Being Presbyterian

Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
Good to have you with us.
We appreciate that you have been joining us for this series on Presby What,
a conversation about Presbyterians and Presbyterianism,
both historically,
current, and even some thoughts on the future.
Today is our last.
We finished today with some ideas about our own personal experiences of being Presbyterian,
and then from the vantage point of being pastors,
some reflections on what we think Presbyterian congregations are going to have to do
to thrive in the next era.
And we hope, I think, we have maybe stand at different
places, Michael, in terms of our long-term hopes for the PCUSA,
but I think at the local level,
Michael and I both join in the same place of hoping
that congregations and believing that congregations can find a way to overcome
some of the challenges and hurdles of our current era.
And we mentioned before
that we actually think Presbyterianism structurally and theologically could be
doing well in our times.
And so today we want to think a little bit about what we
think the bridge might look like from the struggle we’re in to that journey of doing well.
And again, these opinions are just ours.
We speak for nobody but
ourselves, and we speak with no expertise other than our experience in the Presbyterian Church.
In my experience,
maybe a lot more years than you,
Michael, but neither of us are experts in this.
We just offer you what we think we’ve seen.
Yeah, welcome.
We’re glad that you’ve joined us again for our final conversation in this series.
I do think, Clint, as we’ve traced some of the historical structural
administrative and then even looking into the future a little bit, sort of
speculations we’ve had in this conversation,
I think it’s right and
fitting to sort of end this particular series with a conversation
that’s a little close to the home.
So we’re going to break our conversation
into two really sort of finite sections.
We’re going to talk first a little bit
about our own personal experience in the PCUSA because you say that you’ve had a
longer experience.
That’s not just because of your having a few years on
me.
That’s also just because of your own life experience.
And so we’ll talk a
little bit about our different advantages to the denomination.
And then yeah, we’ll turn that attention towards our advantages at the congregational
level, which is in some ways, I think,
a slightly different conversation than
what we had at the institutional level.
And that will make more sense when we
get there, I think.
So let’s start with the personal experience.
Clint, I did not grow up Presbyterian.
And so I come to the Presbyterian family as a little bit
of a faith immigrant,
but that’s not the case for you.
No, I was born and raised.
And when I say raised,
we didn’t attend church faithfully when I was young.
That really didn’t start until probably my seventh,
eighth grade years in the
confirmation process.
And then my family became pretty faithful attenders of the
small Presbyterian church I grew up in in Bronson, Iowa.
But what I think I mean
when I say raised in a small town,
as many of you would know,
the folks that I
was related to, the folks that I knew,
they all went to church.
There was one church in my hometown,
and it was Presbyterian.
And so my aunts were very faithful, very engaged.
They brought us to Sunday School.
They brought us to Vacation Bible School.
The Christmas Pageant, they included us.
So every experience I had of church as a young person was in Elliott Creek Presbyterian
Church, and that in many ways shaped the idea that I was Presbyterian.
I didn’t know what that meant,
but I knew that people who went to that church cared
about me, loved me,
were gracious and patient with me,
though I think it was
later when I realized how patient in many cases they had been with me.
But that speaks to a young person.
When I thought of church,
I thought of that
small white church at the top of the hill where it said Presbyterian on the
door, on the sign.
Now,
having then felt led to pursue the idea of ministering in that church,
it really came later that I began to understand some of what it
meant to call yourself Presbyterian.
And I was admittedly biased,
but I discovered a deep appreciation for tradition that I didn’t even really know that I had.
I couldn’t have told you much about what it meant formally to be Presbyterian,
but what I learned,
I very much began to appreciate.
And as those pieces started to fall into place for me,
and again, I don’t know that this is a
entirely fair decision, but there was a moment in which I said,
of all the flavors of Christian out there to do ministry,
I want to do it in this place.
I want to do it in this tradition.
I believe in this tradition and I see
goodness in this tradition and effectiveness and potential.
And again, some of that I inherited and then some of it I think I learned to appreciate.
And so I guess for me,
Michael, it’s almost like two halves.
It’s being part of a family.
And then later, as you get older,
looking back and realizing why
your family did some of what they did and how you can incorporate those things.
And so I continue to give thanks for those early introductions to what it
means to be Presbyterian,
even as I continue to struggle with what it means now.
And for me, the two halves, I would say,
have complemented each other well. Well, yeah, so my experience of the church was very,
in some ways similar,
but in very many ways substantially different.
I grew up in the Assemblies of God church in my
youngest days.
That’s a Pentecostal tradition.
If you’re not familiar of some of the different
Christian families, those would be a far more expressive group of Christians,
very much
revivalistic.
And in fact,
that’s a lot of my memory of my youth would be being with my
grandmother, traveling literally around the Midwest.
We would go, in some cases, we even went out to the West Coast and go to these sort of revivalistic sort of gatherings.
Sometimes they’d be a week long,
sometimes they’d be longer,
and a very fiery animated preaching,
lots of expressive music and responses to music, people dancing,
and a very sort
of engaged kind of worshiping tradition.
