Monica (my daughter), Isaac (Construction foreman), Erin (team member) and Ronnie (Construction worker)
Last week we looked at the Watoto Church I visited in Uganda, and the church’s discerned vision which provides a focus to their ministry. This week, we look at:
This vision is clearly communicated with the church members and with us as visitors.
Everyone who hosted us took a few minutes to talk about the church’s vision, their role in it. Like layers of an onion, it took on greater depth and meaning for me each time I heard from a different person with a different vantage point. Especially moving for me was the pastor of the village where we built a classroom. He talked about their goal of providing not just shelter and food for these orphans, but education and spiritual nurture, such that the whole person: body, mind, and soul is cared for. Therefore, Watoto’s Bbira village had a pastor, like himself, who worked with others to create worship and Christian formation for the children.
The Watoto Church worship was another occasion where I could see the philosophy of clearly communicating the vision at every turn. The worship felt much like that at any other large, Pentecostal church in the U.S.– in terms of lively worship complete with a band, and extensive use of high-tech/multi-media. (A whiplash experience when one leaves the sanctuary to encounter the inadequate plumbing and lack of toilet paper in the bathrooms! That part felt more classically “third-world”.) Interesting to me was the use of two DVDs in the service: 1) one conveying the church’s discerned calling of caring for widows/orphans, and inviting the worshippers to support this ministry through the monthly financial support of one child and 2) a DVD conveying the church’s vision and core values. I asked our guide, Andrew, how often they showed these two DVDs, the answer–every week. I said, “you gotta be kidding?! That’s so repetitive. Doesn’t anybody complain? Get sick of it?” He said not that he knew of. So the church has decided to err on the side of being a broken record, rather than not clearly communicating their vision.
As many churches do, the sermon was part of a series on their revised vision statement, in which they were adding core values: Christ, Word, Character, Community, Worship, Excellence and Unity. The sermon we heard was the last in the series, on Unity, but the preacher started the sermon explaining each of the core values in brief. Then the “Unity” value was expounded using Pauline theology of the body of Christ, and the unity in one Lord despite a variety of gifts. He went on to relate this to their vision of being a cell-based church. Though these cells meet all over Kampala, and the church has 4 worship centers, their unity doesn’t come from all knowing each other, or worshiping in the same place, but their unity comes from their common calling in the Spirit.
As I mentioned last week, interesting to take this trip in the middle of reading and coding the 51 interviews of clergy/staff for my Doctor of Ministry thesis. One theme that has emerged is the emphasis on leadership which creates process by which God’s vision can be discerned. The Spirit (or God) is credited as leading the church in discerning this vision, the leader creates the environment or process for this to happen. Then the focus is on how to communicate the vision, and equip people to live into the vision. At times in these interviews, it’s almost like a broken record, hearing staff person after staff person reflect on how their work contributes their discerned vision for the church. Watoto church reminded me of the “broken record” philosophy of communicating vision.
Does your church ascribe to the “broken record” philosophy of communicating vision?
What is the right balance for your church between boring repetition and/or inspiring, clear communication of vision?
Next week: This vision is implemented with careful and thoughtful management.
On July 13 I boarded a United Emirates flight with my family, three other families and one college student from my church. We had raised the money to pay for the supplies and the time of Ugandan construction workers to build a classroom in a village serving orphans. We were now going to participate with these workers in building the classroom, and to experience Ugandan church, culture, terrain, and wildlife. We built this classroom through Watoto Church, which is a large church in Kampala started 25 years ago by Canadian Pentecostal missionaries, and runs a ministry to AIDs/war orphans and widows.
Everyone had different takeaways from the trip, but for me, the fascination was in seeing the Watoto Church up close and personal. This occurs at the same time that I’m reading and coding the interviews for my Doctor of Ministry thesis on leadership and management in the missional church! I’ll be processing this experience for years, but over the next few weeks I’ll address here are some initial take-aways that I’m pondering:
The presence of a discerned vision which provides focus to all they do.
