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Questions When Planning Remote Liturgies

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Those of us in the business of planning liturgies, ceremonies, and rituals find ourselves in a brand new moment. Never before have we been asked to curate liturgies across time and space through digital technology at the current scale. As an Episcopal priest and a school chaplain, I have been asked by many people in many different settings how we can create meaningful liturgies in the midst of this pandemic. 

What follows are the guiding questions I have used to plan and brainstorm liturgies for my communities. I hope they can be a jumping-off point as we all navigate this new world. 

First, some definitions and a disclaimer. 

Liturgy is often translated as “the work of the people”. This is true in one sense of the word, but in a deeper sense liturgies are rituals that “embody a way of being in the world”. (Farwell, James. The Liturgy Explained. pg. 11)

In the Christian church, liturgies often revolve around sacraments such as baptism and the Eucharist. In a broader sense, our communities carry out liturgies for a wide variety of purposes. Graduation is a liturgy. School orientation is a liturgy. Family traditions around holidays and birthdays are liturgies. For the sake of this article, I am using liturgy to mean any communal event that points to or embodies a way of being in the world. Adapting the common definition of a sacrament, these community liturgies bring about the thing to which they point. For example, nothing magical happens at the graduation ceremony but through the words and actions carried out liturgically, the seniors transition from student to graduate and alumni. 

So how do we plan these liturgies at this particular moment in time? First, a disclaimer. Any liturgy performed in the midst of a worldwide pandemic will be – necessarily – different from any other version of the liturgy. What’s more, any liturgy adapted to an online context will have to be different. When we start out on the road to plan an event for our communities we must give up any notion that the event will be the same (or in some cases even vaguely similar) as it has been in years past. The poet David Whyte wrote a line that has stuck with me in this time, “Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.” We would love for things to be normal but they are not. The sooner we accept that our liturgies will not be “normal” we can get to the meaningful work of curating these events. 

From here I will list questions that will be helpful when planning liturgies. I have added some commentary to each one. My hope is that these can serve as jumping-off points for context-specific conversations in your own community. 

What does the liturgy represent or communicate? 

Why do you hold this ceremony? What purpose does it serve? What message is communicated? This is not a moment to do things because we always do them. This is a moment to only do those things that are vital in some way to the culture and being of a community. 

Figuring out the core message or meaning in a liturgy first will help as you begin to plan the logistics of the event. Is this a life-cycle marker like a graduation or a coming-of-age ceremony? Is this a moment for individual recognition like an awards banquet? Is this a gathering for prayer and spiritual connection? It is fundamental at the outset to know the “why” behind your liturgy. 

What is the heart of the ceremony? 

What is the main thing? What is the thing people are looking forward to or the thing they will remember? For graduation, this could be the receiving of a diploma and walking across the stage. For an award banquet, it could be the speech by a trusted mentor in recognition of the student. For a family gathering, it could be seeing the faces of those you love.  

Before you can plan a liturgy you need to figure out what the vital components are – what can we not do without? What is the core of this gathering? This is a moment to strip away nonessentials. A rambling hours-long event works (though does it really?) in person but will not work online. How can you bring the heart of the ceremony into sharp focus? 

Can this liturgy be translated to a remote or distance context? If not, what is a new way to mark this moment? 

Once you have isolated the core of the liturgy you have to ask the hard but necessary question. Can we do this online or remotely? An unflinching answer to this question will save everyone a lot of time and stress. Is it possible or advisable to do this ceremony online? 

The next step is key! If it is not possible to translate the liturgy to this new context, what is a new way to mark this moment? We will have to create new ways of being community and marking communal moments in this time. We will have to come up with a whole new framework for many of our ceremonies and liturgies. The good news is that we will not be isolated forever. The better news is that the ways that we innovate right now will help us to do the work of community in the future. 

I have not given you details or logistics, but my hope is that these questions can help you reframe and reimagine our communal gatherings. My liturgy professor was fond of saying that the space always when we hosting a liturgy or gathering. This is doubly true now. The space always wins and our current space is spread out around the world, across town and across time. While many things have changed, the need for connection and communal marking of time has not changed. My hope is that we can emerge from this moment with a renewed sense of the value, depth, and possibility of our liturgies and our communities. 

For more information, check out the work of Priya Parker including her book, The Art of Gathering, and her new podcast, Together Apart.

 

Unimpressed

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The Bishop of Springfield caused quite the stir yesterday with a tweet about how unimpressed he was with the Official Youth Presence at General Convention. The tweet sparked many wonderful responses about the role of the Official Youth Presence and the impact it has had on clergy and lay people across the world.

The Bishop wrote a blog post responding to the controversy. At one point he issued what could be interpreted as an apology, saying, “I wish I hadn’t done it, but I did.”

This isn’t a direct response to those initial comments or the “apology”, but a post inspired by the sentiment.

The Bishop was unimpressed by the Official Youth Presence because they didn’t mention Jesus enough. He was also unimpressed because they were “annoyingly issue-oriented”.

There are two major issues with the Bishop’s comments. First, there is an assumption that the Official Youth Presence exists to impress. That assumption raises my blood pressure enough for me to write a separate post on it later.

The second assumption is that there is a bar of orthodoxy and Jesus’s-per-minute that people must adhere to in order to be considered credible. Tied to this assumption is the misplaced idea that without explicitly mentioning the name of Jesus, advocacy and service becomes “issue-oriented” instead of Christ-oriented.

That last assumption is also enough to merit a separate post, but let me say this one thing: If the Lord of the universe, the maker of heaven and earth, is relying on the vocabulary and word-choice of a group of youth, we are all in trouble.

Now I am not currently a “youth”, but I was once a “youth”, so I feel that I have the authority to speak from my experience. I also work as the Canon Missioner for Youth and Young Adults in the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, which gives me a small amount of credibility when I say the following:

Youth are unimpressed with much of the leadership of the church. 

Youth are unimpressed by the paralyzingly “issue-oriented” leadership that can’t see Jesus in the world unless he is wearing a nametag.

Youth are unimpressed by leaders who require “litmus tests” for inclusion. It appears to me that Jesus had two litmus tests for those who would be his followers: love of God and love of neighbor.

Youth are unimpressed by the ostrich style of leadership that would rather bury its head in the sand than relearn what it means to be a Christian in a new time and place.

Youth are disappointed when the church they love turns on them while they are trying to serve it.

It is time for some of the leaders in the church to get the mitre out of their eyes and see that a group of youth VOLUNTEERING to come to a international church convention is a blessing before it is anything else. In a time when the church decline industrial complex is booming, the fact that youth are willing to give up two weeks of their summer to spend time with Bishops that are admittedly “unimpressed” with them is a testament to the youth and an indictment of the Bishops.

My final point is about formation in the church. If the youth do not have the language to articulate their faith, whose fault is that? We could listen to Paul’s letter to the Romans on this one: “…how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?”

If the youth haven’t heard a clear proclamation of Jesus Christ in a way that is relevant and authentic, it can hardly be their fault if they lack the necessary language to articulate their faith.

My final advice to the church is to talk to the youth before you dismiss them. Talk to the youth who give up time in their increasingly busy schedules to volunteer and serve. Talk to the youth who defy the stereotypes about Millennials by believing in Jesus enough apply to be a part of an institutional church. Talk to the youth about what makes them come alive and how Jesus has impacted them personally before you write them off as “unimpressive”.

The youth that I have met and that I have the honor of working with are unimpressed with much in the world, but one thing is certain: they are impressed by Jesus, the One who has made enough of an impression on all of us to bring us into His Church to love God through one another.

 

UPDATE: I am grateful for Bishop Mark Bourlakas for his support of youth and youth ministry. Here is his statement:”I am so impressed with the commitment of the official Youth Presence here. It made me proud to be a bishop in the Church and in our Diocese where we have so many fun, talented and faithful young people committed to Jesus. Yesterday one of our own former DioSWVa youth, Grace Aheron, beautifully read the first reading at the Convention’s opening Eucharist.”

What Story Are You Telling?: Missional Young Adult Ministry (Super Serial Post #6)

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I am nervous about writing this post. I’m nervous because it seems that every child of God with a blog has written a post about young adults and the church.

In full disclosure, I’ve written a few (like this one).

Young Adults are having a moment. Every corporation and organization wants to understand Millennials so that they will buy their products. The church is not immune. Pastors in all denominations and branches of Western Christianity are scratching their heads and wondering where the young adults are.

I just love stock photography.

I just love stock photography.

Folks are looking to blog posts, books, other popular pastors, and anyone else who may help them tap into the young adult fountain.

This blog post is part of a series on missional Christianity, so the question here is slightly different than some of the other blog posts out there. My primary concern is not how to get young adults to go to church or even how to make our churches more attractive to young adults.

This line of thinking represents a model of church that the missional understanding rejects. The goal is not to attract young people to sit in the pews, the goal is to reach out and bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to young adults where they are.

Instead of providing the five easy steps to attracting young adults, I will give you two questions to ask when thinking about young adult ministry in your church or community.

The first question is why do you want to reach out to young adults? What is the goal? Are you hoping that young adults will breathe new life into your congregation? Do you think young adults will make your parish a little more hip? Do you think that young adults lead to young families which leads to church growth?

Everyone has a motive. To be clear, the motives listed above are not inherently bad, but it is important to understand what you want from the young adults you are seeking to reach. Young adults have energy and passion, yes. Young adults are often slightly ‘cooler’ than other generations (myself excluded). Young adults often start families and invite friends to church.

These things are true and they shouldn’t be the reason for reaching out to young adults.

The primary reason for reaching out to young adults (and everyone else) is the Great Commission – the fact that Jesus told us to tell the world that we have something they need.

This brings me to the second question to ask when trying to reach out to young adults. What story are you telling?

Young adults have grown up in a world in which they are constantly being sold things. From phone screens to televisions to billboards to every space in between, young adults are used to weeding through advertising to find the content they connect with.

Advertisers know that they need to tell a story through their marketing. The general story is that there is a problem (whether real or made up) and their product will solve that problem. If you tell the story of the problem well enough, you won’t need to work hard to sell your solution.

Christianity has the proto-story. We have the greatest solution to the world’s deepest problem. That is our story. And yet, many churches are telling a different story and it shows.

One common story that I see churches telling is that we don’t have enough members and we want more, no matter what it takes.

Another story I see churches telling is that there are social problems in the world and the church is an organization that fixes social problems.

