Nobody wants a tumbleweed ministry, where people settle in church for a while only to blow away. To do God’s work, churches need planted people, and Christlikeness will grow in individuals only when they are rooted in local congregations.
So how can pastors help this generation-mobile, fast-paced, restless-connect to the church? And then, how can they help people put down deeper and deeper roots?
To answer those questions, LEADERSHIP gathered four pastors who face different challenges in assimilation.
Rick Lobs is rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in suburban Geneva, Illinois.
Ray Maldonado pastors Hope Christian Fellowship, an urban and multi-ethnic congregation in Chicago.
Doug Self pastors The Church at Redstone and The Church at Carbondale, located in a mountain valley in Colorado.
Ken Travilla is associate pastor at Wooddale Church in the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie.
Leadership: Describe how assimilation feels. Tell us about a group, apart from a congregation, that you’ve become a part of.
Doug Self: When I first came to Redstone, the community was forming a Search and Rescue Squad. I, along with fifteen others from our community, attended one of the first training classes for Emergency Medical Technicians. When we came together, none of us knew each other well. Yet as we learned and practiced together, we began to think as a team, discovering slowly our individual abilities and roles. Our common interest and task pulled us together.
Rick Lobs: My athletic experiences and service in the Marine Corps are two areas where I was most readily assimilated. In fact, last week I was sporting a Marine Corps T-shirt as I walked down the street, and a man stopped me and began talking about his days in the Marines. It’s been thirty years since I went through boot camp, but I felt a bond with him. I think a common purpose, in sports or the Marines or whatever, helps assimilate people.
One place I have felt least assimilated, sad to say, is the Christian church, particularly in ecumenical clergy groups. We have different social and theological concerns. We use different language, wear different clothes, worship differently-all these things divide us.
Ray Maldonado: Five of us from the church were taking a class together at SCUPE, Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education. When the assignment was given, I started doing it in my usual style-completing assignments early, reading ahead, trying to get a little edge on the others. But the group became uncomfortable with that. None of them had the college experience I had, so they weren’t working at the same pace, nor with individualistic goals.
So they pulled me aside and asked, “What’s happening? What are you trying to do? What are your motives?” I was shocked; I didn’t feel I was doing anything wrong. But they felt we were in that class as a group. We were to study together. To them it looked like I was out there doing my thing. It’s not that they wanted me to do poorly; they just wanted us to do well.
In addition, the class was designed for Anglos who were going to work in the city. But the five of us were second-generation Puerto Ricans who already worked there, although we needed more training. The group felt that to maintain our identity and purpose in that class of thirty-three, we needed to hang together better.
So they pulled me back into the group. For the rest of the year, I worked with at least one or two of the other guys on projects.
Ken Travilla: Let me talk about a different type of experience, but one that taught me a great deal about assimilation. I remember my first Sunday at Wooddale Church. I stood in the foyer, knowing few people and none well. I remember sitting in the congregation and looking up and not knowing one person in the choir. Yet I had just come from a church where I not only knew everybody in the choir, but I knew their families, their children. That was a terribly lonely feeling for my wife and me. After that, I carried a new concern for people visiting the church.
Leadership: What signals that a person is assimilated in a church?
Maldonado: Frankly, in some respects I’m uncomfortable with the word assimilation. It may imply that newcomers must give up some of their essential personality to become like the rest of the congregation, to conform to the predominant culture. That can be a problem for a Hispanic growing up in a predominant Anglo culture.
There was a time I tried to straighten my hair, like an Anglo. I suppose I thought I would assimilate-fit in better. Of course, it didn’t work.
So, I prefer the word belonging, helping people feel like they belong to a community, in spite of their differences.
Travilla: To me assimilation doesn’t mean making people all alike. We use the word quite a bit. In fact, for a while, it became a buzzword in our church-“How are they doing in being assimilated?”
But I prefer to use the word connected. If a person doesn’t get to know somebody else, make a friend, feel connected, he or she won’t stay. So for us, assimilation means getting connected to something or someone in the church.
Self: During my upbringing, assimilation was clear-cut: it happened when someone joined the church. During the altar call, people came down and shook the pastor’s hand and usually transferred their letter from another congregation. So, everything was geared toward that one point. You knew when you were assimilated, and you knew when you weren’t.
In my present situation, we don’t encourage people to join the church formally. People have come to Redstone to get away from social strictures, especially joining organizations. I don’t think I’ve had a dozen people in the last twelve years ask about joining. It’s possible to join if somebody wants to. (Laughter) But for most of our people, it has never crossed their minds.
