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Progressive Church As Exemplified In Two Months Of "Short" Posts
A Guidebook To Progressive Church #17
November 10th, 2022
A Dozen Lesser Known Facts About Worship At GSLC:
1. For the last year we’ve been reading from womanist Old Testament scholar Wil Gafney’s “Women’s Lectionary,” which includes using “she/her” for God when translating the Psalms.
2. Although we’ve typically recited the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed in worship, in the new year we’ll begin a cycle of reciting other creeds, especially the Magnificat (Advent), the Beatitudes (Lent), the Prayer of St. Francis (Easter), and maybe if we’re feeling radical Dorothee Soelle’s Credo or our own version of it.
3. In December we return to using the Revised Common Lectionary, a three-year cycle of readings from Scripture (one from Old Testament, one from the epistles, one from the Psalms, one from the gospels) that we share in common with thousands of churches across the world. 2022-2023 is Year A, the year of Matthew.
4. We tend not to do a lot of “me and my boyfriend Jesus” songs and try to weave more social justice songs into our worship. Except sometimes we do still sing the boyfriend songs because it’s kind of fun to consider Jesus as boyfriend.
5. We follow a “liturgy” or “ordo”, which means a fixed order of worship that includes a gathering rite, lessons from Scripture and a sermon on them, then Communion, and a sending. Although we also love “from the heart” prayers and worship, we believe that if you memorize something you know it “by heart.”
6. We have an organ AND a praise band every Sunday, so it’s like you’re at a concert with Creedence Clearwater Revival AND Yo-Yo Ma.
7. Because the acolytes have really gotten into it most Sundays you receive communion from kids. They’re good at it, and sometimes race to see who serves what. Anyone can receive communion at our church. That includes all children, any age.
8. We only serve gluten-free bread and juice because why divide the meal and exclude those with a gluten-intolerance or issues with alcohol. Plus gluten-free bread is tasty, and so is juice.
9. Our Sunday school team has begun doing their program during worship, exiting at the lessons and returning in time for communion. This gives the chance for small children to hear the gospel at a developmentally appropriate level, but still learn most parts of the liturgy.
10. You want to become a member? Members are as members do, so come and be active. Subscribe to our e-mail and get us your contact info. We offer a spiritual program during the Lenten season (spring/Easter) that culminates in an affirmation of baptism service or baptisms at the Easter Vigil (the Saturday evening of Easter weekend).
11. We started a new practice post-pandemic that has really taken off. It’s the mutual consolation of the saints, and basically we invite people at the conclusion of worship to go meet someone new and ask them, genuinely, how things are with their soul. It’s become a powerful way for the community to care for each other.
12. LGBTQIA+ folks not only participate in worship, but lead it. A significant portion of our worship and preaching team is LGBTQIA.
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November 9th
On Creating Shelter for Unsheltered Families in NWA and Turning Our Church Into a Shelter for LGBTQIA Youth and Young Adults
As a congregation the past few years we have become hyper aware of the multiple pressures resulting in increased houselessness in our community.
During the pandemic we helped countless households stay in their apartments or homes, assisting where we could with rent and utilities, and advocating for greater protections for renters.
As we have shifted to this new phase in the crisis with housing and shelter, I've been pondering our current strategies. I know, for example, that the Fayetteville program Hearth is maxed out and no longer accepting applications. So is FHA. New Beginnings is full. So is the Salvation Army. So is the domestic abuse shelter. 7 Hills, which provides much needed day center resources, doesn't actually provide shelter. And they're right now trying to fundraise simply to have enough day shelter space.
As we are preparing for winter, some local organizations are teaming up to provide emergency low-barrier shelter if temperatures go below 15 degrees (this is something you can volunteer to help with, message me if you're interested).
But this is not nearly enough. We have a crisis in our community that will only get worse as rents sky-rocket. In the past week I've had resource folks from more than one of these orgs just come and visit at my office and express their frustration and exhaustion.
As a socialist I wish the state and federal governments simply provided shelter for everyone. That would be the best solution. But that is unlikely to happen in our area because our government mostly doesn't care about the poor and often simply blames them.
Similarly, none of the biggest grant-giving organizations in our area (Walmart, Tyson, etc.) even have housing as a priority on their list of funding targets.
In other words, at the meta-level our housing crisis is intractable and unlikely to be addressed, at least in the short-term, by large systemic measures.
So I've been sitting around thinking about "the next right thing." And I know what it is.
In January I'm working to bring representatives from Family Promise to Northwest Arkansas to look at forming a chapter in our area. Family Promise organizes churches to provide emergency shelter for unhoused families. The focus is on families with children.
This is a gap in our community--there is almost no shelter for unhoused families.
I've got some links posted in the comments below. You can learn about Family Promise through the first link. You can subscribe to our church newsletter via the second link, and I'll be including updates on the Family Promise gathering once it is scheduled.
The other next right thing is for us to open some of our church space specifically for a LGBTQIA+ youth and young adult shelter. This is something we've been pondering for a while, but as I talk with case workers at area shelters, and also talk with staff at the schools, I realize this is a growing issue.
My friend Heidi Neumark pastors a church in Manhattan that provides shelter for LGBTQIA+ young people like this. She says many, perhaps a majority, come to Manhattan from the South. So developing a resource in Arkansas makes sense.
In December I'll be hosting a Zoom conversation with Heidi and their social worker Wendy. I'm happy to include all those interested in that Zoom call. Just let me know.
It will take multiple steps to get from point A to point B in this plan. However, I'm convinced that our little congregation can be part of the solution. I'm also convinced (because I drive around and see all the churches) that we have more than enough buildings and more than enough people to provide better shelter.
And if any of those working at the big foundations want to have a conversation and realign priorities so we buy just a few less Rothko's and build a few more shelters, please consider this the prod into that conversation.
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November 6th
The other day a friend told me they were a little tired of their pastors always saying that people needed to come back to church. This friend attends a large church here in Fayetteville. They liked something I'd said recently in a post, "If you just drive through the church parking lot Sunday morning and then feel you need to leave, that's fine. Consider it a test run."
I think a lot of us church people are struggling to say out loud what has really happened in these last three years. There may even be a bit of shame in it all… combined with a bit of relief when we learn we really are (at least many of us) going through the same thing… because when I finally do talk with colleagues about their churches post-pandemic, I hear very similar stories all across the country.
First, they experienced a lot of change. In some ways it felt like a turn-over.
Second, overall worship attendance in person on Sunday mornings is down around 1/4 to 1/3 from where it was.
I've heard this from Baptist pastors, Episcopalian priests, various Lutherans, etc. The only exception seems to be very rural churches.
What feels discombobulating (and I don't think I'm alone in this) is that many of those who haven't "come back" also haven't clarified their intentions. Many if not most of our church members still donate. They still follow church life on social media, stay connected with fellow members, etc. If I run into parishioners at the grocery store or on the trail, they emphatically and quickly say they mean to get back to church.
But...
The stories of why people aren't back yet are so varied. Some discovered that as an introvert it was simply far more relaxing to stay home Sunday morning and watch service on-line. Others discovered they just didn't need church that much. Still others started attending during the pandemic because they DID need church that much.
Overall, there’s just a level of exhaustion among everyone, and church is one of the spaces that feels “optional” and therefore the one from which folks take a break for rest.
On the other hand it’s also just about the delay of return. Many members of our church who haven't been inside the church for over two years are still showing up on Sundays, and sometimes even stating they feel like the Prodigal returning.
At the same time, there are so many new faces each week it's actually hard to keep up. We’re not a big congregation but I bet we average 10-20 new visitors every Sunday.
There appears to be a general spiritual search happening, in many directions all at once.
I’m trying to figure out how to stop thinking about the topic, and certainly not send out any more letters or give out any messages that just sound like the pastor complaining everyone needs to come back.
I know I can't get my congregation to DO any particular thing through a concerted effort. If I could, then the messages and invites and calls I've made already would have resulted in a big sweeping return. They haven’t. And that’s fine. I shouldn’t assume I have such a magic touch.
What I can tell you is how it feels to gather each Sunday morning with this much change.
What it feels like is vulnerable.
What it feels like is a moderate level of confusing. Like, since people really do know precisely how much of an impact our little church had and continues to have helping neighbors during the pandemic and after, how come people don't give of their time and resources here as freely as they give to football and rock concerts?
What it also feels like is living in a time of glorious emergence. Those who are present really want to be present. They’re all in. We introduced a time at the end of the service this fall inviting everyone to meet someone new and really ask each other how they're doing, and now there's a period of about 20 minutes or more at the conclusion of worship of what we call the "mutual consolation of the saints," and I think easily over half of people really stay and really talk and it’s noisy. In a good “people loving their neighbors” kind of way.
