[Jan Edmiston, an
associate presbyter for Chicago Presbytery, has been writing about “closing
churches” in her blog. And while it’s
been good food for thought, it’s stirred up some other feelings for me. Here’s an unsolicited response, not meant to
be critical of her work, but in conversation—that in writing, helped me work
through some angst—not about Jan or her work, but about where we find ourselves
in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).]
Jan Edmiston, a
gifted Presbytery staff-person whose work I respect, wrote in her blogpost of
July 8th, 2015, that we should “Imagine that the Church [we] love is
dying.”
(You should check out
Jan’s blog and the rest of her post here: https://achurchforstarvingartists.wordpress.com/2015/07/08/the-difficult-truth-about-creating-the-future-church/).
Respectfully, I
can’t.
The Church belongs
to God. God is a God of life. For me, the death of a/the Church is a
non-starter.
But I also know well
what Jan and other church leaders want to get at. Both we as individuals and the congregations
and councils we’re a part of, need to “be the Church”—the real Church of Jesus
Christ. We can’t simply cling to our old
buildings and the ways that have met us where we are comfortable and wait to be
relieved, if we want to serve Jesus Christ!
To serve Jesus we must be Jesus—emulating his work and witness.
Churches aren’t
dying. They’re struggling to look like
Jesus.
We all know
this. And it’s still hard.
I’ve been grieving
about my beloved Church for a while now.
It’s very much like she’s dying.
But I’ve experienced the illness not just in places we can identify and
agree “where churches need to close”—it’s more like an illness that afflicts us
from top to bottom, and bottom to top, left to right and all around. It’s surely related to sinfulness, real and
present and unavoidable when you get human beings involved. It was that way for Jesus, too. You do remember the stories?
I’ve spent a
quarter-century in leadership in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) serving congregations
and at each level of the church’s councils.
I’ve witnessed the adoption of one downsizing and consolidation plan
after another as we’ve practiced to perfection “circle the wagons,” responding
to decline in members, money, and ministry.
We’ve chosen re-allocating dollars and shifting position descriptions to
meet new realities rather than re-envisioning and reconnecting in response to
God’s continuing and ongoing call to us.
In response to our fears, we’ve done our very best to preserve the
status quo, trying to make the decline as less-painful as possible. So now, there’s little downsizing and
shifting work left to be done; and each adjustment really hurts.
It’s true. The Church needs some kind of transfusion. And in her blog piece, Jan sees one kind of
hopeful possibility where the generosity of Jesus looks absent:
“We have churches that need to close. They no longer serve anyone but themselves, and even that service is barely satisfying much less life-changing. They exist for themselves. They vie for personal power. (“I’m in charge of the kitchen fund and you can’t have any money for new spoons unless you come through me.”).”
And she’s right
about everything past the word, “close.”
Here’s my struggle
with closing. All of the congregations and
councils I’ve ever served or heard about, in some way, at one time or another
(but not always or in all ways), fit this description. And somehow, when we talk about closing
churches we don’t’ talk out loud about ALL the congregations that fit Jan’s
criteria, where “service is barely satisfying much less life-changing; where
they exist for themselves; where they vie for personal power—oh, and by the way
many have plenty of members and money to keep going for decades! Instead, we talk as if we’re working from a
list of churches where the “data” empirically dictates they are “no longer
viable” because membership is too small, the corporation is financially caput,
and the building is located in a non-vital place.
Have we really
forgotten what Jesus and his disciples looked like?
True. It’d be real nice if we could eliminate the
drag of those “less fortunate” churches unable to sustain themselves and be
able to use their unexhausted resources in other places. But it just sounds too much like the
disciples with Jesus in the deserted place: “These people need something to eat
and we can’t help them. Can you send
them away?”
I recognize the practicality—there
may be way too many congregations with less than 12 adherents on our Church’s
roster; but the proposals for moving them on sound a lot like that scene from
Monty Python’s Holy Grail, where the
cart to collect the dead plague victims is wheeled by with an invitation to
“bring out the dead; ” only then, a man appears to “pass off” a relative “who’s
not dead yet;” then the argument ensues about not being able to accept people
are “aren’t dead yet;” then the official whacks the clearly “not dead yet” man
in the head so he’s more passably dead.
I feel
whacked.
Simply shifting
the money from churches that “need to close” to churches that deserve to remain
open is nothing more than a shell game. Because
we’re talking about the Church of Jesus Christ that can look alive or not-so-much
in all kinds of forms!
From where I sit, while
closing churches helps us more realistically “balance the books,” the real need
is for all of us individually and corporately to participate in the transformed
life demonstrated, offered, and inaugurated by Jesus Christ! Because the same kind of transformation that
leads some of us into brave new things is the transformation that’s needed for
congregations to joyfully participate in sharing everything that’s available to
them for the promotion of the Kingdom of God!
Then, it’s not a demand to get out of the way, it’s a gift. Jesus is God’s gift. God is always giving. God gives life, even where we can only see
death—for example.
The work that we
have to do, individually and collectively, is “Jesus”—it’s both the “new to us”
and the old answer!
The true church,
in all its forms, looks like Jesus. Both
uncomfortably poor and extraordinarily generous.
But, “We have
churches that need to close,” sounds a lot like “get off my lawn.” (And I don’t
think Jan is saying that, at all!)
I wish the
conversation was a lot more focused on living and looking like Jesus. I wish we asked ourselves at every level, “Are
we looking like Jesus?” And if the
answer is “no,” or “not as much as we could,” then, if we want to try to live
and look like Jesus, this helps offer a corrective course. For me, this is a much more productive way of
discerning together what God is calling us to be and become.
© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and
Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania
