Note: What follows is an article I wrote for my church's most recent edition of its monthly newsletter. While written with the small parish I am a member of in mind, it may resonate with what other small congregations are facing or currently coping with. This post serves as a follow-up on my posts on the Priestless Parish.
From the First Epistle of Peter:
“Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious. ... ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God.
1 Peter 2: 2:1-3, 9, 15-17.(KJV abridged)
When we started the search process for a new rector more than a year and a half ago, our Bishop made a comment, something to the effect, that he expected our church (our congregation) to look different in five years. Something else that caught my attention during the search process came as a question that apparently all search committees and all prospective candidates are asked to answer, “What are you doing to prepare for the church of the future?”
The message that comes through our bishop's expectation and the preparation question is that change is in the wind. The world is changing. The Church is changing, and the message is clear that Christ Episcopal Church must change or it will be swamped and lost in the sea of changes taking place all around us.
What the ecclesiastical structure of the Church has not done a very good job of throughout the centuries is promoting the priesthood of all the faithful. We hear mention of it from time to time in vague homiletic tones, but the concept of the faithful taking seriously their priestly role has not been emphasized as it should have been, but that is changing; particularly, in the Episcopal Church. We, the laity, need to take this priestly role of ours seriously here at Christ Church; especially now that we’re coping with uncertain times.
We need to discuss the changes that are around us and are affecting us. We need to discern how and what we must change in order to present Christ in a changing world. By being serious about our priestly role, I am not talking about going around wearing a “dog collar” as the English call the wide white band worn by many Anglican priests or taking on specific liturgical roles that ordained priests perform. It’s about becoming servants in a very literal sense.
We need to face some difficult realities that have contributed to shrinking congregations everywhere. Part of the reason congregations shrink and die is because they don’t exercise faithfully in exercising their faith. They say they need a priest or a pastor because they’re so use to being served pew-side. They want a priest who will serve them; to give them interesting sermons that don’t upset them, to give them communion, to baptize their children, to marry them off, to bury their dead, and to be on-call whenever any need arises and, above all, are good at not making many demands on them. And when the priest doesn’t live up to those kind of expectations members can become quickly critical and “snarky;” especially, if they don’t like the priest changing the things they have become comfortable with. They expect the priest to take their snarky criticisms without complaint because the congregation is paying the priest’s bills.
They say they want leadership, but then rarely follow the priest’s lead, unless it suits them. Eventually, ennui sets in and the church dies. If that sounds familiar and we don’t want to end up becoming a thing of the past, we shouldn’t expect that getting a priest will fix those types of problems. It’s up to us.
Let’s face it: We need to become the servants who serve, and by that I don’t mean throwing money at things as being equivalent to serving. Yes - money is a reality we all must deal with and deal with wisely but being part of this royal priesthood literally means serving others, person to person and person by person. It means getting our hands dirty – reaching out to the perceived untouchables in our midst – touching the dead in order to bring them to life. That’s the way of Jesus, and that’s what the priesthood is about; presenting the face of Jesus Christ to the world around us.
In our parish survey, a number of us said we need more people. Is it because we need people in the pews who will throw enough money in the offering plate so we can afford a full-time priest to serve us?
The bigger question is: Do people beyond our doors really need us?
Do we present Christ as a real presence and as an answer to what others are longing for in their hearts and in their lives?
We said we’re inclusive and welcoming, but are we?
Or are we inclusive and welcoming to those who look like most of us, act like most of us, and are opinionated like most of us. Because the reality is most of the people like us already belong to our church or are in another church.
Who are we not reaching?
We should view and use this interim period as God giving us the grace of time to figure out our ministry as a congregation. We should be doing this right now.
We need to embrace our roles as priests – as servants– as the face of Christ in our community. We need to sincerely want and earnestly pray for the fire that is God’s Holy Spirit to motivate us, to engage us in ministry beyond the doors of our church, and to push us beyond our comfort level in order to reach those who have not yet been reached. We need to embrace them in the name of Christ and build the Kingdom of God in our midst.
We can’t afford to keeping looking back to what was or longing for people who left our church and seeing them as an answer to our empty pew (financial) problem. They are always welcome here as children of God, but we who are here in the pews on most Sundays need to move on and take ownership of our priesthood and become the people God intends us to be.
God’s love for us and our small congregation is far more than any of us can imagine. God can and will work wonders among us and work wonders through us – right now if we start putting our “hands to the plow” without looking back as Jesus advised in the Gospel of Luke to those who would be his disciples.
**********
Norm
No comments:
Post a Comment