Church in the Wrong Place?

Shiloh Church believes that it is "Living the Word by Serving the World." Part and parcel of that bold claim is the obligation of going out into the world, perhaps even into strange territory, in order to "Live the Word." The odd circumstance that I have noticed is that the world is sometimes uncomfortable with the Church that comes into it.

Several weeks back, volunteers from Shiloh Church served beer at the outside St. Patrick's Day celebrations at Boston's Bistro and Pub. Dozens of patrons commented on the curious presence of the Church. Why would a church be part of our St. Paddy's Day celebrations? Why would a church be serving beer? To be doing so seems contrary to what many have come to understand as the Christian ethic.

While it may have been appropriate to note that St. Patrick's Day was, at it roots, a religious recognition, we have to admit that our role was not related to the Saint. We were spared that conversation. Shiloh was attempting to accomplish two things: 1. We were trying to raise funds to support our chancel renovation project. and 2. We were attempting to be a church presence to an alternative community, one that we might otherwise never serve. Shiloh raised over $1,300, and the volunteers were certainly in an unexpected place.

During the event, and afterward, I have begun to feel an unanticipated discomfort with the church's presence at Boston's and elsewhere. The discomfort does not come from the religious community. It does not come from our membership or our volunteers. The strange feeling comes from the community. It comes from the public. It comes from precisely those whom we were there to serve and meet. While no one blatantly stated the possibility, I discerned the feeling that folks who were drinking at Boston's thought that the Church was in the wrong place.

It is a strange expectation, I think, that the Church will keep to itself. It is a surprising discovery to learn that the public can be made uncomfortable in the presence of the Church.

It is similar, I think, to what I witnessed in seminary. In the life of the seminary that I attended, more than 25 years ago now, there were those who thought that the more austere their personal life-style seemed, the more they seemed in solidarity to the poor and the needy. The problem was that most of these persons came from affluent backgrounds. Their education was being paid for by family or from ready finances. They seemed to be in solidarity with the poor, but the facts of their circumstances differed widely from what was being projected.

In the alternative communities to whom Shiloh wants to be present, there is a similar disconnect. Some believe that the Church should be a holy place, and that it should stay in its holy place. While many would refuse to step foot in the Church, they are uncomfortable with a church that comes to them. They are suspicious of a congregation that would serve them beer. They are leery of a religious group that would dare be part of their secular celebrations. Some certainly hold that the Church should stay "over there," in religious and spiritual territories. To be part of their secular world is the Church being in the wrong place.

At Shiloh Church, there is no such disconnect between form and intention. This is not like the seminary, where some pretend to be in solidarity with the poor by choosing to live austere life-styles, while being fully able to live affluently. Shiloh does not intend to make the community uncomfortable by being where some feel that the Church should not be. On the contrary, Shiloh seeks to demonstrate to the community that the place of the Church is in the community. The Church certainly belongs with those whom we might serve, even where and when presence in those environs seem to make some uncomfortable.

The challenge of the Church today is to narrow the gap between what is seen as sacred and what is thought to be secular. The process is not to demand of the secular that it become more sacred, as has been the aim of the Church in recent decades. The process must be to allow the sacred to participate in the secular, to allow the service rendered by the Church to impact how we live in the secular realm. That means that the Church must get out into the world, even if it makes the world uncomfortable. The educational process goes both ways.

You can help narrow the widening gap.

See You Sunday!   

St. Paddy's Day Fundraiser

In order to raise funds for Shiloh's chancel renovation project, the fundraising team scheduled Shiloh members to serve at Boston's Bistro and Pub throughout this past weekend's St. Patrick's Day celebrations. On behalf of those who planned the event, I want to thank everyone who took part. While profits did not quite meet expectations, more than $1,300 was raised toward the renovation project.

I was on site for 15 of the 18 hours. The people who represented Shiloh Church did a fabulous job. Many had a good time, as well.

Judging from the comments that some of us heard throughout the weekend, it must be unusual for a church to serve at a bar. The clientele commented repeatedly on how pleased they were to help out a church while having fun. A few even caught onto the church motto, saying that Shiloh is "Living the Word by Serving the World.....Beer." Beer? Yes, even beer.

Can a church serve beer at a bar without judgment or criticism? Can a church be part of the fun and remain a faithful gathering of persons? Can a church alter the public image of religious organizations enough that we can make an impression on a population that we might not otherwise ever even see?

Shiloh can. Shiloh may. Shiloh did. Judging by the wealth of conversation and interaction that I witnessed, Shiloh brought church presence to an alternative community. We did not preach or judge or proselytize. We were just part of the community. We were part of the fun. Hundreds of people, some of whom have never had a positive experience with religious organizations, saw something in the Shiloh group that they may not have expected. We joined them. We did not stand apart or above. We did not look down our superior noses. We were there, with them.

I want to thanks those who underwrote the expenses of the weekend, those who gave up their time to be there, and those who planned the event. Special thanks go to Tia Smith, who coordinated the event, to Dave Boston, who bent over backward to shape the event to our benefit, and to the remarkable members of the Boston's staff, who made our efforts enjoyable.

This was the second year that Shiloh served at Boston's St. Paddy's Day celebration. Perhaps the hundreds who were there, both last year and this year, learned something about Shiloh Church. Maybe we are teaching people about the radical welcome and acceptance of progressive church organizations. Maybe we are teaching something unusual, unexpected and unfamiliar about Christ Jesus.

I have to add that there was not a single problem with the clientele. No one got too far out of hand. There were no fights, no destructive behavior, no huge arguments. People simply had fun. In my opinion, it was good for Shiloh, and for the community, for Shiloh to be a part of it all.