So, my perspective has changed. Instead of pushing formal membership, I consider people assimilated when they feel they are a part of a congregation. Some people attend only four times a year, but we both sense they’re on board and they’ll be around awhile.
Leadership: So, people are assimilated when you can count on them returning in the future?
Self: Not necessarily. It’s more nebulous. It’s when people feel, This is my church, or, He’s my pastor. They may come only once or twice a year.
A few Sundays ago, I recognized a couple as newcomers, so I made my way to them after worship and introduced myself. In the course of the conversation, I asked them where they attended church. They looked startled and said, “Well, we go here. This is our church.” I found out that they’re among those people who come about once a year. But from their perspective, they’re assimilated.
Lobs: For me, assimilation has something to do with church growth, but that’s where it gets complicated. When assimilation means only church growth to me, I notice I am unsure about my ministry; I’m usually trying to justify my ministry with numbers. However, when I think about assimilation as a process of biblical hospitality, of which church growth is often a happy by-product, I feel good about my ministry and my church.
So assimilation begins when we welcome and make room for “the sojourner.”
Maldonado: Assimilation is signaled to some degree by worship attendance, but not always. There are other ways a person can identify with us and say, “This is my church.”
We have a food pantry ministry. Four or five volunteers not only give people food but offer to pray with them, or, if appropriate, share the gospel. The vast majority of people coming to our pantry want to hear some good news, some encouraging words, and have someone pray for them. Many of those people still don’t come to worship, but when they talk about the church, they say, “My church over there . . .” or point to us as “the church I go to.”
They’re connected to the church by the food pantry, even though some of them come only one Saturday a month.
Leadership: Is that the goal of assimilation-for people to identify with a congregation?
Self: It’s the beginning. After that, there’s no limit. I think we’re saying that rather than the church organization announcing someone belongs, people decide whether they feel included.
Leadership: What are the steps, then, in your assimilation process? How do you help people feel they belong-and then take them further?
Travilla: Wooddale Church is located in a fast-growing suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul. Our attendance averages over two thousand each Sunday, and we draw from eighty-seven Zip Codes. We have to be intentional about our assimilation process.
It begins with contacting the first-time, local visitor, about thirty-two per week. The senior pastor sends a letter of welcome, but, in addition, two other pastors telephone visitors the week after they attend and obtain information about them. We’re trying to determine in which “congregation”-our adult fellowship groups and classes-they would best fit. The pastors also ask whether the newcomer would like a visit from a member of one of our congregations-although 95 percent don’t.
Self: Ninety-five percent don’t want a visit? I call on 100 percent of our visitors. They seem to be surprised by it but appreciative of the personal attention.
Travilla: Not in our situation. In fact, a nearby Presbyterian church was encouraged by a well-known church consultant to visit visitors. A pastor was hired to that end. But two years into the job, the pastor told my wife, “I’m losing my job. People don’t want personal visits.” We’re finding the same thing.
In any case, whether people want a visit or not, we give their names to our People Assimilation and Care Coordinators (PAACC), who, in turn, visit the newcomers, if requested, or simply telephone and invite the new people to their congregation.
After “visitors” come to our church three times in an eight-week period, they become “new regular attenders.” At that point, the senior pastor sends another letter to them, thanking them for their continued interest. We also send them an engraved name tag and phone them, asking how they are liking Wooddale Church. If they’re not in a congregation yet, I send their names to the PAACC people again to have them extend another invitation.
We continue to record their worship attendance, as we do with our members and regular attenders. When people miss four consecutive Sundays, a member of our Discipleship Board phones to ask how things are going.
We also offer newcomers a seven-week elective called the New Connection, designed to help people become oriented to the church. In addition, we invite new regular attenders to a social time with the pastors and their wives.
Self: I’m amazed; our environment is so much different. Most people who visit our church have no recent church background. Their expectations of the church are not organizational.
They’re checking things out and aren’t in a rush to join anything. So it’s important that I be careful not to rush them. I usually wait a couple of weeks before I casually drop by for a visit.
I may not see them in worship for another three months, and after that, not for another year. Then maybe they’ll come two Sundays in a row, and then not for three months. Over time, they may begin to come more often than they don’t.
Maldonado: In terms of assimilating people to a deeper level, we encourage people to become part of a koinonia group-for Bible study, sharing, prayer, and worship. We also want them to become involved in some ministry. At that point they can become a member of the church, and that’s when they belong in the fullest sense.