That's what you miss if you aren't there in person. You miss the serendipity of those encounters and what might emerge. That’s what’s poignant to me.
But I also get what’s attractive about sleeping in, catching up on the house-cleaning you couldn’t get do during the week, raking all the leaves. The demands of every day life in 2022 are substantial.
I really believe a part of moving faithfully in the world is having a true picture of it. What I'm offering here is a true picture of why I can't stop wishing folks would come back to church in greater numbers while also expressing understanding and sympathy for why they don’t.
All of that being said, more and more I do feel a calm coming over me each week. I walk to church most Sundays, and there just isn’t this weight. It feels like we are being who we are called to be as a church. Living the mantra: "We are who we are now." As adrienne maree brown says in Emergent Strategy, "Small is good. Small is all."
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Also November 6th
This is your daily reminder that Moms for Liberty is a hate group and is targeting our school board and teaching staff and students with bullying and bigoted tactics on a daily basis.
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November 1st
Today I’m subbing in Child Development and Growth. Once again a reminder the kids are alright.
The sub office said they have 45 teachers out today, and as of 8:30 am as classes were starting there were still 13 spots unfilled. In practice this means classes are regularly being combined, or students are placed in hallway study areas with one adult supervising multiple classes in a kind of holding pattern.
It also means teachers are regularly giving up needed prep hours to sub for one another.
One of the biggest concerns I have is the school district decreased pay for subs between last school year and this one by about 20%. Yes, by 20%. When there is a shortage of subs and inflation.
As we go into winter and flu season I have concern of even more severe shortage of subs. I also have real justice concerns that those supporting our schools as subs are paid less per hour than what most high schoolers make when hired for their first jobs.
We can do better.
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October 30th
I often wish I could interpret to the wider world, conservative Christians and really everyone, why it is that holding fun parties like Nightmare Before Gay Christmas is healing work.
Perhaps this will help: tonight a student from the university of Arkansas television came out and wanted to interview us about being being an affirming congregation. It took them a while just to cross the threshold into the building. It took a lot more questions for them to begin to process how different it really is. They were so nervous. Lots of religious trauma.
Because what we had was an entire building full of queer kids (plus a group playing Dnd) who just felt safe, as themselves. And this university student had never seen that, and wondered why he couldn’t find it on campus.
I sure wish he could. We try. It’s hard competing with bigoted churches whose annual budgets are 30-40 times ours. But I’m glad at least that our little party with the fog machine and great costumes and a little too much sugar and some tarot reading in the back corner could be a balm and sign of hope for him.
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October 24th
I'm entirely fascinated by the energy we are gathering for a "service" here at church that isn't specifically Christian but instead focuses on bodily practices and meal-sharing.
As we have gathered in small groups to brainstorm and imagine, the shape of the service has coalesced around two simple practices: opening with spiritual practices that are movement oriented (sitting, meditation, stretching, fascia work, etc.) and then moving into a meal with some facilitated conversation.
Our next meeting of the core team that will coordinate these services is this Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., and we will likely begin the Wednesday after thanksgiving. If the format interests you you're welcome to connect with the core team and planning.
So here's the part I find fascinating: churches have typically hosted worship for "believers" and so a lot of worship has included prayers, sermons, hymns, and creeds that make sense if the assumption is that everyone "believes" approximately the same thing and is willing to confess those beliefs together.
If you don't believe those things, you don't tend to want to join such gatherings.
And yet... here we have many folks who don't necessarily believe all the things but still wish to gather in meaningful community that is "Christian adjacent."
Historically, the church has hosted this kind of space as a time for inquiry. I think they used to call it a "seeker" service. But those services were still "doctrinal."
However, Christianity, much like other faith traditions, has a wide set of embodied practices that do not have to be explicitly tied to any particular creed. Meditation and silence. Meal-sharing and service. So although it has never occurred to me to have a "non-Christian" service at a Christian church, I can see why it makes sense, and why in particular although it may look a lot like traditions like Unitarian Universalist that are open and non-creed specific, nevertheless in another way it is a kind of interfaith practice that arises out of a peculiar way of being Christian.
I like to think of it as Being Human, which I think is also what we'll call the gatherings. Our church finds a lot of ways to be human together with people of other faiths or no faith at all, and we want to find ways to spend time together, know ourselves and one another better, and there are ways to do this.
The central point: you can have a "service" that doesn't lead to conversion, or focus on conversion in a particular direction or to just one faith. You can actually gather in ways that cultivate multi-faith belonging, that hold space for many faiths or even those pushed away by faiths, and there's a gentle center to all of that we can refrain from naming, in the same way our tradition sometimes refrains from naming "The Name."
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October 22
General notes for worshipping at GSLC:
You can dress how you want.
The Psalms refer to God as She/Her.
Right now we just have the one 10 am service but we’re launching a Wednesday service in December.
There are often interjections.
There’s a band AND an organ and choir.
Currently there’s children’s church kids go out during lessons and sermon and return for communion.
We don’t print bulletins. There’s a screen and a QR code.
You can bring your recycling (the stuff Sam’s Club takes). you can also fill the Friendly Fridge and the Little Free Pantry.
There are a lot of rainbows.
There’s a public labyrinth and Gaga ball pit.
If you drive through the parking lot and then decide you just can’t come in that’s fine too. Test runs are cool. And there’s a livestream.
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October 16th
I've now served as pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church for 12 years.
Can't say that I ever imagined serving in one congregation for this long.
I also can't say that I ever thought I would love it so much.
Today as I was driving across Missouri returning from marching band competition I had the chance to listen to the live stream of worship back at home.
It was a remarkable experience.
I had this major concern in the middle of my ministry at GSLC, right after the split over same-gender marriage in 2014. At that time there was a hyper focus on my leadership as the pastor of the congregation. To many who left the congregation I was the villain and to many who stayed I was the hero.
The reality: I was neither. I simply took one specific step, a hard one, and then accepted the costs whatever those were going to be.
Mostly I'm just a pastor with my own idiosyncrasies trying to be faithful.
Nevertheless a lot of the congregational identity was carried by my identity as pastor through that split because honestly, the church was made up of the people who decided to stay when others tried to vote me out.
Which brings me back to listening to the service today over the live stream. I really was in awe. This is a people who know who they are. Ted our longtime drummer and musician led the liturgy and presided at the Eucharist. Nanci, a member of our preaching team, delivered the sermon. We hosted a wonderful amalgam of band and bells and choir.
This whole community of people can very readily and wonderfully do the church thing while I'm off for a weekend helping with my daughter's marching band competition in St. Louis. We don’t have to call in any special outside support, although sometimes we do invite outside preachers just because it’s good and we like them.
This is how it should be, in my opinion. We have inflated the role of pastor in the wrong way in our communities, and part of what I’ve been working on is moving in different ways that are more anarchist and distributed.
This has been one of the things that I've really leaned into over the past few years —equipping people to preside at the meal and to preach so that there isn't this sense among us that somehow worship can only be hosted when ordained pastors are there.
Try this instead: People join together in praise to show the world who they are and whose they are. This is a better definition of the church than the current statement in the Lutheran confessions.
Her sermon sprung from her interaction with the translation notes from the creator of the Women's Lectionary, Wil Gafney, who said in her commentary that the text was familiar to her because of its frequent use in the black church of her youth. She admitted, honestly, that as a white Christian she did not share that same experience.
Then she faithfully brought that ancient text into conversation with a really horrible and poignant moment in the history of America, the lynching of Emmett Till. Then she spoke the gospel into that and spoke truth, naming that all lives can’t matter until black lives matter. And that health care can't be health care until it's also health care for trans kids.
One of the moms on the marching band trip with me this week mentioned that she'd heard how much our congregation had gone through because of the split and because of our commitment to standing in solidarity with LGBTQIA Christians.
And that’s true. And we're very, very different from those years ago. It's like, I've been the pastor of multiple congregations in the same place while maintaining certain kinds of unusual continuity.
I still try to figure out how I'm supposed to be as a pastor who stayed. Nobody stays. Pastors don't stay. When conflict comes the clergy are typically asked by bishops or others to move, and they comply, because honestly fighting through is incredibly hard. It's virtually the hardest thing I've done.
I do not know another pastor who went through a split like ours and stayed. And I've asked around.
I worry that the pastors who leave risk repeating in their career a careful maintenace of always tenuous "peace."
But that's just not what we've done at GSLC.
What has emerged over these last few years: I now inhabit a space as a pastor where I get to walk alongside this congregation as it expresses a way of being in the world that I love.
It's no longer that the congregation has to have me here in order for that identity to be part of who it is. Rather I get to align my identity and challenge myself and the congregation to keep exploring what it means to live faithfully in the way of Jesus.
It's a hard won (and always still tenuous) but freeing moment we're in, and the bonus is the beauty of all these people sharing the gifts of the Spirit in community.
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October 2nd
I think the average Anglo churchgoer lacks awareness of the difference in distance minority Christians have to travel in order to all meet at "the one table."
Last Sunday when Ozark Atolls hosted a thank you luncheon for our congregation, I mentioned during the sermon how important it was for our congregation to simply attend because the Marshallese have traveled so much farther, so very far, to prepare an amazing meal of their own foods and simply thank us (a thanks we hardly deserve, given all of our complicity in the harm done to the Marshallese Islands from nuclear testing and climate change).
I think we often think of nuclear testing and climate change and other systemic evils as far off things about which we have little control. And in a way that's true.
But in a local congregation the decision whether to help repair the damage done to other communities begins not with big social justice gestures but small steps, small steps like attending a lunch to which you are invited.
A couple of members in our congregation (very active ones, the kind who show up every Sunday and weekdays too) mentioned that they had not planned to attend the lunch because they didn't deserve a thank you or because honestly Marshallese food is foreign to them and they don't have a taste for it.
The message about the different distances traveling to the one table changed their minds, and they came, even if they didn't know how to eat the food and even if they were afraid they didn't deserve a thank you meal.
I know now from long experience that cultures coming together is hard work on both sides. Our Marshallese neighbors don't necessarily want to come into predominately Anglo spaces all the time either. We all tend toward our own, for a variety of reasons from simple comfort to habit to embarrassment or basic shyness.
What many Christians who have not traveled into other cultures may not know is how central hospitality is to other peoples. This isn't to say that Anglo Christians lack hospitality altogether, but our hospitality is largely optional and often tepid. I've visited many Anglo households where I wasn't even offered a glass of water.
By comparison, when I have lived in Eastern Europe and spent a day grape picking at a family garden, or visited places like a Druze village or Crow Indigenous community or a Swahili congregation, there is an elaborate process for hospitality that verges on the obligatory (this is expected, we aren't doing what we should do if we don't do this) mixed with unadulterated joy (it is so amazing to get to welcome this person/these people to our community).
This is one reason among many why missionaries often receive long training before spending time in another culture. There are approaches to accompanying other cultures that are more or less moral, more or less effective, and at a baseline there are ways to be prepared for cross-cultural immersion that facilitate those crossing the culture to feel more ready.
But when cultures come to us, when they arrived right in the neighborhoods where we live, the sign-posts for cross-cultural immersion are put up in our front yard. You don't have to book a flight or get a passport. There's no six month language tutorial. It's just suddenly, you find that your culture is layered in and with another culture, and it is the tiny decisions (I will or will not accept the invitation to this potluck) that become the Christian decisions.
This is made even more complicated by the reality that bringing congregations of different ethnicities together is different from sending a few missionaries. When you send missionaries, or do cross-cultural immersion, it's a select few who make the journey.
But when you bring whole congregations together from different cultures, everyone is along for the ride. Everyone plays a part, even if that part is simply a willingness to try taro for the first time or wait patiently for an event to start when you thought you'd be heading to Starbucks after worship.
I admire those parishioners who have helped me understand what a challenge it is travel the distance we're asking them to travel to meet our Marshallese neighbors. I admire all the more our Marshallese neighbors who have had to travel so far, so very far, to meet us where we are. They have traveled so much farther down the road in order to greet us warmly than we have a right to expect.
I invite anyone reading this to consider our local journey a synecdoche for the whole. Mutatis mutandi every community meeting another one across ethic boundaries and with massive justice disparities between them is going to encounter these struggles and challenges, and it will rarely be the massive righteous gestures that make for healing. It will be the small decisions of showing up, exercising patience, willingness to try things, simple caring, that will make for healing.
And all of this, interestingly enough, IS the gospel in action, because the entire gospel of Jesus Christ articulated in the New Testament hinges around a key concept, Christ's bringing together Jews and Gentiles: "For Jesus is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us" (Ephesians 2:14).
Our entire walk as Christians can be evaluated based on the extent to which we participate in Christ's continuing breaking down of those walls. And some of us have the responsibility of traveling farther than others, if there is going to be true equity and peace.
If you wish to work for racial healing in your communities, start here.
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