Your church is telling a story, that is not a question. The question is whether or not you are being intentional about the story you are telling.

Young adults can tell when they are being sold of a bill of goods or a faulty solution. Too often, church leaders guess the story that young adults want to hear and respond accordingly.

Church leaders think, “Young adults love to hang out in bars. They must love to talk about theology in a bar.” Or they think, “When I was a young adult, I loved acoustic guitars in worship. We need a contemporary service to attract young adults.”

I am not bashing these two examples. I know many young adults who love theology on tap and contemporary services. The trouble arises when church leaders think that either of these outreach methods (or anything else) is the magic bullet that will have young adults flocking.

Young adults do not have a “Spidey-sense” for guitar music and pastors in blue jeans.

Someone is singing "Sanctuary"... I can feel it.

Someone is singing “Sanctuary”… I can feel it.

The magic bullet is not a program or event, the magic bullet is to figure out what story your congregation is telling and tell it well.

As I said in my last post about youth ministry, the greatest thing that the church has to offer the world is meaning through Jesus Christ and meaning is something that transcends all settings, events, and outreach methods.

I think the urge to hold bible studies in bars or to adapt worship music to more popular modes of musical expression is a good one. It is the first step in the missional journey, but we can’t stop there.

A priest walks into a bar...

A priest walks into a bar…

We can’t stop once the young adult is at the bar bible study because once that young adult leaves the bar and comes to your church the story changes. Often, things don’t match up. The story you are telling about your church at the bar on Wednesday night doesn’t match the church they see on Sunday morning.

Authenticity is so important when reaching out to young adults. Don’t tell a story that isn’t true just so young adults will come to your church. Don’t give them window dressing.

The best way to reach out to young adults is to let your community of faith do what it does best. Don’t try to be a social club or a charity or a concert venue, but simply be the church that you are.

You don’t have to change or add new programs to attract young adults. You must simply live your life on purpose and be fully engaged in the mission of God.

You will need to change if your mission isn’t clear and your story is muddled.

You will need to change if your doors only open in. 

Alan Hirsch and Darryn Altclass say, “Remissionalizing [a church is] about gearing the whole community around natural discipling friendships, worship as lifestyle, and mission in the context of everyday life.”

Reaching out to young adults in a missional way means getting to know the young folks that work in your office or that hang around the coffee shop where you do your work. It means listening to the young adults that already attend your church to find out what story they are telling.

It means living out your faith in a way that points to Christ

It means that we must stop guessing what young adults want and go out into our community to find out what they really need.

It means learning our own story so that we can tell it to those around us.

It doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel or coming up with a new story all together.

Michael Frost sums it up by saying, “When we have no impressive buildings and no swollen budgets to sustain our work, often only then do we realize that the best we have to offer this post-Christendom world is the quality of our relationships, the power of our trustworthiness, and the wonder of our generosity.”

Transformative young adult ministry takes time. It takes the long, hard work of building authentic relationships. It takes effort to learn how to best articulate our story. It takes prayer and study. It takes risk.

The Christian story is the most captivating and transformative story in history. For two-thousand years, people who have lived their lives from within the Christian story have done miraculous things and changed the world.

We need to put the spark back in the story that we are telling. 

I’ll leave you with another quote, this one from Antoine de Saint-Exupery, that describes the reframing that must happen for the church to reach out and impact the lives of young adults (and everyone else as well).

Please note, there is so much more to be said about missional young adult ministry. You can rest assured that you will hear more from me about this topic as I begin my work with the people of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia in the next months.

For now, I leave you with these words, “If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work; rather teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.” 

Newbigin-ing at the Beginning (Super Serial Post #3)

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Y’all.

It has been a while, hasn’t it?

Between my week on retreat and spring break, I’ve been away from the blog-realm for two whole weeks. But the world spins on and so do my posts on the Missional Church.

This week’s post is all about Lesslie Newbigin. Who is Lesslie Newbigin? Great question, keep reading.

This regal looking fellow is Lesslie Newbigin.

This regal looking fellow is a young Lesslie Newbigin.

A little disclaimer: I know that Lesslie Newbigin is not the only mission-minded theologian in Christendom. I also know that this short post could not do justice to the incredibly dense volume of work that Newbigin produced in his lifetime. I even know that this post may be seen by some to be like one brick compared to the Great Wall of China.

My hope is that this will give you enough information to spark a fire in you to go do some research on your own. If it doesn’t, hopefully it will give you enough information to understanding more fully that I am not just making this stuff up.

The Missional Church is not an invention of the church growth advisors and it is not a fad.

Unlike juicing, the Missional Church is not another fad.

Unlike juicing, the Missional Church is not another fad.

So let’s learn more about Lesslie Newbigin.

Newbigin was born in England in 1909. His father, a businessman, sent him to a Quaker boarding school at 12 because of their committed pacifism. He went to Queens’ College  in 1928. He became involved with the Student Christian Movement and had a conversion experience while leading a camping trip for underprivileged men.  He soon articulated his call to ordained ministry and set out to become a missionary.

In 1936, he and his wife set out for India as missionaries. Newbigin worked for many years in India and eventually helped to establish a large network of Christian communities across the country. He would train “mission agents” and send them out into smaller villages to teach and baptize. Newbigin eventually became the Bishop in the Church of South India.

He “retired” in 1974 and went on to teach at Selly Oaks College in Birmingham, UK. He turned down an offer to become the Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Birmingham and instead became the pastor of a small, inner-city Reformed congregation.

Throughout his whole career, Newbigin was a prolific writer, with 17 books published prior to retirement. During his “retirement” period, he would publish 15 more books.

Newbigin was an incredible writer and was extremely passionate about sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He spent the bulk of his career abroad, but when he returned to Europe he was shocked to find that secularization had spread rapidly. On their journey home from India, the Newbigin family had to worship by themselves while in Cappadocia because they couldn’t find a church or group of Christians to worship with. This forever changed the way Newbigin viewed Western culture because he saw just how quickly a once firmly Christian city could abandon the faith.

Newbigin’s work formed part of the foundation for the modern Missional Church. Below are several quotes from Newbigin’s book, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, that can help Western Christians understand the position we are in and where we must go from here.

“In many contexts a ‘mission church’ was the second-class institution in the downtown quarter of the city….In some forms of ecclesiastical vernacular, a ‘missionary diocese’ was a diocese that had not yet graduated to the full status of a diocese without qualification. Theological faculties might have provided a place for ‘missions’ as a branch of practical theology, but it had no place in the central teaching of Christian doctrine. To put it briefly, the church approved of ‘missions’ but was not itself the mission.” (pg. 2)

“If God is indeed the true missionary…our business is not to promote the mission of the church, but to get out into the world, find out ‘what God is doing in the world’, and join forces with him.” (pg. 18)

“Mission…is faith in action. It is the acting out by proclamation and by endurance, through all the events of history, of the faith that the kingdom of God has drawn near. It is the acting out of the central prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to use: ‘Father, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as in heaven.'” (pg. 39)

“[Mission] is not the property of the church. It is not domesticated within the church. Mission is not simply the self-propagation of the church by putting forth the power that inheres in its life….On the contrary, the active agent of mission is a power that rules, guides, and goes before the church: the free, sovereign, living power of the Spirit of God. Mission is not just something the church does; it is something that is done by the Spirit, who is himself the witness, who changes both the world and the church, who always goes before the church in its missionary journey.” (pg. 56)

“At this point the church has to keep silence. It is not in control of the mission. Another is in control, and his fresh works will repeatedly surprise the church, compelling it to stop talking and to listen.” (pg. 61)

I would have quoted the entire book if copyright law and the average reader’s attention span would allow it. Hopefully this post has given you a taste of the huge body of work that makes up the foundation of the Missional Church.

The main take away is that “mission is not the property of the church”; it is not just a new way of getting people into the pews. The mission is God’s. The church can take part in God’s mission by taking our hands off the wheel and following Christ.

"Jesus, take the wheel."

“Jesus, take the wheel.”

It may seem that I am beating a dead horse by constantly reiterating what missional means and that God’s mission is not fundamentally about the church. I am emphasizing it so heavily because it is my experience that people don’t really accept it. Many church folks seem to say, “Yeah, yeah. Being missional is not about church membership and church growth” while they wink and keep hoping that it is just that.

I’ll leave you with some closing words from the end of The Open Secret:

“The mystery of the gospel is not entrusted to the church to be buried in the ground. It is entrusted to the church to be risked in the change and interchange of the spiritual commerce of humanity. It belongs not to the church but to the one who is both head of the church and head of the cosmos. It is within his power and grace to bring to its full completion that long-hidden purpose, the secret of which has been entrusted to the church in order that it may become the open manifestation of the truth to all the nations.” (pg. 189)

We have now drilled down a little more to the true meaning of the missional church. The next blog posts will drill down even further to explore missional Anglicanism and what the missional Episcopal Church might look like. From there, we will look at missional youth and young adult ministry in particular.

Stay tuned.

A.A. Milne

What the Missional Movement is Not (Super Serial Post #1)

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It may seem strange to start a series of posts on the missional movement by describing what it is NOT, but there is precedent in theological studies for taking the via negativa approach and it seems like the best way to cut through the fog surrounding this topic.

First things first, the missional movement is not a movement.

I know, I know – I have referred to it as such in the lines above and the introductory post to this series. If you’ll forgive me, that was a bit of a straw man.

As I mentioned in my original post on the missional church, there is a tendency to lump missional attitudes into the same category as many of the church growth trends that have come along in the past. It is very easy to write it off as another way consultants are trying to fill the pews of shrinking or empty churches.

“Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and there are only two people…”

The truth is that being missional is not a trend but is, instead, the true nature of the church.

In his book Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood, Alan Roxburgh tells a modern day parable about three old friends (pg. 31). These friends grew up together, spending endless hours together at play, at school, and everywhere in between. The three friends went to college together and spent many evening discussing their hopes and dreams late into the night. Through the many years they spent together, the three friends developed a relationship that was deeper than words. Each of their identities was formed and shaped by this rich relationship.

Over time, however, their relationship grew distant. The three kept in touch through social media and the occasional call. Every few years, the three would get together for a weekend to catch up and renew their connection.

One day, out of the blue and after several years without contact, the two friends received an email from the third inviting them to his house in California for several nights. The two made their plans to travel to the West Coast and when they arrived, their host sat them down for a feast.

Isn’t stock photography great?

The friends laughed and caught up with each other throughout the first night, but at some point in the evening the mood changed. The two friends sensed a heavy awkwardness had settled around the table as the host began to do most of the talking. He talked about his life, his questions, and his needs. Every question he asked was only so that he could further focus on his own interests. He seemed only interested in making himself seem more successful.

At the end of the night the two friends made their way back to their hotel and the host went to bed feeling great about the conversation and the evening as a whole.

So, what is the point of this parable?

According to Roxburgh, the three friends in the parable are Scripture, Church, and Culture. The first two friends are Scripture and Culture, while the third friend who hosted the other two for the reunion is the Church.

Being missional is not a movement because it is not about the church. Most blog posts and magazine pieces make the missional conversation solely about the church and what the church can do to grow itself. Too often we are like the third friend: inviting Scripture and Culture into the conversation only to further our own interests.

Church movements exist for the church – to increase their size or influence or relevance or whatever it may be. Being missional is not just another movement because it is about returning the three friends to their original relationship.

Roxburgh argues that the focus of the missional conversation is three-fold: Scripture, Church, and Culture. For too long we have pretending that the church has a monopoly on the Good News, as though we are the only way that God works in the world. The missional conversation starts with the assumption that God is already at work in the world, within and without the church.

Later in his book, Roxburgh says that the church has taken itself into a cul-de-sac with this inward focus. He says, “Church questions are at the forefront of our thinking, so we default to questions about what the church should be doing and what the church should look like.” We are wrong to think that a new movement or program will fix what ails the church in this time. Roxburgh goes on to say, “This is not something that can be ‘fixed’ with programs or discussions on church health or by appending the word missional to old habits.” (pg. 54).

Being missional is not about growing your church membership.

Being missional is not about growing your church membership.

So we have established that the missional church is not a trend or new fad, but is a return to the original calling and nature of the church. This should let you in on the fact that this series will not give you the three easy steps to become a “missional” church. This whole conversation is about changing our thinking and our view of the church. If becoming missionally focused brings more people to your parish or community, great. If you enter this conversation with the motivation of increasing church membership (or relevance or whatever), you are missing the point. The point is to stay true to our calling as Christians in the world.

Stay tuned for the next post, in which I will explore what this calling actually is.

Cliffhanger

“Go ye into all the world”: The Missional Church Movement (A Super Serial Set of Posts)

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“Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel.”

This inscription was written above the Great Commission window in the original 1881 chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary. The phrase, from Mark’s Gospel, inspired generations of seminarians and continues to be embedded in the culture of the seminary. It is our fundamental mission as Christians.

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I wrote a blog post a few months ago about the Missional Church movement and how it is more than a trend or church-growth plan. I tried to go beneath the catch phrases and sound bytes to show a bit of the theology and ecclesiology that undergirds the Missional movement.

Since writing that post I have accepted the call to serve as the Canon Missioner for Youth and Young Adults in the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, beginning in June. The Diocese of Southwestern Virginia is a great group of Christians who have taken on this Missional conversation, thanks in part to their Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Mark Bourlakas.

The Diocese is very focused on shifting the Episcopal Church in Southwestern Virginia from an “attractional” stance to a Missional orientation while equipping the people and parishes of the Diocese to be missionaries and ambassadors of the Gospel in their communities.

I have the unique gift of being able to accept a call while still deep in my last semester of seminary. Because of this, I have developed an Independent Study (under the guidance of Dr. Lisa Kimball) that will explore the Missional movement as it relates to Episcopal youth and young adult ministry. I will study the history of the Missional movement and how it has been applied to the Anglican/Episcopal context. From there I will develop resources for Missional youth and young adult ministries that will available for use by parishes and Dioceses across the Episcopal Church.

This is the first of six blog posts that will cover these topics (hence the “serial” in the title). I’ve chosen blog posts over an academic research paper to make this information accessible for more people who can (hopefully) benefit from this conversation.

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I do hope that readers will leave comments, ask questions, and give suggestions for what you would like to see in this series. While primarily for my own edification, I want this work to help as many people as possible to see the what this Missional conversation is all about so that we can more effectively preach the Gospel to the whole world.

This post is brought to you by MailChimp*

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*MailChimp is not actually a sponsor.

The (Missional) Episcopal Church and why it’s more than just a catchphrase.

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The level of snark present on a seminary campus is fairly overwhelming. This trend seems to hold true with many Episcopal clergy, especially on social media. New church fads and movements are skewered in class and at the lunch table. Some groups bring this on themselves, for instance this church that gave away assault rifles at a revival. But many church movements or ideas get shot down (pun intended) in conversation before they are even understood or investigated.

Some ‘trendy’ models of church have been thoroughly investigated and have been found lacking in certain areas. The seeker-sensitive movement came across as watering down doctrine and tradition for the sake of membership numbers. The emergent movement, at times, drifted out of the lines of Christian orthodoxy.

One movement, though not new at all, has been the topic of many conversations at the seminary recently. When you say the word ‘missional’ you usually get one of two reactions. First, a person may respond positively without knowing too much about what it means to be missional. Second, a person may respond with disdain for another church growth fad and dismiss missional ecclesiology…also without knowing too much about what it actually means.

I’m hoping this blog post will be informative about what it truly means to have a missional understanding of the church, but my true goal for this post is that it be a starting point for conversations (with minimal snark) about the future of the Episcopal Church and the future of the Church as a whole.

Being missional is first and foremost about relationship: Relationship with oneself, with the worshiping community, with the community/neighborhood/area as a whole, and especially with God. The primary goal of a missional church is not increasing membership numbers or average Sunday attendance. The focus is not the capital campaign or getting more folks to come to the annual chili cook-off fundraiser. A missional church is primarily concerned with its member’s relationships with each other and the church’s relationship with the broader community. This is not a very popular answer to the ‘problem’ of decline in the Episcopal Church. It seems that people want the five easy steps or the perfectly crafted program that will magically draw people to the empty Episcopal Churches across the country. This brings me to the second characteristic of missional churches.

Missional churches reject the purely attractional model of church. The attractional model has dominated Christianity in America for a very long time. The basic idea behind this model is that you start at the physical church building and draw people in the doors. You draw them with worship services, educational programs, entertainment, prayer groups, etc. The attractional model church presents the people in the community with a menu of religious goods and services in hopes that something will catch their eye and bring them to the building. It is a sign of the consumer understanding of religion.

This model is not working in most of the country. It is not a bad model and it has served us very well for a long time, but it would seem that it is no longer serving the needs of the church or many communities.

There are some hot spots of church activity in major cities/suburbs, but for the most part every denomination is struggling to maintain and especially to increase membership. No matter how many new programs or church growth consultants they bring in, people are just not coming to church.

Missional churches doesn’t see the question as ‘How do we get people to come to church?’ but ‘How do we get the church to the people?’

I recently attended Common Place, a gathering of young adults and young adult ministers hosted by the Diocese of Washington D.C. The weekend was filled with conversations and stories about young adult ministry success and failure. The Rev. Mike Angell, the Young Adult Missioner for the Episcopal Church, spoke about the current trends in young adult ministry in the church.

At one point in his talk, Mike said, “When I give talks or presentations, people tend to ask, ‘Where are all the young adults?’ to which I respond, ‘I don’t know. Let’s go find them together.'”

That is the missional church; one that goes out into the world and interacts with the people who would otherwise never interact with the church.

The Five Marks of Mission is a list of the characteristics of the church’s mission that was adopted by the General Convention in 2009. Since that time, the Five Marks of Mission have been engaged (and not engaged) differently in each Diocese.

The Five Marks of Mission are:

~ To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
~ To teach, baptize and nurture new believers
~ To respond to human need by loving service
~ To seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation
~ To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth
This is the mission of Christ and, by extension, the mission of the church. The Episcopal Church, in my experience, is really good at the last three Marks. We’ve got the service, peace/reconciliation, and sustainability issues fairly well covered. The Episcopal Church, again in my experience, has a hard time with the first two. It seems that we have lost our voice when it comes to proclaiming the Good News and teaching new believers. In our reaction to the incredible growth and influence of the conservative Evangelical branches of Christianity we have forfeited all talk about the Gospel, salvation, and sin, just so we won’t be associated with the more extreme members of the Christian family. It is as if we hope that we can just do works of service for people and the Gospel will somehow seep into them. Call it osmosis evangelism.
The third characteristic of the missional church is that it knows its own story and can tell others about it easily. A missional church knows what Jesus Christ means in its life and wants to tell the world. A missional church can articulate the key points of the Christian faith when asked. 1 Peter 3:15 tells us that we are to always be ready to explain the hope that is within us, the hope that comes from God. The Episcopal Church must also reclaim its identity as Anglicans. As the recognized Anglican church in North America, the Episcopal Church has access to a great Anglican tradition of reform and renewal. The fighting and legal battles of the past decade have zapped a lot of energy from the Episcopal Church, but the same hope that we have in Christ is the hope that propels us forward. This leads into the fourth characteristic:
Missional churches are hopeful. With some of the talk above and with much of the talk around the blogosphere and social media, it is easy to become discouraged about the future of the church. It would be easy to see the declining numbers and shrinking budgets and resign ourselves to keep everything as it is and go down with the ship. The missional church isn’t discouraged by the projections and numbers. Sure, it’s sad that our numbers are lower than they were at one time and it is always sad to see a church close its doors. That being said, there is a lot of room for hope.
God is doing something new in the Episcopal Church and in the Church around the world. With the influence of Pope Francis spreading around the world and the spotlight of American culture fading on conservative Evangelicalism, the Episcopal Church is in a great position to renew itself. The type of renewal that we need is much more than reforming the Executive Council or the General Convention rules of order. We need a grassroots renewal of our identity and understanding of ourselves. This process can begin right now in whatever context you find yourself or your church. Go outside and get to know the neighborhood. Figure out what is important to the people in your church and in your community. Don’t immediately jump to a new bible study or bar event – singing hymns while drinking beer will not solve our problems, although it can be fun.
This may be frustrating to some folks. This process is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Forming authentic relationships takes a long time and a lot of work, but it is the best way for the Episcopal Church to move forward in faith and hope for the future. Being missional is much more than a church growth trick or new ecclesiological fad – it is a return our roots and the roots of the Church. If we are to be ‘fishers of people’, the days of the huge, industrial fishing fleets is over. We must return to the days of individuals casting small nets on the shore, where it all began.
This is by no means an exhaustive explanation of the missional movement. For more in depth study of missional ecclesiology I recommend this book and this book, which is directed specifically at the Episcopal Church. Start this conversation with those around you and see what the Holy Spirit is doing in your church. Please, please, please don’t just bury your head in the sand and hope that things will turn around if we just wait long enough. The world is in desperate need of the Good News of Christ and the Episcopal Church can be the voice that proclaims it if we start renewing our vision and reviving our mission.

 

 

The Episcopal Church is doing just fine (sort-of)

Short Reads

Despite what the title of this post may imply, I am not a fact-denier and I do not have my head buried in the sand. I know all of the talk and blogs and tweets that are circulating about the decline of the Episcopal Church and the decline of the “mainline” denominations across the board. I do not deny that the numbers show a steady decline. I do not deny that the numbers are alarming for people who judge the church by attendance numbers. I do not deny any of this.

Did you catch what I did there?

The decline in attendance numbers are alarming for people who judge the church by attendance numbers. That’s it.

When did church become about how many people show up?

My reading of the New Testament tells me that church is much more about a group of people (two-two billion, the numbers are not whats important) that come together to share a meal, praise God, and then go out into the world, take care of the folks that can’t take care of themselves, and spread the Good News that death and the slavery of sin have been defeated.

Instead, for some reason, we only understand church as a building in which, for a healthy church, 100-500 people gather on Sunday mornings to do “the service”. If this truly is the meaning of the church then the Chicken Little’s throughout the church are right: the sky if falling!

But what if we let that image of the church die?

What if we let go of our need to be “successful” in the eyes of church growth experts and ecclesiological  abacus movers?

What if we found our success in the strength of the relationships formed within our church communities? What if the sign of a healthy church was the service that happened apart from Sunday mornings?

My last post was on the “Doomsday Preppers” of the church. With this new post it seems that I am holding the bludger and preparing to beat the poor, deceased horse.

I’m sorry if you are tired of hearing about church decline.

I am going to keep writing on it until we finally stop looking at the declining numbers and then immediately to our navels for the solution. There is no secret fix or ten step blog post that is going to “save” the church. (*Full disclosure: my last post contained a list. So did the one before that. I am not averse to blog lists in general, only when the list proposes a solution to an imaginary or misconstrued problem.)

The church has never been about success or numbers or strategic growth.

Unless I have greatly misunderstood my professors in my time so far in seminary it would appear that the church is all about failures, small numbers, and inefficient growth. If we really want the church to stop shrinking and to grow we should start living like the church. We should join people who are radically different from ourselves to worship, share, and serve. We should get out of our cells of individual convenience and into the untidy, complicated mess of community.

For all of the talk of decline, there are so many wonderful Episcopal churches that are doing amazing things. Big churches, small churches, urban, rural, “missional” (whatever that word means) ministries of all shapes and sizes.

The Episcopal Church has got it all. If we showed off what we have and refused to add another voice to the never ending waterfall of pessimism and cynicism about church numbers, maybe we would see our churches grow.

The Episcopal Church is doing just fine, as long as you judge the success of a church based on lives changed and good work done in the name of Christ.

For those still hung up on attendance numbers, I pray that God would so enlarge your heart that you would see the people in front of you. If there is no one in your church on a Sunday I have good news for you – there are a ton of folks out in the world who could use your help (yes you), so lets get to work.

Doomsday Preppers (Church Edition).

Short Reads

People love to talk about why the church is dying. They have graphs, numbers, and possible causes.

What people don’t have is a solution. Some suggest that churches need to be more open and accepting; others say the church needs to be more tech savvy; while others say that denominations, themselves, are the problem. There are endless posts bemoaning the slowly dying church. But much like the character in Monty Python’s Holy Grail who is trying desperately to put his father on the cart of dead bodies before he is actually dead, I see this conversation about the dying church as a little misguided.

In fact, I say its all rubbish.

In keeping with the increasingly popular blog format of list-making, I propose a few reasons why the seemingly endless talk about the “end of the church” is not helpful or needed.

1. “The Body of Christ has died once, it cannot die again.” I wish that I could claim this wonderful insight, but it comes from Bishop Susan Goff of the Diocese of Virginia, where I am a Postulant. It came in the context of a talk she gave to my seminary class during our retreat last year. She said that the church can never die because its mission is too serious, its existence is too needed, and, most importantly, it is called for by God. This does not mean that the church will always look like it does right now (but more on that below). The Early Church would be shocked if they saw the church today – not because of any failing morals, but because there is no way they could have imagined what the church/world would look like two-thousand years in the future. In the same way that Martin Luther (whose actions were seen, by some, to be killing the church) could never have imagined a church that would produce Martin Luther King, we have no frame of reference for what the church will look like hundreds of years from now – let alone twenty-five years from now. They kept fighting the good fight because they believed that the Body of Christ would live on and that it would continue to be guided by the Holy Spirit.

2. Judge a tree by its fruit. Jesus was big on tree talk. He talked a lot about how some trees produce good fruit while other trees produce bad fruit. The good fruit producers go on producing good fruit, while the trees that produce bad fruit or don’t produce fruit at all are cut down or left to wither. It is a simple concept that applies to churches. If a church is producing good fruit (committed disciples of Christ, just and fair communities, healthy programs for kids and young adults, etc.) the church tends to grow or at least remains a stable part of its community. If a church begins producing bad fruit (increased in-fighting, cult of personality around a pastor or leader, little or no outreach, scandals, etc.) or no fruit at all, it tends to wither – sometimes slowly over years, other times quickly in a matter of months. Churches closing is not the worst case scenario if the church is not producing good fruit. Of course, the rub is that some of the churches that appear to be producing “bad” fruit (from the correct position of educated, liberal, “mainstream” Protestant denominations [please read sarcasm into this aside]) are growing at an incredible rate. I have no answer to this phenomenon except to say that the anecdotal evidence I have heard about mega-churches and their (often) “prosperity Gospel” message is that they are great places to worship… until something goes terribly wrong in your life. When life takes a turn towards tragedy and pain, being a face in the crowd at church is no longer a good thing. When it seems like your life is going to hell in a hand basket, it is refreshing to walk into a service where people know your name and can recognize the pain in your eyes. I want it to be clear that I am not bashing all mega-churches and I am not saying that every mega-church preaches the “prosperity Gospel”. Even the biggest and best-run mega-church has small groups, because they recognize that Christian community needs to be intimate enough for personal building-up and relationships.

3. Change is not bad. Repeat this phrase as many times as it takes for you un-clinch your fists and see straight again. The church will never again be like it was when you were growing up. Ever. There is no returning to mythological “good ole days” of the church. I say mythological because I am not convinced that the “good ole days” were all that good, but we humans have this nasty habit of making every memory a little better than it actually was. The church of the 1950s is gone. So is the church of the 1960s-1980s. In fact, the church of 2012 no longer exists. The church of December 17, 2013 is about to disappear. In the Gospels, Christ was always moving forward, always pressing on to his goal: Jerusalem. In the same way, the Body of Christ (the church) is always moving forward towards the goal of the New Jerusalem . Rob Bell’s new book, “What We Talk About When We Talk About God” has some great insights into this matter. We so often think that anything that is good has to stay the same or it will stop being good. Think about this: is the person (or pet or family member or performing artist) you are in love with the exact same that they were the moment you fell in love with them? I sure hope not. Both you have grown and matured and learned and changed. And yet, you are still in love. Without opening a huge can of worms, it is also worth noting that the “good ole days” of the church were only “good” for a select group of people. Minorities of all types did not share in the same “good ole days” of the church. Some of these minority groups are living in what could be considered their “good ole days” as we speak. We need to check our own perspectives before we start speaking for anything as big, diverse, and mysterious as the church.

4. Young adults are not actually leaving the church. The “breaking news” in church life for the past fifty years has been how the new generation (pick one: Generation X, Y, Z, Millenials, etc.) is lazy, disrespectful towards tradition and is leaving the church in record numbers. Someone will no doubt point out the surveys and polls that show that a growing number of young adults self-identify as “Nones” and that every year the number of non-church goers rises. Here is another figure: the median age of my class at seminary is 27. You read that right. Half of the Class of 2015 at the largest Episcopal seminary in the United States is under the age of 27. Young adults like my classmates and myself are so drawn to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the Episcopal Church that we would go to seminary, in the face of this false narrative of decline (check out this lecture by the Dean of VTS on this myth), and give our lives to the service of Christ and the church. Many parishes and Dioceses across the Episcopal Church have thriving youth and young adult programs that are attracting tons of people. Folks like Jason Evans in the Diocese of Washington are doing great work to bring young adults into the church because they recognize this fact: the Episcopal Church is in a wonderful position when it comes to young adults. Survey after survey shows that young adults want authenticity, tradition, and reverence in their worship (for more on the research see Dr. David Gortner’s book). Right off the bat you should have noticed that these are three descriptions of the Episcopal Church: authentic in our worship, supported by the Anglican tradition, and with a healthy dose of reverence that is missing from most other places in society.

This list is not exhaustive or authoritative. It is not my thesis and has not been researched as such. This post is simply to observation of a young adult who is tired of being told that people my age don’t go to church and that the church is quickly dying. I reject this narrative and propose instead that we keep our eyes on Christ and keep being the church (to each other and to the world).

As Christians, we claim that there is a King and a Kingdom coming that will make everything right and new, therefore we have no time for the cynicism that pervades much of American culture. As this wave of negativity and ‘what-if’ seeps into the life of the church, we must stand against it and with the cloud of witnesses proclaim, “Alleluia!” To paraphrase the book of Esther,  we were made for such a time as this. We do not know what the church will look like in the future, but we can be sure it won’t look like it did in the past. There are already many groups that have stepped up to the task of working towards the changes that need to happen in the church. The Task Force for Reimagining the Episcopal Church  is hard at work on the national level and individual Dioceses have started groups to come together, pray, and imagine what the church can be. Honoring those who have come before, helping those in the church today, and laying the foundation for a church that will serve the people of God well into the future.

We are not called to put on sackcloth and beat our chest at the end of the church. We are called to proclaim that that God we serve is not a God of the dead but of the living. Doomsday is coming, sure. Until that time, let us be the Body of Christ to a world in desperate need.