Reversing the Decline

Reversing the Decline

I love these holy places. 

That is why in my free time during the past year, I’ve been writing up my latest book; “Reversing the Decline”. It is based on a number of power point presentations I made while I was in the Diocese of Montana last year. The thesis of my book is that we Episcopalians and other mainstream churches have been in decline for a long time and we have forgotten so much about congregational development and evangelism, that we are now almost preoccupied, even planning, in some cases for the closing of way too many congregations. 

I have specialized in “turn-around” ministry throughout my career, and in recent years have “stumbled”, if you will, upon the idea of organizing our church’s life around the notion of Membership Drives.

With the community as the context of that development; with mobilizing the church around the issues of justice, and courageously organizing the church around issues of human suffering and need, a church will then become a place where its mission and ministry will become unmistakably valuable. After all, if we are the Body of Christ, we can do nothing less that what Jesus attempted to do while he was with us to become a healing presence in the midst of those he met. 

The community becomes the basis, then, of the congregation’s development. With a membership management committee at the helm, the congregation will direct its life around raising the visibility of the place by doing Every Door Direct Mailings, Mailings to folks newly arrived in town, perhaps purchasing billboard space, being sure to submit interesting articles to to the local press from time to time, perhaps monthly; by lifting up the life of the place; people will begin to visit the place. The natural times to do our “marketing efforts” will be in September, when the church gears up for its fall program, in the run up to Christmas, when we all have a natural “tug” toward church, and Holy Week and Easter when we proclaim the core of our faith namely that Jesus Christ is Risen today!

Then our greeting skills, our willingness to help orient and incorporate people to the life within a congregation, and finally our efforts at sending folks out to do the work God has given us all to do, we complete the cycle.

But the membership question is not answered until we ask each person during our annual membership drives to work and pray and give for the spread of the kingdom of God. You will remember this essential teaching of our catechism. Thus we don’t ask people for pledges alone. We ask of our selves and others to consider what it is that God’s work is; i.e. to respond to human suffering and need, and to seek God’s justice. We ask for the prayer of the church which is a coming together weekly for the Holy Eucharist, and daily to pray the prayer of the church in the Daily Office. And then, and only then do we ask people to give in proportion to what God has given them; perhaps 10%, perhaps 5%, but in any case, we tap into the gift of generosity which is at the heart of our spirituality.

One of the highlights of my career was an invitation by Frank Brookhart, Bishop of Montana, to fly out to the Camp and Conference Center on the shores of Flathead Lake, to be the primary presenter at the annual Clergy Conference. Frank was expecting me to do present some work on congregational development and evangelism which has always been something of a specially of mine.

As we drove up to Camp and Conference Center from Helena over the continental divide, we had plenty of time to talk. We had been good friends when we served in West Virginia in a previous life for both of us. I explained to Frank that my thinking on congregational development had evolved significantly. I felt that, like NPR and PBS we needed to do regular Membership Drives. 

At the time I was preparing the material for this clergy conference, I was also working on a model for a Membership Drive with the folks at St Gabriel’s Church, in Douglassville, PA. We were experiencing encouraging results. My presentations in Montana were very well received; so much so that I was invited back to be the Keynoter at their annual convention and then to tour the diocese by Deanery and continue my presentations. It was an exciting time for me. At the conclusion of the week Frank and I had to drive back to Helena, from Flathead Lake; almost a five hour drive.

So I asked the Bishop; “Tell me, Frank, have you ever heard this expression from any Bishop, Priest, Senior Warden or other Episcopalian in any capacity; have you ever heard any of them say; ‘Let’s have a membership drive?’” 

There was a long and telling silence. I asked the question one more time; “Tell me, what do you think? Have you ever heard that expression ‘Let’s have a membership drive from anyone in the church from the House of Bishops on down?’”.

Frank had to admit that he had never heard that particular turn of phrase from anyone in the Episcopal Church. Is it any wonder we are in decline and have been for so long a time. This last Thursday, I was at the Diocesan Headquarters to speak with Libby Berman, the Canon for Congregations and Jean Baptiste Ntagengwa, the Canon for Deployment. I asked the same question and received a blank reply.  

I shared with them my manuscript, based on the power point presentations I made in Montana and a lifetime’s worth of experience with congregations. “Reversing the Decline”. Thankfully I received a warm welcome for my work. I am so very hopeful that I can perhaps share this work in a wider setting, now that I have the time to do so as a retired simple parish priest. 

