By most measures, it was a typical Wednesday morning commute. Coffee in the cupholder, slow traffic, radio tuned to NPR, brain wandering and wondering if it is ready for the day. But this day was not a normal day. Local government officials were beginning to encourage us to practice social distancing, diligent hand-washing, and no face-touching. It was the third Wednesday of Lent and I was rehearsing my sermon for that evening in my head. My colleague and I had been invited to preach a 5-week Lenten sermon series on the Public Church at a local church. I was in the middle of a thought – reminding myself NOT to crack any inappropriate jokes about the pandemic during the sermon – when I noticed a crowd gathered on the overpass.
The Saint Paul Federation of Educators (St. Paul Public School’s teachers’ union) had just begun their strike and they were demonstrating on every overpass that crossed Interstate 35E and Interstate 94 in Saint Paul. I honked to show my support as I drove under the bridge. Then it hit me. These teachers are beginning their necessary strike which will require public demonstrations.
How will they do this while honoring the call to social distancing? We will be preaching tonight, encouraging a congregation to move into their neighborhood as a public church. How will they do this while honoring the call to social distancing? It has been two months since that not-at-all-normal morning commute, and I think I have some things to say about how we live as a Public Church in a pandemic.
Today’s blog post comes as a video from Stephen Richards at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Minneapolis. He shares the story of their journey with the Public Church Framework and what it looks like in their context. A transcript of the video can be found below the video credits.
Video:
Credits:
Video: Written, filmed, and edited by Stephen A. Richards
Music: “Pulse”, written and produced by Stephen A. Richards, taken from the album “Cyclone”, copyright May 2019 (used with permission)
Transcript:
“Hello, my name is Steve and I’m a member of the Innovation Team at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Minnesota. I’ve been involved with the Innovation Hub team from the beginning and I’m really excited by the work we’re doing.
However it’s not always been this way. There have been times where I have found the work very frustrating. You see, when we were invited to go on a journey to connect with young adults and God in our community we were not handed a road map for which to do this. And for a long time, I found this difficult. For me, mission had often begun in the church and was about bringing people into the church. Yet, that’s not the way this innovation stuff works.
You see, when you start asking “What is God up to in our community,” you have to step outside the church and into uncharted territory.
As we walked the three artforms, accompaniment, interpretation, and discernment, our focus as a group and then as a church began to shift. We started to think more about hearing and telling stories and how we might go into the community to do this. So rather than sitting inside of a building and waiting for people to come to us, we began to look for ways we were already connecting with neighbors. The Montessori School in the basement of our church was an obvious one. And also the green space out front. We learned that people were using the Adirondack chairs that we had placed out there. They were tying ribbons to the peace pole, and regularly visiting the food box. We decided to focus on this as a space where God is present in our neighborhood. A holy ground where we could start wading further into the river. From this, the peace craft project was born. Which is a brand new initiative of St. Luke’s Episcopal church and intended to creatively engage our neighborhood in peace making activities. Peace Craft has become the connector between the church and the local community.
Through the work we do, and funded by the grant money we received, a new vision for God’s mission has emerged. We are also seeing more people in the church joining us and excited about finding out about where God is working in their lives and the local community.
For example, one of the innovation team members suggested we might ask for grant money to give out free ice creams to our neighbors after church each Sunday. So we did, we named it, “Ice Cream Sunday.” For three months over the summer of 2019, we stood outside the church, eating ice cream and inviting passersby to join us. In doing so, we met lots of people and got to know their stories. We also got to tell them our stories, barriers came down. We began to wade into the river. First, ankle deep, then knee deep, and finally waist deep. This simple act of going outside and sharing ice cream changed our community. We recently lost our Rector, but rather than finding this period of transition unsettling, people have instead become energized, inspired and open to new ideas. There is a tangible energy in the church. There is a tremendous desire to know and discover what God is doing among us. In many ways, Peace Craft is at the forefront of the mission work of our church. The waters of God’s spirit are now flowing within, through, and from our church. And as it does, the fruit of God’s spirit is evident for all to see. As each week, new people are being added to our numbers, including young adults.”
This week we hear from Ellie Roscher, a congregational learning partner at Bethlehem Lutheran Church. Ellie shares a story about the mutual transformation that comes from listening to and empowering young adult leaders.
The Garden at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Minneapolis.
Siri, a talented and emerging folk singer, spends significant time on the road playing music. In between tours, she works at the front desk at Bethlehem even though she is skeptical of institutional religion and questions the existence of God.
About a year ago, Siri found herself in a cycle of despair. She was feeling adrift and unsure of where her community was. And she was feeling cynical, angry and overwhelmed about climate change. She could hear the earth moaning and see it crying out. One night, in response to her lament a friend kindly offered, “Would it help to do something about it?”
Siri took the challenge to heart. She floated her idea of starting a community garden to me and some other folks at Bethlehem. Yes, yes, yes. We helped her flush out her vision and celebrated with her when she received a generous Foundation Grant. Then it was time to begin.
At the Riverside Innovation Hub, our guiding text is from Ezekiel 47. In it, we are led away from the temple to deeper water. Along the riverbank there are lush trees with fruit for food and leaves for healing. Siri had a prophetic vision to grow a garden outside the walls of Bethlehem. Bethlehem, a large and resourced church, had not yet leveraged its voice and power to address climate change in real and meaningful ways. We recognized Siri’s passion and vision as beautiful, and we met her there, downriver, to put her plan to action.
Planting a seed requires the audacity of hope. Tilling the soil quiets the mind, brings peace to the heart, and slows time just a bit. Weeding is a spiritual practice. Watching seed transform is a living metaphor. Fresh air shakes the dust from our souls. Billowing clouds invite us to look all the way up and remember that we are small.
The late-fall blooms of the garden.
Siri was ready to move from despair. Her leadership invited others to do the same. She built beds, planted seeds, watered them and tended to them. She showed up week in and week out and created a space outside the walls of Bethlehem for folks to gather. Sunday school kids came out into the sunshine to guess what sprouts would become. A neighborhood kid asked if he could help water the beds, another asked if he could have a cucumber. More neighbors, who previously did not engage started congregating when Siri and volunteers showed up to work. More congregation members lingered outside the church.
Now, at the end of the summer, the garden has exceeded all of our expectations. It is bursting with life. The sun flowers tower over us. The pollinators bring life and vibrancy and splashes of color. We tended to the earth and it is showering us with bounty. The neighbor who was the most skeptical has thanked Siri for creating a space for folks to gather. Congregation members have thanked her for inviting them out of the sanctuary to God’s nature.
Siri, too, has been amazed at the transformation inside of herself. She is a pastor’s kid, and she has a lot of hurt toward the Christian institution. She sees the harm the church has caused in the world. “It has felt like
gigantic tectonic plates shifting in my being,” she said. “It has been truly transformational to go from overwhelmed to empowered. And to grow a garden on the grounds of a church has been important for me. I’m not ready to worship yet, but growing flowers and vegetables here and having the community rally around me has ushered in healing.”
Bethlehem’s innovation team recognized Siri’s vision and leadership. We built our vision around the growing garden and our growing partnership with folks doing conservation and reforestation in the cloud forest of Guatemala. Siri will be one of the young adults traveling to Guatemala come January, after our garden is harvested. She kept asking me if I should send someone else instead, someone who has more clarity about God and church. I think of Ezekiel and smile. “No, you are perfect.”
The garden has been a blessing. A physical reminder of God’s abundance. A place to gather and listen to the soil and and remember whose we are. It brings dignity to get down on our knees and get dirty. Get some earth under our fingernails. Siri said yes to an invitation to grow something new and rich and beautiful. It has given her hope. And community. Fruit for food and leaves for healing. We are all better for it. We are grateful.
Phase Two came to an end on June 1, 2019 as our 16 partner congregations presented their project proposals. We transitioned into Phase Three over the summer of 2019. Our partner congregations will now spend two years experimenting with new practices and forms of ministry with young adults. This will be a time of continued learning, trial and error, adapting, trying, retrying, frustration, celebration, and growth.
We have shifted from using our Innovation Coaches to support these congregations to a learning cohort model. Each partner congregation will be in a learning cohort with other congregations attempting similar work. They will gather for regular reflection on what they are learning and what growing edges are emerging for them. The Riverside Innovation Hub will support this work by remaining in close conversation with these learning cohorts and leveraging the resources these cohorts need to move through the growing edges they are encountering.
This work will be less like building a program and more like tending a garden. It will be slow and patient work. Noticing what is taking root. Learning whether the bugs in the garden are harmful or helpful. Wondering if we overwatered or underwatered. Being surprised by the fragrance and shapes of what grows. These things don’t look the way they do in the grocery store! If our congregations will be successful in their movement into the public square with young people, and if we are successful in supporting them in this work it will have only happened out of slow, patient listening and wondering and responding to what God’s spirit is already doing with and without us.
RIH Staff went on retreat to the headwaters of the Mississippi to wrap of Phase Two of the project.
