Telling the Story Part 4: Talking about Faith

It was well over one hundred degrees outside when I heard a knock on the front door of my air-conditioned third floor walk-up. When I answered the rush of heat in the foyer nearly knocked me backwards. Standing before me I saw two young men dressed in white dress shirts and ties, with backpacks on their backs: Mormon Missionaries.
"Come in out of this heat!" I insisted. Dazed and a little surprised, they sat down and removed their backpacks.
"Have you been taking regular breaks?" I asked, concerned.
"Not really, " Elder Number One responded.
"Let me get you some cold water," I said, running to the kitchen. I brought each of them glasses of ice water.
They thanked me and and then started in on their spiel. Had I heard about the church of Jesus Christ?
I laughed. "Yes, but I'm not interested. I was just concerned about your safety on this hot day."
"Well, maybe you could try to convert us to your point of view," Elder Number Two suggested. Again, I laughed. This was clearly a clever gambit that they had been trained to use on us non-Mormons.
"No, thanks. I think you're fine just the way you are." Maybe because the heat had gotten to them, they gave up trying to evangelize me at this point and we just made polite chit-chat as they finished drinking their water. After I finished lecturing them about how they really should carry ample bottled water in their bags, they left and resumed their appointed rounds.
Most people, myself included, can't imagine doing anything like what those young men do. They must face near constant rejection every day, not to mention angry dogs and doors slammed in their faces, during their terms of service, which usually last two years. I did once have a job that involved walking door to door, for the City Directory (a book rendered useless by the Internet), but people tended to be nice to me once they figured out all I wanted from them was a little information. These days I don't knock on the doors of strangers very often, but I talk about my faith all the time. It comes with the territory of being a Pastor. It's like pretty much anything else--it gets easier with practice.
Most mainline Protestants don't like to talk about our faith. Most people work in secular settings, and we don't want to offend anyone or even get in trouble. We don't want to alienate our neighbors and make our friends feel awkward. But we tend not to even talk about our faith with each other--even in church. That's sad. The Congregational tradition talks about "testimonies of faith, not tests of faith" but we don't make testimonies very often, either. I think that's too bad. It's also endangering the future of our tradition. Mainline Protestant churches began to decline seriously right around the time that our members started having a lot fewer children. If we want our churches to survive, we need to do something that our forebearers in faith probably have not done for hundreds of years: many more of us need to start opening up about our faith. Some may not ever feel comfortable with it, and that's okay. But many more might find, as I have, that it isn't as tough as they feared.
This is part of a series. Read the introductory post here:
Read Part 2, about Offering Hospitality, here.
Part 3, about Telling the Story without Words, is here.

Telling the Story Part 3: Moving Beyond Words

The plastic flamingos that live outside of United Church on the Green in New Haven, Connecticut are a great example of telling the story without using words. The flamingos carry a humorous message on their bellies in case they are stolen. Their attire changes frequently, based on the season.

It is said that actions speak louder than words. Protestant churches practice two sacraments: Baptism and Holy Communion. Participation in these sacraments, according to tradition, involves offering an "outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace." Sacraments are the most important rituals that we practice, but other rituals commonly practiced in our churches also communicate our values. Some churches ask worshipers to stand during certain parts of worship as a sign of respect. Some congregations turn and face the cross while singing the traditional song known as the "Gloria Patri." In most churches, the offering is brought to the front of the church and prayers of thanksgiving are offered over it. While these rituals are not sacraments, for some church members it just "doesn't feel right" if these parts of worship are changed or omitted. This is because part of the power of a ritual comes from repetition. Doing the same things (or the same kinds of things, such as singing hymns) in more or less the same order on a regular schedule makes people feel good. It's just part of being human. Also, apparently the older we get, the less variation we like in our rituals. The problem is, the old rituals don't speak to younger people the same way they do to older people. And without younger members, churches die.

There is no easy way to deal with this conflict in the way churches worship and live out their faith commitment together in worship and in other aspects of the life of the church, but one thing I learned from my Church Administration professor as well as from several mentors is not to take things away at first, but rather to add things. One of the easiest places to add rituals is in the Children's Time. People like this part of the service to be fun, and kids love receiving stuff. When I pass out things in worship I like to have enough to provide whatever it is to the entire congregation. That is why this blog is called "A Time for All." For example, every St. Nicholas Day (the first Sunday in December) I would have the kids pass out little treat bags to the entire community. The bags included a few chocolate kisses, some gingerbread cookies, a candy cane and a clementine (a tiny tangerine) as a way of providing a magical foretaste of the coming season of Christmas. The adults seemed to love this tradition as much or even more than the kids. I believe that part of telling the story is doing things in worship (and in other aspects of the life of the church) that make us feel the way we felt when we were kids, and we snuggled up in our blankets and begged our parents to read our favorite story again. In the words of a popular hymn, 

Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

This is part of a series. Read the introductory post here:

Read Part 2, about Offering Hospitality, here.