For as long as I can remember, we’ve been in decline. We have fought internal battles over race, gender, liturgical renewal, and then the granddaddy of them all; sexual orientation. Interestingly enough all these internal struggles have reflected what is going on in the wider culture around us.

Thankfully, we’ve been able to say in no uncertain terms that God’s embrace includes all humanity; just as Jesus said in today’s Gospel when he directed us to; “Go ye therefore into all nations, to all people and baptize them, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

So now then I ask you this question; shall we have a membership dive?

If we did, what would it look like? 

Can you prepare your hearts to receive an influx of new members here?

Can you pray for the courage, intelligence, and imagination to invite someone to come and see. Each of you; one person over the next year or so?

After all, let me make it clear that we are not seeking people who will merely come to church; we are seeking people who will have the courage to be the church.

Your vestry and membership committee are making preparations now. In fact an Every Door Direct Mailing is being prepared to send out in September to invite residence to attend services and our Sunday School and experience a church which has the courage to say; “We are a house of prayer for ALL people.”

I feel like Jacob at the Jabbock sometimes. I feel like I've been wrestling with God as I write long into the hours of the day or the night. And I refuse to let God go, not without a blessing. God has now blessed me with a manuscript. May God’s blessing now reach beyond that manuscript to the church we love. Perhaps what I have done here is to get a conversation going that needs to get going!

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Fr Paul

A Welcoming Heart!

(Note: We did an Every Door Direct Mailing last week and the response was, as you might say, underwhelming! Still we did have a few visitors on Sunday, and I articulated this welcome. If we are to be the People of God we'll need to be a People of the Warm Welcome. In such a wise we welcome God and God's people into our lives. That's not a bad way to live!)

A Warm Welcome!

Welcome to St. Gabriel’s Church. This week we sent out a direct mailer to every household in Douglassville and several surrounding mail routes. We have opened our doors to give folks a chance to discover a little about  the church. So then whether this is your first visit to a worship service here or whether you’ve been coming here all your life, welcome!

You will notice that we are a church of ritual. We sing Hymns. We have a Book of Common Prayer and we follow a set formula for worship. The shape of our liturgy has its origins in the early church’s custom of remembering the night before Jesus died. This death was for the forgiveness of our sins and as a gift that leads to eternal life. He took bread and wine, thanked God as any family would at Grace, and especially as a Jewish family would at Passover in the Liturgy of the Haggadah, literally “telling the story of our deliverance from slavery”. At one time or another we have all been slaves. At one time or another many have held slaves. Either way, God seeks to deliver us from slavery.

We read a set of scriptures every week from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Epistles, and the Gospel to put us back in touch with with God’s Story. These readings are intended to be explained by the preacher.

So then, you are subjected to a sermon. In it, the priest/preacher is charged with the responsibility of building a bridge between what happened in ancient times to what is happening today in our shared life stories. Various clergy do that with varying skill.

Today for instance, we have a Gospel reading in which the Disciples are making their way through Galilee in that dry and rocky land underneath the heat of an oppressive noonday sun in that inhospitable place. And Jesus tells them yet again, for a second time that he, the Son of Man, will be betrayed into human hands, he will be killed, and then on the third day, he will rise again. He said this plainly.

But the scripture says they did not understand him. The first time Jesus talked about this, Peter rebuked Jesus, you may remember, but Jesus went right back at Peter and said “Get behind me, Satan. You think like people think. It is time for you my followers to put on the mind of God, and think like God thinks.”

There were hurt feelings, of course. But on they went. He healed people of physical and mental disorders. He did do some very extraordinary things. Miracles seemed commonplace with him. He had a way of teaching they found compelling, and most of all he had a way of loving people, ALL people, even sinners, even the unwashed, outcast and rejects of the day. Rich or poor, he loved them. 

So then they had time to kill and a fight broke out among them as to who was the greatest. I remember playing “King of the Mountain” when I was a boy. I was actually pretty good at the game. I had a low center of gravity even then, so I was able to hold my ground.

So the Disciples of Jesus were playing “King of the Mountain” too. Having been upbraided by Jesus, they probably shrugged their shoulders and began to wonder, half joking, who was going to be the greatest among them when this “Jesus Kingdom” finally came.