What Happened?
The Riverside Innovation Hub trained 8 young adult Innovation Coaches during August 2018. Each coach was assigned to 2 partner congregations. These coaches spent 20 hours a week working with each of their 2 congregations from August 2018 – May 2019, walking with them through our Public Church Framework towards discerning the future of their ministry with young adults. We also supported 9 other congregations who were interested in this work but did not have a coach working directly with them.
The innovation teams at these congregations were taught the artforms of the Public Church Framework and spent the year putting these artforms into practice in their context. The artforms of the Public Church Framework are intended to help a faith community establish and deepen relationships with their neighbors in their context so they might see and hear how their neighbors are longing for good news. This is the work that leads to innovation. These innovation teams were also asked to invite young adults into this process and to allow these young adults to lead this process.
At the end of 10 months of accompaniment, interpretation, and discernment each congregation submitted a grant proposal outlining the ways in which they hope to experiment with being a public church with their young adults over the next two years. These congregations were awarded between $25,000 – $30,000 for this experimentation.
Here is a summary of what we learned about young adults, congregations, innovation, the Public Church Framework, and how to effectively support this work.
What We Have Learned . . .
Young Adults
The most important thing we learned about young adults is that they are not very excited about being “known about”. They would rather you take the time to know them than know about them. They are not a demographic or a target market, they are unique individuals who often resist categorization. They are busy and very committed to their careers and their friends and to holistic living. They are willing to put time into leadership and the local church if they are being asked to invest their time in things that matter and make a difference. Many are not able or willing to move into traditional volunteer roles in the local church (committee member, Sunday school teacher, etc.). So they are looking for new ways to be plugged in. Your local congregation might not get young adults to return to worship. That’s okay. The question and challenge is how will your local congregation find the ways the places where young adults are actively living out their faith and how will you partner with them in those places?
Congregations
Congregations are eager to be in meaningful relationships with young adults. There are some congregations who expect young adults to simply change their ways and become committed to the traditional church and its traditional practices and simply take over the leadership from previous generations while maintaining those traditional practices. But those congregations are few and far between. Most really want to become meaningful communities for young adults and are willing to do the hard work to become that type of community. Those who had the most success were the one who trusted the process of the Public Church Framework and stepped out in faith into the practice of accompaniment – meeting and listening to the neighbor.
There are two necessary hurdles a congregation must overcome before being successful in this work. The first hurdle is their “why”. Why do they want to do this work? Why do they want to become a public church? Why do they want to engage their young adults in new ways? If your “why” is driven by anxiety about the church shrinking or dying, then the work will most likely not be successful. However, if the work is driven by compassion for your neighbor and for young adults, then your work will be fruitful because you will be more committed to developing relationships than simply numbers.
The second hurdle is your congregation’s threshold. Our partner congregations who have benefited the most through this project thus far are the ones who have moved beyond their church building and spent significant time meeting and listening to their neighbors – those who live and work in the neighborhood around the congregation. This work beyond the threshold often led to important relationships, insights, and partnerships that have truly shaped some innovative approaches to ministry. And it all started by walking out the door and being willing to meet the neighbor and hear their story.
Innovation
We are learning that innovation is hard – of course it is! Innovation is especially hard when we think its outcome must be something new, or shiny, or “better” than what we had before. We are learning that innovation is best understood vocationally. This means that innovative ministry grows out of simultaneously deeply listening to the neighbors’ stories and to God’s promises. Those two things inform one another. God’s promises change the way we hear and respond to the neighbors’ stories. And our neighbors’ stories change the way we hear and understand God’s promises. Innovation comes out of a disruption, or what we call a disorienting dilemma. The neighbor is always a disorienting dilemma. God is always a disorienting dilemma. The gospel is always a disorienting dilemma. When we are sorting out the relationship between these things, we are discerning vocation. Our partner congregations who are listening deeply to their neighbors AND simultaneously pondering God’s promises are actively discerning their vocation. This listening and pondering and discerning is what leads to innovation.
Public Church Framework
We are learning that the artforms of the Public Church Framework and their relationship to one another make the most sense when put into practice. This does not mean it is easy to be put into practice. There are many things that impede this public work – tradition, fear, lack of time, not knowing where to start, etc. But what we have learned is that it begins to make complete sense once a community of people begin to put it into practice. Once you begin practicing accompaniment you begin to understand what accompaniment is all about and why it is important. Once you begin practicing interpretation you begin to realize how important those stories you heard in accompaniment are and you begin to learn how to put those stories into conversation with God’s promises. Once you’ve done this interpretive work you begin to find yourself naturally asking questions that lead you into the practice of discernment and out of that discernment work you will a hear a call to proclamation. We are still convinced the Public Church Framework is a viable method for helping congregations faithfully engage a discernment process in relationship with their context.
Supporting This Work
We are learning that we learn better together. No two faith communities are the same but they all desire to be vibrant and effective. The most transformative learning happens when we allow our partner congregations to learn from one another. The Riverside Innovation Hub is committed to facilitating mutual learning relationships rather than functioning as a consultant. The key to supporting our partners has been the establishment and maintenance of trusted relationships, patience, and curiosity. We are also learning to leverage other cross-disciplinary resources at Augsburg University that will serve our faith communities well as they seek to develop the skills needed to engage their neighbors. Honest conversations, curious questions, and deep listening have become our most important tools for supporting congregations in their innovative work.
The following story is from Amanda Vetsch, one of RIH’s Innovation Coaches. She shares her team’s experiences with discernment at University Lutheran Church of Hope (ULCH.) ULCH is located in Dinkytown near the University of Minnesota campus. Their work this year has focused on the challenges and opportunities of being a church in meaningful relationships with young neighbors who are experiencing frequent transition.
In theory, our idea was rooted in the intersection between God’s story, Our Story, and Neighbor’s story so it should have felt good, but we trusted our guts and realized that we had made plans and decisions. We hadn’t actually practiced discernment.
The Innovation Team at ULCH had a meeting to begin discerning their next most faithful steps in response to all that they had been hearing, seeing, and learning through the artforms of accompaniment and interpretation. The conversation began with a grounding reflection, responses to that reflection, and flowed into naming the main themes from the stories we’ve heard or learned about thus far. Then, we began to brainstorm the ways that we might respond to those stories and came up with a couple of ideas to write into the grant. We moved toward making a plan to write the grant and set some due dates for ourselves.
Innovation Team members from University Lutheran Church of Hope share their proposed idea at the RIH June 1st Learning event.
There was very little enthusiasm to begin writing or researching. As the Innovation Coach, this concerned me. I want my team to be excited about the work they are being called into. I didn’t want to shut down their idea, but I did need to investigate why the energy was low. Maybe it had nothing to do with the grant idea and more to do with the post-lunchtime lull, or the busyness in their work or personal lives, or maybe it was me projecting my own ideas onto what I expected them to come up with for the grant. As all good coaches do, I sent out an evaluation form. The form asked questions like:
On a scale from 1 – 10, how much energy do you have when you think about the work of the Innovation team?
If we were to start ALL over at the beginning of this work, where would you focus the accompaniment energy?
If there were NO boundaries to money, energy, or anything, what would you do for the grant proposal?
These questions were strategic. I wanted to know why the energy seemed low at our meeting. I wanted to know if they felt content with the listening they had done thus far and I wanted to push them to dream a little bit bigger in a more anonymous form. We also had a few one to one conversations amongst ourselves and multiple folks self identified that the group energy was low. In reflecting upon this meeting, one team member said, “I think we felt a certain pressure to produce something in that first meeting. So we were pushing ourselves to come up with a really tangible product, and I don’t think we felt like we had the freedom to say that we had more listening to do.”
On the surface this meeting went well, we talked about the things we were supposed to talk about, we reflected on what we had learned, and came up with an idea. In theory, our idea was rooted in the intersection between God’s story, Our Story, and Neighbor’s story so it should have felt good, but we trusted our guts and realized that we had made plans and decisions. We hadn’t actually practiced discernment.
Then, the question is how do we go from decision making to discernment? For the ULCH Innovation Team, it meant reconvening our team. This time we started by rooting ourselves in a reflection practice that pushed us away from the tendency to intellectualize and into dwelling in the embodied responses. We took thirty minutes at the beginning of the meeting to reflect, dwell in, and share the ways that we had felt the Spirit moving in this work. The specific question was, “During the artform of (accompaniment / interpretation / discernment) , when did you feel most alive? Remember the specific moment. What did it feel like, sound like, smell like?” Each person at the meeting had an opportunity to share their memory. In some ways, I’m sure this activity could have felt like a waste of time. We weren’t learning any new information and we weren’t following the action plan to complete the grant by the impending due date. Yet, we needed to take time to reflect in this way because it allowed us to reorient ourselves. We needed to shift out of the comfortable way of reflecting on our learnings as nuggets of information and into a reflection of experiences and awareness of where we sense God at work.
