19th Sunday after Pentecost (Pr. 23) October 15,2006 “Series B”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Dear Heavenly Father, Through the power of your Holy Spirit, help us to love you with all of our heart, and soul, and mind, and strength. Help us to love you, not only with our words, but also with our actions. Above all, help us to reflect to those around us your word, which you have revealed to us through your Son, Jesus the Christ. This we ask in his Holy name. Amen.
This past week, I attended our synod convocation, which was held at the Riverside Inn, Cambridge Springs. The presenters for the educational sessions were Robert Bacher and Kenneth Inskeep, co-authors of the book: CHASING DOWN A RUMOR – The Death of Mainline Denominations, [Augsburg Press].
In their presentations, Bacher and Inskeep shared with us their research, which indicated that although mainline Protestant denominations, such as our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, are experiencing serious declines in membership, this does not necessarily signal the end of these churches. In fact, they began their presentation with a quote published in the New York Journal, June 2, 1897, in which Mark Twain wrote, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”
What prompted their study was a report published in Newsweek, August 9, 1993, which was entitled, “Dead-end for the Mainline? The mightiest Protestants are running out of money, members, and meaning.” This report suggested that if statistics continue in the current direction, it will be “lights Out in 2046” for most of the mainline Protestant churches.
Now without ignoring the seriousness of the statistical trend of decline in our church, Bacher and Inskeep went on to express that the term “death” is truly an exaggeration. Granted, the membership of our congregations is not what it was in the late fifties and early sixties. And the truth is, we may never see those numbers again.
As Inskeep pointed out, the churches flourished at that time due to several factors which do not exist today, two of which I would like to briefly mention. First, there was an underlying belief in America at that time, a sort of ethic embraced by the majority, that if you belonged to the church, worshiped on a regular basis, the world would become a safer and better place to live. In many ways, this concept defined the mission of the church.
As one who grew up in that era, I can relate to this principle. There were thirty-three persons in my confirmation class. Our morning at school opened with a reading of Scripture and a prayer, followed by the class praying the Lord’s Prayer. And although I engaged in my share of teen antics and devilish behavior, the guilt that I often felt for such behavior was not just how I may have betrayed my parents’ expectations, but also the guilt of betraying God’s expectations of me.
But today, that ethic is no longer widely embraced by the general population. Instead of viewing our membership in the church as a means by which we might grow in faith and enable God’s Spirit to remake us in God’s image, people today are more concerned about how the church can meet their individual needs. Rather than looking at how faithfully the congregation proclaims God’s Word, people seem more interested in the size of their youth program, the fellowship activities, and emotional dynamic of the worship service.
The second factor that I would like to mention that has changed since the peak of membership in the church during the late fifties and early sixties, is that it took place during the baby-boom era. As I have mentioned before, my father was one of twelve children in his family. And although I only have one brother as a sibling, and not one of my father’s siblings had more than a few children, when we gathered as an extended family, we often numbered more than we do here on a Sunday morning.
To make his point, Ken Inskeep said that as he was doing his research, he attended a worship service, conducted by one of our bishops on a visit to a congregation in his synod. He lightheartedly suggested that if the bishop wanted to see the membership of his synod increase, he should do as the Roman Catholics do, and place a ban on birth control. That way, the number of children in each family would increase, and reverse the trend of declining membership. To his quip, Inskeep said, the bishop responded, “Do you really think that will help? Just look at the age of the membership of this congregation. I don’t even think ‘Viagra’ would help”
But then, as I sat and listened to the rest of their presentation, to the unique and important balance of the proclamation of the mainline church to our understanding of the Word of God that confronts us as both law and Gospel, I began to experience hope for the future. And in particular, as the presenters expressed the results of their research, which indicate the true health of a congregation, we here at St. John’s are doing fairly well.
No, we can not reclaim the past, even though the past is a part of our valued history. Perhaps we will never grow to the numbers of members that we had, prior to my coming to serve you as your pastor, when the mills closed, and we lost over 160 members, in less than two years. And yes, there have been some members who have left since I have become your pastor, for various reasons, including their dislike of me. But we are still a healthy congregation!