The church’s vision is to be a multi-site, cell-based, English speaking church which brings healing to the nation of Uganda. Specifically, they seek to bring healing to the nation through addressing the needs of widows and orphans. The pastor in the worship service we attended said—“There are many needs in Uganda, and many ways a church could address these needs. We have discerned God’s call to address the needs of widows and orphans. Other churches have other legitimate calls, but this is our call.”
They live out his call through four worship centers around Kampala which offer weekly services. Care and spiritual formation in these four centers happens through cell groups of 10 to 12 people. Each cell group is asked to befriend and care for one Muslim person/family (Uganda is 80% Christian and 20% Muslim) and one AIDS widow and her children living in their community.
The church supports and runs the three villages, two outside of Kampala, and one North on the border of Sudan. These villages care for children age 3 and up, through creating family groups of one widow with eight children. Abandoned infants and toddlers are cared for at “The Bulrushes” in Kampala, an orphanage they started, which now has 100 infant and toddlers. The pictures are from our morning spent playing with babies at the Bulrushes, named after the reeds which hid the infant Moses. (Moses’ mother and sister secured the infant Moses in a container which they set afloat in the bulrushes or reeds along the Nile to save him from the Pharaoh’s decree that every Hebrew male infant was to die,Exodus 2:3.)
The pastor talked about how when they first discerned a focus of widows and orphans, they started with one house in which they cared for 16 children, and he encouraged us to consider always how things start small. He explained that cell groups were the place where the ministry of the church really happens, and not within the walls of the church. (Which made sense, because one of the four worship centers doesn’t have a building, they worship in a tent. In addition, the central church is a very small building for the size of the congregation.) So they don’t have a lot of focus on maintaining buildings and church campuses. The more extensive campus and buildings they own are in the villages which serve the orphans, where we built a classroom.
It was indescribable watching this ministry up front and personal. A particularly moving moment was in sharing a meal with one mother, Bonnie, and her children in the village. I stood outside Bonnie’s house chatting with her, and mentioned that the view out her front door would be the envy of anyone living in America (she looks out over a valley, with houses spotting the hills on the other side.) She was surprised to hear that! (see picture of Bonnie’s view, behind Monica and her children)
Members of our team kept raising the “chicken and the egg question” of which comes first: Does this church have such a clear focus of call and effective ministry in living it out because the need of widows and orphans in Uganda lend itself to this type of focus and clarity? Or are they effective in addressing this need because they have focused on one thing? Could a church in the U.S. have this type of focus and effectiveness in addressing a need in their community? Or does our context in the U.S. not lend itself to people being motivated and galvanized around addressing a community need because the needs are not so glaring?
We didn’t come up with any answers here, only identified the struggle we all felt as we watched this ministry in a very different context from our own. What would be your thoughts, as outside observers to our trip?
Next week: The way the vision was clearly communicated at every turn.
Would you name a church, “Child Church”?? Depends on your context.
The context of a church’s ministry/mission can be delineated into two categories:
- Immediate: The local community in which a particular congregation exists.
- Larger: The wider influences in which a congregation exists, like time in history, region, country, etc.
We’ve looked at larger context the last few weeks, now we turn to immediate context:
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Demographic trends (age, ethnicity, etc)
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Life style and psychographic trends (will unpack that in later blog)
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Pressing needs and challenges that exist
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Other organizations, particularly those addressing the needs and challenges.
Today, I’m going to focus on “pressing needs and challenges.” These would be the unique issues present in one’s community. These can be obvious and glaring, or hidden and hard to see. Determining how many children at the local elementary school are on the free lunch plan could be an example at how to see the hidden need. Some issues scream for attention, others simply whisper.