Self: I see several concentric circles in our church.
In the middle are those serving in ministry-the core group of about sixty. In the next ring are regular attenders, another sixty to eighty. The next ring is composed of infrequent attenders, people who attend worship several times a year, and beyond that are those who merely identify with the church. Of course, there are a lot more people in the last two circles. As people become involved, they move toward the inner core. Like Ray says, people are fully assimilated when they’ve taken up the purpose of the church, serving in leadership.
Leadership: Is it necessary for a person to be in leadership to be fully assimilated?
Maldonado: Not in the sense that every person gets involved in leadership, but that people go beyond meeting Christ and become involved with things the Lord is doing. That gives people a greater sense of purpose, which is especially important in our setting.
Our community’s fundamental problem is not gangs (although they are a problem) but low self-image. When people become involved in doing Christ’s work-the furthering of the kingdom-that enhances their self-worth.
So we encourage people to do the ministry. We’re less interested in hiring interns, people coming in from the outside, than in developing leadership among people in the church.
Lobs: Since I see assimilation as the process of hospitality, I’d call these other stages something else. Hospitality is welcoming, helping people feel at home among us. For an individual coming every week, that process takes three or four months. But that’s different than discipling them, or finding them a place to work, or training them for leadership.
Leadership: How do you welcome people?
Lobs: After the worship service, we greet the visitor with a packet of information about the Episcopal Church and our particular parish. Visitors also receive a phone call from one of the priests who arranges for a lay visiting team (usually a family) to call on them. When they make the call, they bring a loaf of bread with a note talking about the importance of bread, linking it with the eucharistic ministry of our parish.
Four times a year we invite personally all visitors for a meal and a short presentation by staff members. We also invite them to the Inquirers’ Class, which takes place three times a year-nine hours of instruction on Anglican culture and beliefs, and, of course, the gospel.
Travilla: However we each do it, meeting the emotional needs of people comes first. One common mistake, however, is to address theological questions first. That’s not what most people are interested in.
First they want to know, “Do you like me?” and “Can I find a place here?”
Leadership: Who are the people you’re concerned about assimilating? What are their particular needs you try to address?
Maldonado: Our community is primarily Puerto Rican. Other churches in the area also minister to Hispanics, but we are one of the few churches whose largest single group is second-generation Hispanic. But, we’re not just a Hispanic congregation-Anglos and blacks also attend, and our services are all in English.
However, when it comes to people we’re helping to belong, I primarily think of two other groups. First, there are people who are alone in the city, with few friends. They can live in the same block or apartment complex for years and not know their neighbors. They don’t join groups. They go to work and come home and want to be left alone, or simply are left alone.
Then there are the joiners, people who want to belong. For some it’s a political organization or community group, for others a baseball or bowling league. For many young people, it’s a gang, which is a highly structured group with unique symbols and specific social rules-how you stand, what you wear, and so on.
Naturally, how you reach out and assimilate each group is different. With young people, for example, the desire to belong is powerful. So the church must get kids involved in the life of the church. They’re either going to belong to the church or to a gang or to something else. And the fact is that many kids not in a gang are in a church and vice versa.
Loners are a bigger challenge. Often they are people who have been hurt by a group or victimized by crime. Somehow we’ve got to let them know we’re an okay group to belong to.
But loners are difficult to get in touch with. We may initially meet them through the food pantry, but we can’t follow up on many of them. Some of their apartment complexes are impossible to get into. We buzz them, but there is no answer, or there may not be a bell at all. So you have to phone to let them know you’re there or coming soon. We’re constantly looking for creative ways to get to loners.
Lobs: The group that produces most members for our church is made up of people with a conservative, evangelical background. The next largest group is ex-Roman Catholics. Although they bring strengths of their respective traditions, they also bring baggage (usually a great deal of anger) they’re trying to get rid of.
An ex-Roman Catholic comes knowing a great deal about the tradition and liturgy but may need instruction in the Bible. The evangelical knows the Bible but little about symbols, tradition, or liturgy.
So we offer multiple classes, on classical spirituality, Bible surveys, and other subjects.
Maldonado: Do you ever use a person from one group to teach people from another group?
Lobs: Yes; that usually happens naturally. The people who know the Scripture tend to want to teach it, and those who understand spirituality or liturgy like to share those subjects. Meeting intellectual needs is the easiest part. Responding to the emotional needs of each group isn’t as easy.
For example, evangelicals and Roman Catholics often have endured authoritarianism, or manipulation, or empty formalism, or whatever, and they’ve come to our church to be free from that.
Take a song like “Just as I Am,” for instance. Whereas the ex-Roman Catholic might appreciate learning a “new” hymn, it may resurrect unpleasant memories for the evangelical, and even elicit some anger. The ex-Roman Catholics may still be steaming that they were taught the tradition but were left virtually ignorant of the Bible, and so they may resist our emphasis on the traditions.
We have to be faithful to Christ, and that means not letting either group determine how we’re going to present the Christian faith. So we communicate, over time, that people coming into the church must buy into an already-existing organization. It is a way of life and a way of praying that we won’t allow them to change, unless they first become part of the community.
When they’re integrated into the parish, these people have the freedom to work through their frustrations about the past in the context of St. Mark’s, and that process often puts their problems into perspective.
Self: It is strange to hear you describe unchanging tradition as a strength. Most of the people coming to us are the unchurched; in fact, they are trying to get away from unchanging tradition. Many have had church backgrounds as children, but they left the church because they found it boring or irrelevant. Often they have a story of how they were burned by a church. So they’re against organized religion.
The community, 70 percent baby boomers, is primarily composed of people who have come to get away. Redstone attracts individuals. They don’t come there to join things. They move there to achieve a dream. And that dream usually involves outdoor activities and rugged individualism. Privacy is important: homes are far apart and nestled back in nooks of the woods.
So when people show up on Sunday morning to check out our church, it’s phenomenal to me; it’s miraculous that they’re there. They haven’t gone skiing or hiking; they haven’t stayed in bed or stayed home to read the paper. They haven’t done a dozen other things. They’ve come to church!
Leadership: So why do they come?
Self: Some, after they’ve been in the mountains for a year or two, realize the mountains aren’t going to solve their problems. Often the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, or an important transition will heighten people’s spiritual interest. They become curious about the church; they’re going to check it out one more time to see if it’s any different. Maybe it can help.
They’re guarded, pretty sure they’re not going to like it, but they’re hoping against hope that they’ll find something genuine there.
So our assimilation begins with a low-key response, meeting them at their own mood level, on their terms, accepting them as they are. We’re careful not to hustle them but to come alongside them.
The man who does most of our greeting doesn’t meet people at the door with a glad hand, pat them on the back, and talk church language. In fact, sometimes when people get out of their cars, rather than greet them immediately, he will fall in step with them as they walk to the church, entering into casual conversation on the way. That’s an important symbol for us.
Leadership: But, in contrast to Ken’s situation, you make calls on every visitor. Doesn’t that come across to these skittish individualists as pushy?
Self: No, because I mainly listen when I visit. I try to find out why they’ve come to church and why they don’t like church. I try to elicit the-church-did-this-to-me stories, because nearly everybody has one. The anger is there, so it’s best to get it out in the open, for them and for me.
When people start talking about their resentment of the church, I don’t get defensive. If they say, “The church is always after money. Every time you sit down, they shove that offering plate under your nose,” I’ll say, “That’s terrible! I hate it when churches do that. It makes me mad, too.” It so happens that we don’t pass an offering plate at our church but have a box on the wall to receive donations.
Whatever the resentment, however, I try to empathize with the sense of injustice or frustration. Once they see that I’m not interested in making them religious or churchy, they’re more receptive to our church and the gospel.
I also try to discern the needs of these “prospects” and practice pastoral care with them. This gives them the best idea of what our church is about. Just empathizing with them already helps assimilate them.
Leadership: Who are the people you find it most difficult to assimilate?
Travilla: For us, it’s not so much a social unit or age grouping as it is a person with the “What are you going to do for me?” attitude. We reach out to people, but they have to meet us halfway.
Also, we have few poor people. We’re a white, suburban, upper-middle-class church. If a poor person wandered into our church, I would hope people would welcome him or her, but I don’t know if that person would stay.
Maldonado: We have a hard time attracting and keeping people who make good money-those who have a considerably higher lifestyle than our average member. They have a difficult time facing constantly the many poor families in the church, especially single-parent families, generally the poorest people in a community. Sometimes the well-to-do become more generous with their time and money, but often they end up leaving the church, although not necessarily the neighborhood.
Lobs: We have a hard time assimilating smokers, since our church is a nonsmoking area. That excludes a significant number of people.
People who don’t like to see women in leadership won’t be easily assimilated into our church. But theological liberals would find it difficult to feel comfortable with us. Although our building is handicap accessible, it’s still a difficult building to get around in for the handicapped, so they won’t be easily assimilated.
I could go on. There are a lot of groups with peculiar needs or characteristics that we miss.
Leadership: Do you feel that if there are minorities in your community, you need to have them in your church? Do you feel incomplete without them?
Lobs: No, I accept the church growth principle that churches usually will have some diversity but will remain largely homogeneous. That’s true of virtually every place I see.
Maldonado: We strive to be a heterogeneous group, although I recognize the part that homogeneity plays, especially in terms of modeling.
For example, the fact that I, the pastor, am Hispanic helps attract Hispanics. My education helps attract certain Anglos. I like sports; that attracts some of the young people.
Still, we try to accent our diversity. In worship we sing spirituals, traditional hymns, and coritos, Spanish choruses. We make sure Hispanics, blacks, and whites are each represented in leadership.
Sometimes this creates difficulties. For some of us, when we’re intent, we talk a little louder, and our hands move. That’s how we show our conviction. Some Anglos, however, might think, You’ve lost it, man; you’re out of control. Talk to me later when you’re cool and calm.
But when the Anglos back away, the Hispanics think, Hey, we’re just now getting into it. Let’s deal with things now.
Leadership: so what holds the Hispanics, blacks, and whites together?
Maldonado: The mission of the church. We’re a community-based congregation. Many of our people walk to church. We have an emphasis on doing ministry in the community with indigenous leadership. People actually move into the community to be a part of us. And since our community is culturally mixed, it’s more natural to have a culturally mixed congregation.
Also, we are homogeneous in language. There are other churches doing ministry in Spanish. English is a common denominator that allows Anglos and blacks to participate fully in the church.
Leadership: What obstacles to assimilation do you encounter in that situation?
Maldonado: Invisible borders surround city blocks. If you’re a young person who lives two blocks further east, it’ll be difficult to assimilate you.
Recently another pastor brought a couple of young men from his church to help return chairs to our church. When they arrived, the pastor told me, “Listen, these guys are scared. They’re in your neighborhood.” So while these kids were coming in and out I had to literally stand in the front door to protect them, to let other kids in the community know, “Don’t mess with them. They’re with me. They’re just dropping off some stuff, and then they’re leaving.”
That type of turf mentality makes it difficult to evangelize people in other areas of the city.
Leadership: We’ve talked about how the church adapts itself to make people feel welcome, comfortable. At what point does the church stop adapting itself to people and start asking people to adapt to it?
Self: In our community, many people have beefs with the traditional church-they don’t like the rigidity of liturgy, singing hymns, or long, theological sermons. We try, then, to remove as many obstacles as possible so that people can consider Christ, and him only. So we make people comfortable sociologically, but we never water down the gospel.
Travilla: There’s a difference between the form the message takes and the message itself. The form is never equal to the message, which remains unchanged. We may change the form to attract the market around us, but never the message.
Maldonado: Sometimes you have to draw the line. A visiting couple who lived together started attending our church. We welcomed and accepted them as they were. But as they became more involved and grew spiritually (and we learned the man was still married to another woman), we challenged them with the lordship of Christ on that issue. That’s when things got a little hairy.
Yet they moved apart. He addressed the issue of his nonfunctioning marriage, and eventually this couple started seeing each other again. They were hurt, saying, “You didn’t accept us as we are.” But in our church we try to encourage people to live according to the Scriptures. In the long run, I think people want a church to take spiritual stands.
Lobs: Sometimes people come to us and want to receive only the by-products of the Christian church. They have no intention of assimilating. This is a special problem for well-established denominational churches.
People who last attended an Episcopal church in fifth grade still call themselves Episcopalians, though they’re assimilated nowhere. When they want a child baptized or a marriage or funeral performed, they think, Episcopal Church, and come asking for one of these by-products of community life.
We strongly encourage them to worship with us weekly for three months before we talk about marriage or baptism. I say, “If you want to be married here and take those vows, you must first reconsider your baptismal vows, and the first step for doing that is coming back into the body of Christ.”
People sometimes are hurt and angry when we refuse them. But this would be a place we draw the line.
Self: That’s just the opposite of the way we operate. When people come and want to be married, I take it as a spark of interest in Christianity, for whatever reason. I’ll work with them on their wedding, and, as a result, some will start getting involved in our church. Some, of course, I may never see again. But I feel it’s important that I respond to the interest they show.
Travilla: What happens, though, if a couple who is living together wants you to perform their marriage?
