Churches That Helped Make It Happen

Since the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage last week, I’ve found myself reminiscing about one of my previous churches.

This was a church in which roughly half the active members were gay and lesbian Christians, many with partners and children.  Back in the 90’s, word had gotten out around town that this church was “welcoming” of all.  We were not a “More Light” church or an “Open and Affirming” church.  Our members merely wanted a safe place to worship  God, a place where being gay and being Christian didn’t have to collide with each other.

My tenure at that church fell during the years that openly gay Christians were not considered eligible for ordination as lay leaders or clergy in the Presbyterian Church.  And the Book of Order had no provisions for same sex marriage.

Coming from the UCC, I took vows to be loyal to Presbyterian polity, but from the beginning, I broke those vows, primarily by ordaining gay Christians as elders and deacons.  I justified this in my mind over and over again with this thought: We are breaking the rules now, but eventually, history will catch up with us. 

The PCUSA did eventually loosen its teaching regarding both ordination of gay Christians and same sex unions.  Ironically, that all happened after my little church closed its doors.

I often wondered if it was cowardly of us to be a “closeted” church.  Maybe if we had been more outspoken in the community about our character, we could have moved history along a little faster.  Other like-minded Christians might have found us and we would not have had to close our doors.

Well, that’s all water under the bridge now.  But I would like to think that the witness of our little fellowship did make its mark on the world. I believe we were a small piece of the story of the recent Supreme Court victory.  I know there have been many churches, large and small, where grace has reigned when it came to the inclusion of gay and lesbian families; where those families were honored as legitimate, long before the state and wider culture honored them.  While the Church as a whole has stood in the way of this victory, there are local churches (including two I’ve served) who have taught that all people have a right to form families.

Churches like ours contributed to the Supreme Court victory when we baptized the children of gay couples.

We contributed to this victory when we blessed partnerships, civil unions and the adoption of children by gay parents, expecting the same fidelity from these commitments that we expect from straight couples.

We contributed to this victory when we invited the partners of deceased members to sit in the “family pews” at funerals.

We contributed to this victory when we created space where gay couples could just hold hands.

Gay Christian families have existed for many years.  Every church that has welcomed them has contributed to this victory and you should take credit if you are from one of them.

This is not unlike what Paul and Peter were called to do when confronted with the challenge to include the Gentiles.

This is what it means to pay attention to what God is doing in the world and follow, even if it’s in a new direction. Eventually, maybe a very long time from now, others may follow, too.

 *Photograph by Alex McNeill, licensed by Creativecommons.com

Crushing the Butterfly

A friend I will call Jean came to a summer party at our farm recently.  Jean is an animal lover who   entertains raccoons,  squirrels, ravens and even bears in the woods near her home.  When they appear sick, she feeds them with syringes or takes them to the wildlife refuge.    All the neighbors know where to drop the stray cats.

But she surprised us the night of the party when she found a monarch butterfly and brought it to show us.  Apparently, it was injured and could no longer fly.  She held it gently in her palm while we beheld its stained-glass window wings. “So beautiful,” she said.  “but I’m going to have to crush it.  It’s been injured.  It can’t fly anymore.  It needs to be put out of its misery.”

Suddenly, before anyone could protest her assessment of the butterfly’s prospects, she placed it on the ground and stomped on it squarely with her foot.  Shudders and groans swept through the group surrounding her.  The action was so swift, so authoritative, so seemingly heartless, we were all speechless.

I have thought about that action again and again.  What kind of impulse drove her to it?

I believe it was love.

Most of us love animals because they entertain and amuse us.  We imagine that they exist for our pleasure.  But Jean’s action expressed a deeper love, a compassion for the butterfly itself, not for its elegance or the hopeful symbolism it offered her.  More important than its resplendent wings was its unseen soul, its anguish, however imperceptible, at being injured and unable to fulfill its truest calling.  She put herself in the position of the butterfly and did what she thought was best for it.

To Christians, the demise of a church is a tragedy.  We love our churches and all churches.   We love what they represent and the good they have done in every corner of our world.  When we see them shrinking and closing, we recoil.  We want to hold those colored windows in our palms and preserve them forever.

But those who truly love the Church know that it was made to fly by the power of the Holy Spirit.  And a dying church can be a place of spiritual injury, a cluster of injured souls straining to survive as a human institution instead of reaching for the sky as a creature of God.  The Church should not exist to avoid hurt feelings, to maintain friendships or to preserve historical character in the neighborhood.  The Church exists to make disciples, and when the disciples are at the end of their rope, tired and thirsty for spiritual nurture, maybe someone needs to put the institution out of its misery.