In Mark 5 Jesus encountered both. Jairus, ruler of the synagogue, had no problem making his need known in a clear, public way (not quite a scream). His daughter was dying, would Jesus come and heal her? The woman with a 12 year bleeding condition whispered her need; she simply touched the hem of Jesus’ clothes, hoping for a quiet and anonymous healing. Both these individuals pointed to a very real challenge in the First Century context that Jesus encountered, finding relief for physical illness in a time before medicine. As the story goes, Jesus stopped after the woman touched his cloak, and drew attention to her and her faith in his ability to heal. He enabled the whisper to be heard by all.
As we live out being the body of Christ in the world, we often follow Jesus’ example of drawing attention to the whispers and screams of human suffering and need in our immediate and wider context.
This Saturday, my family and I will be boarding a plane for Uganda, along with 3 other families and 1 college students, to build a classroom in a village for AIDS/war orphans. I am intrigued to see the church behind this ministry up close and personal. They have been a congregation that has claimed as their main purpose caring for orphans and widows in Uganda.
Theirs would be a country that has many pressing needs and challenges that scream for attention, yet they have focused their energy around this one need. So much so, that they have recently changed their name from Kampala Pentecostal Church to Watoto Church. (“Watoto” is the name they chose for the ministry arm of the church with orphans, and means “child” in Swahili.”) I’m not sure what I think of naming a church “Child Church,” but I do admire their focus in reading their context well, and focusing their energy on one thing they discern that God is doing in their immediate context–caring for the orphan and widow.
In their part of the world this need screams for attention, but they also are playing a role in helping those of us on the other side of the world hear the whisper. Perhaps that’s also part of how the church participates in what God is doing in the world—-like Jesus— helping the whispers be heard.
What are the pressing needs and challenges in your church’s immediate context? What are the screams and the whispers?
Yesterday was one of those bizarre experiences when the micro and macro aspects of my life converged for a moment. I’m sitting at the DMV (department of motor vehicles) with my tag, “B003,” waiting for my turn, which might never come (despite the fact that I got there 20 minutes before it opened) because the computers were down. I decided to hunker down in my extremely comfortable plastic chair under the lovely ambience of the DMV fluorescent lights to finish my read of Roxburgh’s book, “The Sky is Falling: Leaders Lost in Transition.”
There I sat lost in the maze of the DMV reading about ”liminality,” the in-between stage where people have lost their known world, yet need to discover an alternative present. Webster’s defines liminality as “the condition of being on a threshold or at the beginning of a process.” Indeed, I was at the beginning of a process at the DMV, one that would inevitably take more time than I wanted. “Our computers are down, they will be up in 10 minutes.” Should I leave and come back tomorrow? (After I got here so early, and had hubby drive the carpool?) Should I stay and wait…hoping eventually the computers would be back up? Should I leave and drive to another DMV?
The commonality between the macrocosm of the church’s liminality and the microcosm of my personal DMV ordeal hit home. With the unexpected twist of–the “computers down”– the known path of arriving early and getting a good number would not necessarily get me the expected result. So also churches live in the between time, where the known paths might not get the expected results. These paths consist of doing certain types of programs, serving certain types of people, which are less frequently getting the expected result. There was a time when a pastor could preach a pretty good sermon, the church could have a pretty good children/youth program, provide a pretty good choir and the church would be fine. So church leaders wonder, will the time come when it will all snap back to normal . . .when we can cover these bases well and the church can continue just fine year to year?
I always know that a person is not ready to identify with the liminal stage we are in as the CHURCH when they say to me, “Well things are hard at our church now, but these things come and go. It’ll all shake out in the end.”
Of critical importance in looking at the church in the larger context is naming the fact that we can’t go back; we don’t know quite where we are headed, and no clear path exists to take all the uncertainty away. Liminal names this well. Similar to my wait at the DMV, the emotions that well up are confusion, anger, and sadness. Leadership in this time requires living in the tension. The leadership skills needed are helping people name what’s going on, grieve it, and find in our traditions/biblical stories the courage needed to adapt and create new forms of church life (with a big dose of the Spirit’s guidance).
The tendency of leaders is to try to comfort the people and ourselves with platitudes. I think of the guy at the DMV. When he first came out he said, “The computers are down, they will be back up in 10 minutes.” Then the next time he came out he said, “The computers are still down, they will be back up in 30 minutes.” Then the third time he came out he said, “The computers are still down and I have NO IDEA when they will be back up.” This is the key “aha” moment as leaders. The “I have NO IDEA” moment, when we admit there’s no logic in simply longing for things to be as they were, but we have no real idea exactly how it will be as the church is birthed anew.
Have you reached the “I have NO IDEA” moment yet in grappling with the larger context of the Church in the US?
Photo: “Ottawa River”
Two blogs ago I began a series looking at context, claiming that the CHURCH universal has always had local expressions, in which the eternal truths of the gospel have been interpreted and made known in culturally relevant forms within many different particular contexts.
I’d like to expand on this thought theologically. Just as God was incarnated in human form through the historical life of Jesus Christ, so also today God is incarnated in human form through the historical life of a local congregation. Each congregation is the body of Christ, formed in a certain context. This means the local congregation has been shaped by that context and in turn, influences that context with the gospel message.
Thus, churches are contextual, and are called to continually do the work of contextualization, which is the work of reading one’s context and translating the gospel message and ministries of the church into one’s context.
Context refers to two arenas to read in doing the work of contextualization:
- Immediate–local community
- Larger–region, country, place in history
Context refers to both the immediate context, the local community, but also the larger context of the region, country, and time in history in which a congregation exists. Thus we may speak of a congregation in the context of Sunnyvale (my town), which is flavored by the culture of Silicon Valley, the San Francisco Bay area, California, the United States of America, etc. We may speak of a congregation’s context also including the denomination of which they are a part. We may also speak of context in terms of time-it means something different to be the church in 21st Century America than it did to be the church in mid-20th Century America.
Some “Buckets” of the Larger Context:
- Religious Trends in the US
- Shift from Modern to Post-Modern society (and living in between with both!)
- Immigration Trends in the US
Today I will focus on—-Religious Trends in the US: (Taken from the 2008 Pew Report Website, or click here for PDF version of the report)
Note to clergy: We are often aware of these larger religious trends, but as I work with congregations, I find that an amazing number of lay leaders are not. Helping people see these trends can be helpful in two ways: 1) People don’t feel alone when they see how their church has been impacted by these larger trends AND 2) They feel a greater urgency for change.
In 2006:
- 25% of age 18-29 are religiously unaffiliated
- 16% of all adults are unaffiliated
- 18% of all adults are mainline Protestant Churches
- 51.3% of adults are Protestant (this category consists of 3 groups, one of which are the mainline Protestants)
The Pew Report compares the unaffiliated percentages from the youngest and oldest group, concluding that the decline of the mainline Protestant churches is likely to continue:
- 25% of age 18-29 are unaffiliated, compared to the 8% of those 70 and older.
- 43% of age 18-29 are Protestant, compared to 62% of those 70 and older.
Mainline Protestant churches across the country have a higher proportion of older members, and white members.
From 1970-2006, the proportion of Protestants has greatly decreased, while the proportion of religiously unaffiliated people has significantly increased. Through the 1980’s, unaffiliated ran between 5%-8%, but is now almost doubled at 16%. Of this percentage, 6.3% are “secular” unaffiliated and 5.8% are “religious” unaffiliated. (1.6% are atheist and 2.4% are agnostic). Of the 16% unaffiliated in the total population, 44% were raised Protestant and 27% were raised Catholic.
The West coast has the largest proportion of unaffiliated, including atheist and agnostic, so these percentages of 16%, 1.6% and 2.4% would be higher for California than for other parts of the country (unaffiliated in California runs 22%). There are less mainline Protestants in general on the West coast. Of the total 18% of mainline Protestants in the US, 19% are in the Northeast, 22% are in the Midwest, 17% are in the South and 15% are in the West (14% in California).