See You Sunday!

Rooted or Entrenched?

The poster hangs in the busiest hallway at Shiloh Church. It is from the Still Speaking Campaign of the United Church of Christ, and reads: "Our faith is 2000 years old, but our thinking is not."

This past Sunday, Jesus, in the lectionary text from John, turned over the tables of the money changers and cast the sacrificial animals out of the Temple courtyard. He did so, I think, because the marketplace that was held in the Temple courtyard was based in injustice and inequality. It resulted in societal separation and cultural bias. It favored those who had assets, property, provision and possession over those who had just enough for their survival, or even less.

Jesus did not reject the Judaism of the Temple. Jesus rejected the tendency of persons to become complacent in the face of injustice and inequality because they are fostered in religious organizations. Religious injustice and inequality result from the inability or unwillingness of religious organizations to question their own policies and practices.

There must be a relationship between the foundational, core values of a religious institution and the policies, procedures and structures that are derived from them. In what is the Church rooted? In what ways have these organizations become entrenched? "Our faith is 2000 years old, but our thinking is not." 

How many church meetings have the readers of The Shiloh Insider wherein the line between rootedness and entrenchment is blurred? In how many of those meetings has some unwitting victim of the organization's bureaucracy uttered the famous phrase, "But we have always done it this way?"

It is certainly true that congregations and religious organizations benefit from being rooted in a solid tradition. Many saints have come before us. Their ways are not necessarily sacred, however. Their practices have not brought God's kingdom on earth. Their policies did not always match their core values. Even when they sometimes did, their core values are not necessarily our core values.

The contemporary Church is being challenged by shrinking populations and diminishing dollars, by a cultural agnosticism that functions in the whole without God, and a practical rationalism that denies the practice of what seems mystical and metaphysical. The Church is increasingly irrelevant to the developing culture.

To stem the tide of shrinkage, and to reverse the trend of diminishing dollars, the Church has devised all sorts of marketing approaches and practical approaches that are meant to attract others. Some have been met with some success. Some have worked, at least to meet the sociological and psychological needs of the culture.

None of the fancy marketing approaches or practical sociological or psychological methodologies will work in the long run, however. Only one approach will, I think.

The Church today must determine its own core values. In the past sixty or so years, we have learned so much about Christ Jesus, and about the development of the early Church, that old core values no longer apply. Old practices, procedures, policies and structures no longer work. The contemporary (Progressive) Church must re-examine and determine anew a core ethic for the Church. It must reinvent itself. Once the Church articulates the core ethic(s), it can begin to shape new policies, practices, structures and procedures.

In my humble opinion, the conversations should have started a few decades ago. They could have resulted, by now, in new formulae for what the Church is to be, what it is called to do and how it does its work. Even if some conversations started then, they were thwarted by organizational and bureaucratic entrenchment. The ongoing supply of money allowed the institutions to continue to protect their traditional configurations and practices, even if they resembled the market place of the Temple in Jesus' age.

Now the money has fallen short, and religious organizations are being forced to reconsider what they do and how they do it. This might be great news for the Church of Jesus Christ. Perhaps we can use the opportunity before us to narrow the gap between the core values of our faith and the ways that we have organized ourselves and the practices that we have adopted. Maybe this is the advent of the kingdom.

Let's hope and pray.

See You Sunday!  

Crucial Conversation

On this coming Saturday, march 10, leadership from the Associations of the Ohio Conference will gather in Columbus to begin some very important conversations. These upcoming conversations come from an initiative within the Southwest Ohio Northern Kentucky Association (SONKA), of which Shiloh Church is a part. SONKA's Strategic Planning Team has been working for months to help the Association shape a thorough self-study that would, hopefully, result in reforming the ministries, structure and organization of the Association.

The work was progressing well, when, several weeks ago, Ruth Brandon, current Association Minister, announced that she would resign her position on June 30, 2012. As the Strategic Planning Team continued its work, and as it called upon Bob Molsberry, Ohio Conference Minister, for guidance, the team discovered that four of the five Ohio Associations were in nearly the same place as SONKA. Vacant or losing leadership, the Associations now find themselves struggling for dollars and vitality.

Since most of the Associations join SONKA in transition, and since Association leadership recognizes that this is a transitional period in the life of our churches, denominations and middle judicatories, this time calls for us to be in serious dialogue about the models/structures/organization of the Ohio Conference and Associations.

The conversations are not new. Structural reformation was suggested about a decade back, but was never acted upon. In that attempt, the planning group recommended that Ohio break into three regional Conferences, similar to the model used in Pennsylvania, around population and centers of church concentration.

The present conversations are likely to be multi-dimensional. Certainly, the team will consider the polity of the United Church of Christ, where the local church is the basic unit of power and authority. The conversations will have to consider the roles of Conference and Association middle judicatories, examine redundancy, potency, and the impact of those ministries on our local congregations. Of course, the conversations will necessarily extend to the national/denominational level, where we will have to consider wider church impact and the possibilities that lie within organizational change.

Is this a time for the local churches and Associations/Conferences of the United Church of Christ to boldly pursue organization along the lines of The Progressive Church Movement? What about those congregations that are not currently pursuing growth or expanded ministries? What of those congregations that are in the process of dying? What kinds of structures, initiatives, programs or approaches might serve them? Is there a different way of doing the business of the Church, one which meets the needs of our local congregations in the midst of changing culture?

I am happy to be a part of these conversations, representing SONKA and Shiloh Church. What we decide now has the potential to impact our local churches, our middle judicatories, and our denomination for a long time to come. Pray for wisdom and insight into God's will. These conversations may be the beginning of something new.

See You Sunday!