Nobody wants to be the one to crush the butterfly.  It makes you look heartless and cruel.  But there is a kind of love that knows when it’s time to do just that.

The butterfly, remember, is living its second life.  It has already experienced resurrection once, so it has no fear for its future beyond the grave.  Shouldn’t this also be true of the Church?

 

* Photograph by Estela Romero, licensed by Creative Commons.

The Church After Katrina

Camp Restore/
Prince of Peace

Last week I went on an unforgettable mission trip to New Orleans and encountered a couple churches that gave me a lot to think about.

One was Prince of Peace Missouri Synod Lutheran Church.  In 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged the Gulf Coast from Texas to Alabama.  Over 250,000 homes were destroyed, plus businesses and community buildings.  Prince of Peace, once a thriving church and school, was flooded.  But with assistance from the wider church, its expansive building was renovated and converted into a volunteer camp, now called Camp Restore (a separate non-profit agency), which brought in thousands of volunteer workers to do hurricane clean-up.

Camp Restore has become a thriving center that provides bunk style housing and meals and matches volunteers with work sites where they do everything from hanging drywall to playing bingo with senior citizens.  They average over 3,000 volunteers per year.

Meanwhile, Prince of Peace is a tiny shadow of its former self.  At one time, they housed over a hundred members and a busy Lutheran school.  Since Katrina decimated the population of their community, they are down to about ten members.

I asked Bill, the church’s president, what it was like to experience such a massive loss of members all at one time.  “Well, honestly,” he said.  “We had other things to be thinking about.”

Those “other things” included the clean-up and restoration of an entire city.  “The only people who stayed,” Bill explained, “were the people who still had a house, a job, or a family here.  Everyone else left.”

Today, Bill occasionally stands in line to eat breakfast and meet some of the volunteers that crowd his church’s sanctuary for meals at long dining tables.  Recently, after years of meeting on Sunday mornings, the tiny congregation decided to try worshiping on Wednesday nights.  They invited the volunteers to join them, and the first Wednesday they tried it, they ran out of communion elements, because they weren’t expecting so many people in worship.

I had the privilege of worshiping alongside the congregation one Wednesday during my stay, and was joined by about 30 other volunteers.   Although in many places, Missouri Synod Lutherans do not share communion with people of other traditions, we were all welcome to kneel and partake at Prince of Peace.

I had to wonder what the Prince of Peace congregation is made of: they have survived one of the fiercest hurricanes in history and stayed in place.  Yet they have also take a huge leap into new territory, allowing their building to be transformed from a traditional church and school into an entirely different kind of ministry in rapid response to an emerging need, making all the sacrifices necessary in order to do that.

What can you and I learn from this tiny, amazing congregation?

 

 

 

Not Today

I had an encounter recently that left me feeling dejected: at a gathering of clergy, a pastor poured out to me his frustration with his declining church.  He could not get the congregation to change their behavior, even though they were on a path of steep decline.  He was looking for some answer, some ray of hope.  All I could do was listen and nod my head.

I went home and asked my husband, “What am I supposed to say to these people?  Your church might die.  Sorry about that.” 

He looked at me for a moment, and then said, “Not today.”

“What?”

“They’re not going to die today,” he repeated.

It took me a second to get my head around that. My husband, a farmer, speaks from experience.  This is a guy who works to keep animals alive every day.  They get diarrhea and pneumonia and swallow pieces of metal.  He is always injecting someone with penicillin or patching a sore eye or bandaging a hoof.  When a heifer is gasping for life and he’s pumping her veins with electrolytes, he is saying, “You might die.  But not today.  Today, it’s my job to keep you alive in case you get stronger tomorrow.”

In his usual sparse way, he had said so much.  If you are not closing your doors today, there is still work to be done.  Any church that is worrying about the fact that they might close some time in the future is wasting time.  There is important ministry to be done today.  And I don’t mean cleaning the grout in the church kitchen tile.  I mean, there is a mouth to feed, a grieving family to be comforted, a love to be celebrated, a story to be told, a cold body to be warmed.

I know this contradicts so much I have said about planning for a generous, faithful end of life for churches when that end seems inevitable.  I still believe in all that.  But at the same time, letting church decline sabotage whatever good ministry you are doing now is not the answer.

Just this once, forget about dying tomorrow.  Keep being the church, alive, today.

*Photo by Marshall Astor, licensed by Creativecommons.org

 

A Little Exposure

It’s a bit late, but I’m happy to announce that The Christian Century has printed an article I wrote entitled “Holy Stuff” in their March 19, 2014 issue, which you can find here.