Part 4, Talking about Faith, can be found here.

Telling the Story Part 2: Offering Hospitality

Recently I wrote a well-received blog entry offering insider tips to church seekers--people who are interested in joining a church. This entry comes at that particular question from the opposite viewpoint--how to help churches prepare to receive seekers in a way that makes them consider returning or even becoming active in their congregation.

Offering hospitality is an important way that Christians tell the story of our faith--perhaps the most important way, because if we don't make people feel welcomed, we won't get the opportunity to tell our story in other ways.

Most mainline churches think they are pretty good at this. In reality, most of them are pretty terrible at it, although their misperception is understandable. Mainline churches have traditionally operated on the principle that they are not very good at introducing adults to Christianity. They have tended to rely on a combination of having children and recruiting new members from people who are switching denominations or who have recently moved to the area. That strategy is not going to work anymore, according to a study that linked a decline in church membership to a decline in family size. Churches that want to survive have got to learn to offer hospitality a lot better--and many of them need to learn it in a hurry.

What does hospitality look like? This may sound intimidating, but hospitality starts with the exterior of the building. Recently my husband and I drove by a church on our way home on Christmas Eve. I've never been to the church or met anyone who goes there, but from what I could see from the street at twilight it looked welcoming.  Huge colorful banners with seasonal words like "joy" rustled in the wind, and the doors kept opening to welcome more and more people. Not all churches can afford banners like that, but churches that want to attract new members should consider positioning people outside during the time that people begin arriving for worship, to offer directions, help with parking or even just to offer a friendly wave and welcome. Most churches don't do that. In fact, most churches can be surprisingly intimidating. 

Not long ago I had an experience I have not had in a very long time--I visited a church "incognito," the way a seeker does. I have obscured identifying details somewhat, but what I'm describing here are mistakes that are not unique to this congregation. I Googled the name of the church and found a website that was sort of sterile, matter-of-fact and filled with Christian in-group words like "pastoral."  My husband and I were able to find out the address and the time of the Sunday service on the website. It also included a photo of the church exterior, which made it easy to find the building. When we arrived we were a little uncertain about parking but found the adjacent lot. There were signs that indicated that it was okay to park there but no clear signs about where we should enter the church for the service. After we parked we walked halfway around the building trying doors and found all of them locked. We turned back and headed back toward the parking lot, where someone motioned from their car towards the entrance. When we entered nobody was there to greet us. One older lady looked me up and down and said nothing. A couple of people who were milling around muttered hellos. I feel compelled to note that we did not look out of place. We were freshly showered and dressed like conventional middle class people and our clothing and appearance were similar to that of the people our own age at the church. 

We wandered into a common area and on the other side we finally saw a small sign that pointed us in the right direction for worship. A child greeted us at the door and handed us a bulletin. We found a seat near the rear. The person seated in the row in front of us said hello. My husband said hello, offered his hand to shake and said his name. The person took his hand and smiled but did not continue conversing with us.  A woman sat next to us, nodded coolly in our direction in what I'm sure she meant as a gesture of welcome, and then moved toward us to offer a hearty hello to the person sitting in front of us. She then moved to the seat beside him. When the service began a member offered a welcome from a lectern and asked everyone to greet one another. The people around us shook our hands and offered simple greetings. The service bulletin and the worship leaders offered directions for how to participate in worship that were helpful to us as people who have attended many church services, but which might have been confusing for someone who had little previous contact with Christianity. During the time of announcements the woman who had moved away from us indicated that she was in charge of a ministry, which made me think that at least she knew that we were not regular members. The age of the others near us also made me suspect that at least some of them either knew or had reason to suspect that we were visitors, but none of them was particularly friendly or welcoming to us as newcomers. 

At several points during the worship we were informed by church leaders that we were welcome there, but actions speak much louder than words. Prior to the Pastoral prayer the Pastor invited people to share their joys or concerns with the congregation. Most people who come to church as a seeker are there because of a crisis or problem and would love to talk on-on-one to someone caring about this concern. This was true for my husband and me. The night before we had learned that a friend around our age had died unexpectedly. My husband was so saddened by this that he felt he wouldn't be up to responding to potential friendly overtures of church members. As it turned out, of course, he needn't have worried.

The Pastor would have likely been friendly and welcoming to us, of course, but he was new, and the church member standing next to him when he greeted us at the end of the service didn't indicate to him that we were visitors.

As a longtime Christian and Pastor I am fairly certain that everything we experienced can be explained by ignorance or shyness. Many church members have only belonged to one church for their entire lives and have no idea how to make a seeker feel welcome, as they have never been a church seeker themselves. This congregation relied on the public proclamations of welcome and felt no need to add individual personal ones. I'm sure this stemmed at least in part from wanting to not overwhelm visitors (something that is also a huge mistake that some churches make.) The church members who were more naturally friendly and outgoing had clearly not been trained or placed in positions where they would be the first to greet visitors.

My husband says that he did like the worship service and he would consider being the one to be friendly and outgoing and introduce himself. As a person with more experience in church seeking I advise against that for most church seekers. I've done it and it has always led to future regrets. I guess it is possible that it could work out, particularly if you are an outgoing take-charge type of person, but if you are at all shy and reserved or are in some sort of a crisis in your life right now you need to find a church that is more open and friendly to newcomers.

If you think your church may be falling into similar patterns, do not despair. It is possible to change but it starts with awareness. I'm not going to go into a step-by-step plan here but there are books that can help guide you in the process. I have found books by Diana Butler Bass helpful (particularly Christianity for the Rest of Us.) I have had the most success with the Unbinding the Gospel series by Martha Grace Reese. 

One of the pitfalls of developing awareness about hospitality is that it can cause a sort of panic to take hold in the church. I have experienced a church member actually yelling at other church members for what she perceived as not offering hospitality in the best way. There is no reason to beat yourselves and your fellow church members up, but if your church is losing ground in terms of numbers, you do need to develop a sense of clarity and urgency around this issue.

Has your church found success in telling their story through hospitality? If so, how?

This is part of a series. Read the introductory post here:
Part 3, about Telling the Story without Words, here.
Part 4, Talking about Faith, can be found here.

Telling the Story Part 1

Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away!--Isaiah, Chapter 49, verse 1

This month I am focusing on the concept of "telling the story." We are people of the book, like the Hebrew people with whom we share our spiritual ancestry, but it took a while for the book to be written. What we now call the Old Testament started out as stories and rules for living passed down from one generation to the next over a period of hundreds of years.  The actual writing of the Bible is estimated to have begun around 1000 years before the birth of Christ. However, it was not until after the Hebrew people experienced a painful forced exile in the foreign country of Babylon (land that today is mostly part of Iraq)  that the Hebrew people began to really organize the texts into something one could call scripture. For most of their early history the Hebrew people were people of the land, but with the codification of scripture they became people of the book, an innovation that has enabled their religion to survive periods of persecution, hardship and exile.

Modern day American Christians tend to feel as though this is a period of hardship or even persecution. Most churches are shrinking in membership at a time when the United States population is growing. Churches are growing older in average age while the overall US population remains young.  At first glance makes it seems as though the churches that are growing offer stadium seating, surround sound and a variety of other expensive amenities. Most churches cannot compete with that, and few even bother to try. However, appearances can be deceiving. Some non-mega churches are in fact growing. They are growing because they have found a way to focus on telling their stories of faith--both the stories of individuals in the congregation, and the larger story of the faith that we all embrace. 

We are part of a great tradition of testimonies of faith, and we need to put our focus on telling our story more often and in more ways.

How can we tell the story? Each of my blog entries in January will focus on a specific way that churches can tell the story. 

What is your favorite way of telling the story of your faith? Share in the comments below.
This is part of a series. 
Read Part 2, about Offering Hospitality, here.
Part 3, about Telling the Story without Words, here.
Part 4, Talking about Faith, can be found here.

Angels Watching Over Me

Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his host!-Psalm 148, vs. 2

On the Sunday between Christmas and New Year's I decided it would be a good idea to highlight angels in the Bible. Members of the North Canaan Congregational Church , where I was preaching that Sunday, agreed that this was a great idea, and pulled together to make what is often a low-attendance, low-energy Sunday into a special celebration. I preached a sermon about angels, we sang hymns and anthems featuring angels, and members of the congregation brought in angels from home to decorate the windowsills. One member even created the little peanut angel ornaments to distribute to the other worship attendees. Special thanks go to Gertrude Anderson for helping to pull the event together.

Angels

Now after [the Magi] had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” --Matthew 2:13

Most Americans believe in Angels. Even a majority of non-Christians believe in Angels, as well as four in ten people who never attend religious services. In the Bible, Angels (sometimes translated as "Messengers", as in messengers from God) are everywhere. The passage of scripture I quoted at the beginning of this blog entry is one of many famous passages of scripture about a person receiving a visit from an Angel. This particular angelic visit changed history, as it probably saved the life of the young Jesus. It also raises some interesting questions about the nature of Messenger-Angels. After Joseph takes his young son and wife to Egypt, Herod has his soldiers kill all the boys in the area who are roughly the age that he thinks Jesus would be. According to estimates of population in the area at the time, that amounts to about eighteen children killed, which is a pretty awful massacre. Why didn't the angels warn those fathers about the pending danger? Or did angels warn them as well, but for some reason they couldn't hear or understand the warning, or maybe they just ignored it? Scripture is silent on this question, and we will never know.

People who claim a special ability to see angels claim they are pretty much everywhere all the time, as depicted in the German indie movie "Wings of Desire."   (If you've never seen it, the film is more like a long visual poem than a traditional movie, but it contains many beautiful and interesting and even humorous ideas about angels and humanity and the interplay between the two. I didn't love the movie while I was watching it, but almost fifteen years after I first saw it I still think about the ideas and images in it.) Angels also appear in more popular films, such as "It's a Wonderful Life," which is one of my favorites. 

What do I think about angels? I guess that's a complicated question. People who have come through rough times in their lives have told me they feel that angels watched over them and sometimes guided them to safety while all the terrible things they went through unfolded.  When I was younger I was often skeptical about these statements. I thought, if an angel was watching over you, surely they would have told you in no uncertain terms to just dump your abusive husband and get on with your life. Now I see things differently. Angels seem to speak very gently and quietly, and modern people, either by habit or inclination, don't seem to listen for them or to them much at all.

What if we took some time every day to consciously look and listen for Angels? We wouldn't need to change our beliefs at all to open our hearts and minds a tiny bit and just listen. Would it change anything for us? Would we start making different decisions, and start making decisions differently? I think it's a good question for us to ask ourselves.

If you are at the end of your rope

This is a post for anyone having some sort of severe crisis. I am posting it just before Christmas because a crisis can feel even more difficult during this time of year, but this list has information that is useful year round. As these links illustrate, no matter what sort of crisis you are experiencing, there is a resource available to help you.  (If you a feeling just a little bit "down" during the holidays, check out my previous post on "Holiday Blues.")

If you are experiencing a crisis during the Christmas season (or at any other time), here are some resources that might help.

For Prayers: If you feel the need for someone to pray for and with you, try the Silent Unity 24-hour prayer hotline, 1-800-NOW-PRAY (669-7729). 

For emotional difficulties: The national suicide prevention hotline is for anyone who feels they are in some kind of crisis, regardless of whether they are thinking of suicide. Visit their website or call them any time day or night at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).  

If you are living in an abusive situation: The National Domestic Violence Hotline can help. Visit their website or call 1-800-799-7233 | 1-800-787-3224 (TTY)

Homelessness: If you are homeless or fear that you are about to lose your home, visit the website for the National Coalition for the Homeless.

If you are a homeless teen or a teen thinking of running away from home, call the National Runaway Switchboard  at 1-800-621-4000 or visit the Switchboard's website at http://www.nrscrisisline.org/.

For Hunger: If you are hungry or don't have secure access to regular meals, there is a National Hunger Hotline.  Visit their website or call at 1-866-3hungry (1.866.348.6479) or 1-877-8hambre (1.877.842.6273).

If you lack healthcare coverage: go to https://www.healthcare.gov/. 

If you are experiencing grief: The national suicide prevention hotline helps individuals experiencing problems with grief as well. Visit their website or call them any time day or night at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).  

If you are grieving the loss of a pet: The ASPCA pet loss hotline can help. Visit their website or call (877) GRIEF-10.

For Veterans in crisis: If you are a Veteran of the US Military and having any kind of crisis, the Veteran's Crisis Line is for you.  Call 1-800-273-8255 and Press 1 or send a confidential text to 838255 at any time of the day or night and any day of the year.

If you or someone you love is terminally ill: Visit the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization website to connect with local services.