And my grandmother was in a small Assemblies of God
church in Pipestone, Minnesota.
And then when I was with my mom and dad in St.
Cloud, they went to Assemblies of God church.
And that sort of later grew out of that into more non-denominational,
charismatic church experience, which was very similar in worshiping style to the Assemblies
of God, but far less structural in terms of the individual congregations.
And so ultimately,
out of that,
I decided that I wanted to go to Oral Roberts University,
which is in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
which has from its inception in the history and lineage of Oral Roberts has been a charismatic university.
So that really fit my faith sort of experience and went there.
And, you know, all of that really had me on track,
Clint, to be a pastor in that faith tradition.
I was very much
sort of planning on being in a charismatic church.
And for me,
that really transitioned about midway
through my undergraduate experience.
We had the experience of the president of Oral Roberts
University at the time,
Richard Roberts, that would be Oral Roberts’ son,
was accused and then
later found guilty of multiple counts of fraud against the university.
And that sort of began to
peel back many layers of corruption and misdoings within that institution.
And that was happening
simultaneously with me being in an undergraduate theology program,
really engaging with my own faith.
And these two things together,
I began to have these two sort of concurrent desires.
One was to be part of a church tradition that had connections to the larger trunk of Christianity,
sort of that historic faith.
And in Protestantism,
Presbyterians can trace their lineage all the way
back to the beginning of the Reformation.
And so for me,
that connection to the larger church
theologically and personally was very meaningful.
And then also,
to be very blunt,
Presbyterianism
reflects really the best of centuries of deep thought about how we can be very wide-eyed and
honest about the reality of human sinfulness.
And being a young man watching a very decentralized,
very emotive sort of centered Christian tradition,
I saw in Presbyterianism a place
where there was both structure and possibility for ministry.
Our governance, as you’ve already heard in previous conversations,
really takes human sinfulness seriously.
And for me,
the idea that you could do ministry in a place that sought to curb people’s worst inclinations and to emphasize
people’s best through diversity of leadership,
through checks and balances.
For me, as I came very seriously into the idea of doing ministry in a church family,
Presbyterians seemed to have
some significant wisdom that resonated for me.
So I went to seminary and became Presbyterian through
some relationships and connections to the PCUSA.
And to shorten the story,
that’s how I got to where I am here.
Yeah, it’s interesting, Michael.
I think two fairly different pathways that
end up leading us to relatively similar places.
I think maybe what may be of interest is from our
different vantage points, and again, mine being a little longer both in terms of age and therefore
experience.
I was thinking it’s been nearly 30 years,
almost 30 years since I was
ordained, 25 years at least.
And I would be curious in your relatively
short period of experience as a PCUSA pastor,
what you would say has struck you as both
our great strengths at the congregational level or at the denominational level,
as well as maybe
more interestingly, what has frustrated you.
And some of this may be ground that we’ve already traveled,
but I’d be curious to hear that reflection.
Yeah, I think, Clint, that one thing that the Presbyterian family does really well is enable thriving congregations to do their ministry faithfully.
I have had the privilege of serving in a number of well-led,
highly driven congregations where the membership takes seriously its call to be ministers in the world.
I think I’ve had
a pretty narrow vantage of the Presbyterian Church as I’ve been blessed to be in the midst
of congregations, all of them really, on the move.
And I think that really reflects the best of our
family, of our tradition, I would even say.
I would say that as I survey the denomination,
I would say I’m an immigrant in.
There are lots of times in which the denomination,
and this is formally rooted in the place of my opinion,
so that needs said.
But from my vantage,
it seems that sometimes we’re preoccupied as a larger group with statements on issues.
And we try, I think, to make national sweeping arguments on things that are,
quite frankly, often not things that we really have the purview to say.
And when we do say,
I don’t think are said in such a way
that the world can hear them.
And let me make that more practical.
There have been times,
Clint, I feel like, where we are still stuck in the ’60s, whereas the denomination,
we make proclamations on things that people would have listened to 60 years ago.
But today,
to be Presbyterian doesn’t come with it any sort of prestige or built-in note worthiness.
When the Presbyterians say something, it’s not as if the world is waiting with bated breath to hear what
we have to say.
And I think there’s sometimes,
especially in our structures and especially in
our ways of trying to navigate in this new world,
I think sometimes I felt like we’re far too
concerned with making big public proclamations instead of enabling individual congregations to
thrive.
And once again, that comes from my experience,
that when there is a thriving congregation,
Presbyterians seem to do really,
really well.
We seem to be able to engage with people.
We seem to be able to help fashion the church into a body of active volunteers and people who really can engage
with their faith on a meaningful level.
But when we start focusing on sort of administrating the
structure, it seems to me that sometimes we miss that and congregations and therefore our ministries suffer for it.
Yeah, so for me,
I think that I have appreciated that we are thoughtful people.
At our best, Presbyterians think deeply about things,
and it surprises people sometimes to
find out the amount of thought and discussion and debate that has gone into something as simple as
an order of worship.
Right. When you show up at church,
you’re not just doing the sermon before
the offering because that’s how we do it here.