What does all this say? For West coast mainline Protestant churches, if you think “doing church” is getting harder and harder, that’s because it is! More young adults are unaffiliated, thus partially explaining the lament of many congregations– that young adults are no longer coming to church. Since 44% of the total 16% religiously unaffiliated were raised Protestant, and 27% were raised Catholic, this means that a majority of these people have some familiarity with the Christian story.
It is interesting to put these statistics alongside John 4:34-36:
34“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.”
Religiously unaffiliated people in the U.S. doubled from 1970 to 2006, and one could see this as a ripe field for harvest. This field probably contains soil that would need to be tilled and softened, followed by planting and nurturing seeds. This is a long process in which reaping may come at a later day. Do churches have patience for this kind of work?
Next week: Postmodernism
After Note, Trends by Zip Code: Another way to get at religious trends would be to look at the data on the American Religion Data Archive for your zip code. http://www.thearda.com/
Click one of the links in this sentence to see a sample of how I reported of this data for United Methodist or Presbyterian USA in Santa Clara County, CA.
To prepare your own document such as this: On this home page scroll down to US Congregational Membership Reports, Enter the church’s zip code and hit “GO”. Copy and paste all the info into a separate WORD doc.[1] This will give you the most recent report.
Do the same with the 1990, 1980 and change (see horizontal tabs under red “Report”) Copy and paste. You are looking for the change from 1990-2000 (and you can include 1980).[2]
You are mainly paying attention to that first bar graph with “Evangelical Protestant,” “Mainline Protestant,”…..to “Unaffiliated.” NOTE: as a mainline church, you are included in “Mainline Protestant” and not “Evangelical Protestant.” The latter is the designation for non-denominational churches outside of Mainline Protestant.
You want to capture the data for Mainline Protestant, Catholic, a few other religions and then most importantly, “Unaffiliated.”
This would be an excellent document to discuss at one board meeting, asking the following questions:
- What do you see about the larger religious profile of your county?
- What does that mean for your church?
- How do the movements in the religious profile of your county mirror the movements in your congregation’s data?
1. There’s a lot of other stuff you can explore on this website. For fun, you can scroll down to very bottom of home page, enter your data and take the “Baylor 2005″ survey and see how you compare to others in the nation with your demographic profile.)
2. You can also attempt to make a customized report by clicking on US Map further down the home page from UC Congregational Reports. Click on Report, choose type of report. I suggest using the dot method of constructing your area. Copy and paste the report generated into a WORD doc.
This week finds me in Washington DC, first sweltering in 95 degree heat, and now freezing in driving rain and wind. You may be asking what a weather-challenged Californian is doing on the other side of the country enduring weather whiplash?
I’m working with a creative, caffeine-hyped group of Presbyterian leaders fascinated with the idea of leading change and transformation in churches, namely: Philip Lotspeich, Brian Clark, Craig Williams, and Shannon Kiser. Together we are writing a resource to be used by churches similar to “Starting New Churches 2.01″ (which can be found on the PCUSA tribe’s Presbygrow website).
In the beginning of the week, we assumed we were designing one 12-month module on leading change, but came to an amazing God-moment, where we coalesced around the idea of three 12-month modules around the themes of–
- Module 1: Prepare
- Module 2: Engage
- Module 3: Send
We realized we could only get Module 1 written this week. As we started on that, we then coalesced around Module 1 being a capacity building resource for church boards to use in their regular meetings.
Why a first, capacity building module? What is “capacity building”?
The WCO defines capacity building as “activities which strengthen the knowledge, abilities, skills and behavior of individuals and improve institutional structures and processes such that the organization can efficiently meet its mission and goals in a sustainable way.”
So through Module 1, we hope to help church leaders-
- Grapple with the changes in society and a Biblical response centered on God’s purpose for the church.
- Strengthen their abilities and skills to meet the challenges this change has brought.
