![]() I wrote an article for Congregations Magazine (Alban Institute) called Journey to Jerusalem. It is the story of closing a church. Twenty years ago closing a church was a black mark on my profile. Now churches want pastors with my experience. Today I want to speak to churches that are afraid they may need to close. For some reason, after about three years of ministry, Jesus decided to go to Jerusalem. Your Christology (who is Jesus?) determines whether you believe that he knew he would die there, but there is no question that it was a huge risk to make that choice. In the countryside and small towns people were choosing to follow him. Small town leaders asked him questions, but were not in a position to hurt him. In Jerusalem, Rome was in charge. We don't know why Jesus picked that particular time to turn toward Jerusalem. Why not wait a little longer? Or maybe he had waited longer, ignoring that voice of God in his head. But he made the choice to face his possible, likely, or perhaps pre-ordained death. If you are worried that your church might die, I suggest that this time in history is a good time to turn toward Jerusalem. Before our neighbors were being deported and our trans siblings were attacked and federal workers were pushed out of their jobs and on and on and on; before all that the questions of closing were about whether to sell your building, cutting the paid leadership hours, and how much energy you can devote to church. Today, by choosing the path toward Jerusalem, you gain the opportunity to make a significant impact on your community. You can decide to put all of your energy on care for your neighbors, on phone calls to political leaders, on support groups for trans teens. You can decide to risk your remaining money on projects that protect your neighbors, or support legal actions, or provide financial aid for displaced workers, or you can give your money to organizations that have the energy to do the work that you cannot. Imagine a worship service, open to all, that is a planning meeting for actions to protect people in your neighborhood or town. Imagine evening worship or bible study that is focused on developing strategies for immediate action. Imagine phone banking as active prayers: with scripts and call lists and snacks, and Christian arguments as to why justice must prevail. Imagine how great it will feel to be the church that is making things happen in your town. Right up until the doors close the work that you do will matter in the work for God's Kingdom.
0 Comments
![]() So far, I'm sure you noticed that I haven't mentioned anything about what is going on right now. Certainly one of my points is that the best reaction to the chaos is to take a deep breath and figure out how to do well those things that churches do well. The name Act! Be Church Now is something I thought of in terms of the current crisis in our government, but Be Church and the idea Act! are essential to my ecclesiology. The internal work of church is definitely to learn how to be with God. Who we choose to be as a community is what defines our health as a congregation. I'll write more on this in later weeks. But I'm not good at sitting around and praying. My prayers happen while I'm doing things. The answer to these times is to Act! The answer to how to be church has always been Act! To be sure, especially in dying churches, some people choose to do everything. To try everything. To aim to be everything for everyone. That is not going to help. Anxiety driven action is not what helps us to be the Body of Christ. (Thus, more on how to be coming soon.) But to have a single action, or two actions, that define your congregation to the people outside your doors is essential to my definition of church. The purpose of church is to meet the needs of the people of God--members, visitors, and those in the community we are a part of. (Not all the needs. One of the needs. Two of the needs.) Both of the churches that I serve right now, and most of the churches I have every served have food pantries. We are taking seriously Jesus command to feed those who are hungry. One church I served also had a moving ministry, providing support, and a truck, for people moving into or out of our town. Another had a healing service and worked with Rape Crisis Center. One of my present churches provides a Rainbow Senior Meal once a month, lunch for the shortest days, dinner and an outdoor BBQ the rest of the time. Another is the sponsor of the town's Bridging Differences group, providing conversations about how we can welcome people across differences in racial identity and sexual orientation. As you can see, all of these projects are somewhat connected to political environment we are in. But we didn't start them because of that. We started these ministries to serve the needs of people in our community who would otherwise be overlooked. Each of these programs took years to become embedded in our community and to become markers of our identity as church. That is the gift of church. We have the time to be the steady presence reaching out to a group of people that might be hurt by society at large. We have the time and the foundational values that allow us to set the priority on the relationships that we build. We are not necessarily the most politically astute and we don't have the legal chops. We have, or can choose to build, the relationships with the people who need to be heard. Often it is the church in town that calls the community to gather after a disaster. So to churches that are making connections with people who would otherwise be ignored--keep going. Keep doing the work you are doing. These relationships are essential to the future of our communities. If your church is not yet making those connections, spend time now figuring out what group that you can reach, and begin the work of building relationships. I offer to us all this youtube video from the Ezra Klein show. The point is this--the chaos is meant to overwhelm you. The chaos is meant to distract you. The chaos is the actual strategy. Remember that God creates the world out of chaos, so we can choose to stay focused on God, and focused on our relationships in the community. We can Be Church Now. (Send me a note about what your congregation is doing in these times!) ![]() Share now, to be able to Protect Later I've always been a little bit uncomfortable with the ministry of the church in the first century. The idea that a church would focus on caring for members, rather than for the wider community rubs me the wrong way. It's a lesson that I don't think was taught to me directly, but that I heard clearly. Here is the problem with that lesson. In the churches I have been in, we don't take care of our members, either. I mean, we are nice, and we take care of everyone's spiritual needs. At some of the churches we try to encourage those with less to take advantage of our pantry or thrift shop. But I've never been in a church where we sit down with people who don't have enough and say "can we figure out how to take care of your needs?" I know of one church that had an unknown person wander in, share his hardship tale, and the congregation came together to help him. They were cautious and slow, but spent time getting to know him, and then came through with help with housing, help with food, drove him to appointments, and more. It revived the place. It gave them a sense of purpose. It opened up discussions on what is the purpose of a church community. They could have instead worked on institutional issues--in his case it was the justice system--and worked to fix that system to be more fair. I hope that there are churches that are doing that, and maybe this church will turn to that work. But they were tiny, worn out, lost in the journey of how to save their congregation. This person was a simple enough project, directly in front of them, and welcoming of their care. A lot of people are going to need that immediate care in the coming weeks and months and years. Higher prices will hurt the poor especially hard. People who are transgender or are immigrants are at high risk. People who are Lesbian or Gay or Bisexual or Jewish or Muslim or have chronic illnesses or disabilities and more, are afraid. I encourage you to find one household, or one group of households, that are members of your church and figure out what they need. Figure out everything they need. Do they need help with accessing material resources? Do they need additional counseling, or a lawyer? Gather money and buy them what they need. Maybe many people in your congregation can work on finding someone a new doctor, doing research on places they can move that are safer, creating a support group for your member and their friends. This is not something you can do to a person in need. This requires working with. Start small. A few people who know the people-at-risk can gather with them and start the conversation. "Our church wants to provide you the supports you need. How are you doing and what kinds of things can we help with?" Unless your church has a history of providing in-depth support, they will not be able to imagine what you are willing to do. Perhaps you cannot imagine what you can do. Start small, but do offer ideas, like the possibility of checking in-weekly, doing internet research for them. Perhaps you can just help them turn off the news by promising to report what is going on in summary form. Perhaps they would like someone to talk to the school system about how they are being treated. Ask for permission before including a larger group in the discussion. Money does not solve everything. But it solves many things. Be direct in offering to pay for additional counseling or lawyers, or school lunches, or gasoline to get places. Obviously some people need more financial help than others, but even a middle class family could be overwhelmed by health care needs when the system seems so fragile. And moving, whether to another state or another country, is expensive. In the vein of hoping for everything, but expecting nothing, we want to be supporting these church members because we could get to a place where real people in our town or in our government are threatening physical violence against them. The better we know them, the more we have practiced being their support system, the more likely that we will be the church that stands between hate and our neighbor. Loving your neighbor as yourself may be a commandment that requires us to take significant risks. Get started now building the relationships that will make it easier to choose love over fear. |
My ThoughtsFor my organized thoughts, see my book Five Loaves, Two Fish, Twelve Volunteers: Developing Relational Food Ministries. In this spot are thoughts that appear for a moment--about food programs, mission, church, building community, writing, and whatever else pops into my head. History
February 2025
Categories
All
|