conversation we had about how Christ Church Cathedral could be more of a presence downtown for those who work here. And if that is the goal, it has in some ways worked. I ... and through me, Christ Church Cathedral ... now have a relationship with Bryan Cave, a law firm that is the largest tenant in the building. When they needed someone to lead a memorial service for a former partner a few months ago, they were able to call on me and I was able to help them put something together and lead it. That's a good thing. That's Christ Church Cathedral being a spiritual resource.

But the real value of this little prayer service is how it is deepening the faith of the people who come. They talk about how it has made a big difference even taking 10 minutes in the middle of the week. A small group of us now have lunch once a month after the service and talk about our prayer lives and our common effort to adopt a habit of daily Bible reading. Today, one of our regulars stopped me on the way out and excitedly asked me some questions about something he had been reading in the Gospel of Matthew. He was reading the Bible... and it was getting him excited. You just can't beat that!

None of these people are "Cathedral members" and only a couple are Episcopalians. Almost all of them are members of some community of faith ... and this isn't about trying to get them to leave those communities and come to the Cathedral on Sunday. But it is about the mission of the Church writ large. This is about "restoring all people to unity with God and each other in Christ." And even on those Wednesdays when it has been only me and one other person, I walk out of there knowing that we have been the church downtown ... and I've gotta believe God is smiling.

If you're downtown on a Wednesday at 12:05, come on by. We're in the Old Kemoll's restaurant space on the first floor of OMS (Broadway and Olive). It's Christ Church Cathedral outside our walls. And I hope it's only the beginning.

What do you think? What do you think of this outreach? What else could/should we be doing? Is there any outreach to downtown that you'd like to help with? 

Reprinted with permission of Mike Kinman.