- Improve their processes on the leadership board such that they can meet the mission in a sustainable way.
Another good definition: “Capacity building is the elements that give fluidity, flexibility and functionality of a program/organization to adapt to changing needs of the population that is served.” We’re writing away— hoping this resource promotes a congregation’s fluidity, flexibility, and functionality to adapt to the changing needs of their context (i.e. community).
Soon we’ll be looking for congregations to field test Module 1: Prepare. Any takers?
A well known adage in real estate: “The three most important aspects of real estate are: location, location, location.” One could also say, “The three most important aspects of doing church today are: context, context, context.”
Why? And what is context?
Context:
- Immediate: The local community in which a particular congregation exists.
- Larger: The wider influences in which a congregation exists, like time in history, region, country, etc.
Contextualization: Seeking to read one’s context and translate the gospel message and ministries of the church into one’s context.
“The church never exists in a vacuum . . . There is no other way to be the church except in a concrete, historical setting.”[1] Van Gelder expands upon this quote to explain the way the CHURCH universal has always had local expressions, in which the eternal truths of the gospel have been interpreted and made known in culturally relevant forms within many different particular contexts.
To do the work of contextualization is to ask the question: What does it mean to be the church in this community? The question, “Who is my neighbor?” in Alice Mann and Gil Rendle’s book, Holy Conversations, is pointing to the immediate context of a local congregation.[2] Context refers to the simple demographics of a local community, who is living here?
Context also refers to the culture of a community. Each congregation is the expression of the body of Christ developed within a specific culture of its location. When a congregation is formed and continues to evolve, the gospel is translated in a way that makes sense to people in that context. Translate here does not mean language (although it could) but means adapting what we say and do to meet the needs and speak the heart language of the people to whom we seek to minister. Contextualization is the intentional work of seeking to read the culture and heart language of one’s community context, and translate the gospel message and ministries of the church to this context.
For example, a restaurant is a common type of organization in American life. Can you think of some that are more “contextual” than others? In other words, a restaurant that is unique and developed just for the context of a particular location?
I think of Dakota Bar and Grill in the Twin City area of Minnesota. It combined the best of Minnesota fresh ingredients, with the ambiance of the great theater/art/culture I had grown to appreciate in the Twin Cities. Those who started this restaurant read their context well and translated the organizational form “restaurant” into Twin City culture. (My favorite meal there was the duck, with a side dish of wild rice, fresh corn and blueberries!) Contrast this to the restaurant chain, “Chili’s.” There was probably an original Chili’s in which the menu and ambience were first developed. From the Mexican tile embedded in the table tops, and the focus on Southwestern cuisine, we might guess it was somewhere in the Southwest. (I emailed the Chili’s company, it was.) Now you can walk into places all over the world, and everyone has the same exact “Chili’s” experience. There is no attempt to “contextualize” Chili’s restaurant to the unique culture of Minnesota, Florida, Europe or the Far East. It’s all the same.
The reason context is so critical today is that many of our congregations started with an effective connection with their context, but their context has changed. Without a renewed reading of context, then engaging in the work of contextualization, decline is inevitable. For example, many of our congregations were started as post-WWII suburban churches to meet the needs of the expanding suburbs containing WWII and “Silent” generation parents having babies (known as the baby-boom). Many churches were started to meet the needs of this generation and their children. Some of these churches now find themselves experiencing very different dynamics in their location, like the immigration of people from Latin America and India. What would it mean to do ministry now in this changed context? It would look very different.
“New contexts require new expressions for understanding the church.”[3]
Context, context, context. What is your church doing to read your context?
Next week: what does it mean that the church exists in the larger context.
Rendle, Gil, and Alice Mann. Holy Conversations: Strategic Planning as a Spiritual Practice for Congregations. Herndon: Alban Institute Publications, 2003.Van Gelder, Craig. The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000.
[1] Craig Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 24.
[2] Gil Rendle and Alice Mann, Holy Conversations: Strategic Planning as a Spiritual Practice for Congregations (Herndon: Alban Institute Publications, 2003), 5.
[3] Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit, 24.
Today is the last interview with Albuquerque pastor Trey Hammond, in which Trey describes his congregation’s interest in Celtic spirituality and evangelism. The interview is 5 minutes long, and beneath the interview, I review a book Trey mentions, George Hunter’s “The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West Again.”
“The Celtic Way of Evangelism” could be broken down into two sections. In each section Hunter integrates his description of the historical events surrounding the missionary movement in Ireland with social science, theology, and philosophy. In the first, longer section Hunter describes the historical development of the church in Ireland, contrasting St. Patrick’s evangelistic methodology with the theories of communication starting with Aristotle, and continuing to Helmut Thielicke, Soren Kirkegaard, and Kenneth Burke. Sounds dull, but is actually a fascinating and easy read. In summary, Celtic evangelism is done via teams of people who build community through which the gospel is shared with sensitivity to indigenous thought and customs.
In the shorter, second section, Hunter demonstrates how the Celtic evangelism is relevant for today’s secular society. Hunter claims that the Celtic understanding of helping people find faith through bringing them into Christian community is validated by the field of the Sociology of Knowledge, particularly drawing on Peter Berger’s work in “The Social Construction of Reality.” Lastly, Hunter provides examples and stories of how this could be relevant within a few streams of the U.S. population. In the last chapter attempting specific applications, he struggles to make his argument as clear and compelling as previous chapters.
Overall the book is a fascinating read, and his arguments regarding what is relevant and thus could be learned from Celtic evangelism merit our attention. The stress on hospitality and building relationships with those outside the church is similar to what others are stressing as the needed change from church doing mission to or for people—to church engaging people in the community in meaningful ways. It reminds me of the church in the book “Practicing Theology,” chapter entitled, “Liturgy, Ministry and the Stranger” by Gilbert Bond. This urban church decided to stop their “outreach” program as the government sponsored food distribution center in their neighborhood, because of the ways it kept the people in the neighborhood at a distance and subordinate. Instead, they began a more hospitality-oriented ministry of inviting the neighborhood to community meals where outsiders met and sat at table with church members.
In my last class in my Doctor of Ministry program, Dr. Gary Simpson challenged us all to think through what is our “public theology”? I wrote on my Facebook update the next day—”Stephanie is confused about her public theology. More reading is in her future.” When I told Gary that this was my update for the day, he laughed.
This second interview with Trey Hammond touches on issues of public theology, or how one thinks God calls the church to interact in the public sphere. Watch the interview with this question in mind, what is Trey’s public theology?
Trey mentions that his congregation has been involved in community organizing. This would be one approach in a public theology. The Wiki definition:
“Community Organizing is a process by which people living in proximity to each other are brought together in an organization to act in their common self-interest. Unlike other forms of more consensual ‘community building,’ community organizers generally assume that social change necessarily involves conflict and social struggle in order to generate collective power for the powerless.”
In this framework, the church joins other groups to bring pressure to bear on power structures in order to facilitate God’s justice in the world.
Another approach, Civil Society, is put forth by Dr. Gary Simpson. The church exists as one civil society organization (CSO). There are three types of organizations in Western society: Business, government and CSO’s. The London School of Economics Centre for Civil Society’s working definition is as follows:
“Civil society refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values. In theory, its institutional forms are distinct from those of the state, family and market, though in practice, the boundaries between state, civil society, family and market are often complex, blurred and negotiated . . . Civil societies are often populated by organizations such as registered charities, development non-governmental organizations, community groups, women’s organizations, faith-based organizations, professional associations, trade unions, self-help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions and advocacy groups.”
In this light, the church seeks to find SCO’s to partner with in order to cooperate with what God is doing in the world. The thesis here is that God is at work through these three strands of organizations, the church finds its place and ministry in the world through its participation as one CSO.