This article draws on a few stories from my book “Toward the Better Country” about the way Christians mourn the loss of physical objects they identify with their life in a church that is closing.

I’m happy that the article offers my book a little exposure to people who may benefit from it as they struggle with leadership in declining churches.  The Christian Century is read and respected by many of my colleagues, and the article is helping to get the word out.

But I’m finding that marketing the book is a challenge for me personally.  People want a short answer: “What’s your book about?”  and I’m tempted to say “It’s about church closure”.   The Christian Century article would certainly make it seem that way.

But the book is about more than closure.  It’s about the grief, disorientation and powerlessness many of us are feeling as we watch our churches shrink.  It’s about identifying what is really important in your ministry and putting aside everything else that gets in the way of that most vital mission.  It’s about the creativity and collaboration–with God and neighbor–that is allowing some churches to do ministry in new, more vital and sustainable ways.

Why can’t I seem to get that into an elevator speech?

If you have read or even skimmed my book, and want to help me with my elevator speech, please post a suggestion below,  I could use your help!

Toward the Better Country

Toward the Better Country: Church Closure and Resurrection

by L. Gail Irwin

is now available from

Resource Publications/Wipf & Stock Publishers 

You can order your copy here,

Web price:$17.60 plus shipping

Copies are also available online at Amazon.com

Book Synopsis

The pews of many mainline churches are clearly not as full as they used to be.  While committed Christians are trying everything they can to keep their churches open and thriving, history has shown that no local church is meant to live forever in its current form.    Like people, churches are born, live and breathe, fulfill their missions, and pass away.  And recent history shows that more churches will be closing or re-shaping their ministry in the near future.

Toward the Better Country tells about the grief stages, discernment processes and creative options explored by lay leaders, pastors and regional leaders who have dealt with this sensitive time in the life cycle of a church.  These are woven in with the author’s own experience of leading a church through steep decline toward closure.

This resource, based on interviews with over thirty lay, clergy and judicatory leaders, will offer healthy, practical ways for congregations to move through the terrain of loss, discern God’s path for their future and pass on their legacies to emerging ministries.  It can be used for personal reflection, leadership training, or in discernment groups in local churches.  Scripture readings and questions for conversation are included at the end of each chapter, along with a list of additional resources for churches struggling with decline.

Chapter Titles:

1. Introduction

2. The Rise and Fall of Sacred Places

3. Expressions of Grief in the Faith Community

4. Discerning the Failure to Thrive: Lay Leaders

5. Discerning the Failure to Thrive: Pastors

6. Discerning the Failure to Thrive: Regional Pastors

7. Multiple Paths to the Future

8. A Tale of Two Closures

9. Laying the Foundation for Future Ministry

10. Seven Ways to Say Goodbye

11. New Wine for New Wineskins

Appendices, Additional Resources and Bibliography

The Book is Here!

If you are part of a church struggling with vitality and viability, and wondering what options you have for continuing ministry, I am happy to announce that my book, “Toward the Better Country: Church Closure and Resurrection” is now available in print from Resource Publications/Wipf & Stock Publishers.

This has been a four year project for me and I am pleased to see it come to fruition.  My book is not perfect, but hopefully it will generate discussion that helps us all move the church forward into a new era.  I am happy that so many great stories shared with me can now be shared with others, and I encourage you to read it and let me know if it is helpful in your church.

For a brief synopsis of the book, click on the “About the Book” tab at the top of the page.

You can order the book now by clicking here , or at Amazon.com.  The book will be available as a Kindle e-book within 3-6 months.  Libraries and educators may be able to access the book through Ingram.

If you are part of a church or denominational group, and would like me to come and talk about the topic of church downsizing and closure, please leave a comment below and I will contact you.

 

My Church Closed: Now What?

The title of this post comes from a sad question someone Googled that led them to my blog: My church closed; now what do I do?

Well, here are some things others have done after their churches closed, based on my interviews:

In the United Methodist Church, the policy is to make sure every member of a closed church transfers their membership to a new church.  Those who don’t choose a new church are supposed to be automatically transferred to the nearest Methodist Church in the area.  (This doesn’t always happen, but it’s a good goal).

• In one closing church, most members chose to attend one of two other churches in their city.  However, one family told me “We  weren’t ready.  We had to take some time away from worship to heal before we could join another church.”  After about a year, they finally joined one of those two churches, comforted by worshiping with members of their former church.
• A sad story: a woman whose  church closed now attends several other churches, but has not been able to find one she can call home.  When her husband died, she didn’t have the support system she needed to get through her grief, and after three years, she is still adrift.
• A happy ending: a lay woman bravely walked away from her church when the system became deeply dysfunctional.  She explained to the congregation her reasons for leaving.  After she left, the pastor and choir director also resigned.  The church closed about a year later.  All three people joined the same new congregation and were overjoyed to find spiritual strength in a healthy church home.

If your church is closing, you will be left without a place and people that may have been like home and family to you.  Here’s what I think you should do:

• Visit some area churches with members of your current church family to see what they are like.  Not everyone will join the same church, but you can help each other find the fit that is best.
• Ask your pastor or gather a team of lay leaders to do a “spiritual inventory” of each member’s interests and gifts.  Whatever new church you go to, meet with the pastor and tell him/her about the gifts and interests you have for sharing ministry in a new place.
• If you are homebound, ask your denominational representative to appoint a visitation pastor to keep you connected to the wider church with prayer and communion.
• If you truly love your former church family, don’t assume you have to “break up”.  Meet once a month at a restaurant for lunch.  Or form a prayer chain or a weekly bible study.  Find a way to maintain spiritual friendships.
• Don’t forget that you need to grieve.  Let yourself be sad, and find others to be sad with.  Your sadness will pass.  God has a new ministry ahead for you.  When your grief begins to fade, go find your new flock!

Carry The Light

One of my colleagues led his congregation through a long process of closing their church and razing their building last year.  This Christmas, shortly after the demolition, he received a surprising gift from a woman in the community, not a member, who just felt led to enter the abandoned building and look around one last time.  Here’s what he wrote about her gift:

I was surprised this past Christmas by {a gift of} a framed print by Roger Loveless entitled “Carry the Light.”   

“Mary” told me that on the day the wrecking crew came she felt an overwhelming need to go and see the church one last time.  She went in, looked around and went to the basement where there was only some debris and nothing left of any value.   She poked around some, then decided to leave.  But as she got to the steps, something prompted her to go back and search again.   Again she saw nothing worthy of attention so she turned to leave again.

As Mary started to ascend the steps, the strong feeling persisted.  She returned to a back room and moved a piece of carpeting on top of an old piano.  There was the print!  Her obedience to the Spirit proved to be fruitful.

“Carry the Light” features a Christ-like figure holding a lit clay lamp in a doorway.   His gaze invites the viewer to receive the light and take it with them.  It has been hard to close a church and dismiss a fellowship of men and women whom I have served for so long.   It is a sad task that has taken place in many rural churches across the Midwest for many years.   But this picture gives me the hope that, though the buildings are gone, the good news of Jesus Christ goes forth.   We carry the light of Christ with us to new ministries of love.

I am humbled to experience the hand of God at work.   I am grateful to Mary for following the promptings of the Spirit to redeem this meaningful print from the dust.   God is at work in many lives, and I am grateful that God would touch ours so clearly.  

Rev. Marty Toepke-Floyd (Wishek, North Dakota)

Thanks, Marty, for that incredible story.

*Photo by The~ Awesome~Weirdo, Creative Commons license

Make Mine A Molson

We will be reflecting this week on that odd first miracle of Jesus: the changing of water into wine.  That story reminds me of one told in an interview with an accomplished interim pastor who helped a church through a healthy transition to closure.  This congregation had tried many revitalization ventures with no results and had decided to cut their losses while they still had assets to convert into other, more sustainable mission ventures.  They had worked as a team to inventory their spiritual and material gifts, shared financial legacies with neighborhood non-profits and their denominational body, documented their history and cleaned the building for sale.

Then they threw a party.

It started on a Sunday morning when just the members gathered to worship together one last time.  That afternoon, they invited in hundreds of people from their urban neighborhood, sister churches and ecumenical partners for a celebration of the church’s ministry.  Finally, the guests went home and the movers showed up to carry out some large furniture going to another church.  The Session members gathered for one last meeting, at which they celebrated this bittersweet day by breaking open a case of beer.

Yes, they all had a beer together, right there in front of God and everybody.

When one of the movers walked by, he saw them drinking and said, “Boy, if I’d known this church had beer at their Session meetings, I would’ve become a member.”

Everybody laughed.  And somebody probably cried.  But despite a few tears in those beers, I think they did the right thing to drink a toast to the past and the future.

From the first birthday party attended by kings in funny hats to the last supper when everyone got a foot washing; from the first miracle at a wedding to the last breakfast party on the beach, it has always been part of the Church’s job to party: to celebrate–not just what we have done, but what God is doing among us.

No matter what is happening in your life or your church, there is a great party being planned, at which all our ordinary sorrows will be drowned in extraordinary joy.  Christ is the host, and he apparently knows his spirits.

So, bottom’s up, everyone!