INTRODUCTORY REMARKS at the 2013 Summer Seminar
By Dorothy Bass
As we think together about outreach, evangelism, and inviting people to share in the life of faith, we know are far from the only North American church leaders taking up this topic this summer. In my own denomination, this year’s annual synod meetings include reports from national headquarters about declining membership, falling revenues, and program cuts. Other denominations are announcing ambitious goals for planting new churches in upward trending demographic centers or winning new members through advertising campaigns and other efforts. This isn’t news; mainline churches have been hearing about the cultural disestablishment of Christianity for decades, and now the trend is catching up to other church bodies as well. Various studies have focused on specific aspects of the overall trend: the rise of the “nones,” those who say they have no religious affiliation, as our fastest-growing religious affiliation; the changing shape of young adulthood and the distance of many in this age range from religious commitments; and the growing suspicion of institutions generally, including the church.
The proposals from the congregations gathered for the summer seminar make it clear that the trends I’m sketching so broadly are also evident in your own communities. And yet … and yet … we who read your proposals saw that these trends do not paralyze you. We saw life, and hope, and creativity in your descriptions of who you are and what you are doing. We saw eagerness to engage the vibrant spirituality that is also part of contemporary culture. We saw energy for reaching out and wisdom about how to do so. National statistics make the front pages of newspapers, but it’s in and through congregations—local communities, not so readily visible, where people gather to worship God in specific contexts—that the life of faith actually takes on flesh. And it’s in and through actual communities of word and sacrament, song and service—and through the people nurtured in such communities—that Christ reaches out to heal, to reconcile, to renew, and to transform. This is not my lofty vision of what should be. It is something that’s actually taking place all over the world, and in our home communities, right now.
As we planned for the seminar, one of the big questions that kept returning was what exactly to call the activity that the week’s program and all your projects address. Scripture has many ways of describing the dynamic practice we have in mind, including “the Great Commission” reported in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus’ call and command to his followers to go and make disciples from all nations. What words express our desire to obey? Invitation, evangelization, reaching out, proclaiming the gospel, sharing the gospel, evangelism, mission, church growth—all of these appear in our planning documents. Each term has a certain theological weight and direction.
As we begin, I’d like to add three more terms to the mix, partly to enrich our vocabulary, but more importantly to start making a few connections. Each term points to an on-the-ground practice that happens in one way or another in every Christian community. Each one sounds simple—but in fact, doing any one of these faithfully requires lots of theological discernment, cultural sensitivity, and strategic savvy.
The first is hospitality. Many of your mission statements express your congregation’s commitment to be a place where all are welcome. These are honest, deeply held expressions of acceptance, warmly offered from the heart. Why is it, though, that what is so warmly offered often fails to evoke a warm response, leading to the new relationships for which we long? In Scripture, hospitality creates a role-shifting reciprocity; the stranger, it turns out, is the angel, the one who bears gifts. Hosts and guests change places, and places change. A new book by Jessicah Krey Duckworth, Wide Welcome, carries an intriguing subtitle: How the Unsettling Presence of Newcomers Can Save the Church. “Oldcomers,” Duckworth argues, need “newcomers” not to keep the bills paid but to ask real, fresh questions; to give a face to the pain and yearning of humankind; and to remind them of why they do this thing called church in the first place. Newcomers and oldcomers need one another because both need God. The kind of hospitality Duckworth advocates entails listening to newcomers and meeting them where they are, confident of being blessed by their presence in a way not yet fully understood. I see this kind of hospitality in the proposals from the St. Olaf congregation and Robertson-Wesley United Church.
The second term is testimony. Amid the distractions and obsessions of our culture, gathering to worship God and to love and serve the neighbor witnesses to a different reality. Chicago Temple included in its proposal a few lines of the hymn Brian Wren wrote for the congregation’s 175th anniversary celebration: “If the world observes and listens, testing if our words ring true, will our work and worship offer glimpses of a world made new? Will the souls we gently beckon, never hustled or enticed, see in us a moving image of your love in Jesus Christ?” Testimony can be given in words, but also emerges as presence, as art, as song. Dixwell United Church of Christ is offering testimony to God’s enduring grace as it recovers and lifts up for its neighborhood and city the living legacy of black sacred music. When the people of this historic congregation play and sing, they join the testimony of their forebears as it is distilled in music, extending testimony to God’s faithfulness into the rising generation and a changing neighborhood.
Often, hospitality and testimony converge. Hospitality is a form of testimony to boundaries broken. And testimony not only proclaims but also beckons; it invites people into relationship. I see these practices merging in the ministries of Holy Family Catholic Community in Wisconsin, where Anglophone Catholics and Latino Catholics are learning to welcome one another—each a stranger, each a guest, each a host to the other. In their mutual hospitality they also offer testimony to God’s call and promise, allowing others to glimpse Christ’s body unified and social boundaries overcome.
The third term is ritual engagement. Some of the congregations gathered here call their worship “liturgical,” while some do not. But all have rituals of gathering, praying, singing, hearing, offering, eating, and being sent out into the world, and all hope to deepen and enhance these rituals and draw others into them. At Colbert Presbyterian, the yearning of church leaders is great to draw young adults into understanding and participation in regular Sunday worship. In Richmond, Virginia, St. Paul’s Episcopal asks how to focus a broad and lively liturgical repertoire for the sake of its new downtown neighbors: “to break out of the mode of seasonal experimentation and trial worship, and begin to model a depth of commitment to our new neighbors … our vision is one of creating a downtown community of God.” In Northfield, Minnesota, a UCC congregation wants to engage all—children, adults, all—in singing. I am reminded of the theologian David Ford’s commentary on the admonition in Colossians to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. When we put on Christ, Ford notes, we become “singing selves,” part of a community that has shape and form, as music does, but that in principle has no boundaries. Another voice can always be added.
Hospitality. Testimony. Ritual engagement. These come in different flavors in our different denominations and communions—but they are upheld by the same Spirit. The team from Tyson House expressed this well. “As a ministry that is Episcopal and Lutheran,” they wrote, “our worship tends to be both catholic and evangelical (small c, small e). But we are eager to share what we do and to learn from those who are capital C and capital E.”
On behalf of ISM, Martin and I and all who have brought you here hope that our days together in New Haven will be infused with same three qualities.
Hospitality, and a spirit of mutuality as we learn from, host, and guest one another.
Testimony to our shared hope for the church, both local and ecumenical.
Ritual engagement, or putting it more truly, the worship of God, which will frame all our efforts. Here we will confess our sin and move forward trusting in God’s pardon. Here we will be refreshed and reoriented by encounters with the Word. And here, worshiping together, we will be reminded that in all we do, here and at home, we rely on God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit.
We are a small company, each with our own distinctive foibles and gifts. However, the questions we’ll be exploring are questions that affect the whole church. Thank you for sharing in this time. May God bless our conversations here, and the congregations from which we have come and to which we shall return.