These are two different approaches with similarities and distinctions beyond the scope of this blog today. I see both in Trey’s approach. He mentions community organizing, but I don’t know specifics. (A story to capture on another interview?!) He mentioned in last week’s interview how the La Mesa Presbyterian Church sponsors a children’s art and music program with the elementary school across the street. This would be an example of the church as a SCO reaching out to a government organization in order to collaborate in providing a service to the community.
What is your public theology? How does the church interact in the public sector?
Lastly, I love this quote from Trey, and lift it out for our consideration as we struggle with these questions:
“We don’t do mission to people we do mission with people. We don’t do evangelism to people we create places of hospitality for people to engage each other on a spiritual level.”
What is the public theology at work behind this quote?
Resources for Reading more on Public Theology:
What is Public Theology? http://www.csu.edu.au/faculty/arts/theology/pact/documents/What_is_Public_Theology.pdf
Online Journal of Public Theology: http://www.pubtheo.com/
The University of Edinburgh’s Divinity School’s Center for Theology and Public Issues: http://www.div.ed.ac.uk/theolissues
The Canadian Center for Public Theology: http://www.publictheology.org/
La Mesa Presbyterian Church
Today we look at Interview #1 with Rev. Trey Hammond of La Mesa Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque, NM. I found Trey’s experience fascinating. He (and the church he pastors) face the adaptive challenges of a predominately white, middle-class, educated congregation which longs to have a ministry within their changing community context.
The church has discerned three “strands” within the community that they seek to connect with: Native American, Hispanic and refugee immigrants from Somalia. Therefore, this is the first of three interviews (this one being the longest, 6 minutes). See my comments below after watching the video.
I’d like to highlight a few things I found noteworthy in this first interview.
I was struck by the spiritual discernment the church had done to name the three strands of community context in which they wanted to intentionally build relationships and ministry. This may sound simple, but naming an intended direction is critical to getting traction on the adaptive challenge of connecting with a neighborhood different than the make-up of the church.
I was also struck by how Trey described the church’s movement in their intended direction. He describes their ministry as relational. They first attempted to build “social capital” in the neighborhood, through opening up their building for celebrations like Quinceañera, partnering with the elementary school across the street to offer a music and arts program, and sponsoring a neighborhood multi-cultural street festival.
Social capital is a term with many definitions, but I offer two expert definitions here in conjunction with Trey’s use of the term. As Trey used the term, it connoted to me building relationships and connections which produce goodwill and partnerships between the church and local community. According to Robert Putnam, social capital “refers to the collective value of all ’social networks’ and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other.” Nan Lin offers another definition: “Investment in social relations with expected returns in the marketplace.” For a church, a good working definition might be: Investment in social relationships with individuals and institutions in the community toward cooperative efforts.
Lastly, I was struck with how the church had invited a leader in Hispanic ministries in the RCA to consult with them on their intended direction of connection with the Hispanic community. Trey quotes the leader as telling them, “You’ve earned the social capital of the neighborhood, now it’s time to move into making spiritual connections, not just cultural, political and social connections.” (approximate quote) This invited expert affirmed the church’s direction of building three kinds of social capital: cultural, political and social. Then the expert pushes them toward what is perhaps a later and more difficult step of making spiritual connections. Often churches might start one type of connection, say political for example, but never take the risks to make a spiritual connection. Or conversely, a church may want to start with a spiritual connection, but doesn’t have the social capital sufficient to make that spiritual connection.
In light of Trey’s experience, good questions churches can ask of themselves are:
- What would be our “strands” of direction in which we build social capital and relationships in our community?
- What kind of “social capital” and how could we go about building this? (cultural, political, social, spiritual?)
- If we’ve made cultural, political and social connections, is it time for us as a church to make spiritual connections as well?
If you would like to use this Interview clip and questions for discussion in your church, you could access this interview via this website, or the YouTube link is: