NOTE: My on-going theological reflection on the development of our renewal at First Church. This is part two in anticipation of the conclusion re: seven current actions we are working on that embody a new commitment to servant leadership. I shared Part One yesterday and hope to complete this essay over the weekend.
Thoughts on Two Hundred and Fifty Years of Ministry in the Same Place (part two of three)
When we began our journey
towards renewal seven years ago, we trusted by faith that God wasn’t finished
with us as a community. We didn’t know what that meant because it was
unknowable before starting the journey; we simply trusted that God had been
faithful to our great cloud of witnesses before and would continue being
faithful. Patiently and carefully,
listening to one another and sharing prayer, tears and laughter, we began to
discern a path into both renewal and reconciliation. It should be noted for the record, however,
that before there was an abundance of laughter, there was a surfeit of
tears.
Grief work in churches called
to renewal is essential because “when deaths go ungrieved, death becomes
triumphant.” (Jaco Hamman, When Steeples Cry, p.24) Both Douglas John Hall and
Jaco Hamman have observed that in the past 50 years, the once dominant
Christian churches of North America have been disestablished; in Quebec this
took place legally while the change has been more cultural in the United
States. Nevertheless, the once main line denominations are now side line
institutions struggling for vision, meaning and resources. And the magnitude of
this change is wrought with grief.
One son of First Church
recently posted this sobering summary of contemporary church life on
Facebook: “Pray for your pastor: 97% of
pastors have been betrayed, falsely accused or hurt by their trusted friends.
70% of pastors battle depression. 7,000 churches in the United States close each
year. 1,500 pastors will quit this month.
10% will retire. 80% of pastors feel discouraged. 94% of pastors’ families feel the pressure of
ministry. 78% of pastors have no close friends. 90% of pastors report working
55-75% hours each week. Pray for your pastor.” (Steven Small, Facebook, August
5, 2014) I would push this summary one step further and note that when our
pastors are overwhelmed and discouraged, it is only natural for many in their
congregations follow suit. Such grief “is the normal emotional, spiritual,
physical and relational reaction to the experience of loss and change. It is a
powerful and involuntary force governing the way your congregation will have
its life together and engage God in the world.” (Hamman, p. 12)
In the summer of 2007, the
magnitude of grief in First Church was incomprehensible to me. I knew the brain
injury inflicted upon my predecessor had been traumatic and unnerving for
everyone involved, but I was not aware of the additional congregational pain
born of the cultural and political changes in our community. (NOTE: After
serving faithfully and creatively for 22 years, he was struck by a hit and run
driver while riding his bicycle – and left for dead. In time, he physically
recovered but chose retirement during the years required to rebuild a life
after such a brain injury. He continues to serve Christ’s church through
writing and has become a trusted friend and colleague.)
Seven years later my
sabbatical team and I wrote about this anguish like this:
Our congregation was struggling for an identity
for the future. In the past, First Church had been the theological and cultural
home of the community’s elite. Changes in culture, demographics and regional
business needs rendered the old identity moot. (Further upon the) unexpected
(but necessary) retirement (of our pastor of 23 years) we wandered through a
series of interim pastors, false starts and despondency… We were in desperate
need of… renewal.
What was actually true,
however, was the desperate need for mourning.
The loss of a strong and trusted pastor was profound, but so was the
confusion and resentment born of losing the region’s largest manufacturer – and
the subsequent loss of jobs and people. And it would be a mistake to minimize the
effects that our cultural disestablishment had upon the congregation: not only
was Pittsfield becoming a more casual community, but it was forsaking its long
history of involvement in houses of worship. To be blunt, the world was
changing too fast for many. So when the pastor had to depart without an
intentional transition, the congregation’s sadness and despair became
palpable. Without “an intentional
process of letting go of relationships, dreams and vision,” fear and death
became the dominant motif of our community of faith. And it demanded that we
make the work of mourning the first step towards our renewal.
Mourning implies living through grief;
to live with loss and change: Due to its intentionality, mourning is work.
Mourning requires mindfulness and decries nostalgia. You have to embrace Paul’s
challenge to the believers in Rome, whom he commanded to have “sober judgment”
about being the body of Christ. (Romans 12:3) Doing the work of mourning is not
about replacement but describes a process of evoking memories of the past,
discerning the impact of change on the present, envisioning a future and then
living into that new identity. The work of mourning is a creative response to
loss.
Once again, our great cloud
of witnesses – this time from Israel’s exile – is instructive for they, too had
to grieve and lament before they were ready to rebuild and renew. In Isaiah 61,
the prophet of the Lord was inspired by God to tell his people: “God has
anointed me as the herald of joy to the humble, to bind up the wounded heart
and preach good news to the poor.” It is essential to grasp that the Hebrew
word we translate as “preach” is basher, “from the stem basher, which literally
means meat or flesh.” (Hamman, p. 10) Perhaps a more helpful rendition of the
Hebrew in Isaiah 61 would be: The Spirit of the Lord is on me because the Lord
has anointed me to ENFLESH or EMBODY good news to the poor.”
In prayer, by accident,
through conversation and the wisdom of others, we discerned that there were
three places we needed to embody mourning before the light of renewal would
dawn: worship, church council and our engagement with the wider community. It was
not always pretty. As in any group being led through their grief, there is
often anger and acting out to say nothing of resistance and sabotage. There
were countless nights when I wept and actually prepared my resignation. Like
Moses before me, I grew weary of the “murmuring” and active dissatisfaction
that was our reality for the first three years of my ministry. Thanks be to God there were times of laughter
and joy, too because without them I would have been long gone.
Thanks be to God as well that
most of the elected lay leadership of First Church trusted the grace of God as
expressed in our great cloud of witnesses.
They were faithful, if uncertain; they loved, even when afraid; and they
knew beyond any obvious evidence that God was not finished with them yet. Further,
they came to trust that I did not recommend – or make – capricious changes –
they were all intended to take us deeper into the work of mourning and renewal
– so the leadership trusted. They were rigorous in their questions and
critique, but they gave me the space, love and respect to “embody and enflesh”
some of God’s spiritual good news.
·
Worship: Because public worship is the front door
through which new and well-established folk experience the church, this was we
needed to embody new encounters with the Spirit. The music had grown stale –
well-executed and beautiful – but in a narrow and limited way. Sung responses
were outdated and complicated to sing. The words of the liturgy sounded like
1950. And people were not accustomed to full participation during the 10:30
hour. As one old salt said: “We were
mostly a place where the pastor pastured and the congregation congregated.” There was a lot of mourning to be done as we
changed the worship experience. There was sorrow and uncertainty when long
standing staff retired. There was resentment and resistance to hiring new and
more contemporary musical staff.
Personally I
came to value this quote by James Dittes:
“To be a minister is to know the most searing grief and abandonment,
daily and profoundly. To be a minister is to make an all-out, prodigal
commitment to a people who cannot possible sustain it.” We spent a full
three years grieving and mourning about worship because “when you grieve the
disappointments and disillusionments… you create space for yourself to continue
to grow in ministry. Such space in turn makes growth for your congregation
possible… for the art of creating space for others to grow is the essence of
pastoral ministry.” (p. 29) With tears and clear explanations, with courage and
support from key lay leaders, with an abounding trust in God’s grace, we kept
moving beyond exile towards healing. And while there will always be more work
necessary, after five years of wandering and rebuilding I think it is fair to
say that we have entered a time of creativity, zest and celebration in worship.
·
Council: Without the support, love and trust of the
elected lay leadership the work of leading a people through grief into mourning
and renewal is impossible. Thankfully I
inherited a faithful and well-trained group of leaders when I arrived in 2007.
Not everyone was charitable, of course; but the majority refused to engage in
gossip and honestly brought their concerns to my face rather than triangulating
and causing deeper pain. The journey
into mourning on this level took three forms:
a) periodic study and prayer retreats; b) study and prayer at the
opening of each council meeting; and c) the strategic and prayer-filled
rewriting of our by-laws. During our
retreats – where we crafted a new mission statement, envisioned new directions
for worship and saving money and also discerned the focus of our Open and
Affirming commitment – we studied scripture. That is, we learned from the great
cloud of witnesses.
We broke
bread together, we told stories, we wept and grieve in the open – and in time
we shared our hopes and dreams. I am convinced that this “slow church” approach
to embodied mourning was the key to moving into new life. As some theologians believe – and Jesus
taught us – the leadership of a congregation is to become the leaven in the
loaf. When they are grounded in God’s
grace, not only are they able to interpret the movement of the Spirit to the
wider congregation, but they radiate joy rather than despair. “We
learn the skills of hospitality in small increments of daily faithfulness. The
moral life Is much less about dramatic gestures than it is about steady work –
faithfulness undergirded by prayer and sustained grace. The surprise is how
often it is accompanied by mystery, blessing and joy.” (Christine Pohl
in Sojourners magazine)
·
Mission: The Old Testament book of Proverbs, an ancient
collection of wisdom statements designed to help young people transition into
successful adulthood, includes this aphorism in 29:18: “Where there is no
vision, the people perish.” (KJV) Over the years of decline and death, the
outward mission of First Church lost vision. Everything that was taking place
was good, but our efforts seemed more designed to make us feel satisfied that
we were on the right side rather than making a difference in our culture. When
asked early in my ministry, “What is the mission of our outreach work?” there
was a long, confused silence and then the embarrassed confession that nobody
really knew. This, too, had to be
grieved – and it was frustrating to own our lack of vision. In time, however, we
were led to two significant changes: a)
we crafted a pithy mission statement that allowed us to evaluate our work and
use of resources; and b) we reclaimed the liturgical calendar as a guide for
our social action.
After prayer
and study – in retreat and in private – we wrote: In community with God and each other, we
gather to worship, to reflect on our Christian faith, to do justice and to
share compassion. This allowed us to prioritize our limited time and
funds to strengthening worship, Christian education, acts of both social
justice and compassion. The liturgical calendar helped us refine this mission
even more: in the summer months of
ordinary time we gave time to caring for the earth; in the fall as ordinary
time was shaped by Reformation Sunday and All Saints Day we made certain that
we were offering hope to those in need of food and shelter; as winter morphed
into Advent and Christmas we addressed peace-making; and in spring we were
shaped by the movement of Lent/Easter and acts of renewal and rebirth. We also
found that we needed to join others in the ecumenical church who have created
the “Season of Creation” in September to give special emphasis to environmental
justice.
As I stand on the precipice of a sabbatical in 2015, I
am certain that without the grief work of mourning First Church would be in
much tougher straights than we are today. Jaco Hamman is right: When you grieve the disappointments and
disillusionments you experience in ministry, you create space for yourself to
grow. Cleary Israel’s return from exile is a model for our renewal. Our internal struggles for trust, our deep
and sometimes contentious arguments and laments were, in reality, symptoms of
grief that were also signs of hope. Sr. Joan Chittister once said that renewal is
always about learning to “see the eagle within the egg.”
Our great cloud of witnesses might put it like
this: I know it is Friday – and all we
can see is the Cross – but hold on because Easter Sunday is coming!” What I
have discovered over seven years is that by honoring the call to mourn – and
creating expressions of beauty and joy in worship – we were able to listen for
God’s still, small voice and follow in creative and playful ways. We were
empowered to emphasize gratitude rather than obligation or judgment. And we
took theology seriously as we prayed with fear and trembling.
1) Rebecca Leigh
2) Dianne de Mott
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