Self: Well, you’ve just described 95 percent of the people who come to me for weddings. Many times they’re unaware of why they’re wanting to be married by a minister. But there’s usually some quasi-spiritual motive. So, rather than put up a barrier by saying, “You’ve got to meet these criteria first,” I use their coming as a starting point for discussion.
Now if they are Christians, I talk to them about their living situation. We’ve had several of those couples move out until they were married.
Maldonado: There’s a difference between assimilating a non-Christian and a Christian. At some point, no matter how welcome you make visitors feel, you’ve got to talk to them about belonging to the family of God. And that means you have to ask them to make a decision about Christ-not always a comfortable decision.
Travilla: That question is asked when people want to join our church. At that point, we make it clear that one of the requirements for being a member of Wooddale Church is to have a vital relationship with Jesus Christ as personal Savior. But up until that time, we do everything we can to help them like it there, without asking them to change.
Leadership: What is the pastor’s role in this process of assimilation? How active are you in it and how much do you delegate?
Maldonado: In a small church, people expect the pastor to be directly involved. I do that, among other ways, by incorporating a variety of people in leading worship. That communicates to visitors that people get involved in our church. Just the other day someone said to me, “We noticed there were a lot of people leading worship. One person did the welcome, another the offering, and another this and that.” He got the message.
Travilla: The pastor needs to have some interest, otherwise assimilation isn’t going to get the attention it needs. Although our senior pastor delegates much of the task, he also sends a letter of welcome and a follow-up letter and attends gatherings of newcomers. In addition, he sets a tone in sermons and conversations that ours is a church that wants to connect with people.
Maldonado: In a church, someone is going to reach out to newcomers, so it had better be the pastor or someone the leadership or pastor designates. You don’t want problem people drawing others to themselves. I think of Absalom, who began to draw people to himself and so took the hearts of Israel away from David. You want people to be drawn to the core of the church, not a splinter group.
Leadership: So how much time can a pastor devote to assimilation? When does it start to take time away from other essential pastoral duties?
Lobs: That raises a question for me. For years churches have gotten along without intentional programming, assimilation seminars, and the like. How did we get by without Lyle Schaller? (Laughter)
So it does make me wonder, Do we think about it too much? Are we too intentional about these things? Our assimilation process is intentional, right to the loaf of bread-we even count the poppy seeds. (Laughter)
Self: In one sense, all that we do at Redstone is assimilation, helping people feel they belong and then helping them grow in Christ to a deeper sense of belonging. Everything that I am and do, everything our church does-the setting, the low-key worship, the use of nontechnical Christian words-is an attempt to help people feel comfortable in the church.
Lobs: I think one of the pastor’s main roles is to affirm the church’s heritage. We have a variety of church traditions here, and each of us has enthusiasm for his situation. There are no apologies for what we’re doing.
I don’t understand why some Episcopalians, for instance, feel apologetic for our long, noble history. That’s our selling point to some people who want to be rooted, to know that they are part of an unbroken parade that began with the apostles.
Some people yearn for a complex liturgy that takes a lifetime to understand. Yesterday, for instance, that flower unfolded for me a little more when I recognized this: the feast of the birth of John the Baptist is near the summer solstice; so, from the day we remember the one who preached repentance and judgment, the days grow darker. On the twenty-fifth of December, near the winter solstice, we celebrate the nativity of Jesus, the Light of the World, and from that point the days grow brighter. It’s a small thing, but I expect to keep learning things like this through the years.
So, I think it’s sad to watch an Episcopalian priest abandon this heritage and try to inflict another tradition on the congregation. I’ve also seen nonliturgical people try to impose liturgy artificially on their congregations. It reveals a lack of centeredness and undermines the assimilation process. A sense of well-being about one’s place is a key in the assimilation process, and the pastor is in the best position to communicate that.
Self: I think we’ve arrived at our levels of comfort by “analyzing the market” and making “the product” as appealing as possible. For me, that means recognizing that the people in our community rebel against tradition. For Rick, it means reaching out to people who yearn for tradition.
Lobs: Also, I’m thankful that as important as our role is, we’re not always in control of the process. I know people who should have fallen through the cracks, pretty wide cracks. We didn’t call or visit them, for example, and yet they quickly became faithful members of the church. In other people we’ve invested all kinds of time, money, lunches, brunches, meetings, and classes, and they never became a part of us.
That’s a relief to me-to know that if, at times, our cracks are large, all is not lost. We have more than adequate back-up with the Lord. He normally calls and dispatches through the process, but sometimes in spite of it.
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