Someone has thought through where should that go,
what is theologically most appropriate in terms of the order in which we worship or
a hundred thousand other things.
We are thoughtful people at our best.
And as is the case,
our strengths are often our weaknesses.
The frustrating thing is the same thing,
that sometimes we think things to death without ever acting on them.
There are times
in the national church,
especially where I feel like we are so bogged down in the discussions
and in the debates and in the thinking,
that we are almost paralyzed by the analysis and unable to move.
And as we mentioned a week or so ago,
actually a couple of various times,
we’ve not been as a denomination,
in my opinion,
particularly nimble.
And part of that is because we are afraid
that if we don’t think something through from every possible angle,
we might have missed
something.
And I think in the future,
we may have to learn to think and move simultaneously
and do a better job of that.
There may not always be the luxury to study something for two years,
which has been a pattern of the Presbyterian church and make a pronouncement on the next
General Assembly when the world doesn’t even remember what happened two years ago.
And we’re onto a hundred other things since then.
So I hope that we’ll be able to address that in
the coming years.
In fact, I think we’ll have to.
I do think there’s a bridge here from my experience
towards a more congregational kind of vantage, Clint.
And it’s really by way for me of gratitude,
to be honest with you.
I think the piece USA for me has been an unbelievable blessing as a place to
do ministry, to learn ministry.
I think it may be better said.
And that comes with its frustrations.
I’ll be honest of being in a presbytery.
We’ve talked about that.
That comes with frustrations
because there’s differing kinds of pastors and congregations have different needs.
And so sometimes it feels like if you’re not at odds,
you’re at least on different sides of the room.
But then there’s another vantage where the presbytery and church at large,
and this also includes the congregation where I now serve and where I’ve had the privilege of serving in other
capacities, has always treated me specifically and my family more generally,
incredibly generously.
To be a pastor in the piece USA comes with a great amount of just sheer blessing.
People who are concerned about the pastor’s health benefits and thinking about what it means for a pastor’s
family to be stable,
even though it’s not a job that’s going to advance you through a sort of
corporate ladder.
There’s a sense in which the presbyterians do take very seriously their desire
to care for the people who do ministries under the label of presbyterian.
And I think that is
a reflection of a larger congregational recognition that we need to try to be sustainable and we
need to try to do as best as we can to care for the people under the wing of our church’s ministries.
And I think pastors in my own very personal experience receive a great amount of blessing
and benefit from that concern.
Yeah, and I think from my perspective, Michael,
at the congregational level,
much of our struggles on one hand aren’t people problems.
And what I mean by that is in
every congregation of presbyterian,
wherever you’d find them,
you’re going to find deeply faithful,
deeply passionate,
compassionate, loving people.
There is going to be a core group
of wonderful people in every place that you could go to that calls itself presbyterian.
Having said that,
I think that the nature of our problems then,
in some ways our leadership, I think that,
again,
we are still training leaders in a structure that is in some ways
outdated or at least with assumptions that perhaps are outdated.
And then just the nature of
what happens in the midst of struggle and the human tendency to dig in and double down on
what we’ve been doing,
that fear of change,
that inability to say we need to hold the past loosely
and move into new times.
And congregations that lack one of those two things, if they
are not blessed with strong leadership or if they’re not able to chart some new courses,
they, in my opinion, are very likely to be struggling right now.
It is simply not a very
likely scenario that without forward-looking leadership and without a congregation willing to
make some adaptations to the time we’re in,
that they’re going to be doing well.
And it seems to
me that at the local level,
that could be in many ways the crux of our struggles.
Having said that, I’d like to turn the conversation more positive and think for a moment about those things that
I think congregations can do.
In fact,
I would go so far as to say things I think congregations
must do if they’re going to thrive in this age.
We’re both fortunate in that our experience
in previous churches, both at the ordained level for me and at the educational internship level for you,
have been in places that were doing well.
They’ve been in places where there was a
kind of pushback on the trends of the PCUSA,
and that’s unfortunately probably a rare experience.
I think you or I neither one could say that we have been in a struggling church at this point
in our ministry.
Of course,
there’s some good luck that goes into that, of course,
but there are probably not statistically a very large number of Presbyterian pastors who could
say that’s been their experience.
And so as we get to come back through those experiences,
I think it might be helpful to highlight what we think those churches have done well that have
allowed them some measure of what we could call success or progress in a very difficult time.
And I think that highlights the challenge for all churches and all Presbyterians of what it
may take, part of what it may take,
to navigate this time frame well.
Yeah, I think to name the first one on that list,
Clint, I’ll talk about youth and families,
and I think that maybe there’s a surprising turn in that conversation.
I do think that
the Presbyterian—and this isn’t confined to Presbyterianism,
I don’t think.
This is also found in the larger mainline church.
There’s this idea that if you have a young person
in the church, that they’ll draw young people into the church.
And for that reason, I remember
getting ready to graduate seminary.
I had a number of churches interview me only on the fact that
I was coming out of seminary,
and they liked the idea that I was young and had a young family.
And I don’t think the Pied Piper approach to ministry is really a sustainable one going
forward.
Just because you’re young doesn’t mean that you’re good at connecting with young people.
It also doesn’t mean that young families will feel welcome in a congregation.
Though,
that said, if a congregation has no place for young people and no ministry for families
trying to navigate the realities of our current world,
they’re missing an important segment of
what it means to be a family of faith.
If you don’t have any insight from birth all the way
through 25 to 30 years old,
that’s a big deal.
That’s not a sign of welcome.
And so, I think what I’ve learned, and I’d be interested in your advantage on this,
Clint, is that it’s less about
young people.
If you’re joining us by audio,
there’s scare quotes there.
And that’s just about young people.
It’s really about a church’s attention and desire to be open and welcoming,
and to recognize the different people that are within the walls of a church and seeking to
minister faithfully to each one in their season of life.
And so, that is relative to age,
but I think those diversities are larger than that even.
I think we might speak to racial diversities.
I think we might be able to speak to socioeconomic diversities.
And we could say that churches that
are aware of the diversity of their membership,
and they care enough to be working on ministries
for all of those people,
that’s a good sign of a church’s thriving.
Yeah. So, I remember many of those similar conversations,
Michael.
It seems somewhere in
the late ’80s to early ’90s on through the early 2000s,
there was this window where
people talked about young adults.
Do you have young adults in church?
Do you have a young adults group?
And the idea was somehow if you could get young adults into church,
the church would somehow be saved, would be changed.
And I think the fallacy of that is
that any time we look to a group with the idea that we have to recruit them in order to
invigorate the church,
we’ve missed the point.
The point is not that if we can get some 25-year-olds,
then the rest of them will come here and we can pay the bills and we can do all the things
we used to do.
The point is that the gospel speaks to everyone,
and we should care about
the lives of 25-year-olds and 15-year-olds and 5-year-olds.
And I think far better is
the idea of reaching out to all people and specifically maybe a church’s willingness
to look around and say,
“Who’s not here?” And what does it mean that they’re not here?
Does it mean that they’re not interested?
Does it mean that what we’re doing doesn’t connect?
I think the church that is willing to say,
“Where are our gaps?” And that could be racial ethnic,
that could be in terms of age,
that could be in terms of gender,
there are lots of ways you
could have that conversation.
But I think a church willing to have that conversation
is going to find opportunities to evaluate its ministry in new ways.
And I think probably,
ultimately, find some ways to connect with groups of people that they had previously been missing.
And to me,
that’s the crux of the conversation,
not, “Do we have to get some young people in here
because they’ll bring their parents?” It’s such a minimized way to talk about ministry,
and I think ultimately not very effective.

What else would you point to as signs of thriving?
So I think a church,
I think probably the major line that I draw in churches that are
growing, and by growth, I don’t necessarily mean getting bigger,
because there are wonderful
churches in places that realistically aren’t going to allow them to get much bigger.
If you look at
a church in small-town Iowa,
the reality is they’re not going to have huge membership increases.
So when I say growth,
there are lots of ways to grow.
You can grow bigger,
you can grow deeper,
you can grow more faithful.
They’re more knowledgeable,
more supportive.
There are tons of ways we can talk about growth.
But I think the biggest line I see between churches
where I would say there is growth and churches where maybe they’re struggling is where their focus is.
And the church that focuses inward,
the church that is too worried about self and survival
and paying the bills,
and all of those things that are important but not fundamentally first.
The church that looks inward,
I think, will almost always find itself on the wrong side of that growth line.
And the church that looks outward,
even if it’s small,
I think is going
to have an opportunity to have life.
The church that is looking for ways to reach out to people,
for the church that is involved in mission.
And by mission,
I think we mean more than just
giving money.
Giving money is wonderful,
but sending a check is not inherently empowering to your church.
Unless people understand what it means, what it does,
sending a check overseas
is a beautiful expression of Christian mission if the church knows it’s doing it and understands
what it means.
But simply having a mission budget,
in my experience,
doesn’t impact a church
along the level of moving to growth.
So for me, mission outward focus, I think, is an absolute essential.
Yeah, I think the thing I was going to follow up that with Clint is really
a reflection of that.
It’s maybe a subset of that outward focus.
You know, I for a long time have
had technological interests, so I brought that as a lens to the church,
you know, wondering how we can use communication and digital technologies.
How can we reach people in our congregation more faithfully?
And I’ve brought with that the same lens I spoke about with young families, the idea being,
hey, if we can engage them where they’re at,
that’s a good thing.
I think this is a burgeoning
conversation for me.
I think COVID has in some ways forced me to begin to evaluate it with a little
bit more constant gaze.
And as I’ve reflected on it, Clint, I’ve realized,
I think,
how pervasively our public conversation and therefore individual experience of the world is being shaped by the
things that we read on our web browsers and on our mobile devices.
The amount of time statistically
the average Christian spends on a smartphone is staggering.
And it’s no wonder that when those
devices are filled with content that is de-personalizing and lacks peace and lacks
grace and lacks humility,
that people are experiencing those very things within themselves.