So Jesus asked them; “So what were you arguing about”? Of course he knew, he could read their body language, and he may have had good hearing too. And besides all that, he was Jesus, so he knew anyway.

I do hope you know that the secrets of your hearts are indeed open to God. And he loves you very much, even with all those secrets being disclosed to the heart of God.

Well they were embarrassed about admitting that they were playing “King of the Mountain”; just a silly child’s game.

So he sat down: the posture of the teacher in the ancient near eastern world.  Whoever wants to be first, he said must be last and moreover must be the servant of all. Jesus would later reinforce this idea by washing their feet on the night before he died for them. Then he took a child. There are always children wandering about in the Middle East even today. They are desperately poor then as now. They were trying to peddle thing then as they do now. Post cards, water, cheap trinkets. They are often dirty from the constant kicking of dust. Water is way too expensive for the poor to use in such an extravagance as frequent washings.

So he took one of these children and set him or her in their midst. And then taking the child into his arms, he told them whoever welcomes such a child welcomes Jesus and moreover whoever welcomes Jesus welcomes the One who sent Jesus.

Suddenly, Jesus had taken an ancient child’s game and turned it upside down. This is not about becoming “King of the Mountain”. This life is about becoming a servant to humankind.

Now for those of you who are new to St Gabriel’s, I suspect that even you know that we have organized our life around the needs of Senior Citizens. We have played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Keystone Villa. And then we incurred significant debt by building the Parish Life Center. We house the Good Shepherd Learning Center, and  we provide for the needs of younger families in the community and tend to their children in a safe, clean, and educational environment. The Boy Scouts meet here. There are seven recovery groups that meet in the building. We feed the poor at the Community Center in Birdsboro, and we make lots of soup for the food pantry housed up at St. Paul’s.

Now you know as well as I do that we cannot rest on our laurels. That’s why we’ve invited you to gather with us here at the church today, at St. Gabriel’s church. There are so many human needs for the followers of Jesus to tend to. That’s why we are here. We are here as Jesus said, to be child-like servants one of another.

When St. Gabriel came to Mary yea all those many years ago, he told her; “Mary, I have news for you. You are going to have a baby. And not just any baby.” She was hardly a girl herself and her betrothed Joseph was going to have a hard time with this story.

But Gabriel had a message for her as well as for the rest of us. God cares about the people. All God’s people. And God was sending Jesus into the world to show how much God cares; how much God loves all these people.

So, then week after week after week, we re-enact in our liturgical worship that supper Jesus had with his friends. We break bread together. We remember Jesus not just as we would a historic figure. We invoke Jesus into the present as Jesus told us to do. This is how we remember him. This is my Body. This is my Blood. Jesus becomes present to us in this Liturgical offering.

So welcome to St. Gabriel’s Church. Whether this is your first Sunday with us or whether you are a cradle Episcopalian, this is your church anytime you need one. You are welcome at this table, all of you always. When Jesus fed the multitudes on the hillsides of Galilee, he didn’t check anybody’s membership cards, he didn’t check on bank accounts, race, ethnicity, age, theological orthodoxy, gender or even orientation.

To Jesus if we were human beings we were children of God. And as the Son of Man he welcomed us to God. And so on this day I welcome you to God as well. Draw near to God, as today’s Epistle lesson says, and God will draw near to you.

May you be filled with all the fullness of God this day. 

Fr. Paul

A Tale of Two Sundays

This Week the Bishop

Next Week the Invitation

It is just one thing right after another at St. Gabriel’s. Just when we thought things were getting busy enough, they go right on getting busier. The Bishop comes here today and next week we are inviting 6,000 households to St. Gabriel’s!

I know that the very mention of the Bishop’s visit can make many anxious. But add to that an invitation to 6000 local households! That’s enough to take your breath away with anxiety if you are responsible for running the Sunday School or the Youth Program, or the whole church, for instance.

So let me first remind you and me to breathe deeply. In and then out; breathe!

Breathe in and then out; in and then out and continue doing so. 

"All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well."

This is how the Holy Spirit comes to us.

She comes to us in our Breathing.

In Eastern Christianity, the word "Sophia" means “Wisdom”. Wisdom becomes the feminine dimension of God, in a very important sense.

The Center of the Eastern Church for over a thousand years was the Church of the Hagia Sophia or “Holy Wisdom”.

Those who seek to live in Wisdom must practice their breathing.

To inspire is to take a breath.

To be inspired it is necessary to practice breathing.

So then, breathe.

It is at the root of prayer and meditation to breathe well and to breathe deeply.

Thus we learn of God’s Wisdom, and God’s inspiration.

The word “spirit” and “inspire” share the same root in English, Greek and Latin; all the great languages of the Western Church.

So then the Bishop comes to us this morning.

The visit of a Bishop is a signature moment for Episcopalians since it is in the very name of our church that we describe ourselves as a church with Bishops.

There’s that Greek language again; “Episcopos” being the root word. It means “overseer” or “superintendent”, one who has responsibility for a grouping of congregations in a unit we call a “Diocese”.

In fact the basic building block for the church is not the congregation if we look back historically at our own church or even as we look back at the majority of the Christian Experience.

The building block for the church is the Diocese.

The Bishop is the Defender of the Faith.

He or she represents our Unity in Christ

Our Apostolicity is resented to us in the Bishop in the sense that the Whole of the Church is represented to us in the office.

Thus, for instance, when we come to the Bishop for Baptism, Confirmation, Reception or Reaffirmation, we proclaim our faith to the whole Church.

The Bishop becomes much more than a person and the Church becomes more than an organization.

Understood correctly the Bishop represents our physical and spiritual connection to Jesus.

I used to tell that to my children, since my priest told me the same thing. 

When the Bishop lays hands upon your heads, it is symbolically as though Jesus himself lays His hands upon you, because in an unbroken Apostolic Succession, that Physical and Apostolic presence comes down to us at the hands of the bishops of the church.

And too the Church is more than just an organization. We become members of Christ as we gather with our Bishop and as we gather with one another.

We are the blessed communion of all faithful believers. And I believe this Communion crosses denominational boundary and even crosses beyond life and the grave and unites us to all the faithful of God, living and dead. When I go to communion, I gather with all the beloved of God.

And that brings me to next week too. Over the next day or two almost 6,000 invitations will be extended to every household in Douglassville. We are doing an EDDM an; an Every Door Direct Mailing. Much like the local Pizza Parlor or Chinese Restaurant, we too need to announce to the community we live in that we are in business.

We are in the business of God. And yes, that makes us busy. If we are to be busy with the business of God when visitors come to our door, lets do so with a warm welcome. And lets remember that it is always our business to proclaim Christ’s Victory over sin and death. Our sins are forgiven. Life doesn’t end, it changes. It changes at our Baptism, it changes at our Confirmation, it changes as we gather with one another week after week. It changes as we are gathered to God one after another unto our ancestors.

And what we are learning too in the Episcopal Church is this; God loves us without distinction just as blessed Peter the Apostle said in his now famous Easter Sermon;

Acts 10:34,35

The “Outsiders” Hear the Good News

Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.'

And Blessed Paul the Apostle also stayed on message when he said the following.

Galatians 3:28

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

I know full well that there is a spiritual brouhaha over sexual orientation, gender identity, class, race and ethnicity. And one after another we, in the Episcopal Church, have come to believe that Jesus makes no distinctions and neither should we. And yes, I know that there are passages in Leviticus where you can  condemn for certain kinds of people, but when the Chief Priests and the Pharisees challenged Jesus to sum up the Law, Jesus did not begin to tick off those we could exclude from God’s Salvation Plan. You and I know full well what he said:  he picked the “Shema” that Verse from Deuteronomy that says:

Deuteronomy 6:4,5

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God is One and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

This, Jesus said, is the first commandment. And the second is like unto it. His mind searched the Scripture in an instant and he said this;

Leviticus 19:18

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The two become one congruent law with the other. Love God and love your neighbor. You cannot love the One without loving the Other. God and neighbor are interchangeable as it were. Jesus then sent us out to do the work that God has given us to do. And a hard piece of work it is too, when we think of those who mean us harm, or even those within our families with whom we feud.

But now, getting back to next week, I doubt very much that 6000 folks will come to our doors next Sunday. I have no idea how many will carelessly toss our invitation into the recycle bin. But I pray that some will be moved to feel that tug within the heart that says; "Maybe, just maybe these people down at St. Gabriel’s will welcome me into the Holy Place and allow me to meet God and explore what it means to love God and serve God’s people".

So, keep breathing. Breathe in and breathe out. 

God will be with us in all things!

Fr. Paul