In all of Bacher’s and Inskeep’s research, the traits that make for a healthy congregation are the following: 1) the laity of the congregation own their role in the ministry of the congregation, in which the pastor is viewed as a resource, but not the sole direction of decisions made. 2) There is an emphasis put before the congregation which uplifts the needs of those outside the congregation. Even though there may be some who question the decisions of our Social Ministry Committee, there are plenty of means by which we have responded to help those in need beyond our own parish.
3) The congregation has an appreciation for the arts, which is manifest in the occasional use of drama during worship, special musical presentations and, if I might interject, murals on the walls that proclaim the stories of our faith. 4) We teach our youth and instruct them in the basics of our faith, and celebrate their understanding of what it means to live as a disciple of Christ.
Of course, here again I might interject an illustration from the Amish community that suffered the death of their children last week. Although I did not personally read or hear this story on TV, I was still deeply moved by the witness to God’s grace that this story proclaims.
A member of our congregation informed me that right after she had heard of the shootings of the young girls in the Amish school, an evangelical pastor felt called to go to that community to offer whatever help he could. He first went tot he home of the family of the person responsible for the death of those young girls, to offer God’s grace to them. After all, they are often the most neglected persons is such a tragedy.
However, when he was there at that home, the Amish came to offer their forgiveness. It was an experience that truly moved this pastor. But then, this pastor was invited into the home of a family that had lost one of their little girls in that tragic shooting. And as this pastor noticed the loving care in which the girl’s Amish mother prepared her daughter for burial, he listened to her grandfather explain to her brothers and sisters of the need and importance to forgive the person who took their sister from them.
The conclusion of the story was that when this pastor experienced this witness to the grace of God at work in that Amish community, he had to leave. And it is my understanding, that he left that community, without having ministered to them, but through their witness, he experienced the grace of God, active and alive in the lives of that community.
When I first heard that story, my heart was so moved by the witness of that Amish family and their community, that it was hard for me to recall that story, and retell it to others, without tears choking my speech.
This brings me to my final point. Our presenters suggested that the future of our church may well boil down to our ability to share with others the importance of our faith. Even though our numbers may decline, we need to be true to our faith, teach our youth, and challenge our adults, including our pastors, to be faithful.
In light of this, I actually challenged one of my best friends, as he was shooting pool. Pastor Burkness related to me that the last time he played on this particular table, a black man and a white man approached him and wanted to play for money. Bruce then told me that the black man was the shooter, and the white man was his backer. But then he added, “It really didn’t matter. I won a lot of money that night.”
I then asked Bruce, who is in no way a prejudiced person, if it really mattered what the color of that person whom he played pool with that night mattered. In fact, I even got more specific, and asked, “Do you think that we will ever be able to neglect a person’s skin color, and just say, “These guys approached me and wanted to shoot for money, and I beat them?” Bruce responded by saying, “Point taken. But I don’t know if we will, in our generation, get to that point.”
Well, I hope we do get to that point! I hope we all begin to take seriously the need to live our lives as a witness to the grace of God that can truly amend our lives, and enable us to be witnesses to God’s grace. I hope that we can echo the verses from the hymn that is to follow, and let it be an inspiration to us of the mission set before us, that we might follow Christ, and in this time of declining interest in the truth of our message, inspire us to witness to others of the grace we have already received.
Think of the word of the hymn we about to sing, especially the first verse, and let it inspire us to mission and service. “The Church of Christ, in every age, beset by change, but Spirit-led, must claim and test its heritage, and keep on rising from the dead.” More than this, Think of the words of our second lesson for this morning, in which the author of
Hebrews says, “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” God is there, to not only help us know our guilt, but also to help inspire us to witness, to tell our story, about how God inspires us to live by faith. Regardless of our numbers. God’s grace inspires us to carry on as his church.
Amen.