For me, it’s really been a moment in which I’ve reflected.
I think thriving congregations will
recognize and have to grapple with the amount of time that people are engaging with some of the
tough stuff in the world and how we should,
as Reformed Christians, try to have a voice in that public discourse.
Now, we’re not going to be able to shape it.
We’re not going to make a
Facebook competitor that’s Presbyterian.
But I do think we have some theological responsibility
to find ways to get into these spaces and to inject something of what we believe is deeply
meaningful and true because of Jesus Christ.
And I think just to make that explicit,
many of you are listening today on Facebook.
And I think I’ve learned that that’s not just a nice
little value added thing that thriving churches are going to have to do.
I think thriving churches
are going to have to recognize people are on Facebook to a level that I think most of us underestimated.
To what extent can we be there in a meaningful and really substantive way
that might help as we seek to make disciples of Jesus Christ?
Yeah.
And there’s, I think, an interesting bridge here,
Michael.
I once had a parishioner say to me,
and she was older,
much older than I was at the time,
and said,
“I love church because it’s the
only place where things are like they used to be.” And you can imagine for a person in their 70s
or 80s who’s looking at a world in which nothing is like it was when they were a young adult,
that that is a real sense of comfort.
But you can also imagine the struggle that presents
in making the church accessible to the rest of the world,
who really doesn’t…
Not only do they not live anchored to that time,
but they don’t have that sort of
emotional compulsion to go back to it.
It is for them archaic to come into the church and not
see the markings of what they experience in the current world,
in the modern world.
And I think what that means is twofold,
that churches,
exactly as you’ve suggested,
churches need to embrace the broader context of technology,
the digital media,
and I don’t think we know what
that will look like yet.
And by the way,
that’s a world that will change every five years.
Whatever it looks like now is not what it will look like five or 10 years from now.
We could guarantee that.
The second thing I think it means though for a congregation at the practical level
is that they have to manage their ties to their history well.
It is a very difficult balance
to maintain a place where we are grateful and thankful for the history of our congregation
without being imprisoned by it.
And when we come into a building that is old,
when we worship in a
service format that we’ve been using for decades,
when we do those things that have
long roots to them,
there is a beauty to that.
There is a stability and a wonder to that
that is really good.
But when those same things keep us from moving when they no longer work,
when we keep doing them when they’re no longer effective for no other reason than because we’ve always done them,
they become anchors, they become problematic, and they really hinder us
from moving forward.
And so I think at the congregational level,
one of the struggles in
every church right now will always be any church that’s been around for very long,
maybe if they’re new they don’t have this issue,
but eventually they will.
The struggle is how do
we honor and recognize our past without being captive to it?
And that’s a pitfall for a lot
of congregations and it’s not easy to do,
but I do think it has to be done if you’re going to
move forward in this day and time, it has to.
Well, that’s an exact reflection of one of our
strengths being a weakness we have to contend with,
that as people who think deeply,
it is easy for
us to get caught up in the conversation of how have we done it and why did we do it that way?
Because we did it that way for what was good reasoning,
we thought it through.
But we have to be able to consider that there are sometimes you need to take risks and do actions that you
may not have completed the whole thought cycle on yet.
I’m not saying that you run into the world
without any thought, but I do think there’s a sense in which we must be willing to start
making some movement outward,
even when that movement,
we don’t know how it’s going to end up.
I think one of the examples of that Clint is,
and this has been maybe most significantly
highlighted in my time at First President’s Spirit Lake,
there hasn’t been a Presbyterian church
I’ve been part of that’s had the same kind of culture as First President’s Spirit Lake on the engagement with community.
I think there’s something really significant about a church
that recognizes that the people who come into the sanctuary of a church or in the time that
we’re at right now,
maybe the people worshipping from home,
that these people live in a place,
a real place with real concerns and real weaknesses that maybe the place where they live,
their struggle with kids getting lunches or there’s struggles with families that are having
job losses and financial problems or maybe in another place in the country,
there’s
racial injustice.
You know, whatever that congregation’s community is,
you cannot pretend that the sanctuary is a safe space from those problems.
The people come from
the community into that place of worship and they bring with them the concerns where they live and
the people that they live with.
And Clint, a church that is engaging the community in real and substantive ways,
this is a church that is living out the theology that we seek to reflect on and I
think sometimes we misorder that.
Sometimes we try to think it through.
We try to identify the best
plan and by the time we’ve identified it,
it’s already irrelevant and now we have to make a new
plan.
Sometimes the first step is we need to engage the community and the people who we live with
to show them the love of Christ and we’ll begin to build the systems and structures and
thoughts around it as we do.
Yeah and let’s be honest,
in any community there are people who are
just never going to come and be a member of the congregation you’re in,
be it not their tradition,
not their preference,
it’s just it’s not for them for whatever reason.
And if by church we mean only
the people who come to our building,
we’ve really missed an opportunity and I am proud of First
Press for that very thing Michael.
We have dozens,
probably hundreds of members who regularly
take their faith out of the building and go invest it in volunteering,
in community projects, community programs,
very much put that into the life of others.
And I think in many cases do that
under the auspices of First Press Materian Church.
Now in some cases they’re just doing it because they do it,
but in many cases they have motivated or they have mobilized First Press to be involved with them.
And I think again one of the great things that a church can do is to be an advocate
on behalf of their community and the people in it and when that happens it is only good for the
church.
It is fulfilling our mission,
it is also providing a witness,
a positive witness in the
community around us and absolutely that is a,
I shouldn’t call it a simple thing,
it’s a simple thing that’s not easy that the church can do where it lives.
I do think there’s a tricky balance there
that places struggle with.
You’ve already mentioned that in every Presbyterian church in the country
there are compassionate people,
there are giving people,
there are people who are concerned about
the issues of their community,
but that doesn’t necessarily mean that a congregation is going to
be making movements and ministries towards that community.
I think sometimes the balance between
lay leadership and pastoral leadership can be difficult.
What is managed by a church staff and
what is managed by the people who serve and worship in a congregation?
We have to be mindful
that if the church doesn’t rely upon the experience and the witness of its members,
the church will never be able to respond to the needs of the community.
It’s the people who sit
in the pews who know the problems that need solved in their area, right?
And so there has to be a kind
of volunteerism, there has to be a kind of willingness to say hey here’s a thing and I’m
willing to quarterback a team or a process that’s going to help us move forward there and then that
lets other people come on board and participate.
And you know there are these mechanisms I think
Clint that really shut the door on people participating and some of those are practical.
We sometimes as Presbyterians will have a ministry event or a fellowship event that happens at times
when other people can’t go.
You know we have to be aware of those kinds of issues, but other times
I do think it’s maybe even an issue of labeling,
like the thing that we say about the world around
us sometimes excludes other people from participating as well.
And I wonder if you’ve seen,
has the church struggled with sort of its public communication and its labeling of things throughout
your entire time of ministry or is that sort of something that’s grown over time?
So I’m trying to
think Michael and I believe I can make this statement accurately.
In my experience, which is admittedly limited,
I don’t believe that I have seen
what I would call a vibrant and thriving church that has regularly embraced
a certain label about itself.
In other words,
I think that the churches of my experience who
have done well have been largely apolitical and I don’t mean apathetic.
I don’t mean that they
haven’t been involved in ministry in various directions.
What I mean is that they have
avoided the temptation to say,
“This congregation is this perspective or this perspective.
We’re for this and we’re against this.” And they’ve done that only in the broadest sense of the gospel.
And they have fought the temptation to bring that down to the micro level where they say,
“We’re Democrat or we’re Republican or we’re pro-life or we’re pro-choice or we’re this or we’re that.”
And that’s not an easy thing to do because as we talked a few weeks ago, maintaining
a diversity when there are people with very different and very passionate differences
about ideas in our world is tough.
That’s not an easy thing to navigate.
But it seems to me
that churches that thrive don’t pigeonhole themselves.
And they try to understand that we
are all in a place trying to hear the gospel speak into our lives and our opinions and our
voting records and whatever else it may be.
And that God has something to say to all of us in
that.
And so, yeah, I would say in my experience,
I have not been a part of a church that I would
say was doing well where I felt like there was a bombardment of political,
social kinds of issues.
And it’s not to say they didn’t care about those things.
They cared deeply about the poor.
They cared deeply about race.
They cared deeply about the…
But they don’t make them issues.
They make them points of practice for our faith.
And I do think there’s a difference.
That may not…
I don’t know if I’m being entirely clear,
but in my mind there’s a very clear delineation between
an agenda item and a gospel item.
Right. I think maybe a way that I would go into that is we live
in a world which is gradually making more and more issues moral issues.
It would be easy to talk about
the diversity of our congregation.
And it wouldn’t be long until you found issues and topics that
people felt like were moral issues.
Like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.
I can’t get on board.
I think that’s wrong.” Or, “I think this is the only way.” No,
Pastor Klain, you don’t understand.
And that’s not to say that as a church we don’t care about things that are true.
It is to say that as a congregation
we must know who we are.
We are fundamentally a people who seek to live under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
And I do think that sometimes we misorder that.
Sometimes we put things above
the gospel account of who Jesus was.
And I think congregations that live into the kind of grace
and humility that says,
“I really think that this is this way.
I really believe that.
I believe this is a moral issue,
but I recognize that I’m a disciple of Jesus Christ and I will seek to listen
and to hear and to be open to transformation wherever that might come.” That is a mark of
health.
And it’s not just a mark of health of a congregation.
I think it’s a marker of
individual identities and discipleship happening.
Yeah, I worked with a very good pastor who used to say that the church has to avoid the temptation
to major in minors.
And what I hear in that is this idea that we should not get caught up and
take votes and have church arguments about things that ultimately we have the freedom to disagree
about.
There are non-negotiables in the church.
There are things that really there’s not going
to be or shouldn’t be some diversity,
that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.
That’s period.
That’s not up for debate.
That’s not up for discussion.
How we feel about the best way to handle racial tension,
there’s plenty of wiggle room there.
And when churches major in minors, in his words,
I think they run the risk of missing the big picture.
And any time we do that,
I think we’re going to make it harder for the church to thrive,
for the church to move into a period of vibrant ministry.
Now, having said that, Michael, I want to balance that with I don’t want to give the
impression that the church doesn’t stand for anything,
because obviously that’s wrong too.
The church that tries to be everything to everyone is ultimately going to fail,
because that’s not a
achievable goal.
It can’t be done.
And so a church,
I do think a church has to understand who it is,
and it has to live up to that identity.
We are a creedal church.
We have a history.
We have deep theological roots.
That’s not something we should shun.
That’s not for everybody,
and we have to
understand that.
And there will be people who say that that’s not how I experienced church.
And to them we say,
well, okay, can we help you find the right place for you?
But we don’t need to apologize
for who we are as Presbyterians.
And we believe people are tainted by sin.
That’s not a very
comforting message.
That’s not a very fun message for people who want to be entertained.
Well, I’m sorry about that.
That’s who we are.
And I think churches can also get themselves in
trouble by not understanding this is who we are and what we do and where we live,
and we have reasons for that that make sense to us.
And yes, we’re willing to evaluate them.
But when we start
giving up our identity in the name of growth,
I think we’re headed down ultimately a bad path.
I do think there’s some subtext in some congregations that people know intuitively
about this membership drop.
And it’s not just a national statistic over 60 years,
Clint.
It’s something that congregations on the local level feel it when the pews
become more and more empty as years go on.
And I think there’s this sort of subconscious almost
thing that happens in a church that says,
Oh, look,
we need to do whatever it takes to get new people.
And you start to squelch people when they come in the door like,
Oh, look, you’re the future.
And you suffocate people,
or you start to compromise values.
You start to to lie to
yourself about the culture of your congregation and your strengths.
And you start trying to
bend things and do things that just quite frankly,
aren’t faithful who God has called you to be.
And I do think whenever we start responding to difficulty with Hail Mary kind of things,
when we just sort of take a hope in prayer and throw it out there and hope,
well, I hope people will come.
That’s not being particularly faithful.
That’s not trusting that it’s Jesus’s church and
that he’s going to work with the people.
I think instead we should strive to be places of welcome.
We should strive to make sure that people know that when they come into a ministry of a congregation,
their name is going to be known.
They’re going to be loved.
They’re going to be heard.
And we should, as a community,
strive to do what we do well in worship and in discipleship and in mission.
If we can major on the majors and we can keep people from becoming overly fixated on stylistic
and personal preference issues,
I think the church is then freed up to be the church that
Christ can move and transform as needs to be in that community.
Yeah, you and I share a abiding belief that the church,
in order to be the church,
must practice hospitality well.
And that has to do with how we receive people,
how we engage people,
how we welcome people.
And Michael,
I think the church can miss on
either end, right?
There are two ways to miss that.
I have a friend who,
after years of not going to church,
went back with his family only to be told by,
I suppose, a well-meaning older woman that if he came back,
they would expect him to wear a tie.
And on the other hand,
I’ve known people who go to church and get 10 letters and visits and are
just sort of overwhelmed by the attention.
And so there is a certain balancing act that happens in
being warm,
being hospitable, being welcoming,
but not being overwhelming,
not taking that too far,
not being desperate in some ways.
And that’s probably different in various contexts.
That may look different in a city than it does in a small town where people generally know each other.
I’m not sure what the nuances would be geographically,
but I do know that congregations
that want to have some growth and want to experience some connection with people who
aren’t yet in their congregation are going to have to give some very thoughtful reflection to
how do we welcome people?
How do we make people help people feel connected?
How do we allow people
the space to know,
“We’re glad you’re here,
but if this isn’t the place for you,
we understand that as well.” And how do we do that in a way that is gracious and that says,
“In whatever time we
share together, we hope you’re blessed in the name of Christ here,
and we want to be in partnership
and relationship in His name with you and others.” That’s not an easy thing,
but it’s an essential
thing.
There’s no way a church is going to have growth without being good at hospitality.
It’s not possible.
I think to bring some threads together for myself here,
Clint, I think I would say
the word that really comes to me in this conversation is faithfulness.
I think for the
church to thrive and for myself even to thrive in the church into the future,
it will require faithfulness to Jesus Christ.
And I’ll be honest with you,
I’m making this very personal at this moment.
If I had to guess what the church is going to look like,
if I serve my entire career as a
pastor in the Presbyterian Church USA,
I cannot predict to you what that church is going to look
like and what it will take for that church to thrive,
yet alone try to imagine what the next
generation of pastors will be seeking to do in the midst of thriving congregations.
I think it’s impossible to look that far down the road with certainty,
and so the same for congregations.
We don’t know what 25 years is going to require for churches,
but that’s not what the church is
fundamentally called to do.
We’re not called to to be fortune tellers.
We’re called to be faithful in this moment,
and there’s this beautiful pairing in that,
and that’s what I seek to try to remind
myself daily that if I come in and I bring the best of the gifts that I’ve been given,
and I try to be
faithful and dispensing with those gifts,
and if I try to literally be full of faith in the one who
calls us and animates us as as Christians on an individual level and as a family of faith, as a congregation,
if we can put our faith in Christ and be faithful to do what we can with the gifts we’ve been given,
I think that is where we can trust that God’s going to lead us forward.
So
it requires a kind of humility or a kind of nimbleness of really even self-conception.
I think I have an idea of what it means for us as a congregation to be faithful today,
but I know I don’t know exactly,
and I know even more confidently I have no clue what that’s going
to be in 10 years,
but I’m not trying to get that right.
I’m trying to be faithful,
and to whatever extent I can,
I pray and trust that Christ will be present in the midst of it.
Yeah, so I couldn’t agree more, Michael,
and to kind of branch from there,
I heard a pastor preach a sermon once in
which he said, “It is the nature of the church to grow,” and if you look at the book of Acts,
when people lived out the gospel,
when they prayed for one another,
when they cared for one another,
when they shared food with one another,
when they ministered to the poor together,
I think that we can be tempted to think that growth in the church is the product of what we
the pastors and the congregation do,
and that’s true, but only in the sense that it’s a reflection
of how we do the gospel together.
The growth is not about the building and the program.
Those things are related to the gospel,
and growth is fundamentally about the good news of Jesus Christ,
and as a church lives that out together,
it is going to experience growth.
Maybe it will be in number.
Maybe it will be in spirituality,
in understanding.
Maybe it will be in ministry,
in outreach, but the church is going to—you cannot stop the gospel from growing in a place where it is
being faithfully lived out.
It’s unstoppable,
and so with 100% certainty,
we can say that we don’t
know what the church of the future will look like,
the church in two to three decades.
We don’t know.
There will be things we could guess at.
We’d miss them.
There will be things that we don’t even
know will happen yet,
that they will be living into and out of.
However,
I think we can say
that then and always,
a thriving church will incorporate some things that it always has.
That there will be people learning to love one another.
There will be people caring for one another.
The growing church will always have the sense that there are people here who genuinely
care about my life,
my struggles, my needs,
my health.
It will be a church in which there’s
warmth,
where there’s welcome, where there’s prayer,
where there’s a commitment to service,
where we are constantly trying to come to terms with our tendencies to be selfish and hold on to
our own things and instead learn to be giving and gracious.
There will be a place where community
matters and connections matter in the name of Christ,
and there will be a place where families, young and old,
are treasured, and people, young and old, are connected to this body of faith.
Those things, I think, are transferable.
Those things, I think, that the church,
in whatever way it does worship and how it uses the computer and how it communicates and what songs it sings,
those things are always going to matter,
but they matter less than ultimately
people’s experience of the gospel,
and that’s ultimately what’s going to
promote growth and vibrancy in any congregation, I think.
I think my last word is this,
Clint, if you’re joining us for this conversation,
thank you for joining us for this,
and I hope all of the conversations previous.
If it’s a little strange for you to think about church and faith at this sort of congregational level,
congregations growing, congregations struggle,
I hope you can hear it is not even
barely below the surface.
It is right there.
The same conversation is about each and every one of
our individual faith, because remember,
Presbyterians are all,
we are completely focused on the
universal priesthood of all believers.
It is our membership that we believe is called to do
ministry.
So when we talk about growth,
we’re not just talking about the people in the sanctuary,
we’re talking about you.
We’re talking about each and every person who’s finding faith in life in
the congregation, and I hope that you,
maybe in this conversation,
feel more connected if you’re
in a Presbyterian congregation.
Maybe it adds a little bit of understanding to what Presbyterians
are and what we value if you’re not,
but friends, this is a deeply personal conversation,
because whatever the church will look like,
you, if you are worshipping and serving and being loved in a
Presbyterian church, you are essential to the church thriving.
Will you welcome?
Will you be willing
to help the church adapt?
Will you help the church serve in your community and around the world?
I think we can all be inspired and reminded of our calling as members of Christ Church to do
ministry, and if we do that,
then we can be confident that Christ will be faithful to our
churches as we continue on.
Yeah, Michael, I think that’s a good last word,
and one of our great
strengths as Presbyterians is exactly that,
the belief that your faith matters not just to you,
but to us,
to the body of Christ,
that your discernment, that your practice of faith,
that your giftedness matters in more than just your life,
but in the life of the congregation
and the life of the community and ultimately the life of the Christian family,
the Christian church, the kingdom of God and the body of Jesus Christ.
And that’s a,
that is a beautiful
theological statement that is profoundly powerful when we live it out in community
and in our context.
And to the extent that we can do that,
I think we will not have
too many fears about how churches grow.
If churches can do that,
I suspect they’ll be fine.
Friends, that’ll be our last word.
We’re grateful that you have joined us for this conversation and these conversations.
Next week we will return.
We’re going to be picking up a new series in which
we’ll be inviting everyone who joins us to think through how we can be aware of and emphasize God’s
presence in our life every day.
You’ll learn more about that as we kick that off next week,
but until then, be blessed.
Thanks everybody.