ULCH team receives a gift from Innovation Coach, Amanda.
We challenged ourselves to dream a bit bigger. We tried to imagine a proposal idea that had no limitations to money, time or energy. This lead us to collectively realizing we didn’t have the information or experiences to represent what our neighborhood and congregation is dreaming about. So we dreamt up ways to begin to hear our neighbors’ and congregations’ dreams. In reflecting on the second discernment meeting, a team member said, “It was helpful to name the fears, or what feels risky. There’s a tendency to want to know beforehand that it’s all going to work as we plan it to. And we needed to be able to say, well it’s risky and it’s supposed to be.”
There is no magic formula for discernment. One of the biggest lessons we’re learning in this process is that discernment takes time and trust. There is a desire deeply ingrained in us to achieve and be productive, but discernment cannot happen when we focus on the product more than the process. A shift in rhythm has to happen and we have to trust that we have heard, experienced, seen, and felt God at work. For ULCH, this shift in rhythm means slowing down, giving ourselves permission to push back some due dates, and taking notice of where the energy is or isn’tso we can reorient our attention to where it is most needed. Being freed from expectations to produce a flashy new thing is allowing our team at ULCH to tend to relationships, stories, and life in our ever-changing neighborhood.
This week, we would like to share a blog post written by Cassie Dong, our Communication Coordinator. Cassie was inspired to write this after participating in the “Palm Friday” chapel at Augsburg University last Friday. This blog post illustrates the Interpretative work our faith communities are working on.
If you are looking for a straight answer, stop here; there is none. If you would be willing to dwell into your neighbors’ story, your story, and God’s story, then keep reading. It will be long, but it will all make sense at the end. After all, only when you weave these very different stories together can you find how God is calling us to show up in our community. Be patient for this work is slow and challenging.
Our Story: Are we feeling guilty with “being Christian”?
As a young leader, I am used to being vocal about my beliefs. I speak up for people who have been marginalized and have no voice. Yet, one of the most difficult things for me is to learn how to publicly proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in a way that speaks true to the communities that I serve. It is challenging to find the right balance between living out my faith in the public square and to be compassionate toward people who have experienced trauma and pain at the hand of the church. I am disheartened to see faith communities resistant to use “God’s language.” Many faith communities come forward to acknowledge mistakes the church has committed in its long history. However, instead of closely looking at and changing policies, systems, processes, and cultural norms of white supremacy, colonization, and toxic masculinity, many people respond by no longer talking about their Christian faith in public. Are there ways for us, as Christians, to declare that Christianity is a religion of love? Can we live out our faith and allow God’s stories and our stories to guide us in accompanying our neighbors?
God’s Story: Palm Sunday
To answer those questions above, let me first share with you one of God’s stories. I would make an assumption that many of us have read or heard of the story in Mark 11:1–11 in which people “spread branches they had cut in the fields.” They carried these palms as they followed Jesus entering Jerusalem while shouting praises to God. From this Biblical narrative, we have Palm Sunday—the Sunday before Easter when many churches celebrate the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem by carrying palm fronds.
Let’s stop here for a moment and ask a few questions. During church service on Palm Sunday, when being given those palm branches, what do you do with them? Do you wave them while entering the chapel? Do you hold on to them throughout the entire service? Bring them home when the service is done? Do you know what exactly do these palm branches represent?
Our neighbor’s Story: The March for Our Lives
I would need to tell you about my neighbor’s story in order to answer those questions above. In support of stronger gun violence prevention measures, on Saturday, March 24, 2018, the March for Our Lives took place in Washington D.C. where between 200,000 to 800,000 people participated. In other places in the country, thousands of people—many were high school students and young adults—marched onto the street with protest signs sending strong messages against gun violence and demanding for change. Among those protest signs, there were some palm branches: some were held high above the head; others were tied to protest signs. Yes, Saturday, March 24, 2018 was the day before Palm Sunday.
People worshiped during Palm Friday chapel at Augsburg University. Photo credit: Janice Dames
Weaving together our neighbors’ story, our story, and God’s Story
On April 12, during the “Palm Friday” chapel, Augsburg University’s associate pastor Justin Lind-Ayres told us about his experience participating in the 2018 March for Our Lives. He compared those palm branches with protest signs we have today. He shared, when people held onto the branches and followed Jesus into Jerusalem, they were marching with Jesus to demand for a change and to celebrate the good news of Jesus Christ. Similarly, people who were marching with palm branches at the March for Our Lives were also advocating for social justice while celebrating the incredible leadership of young people who organized and led this national demonstration. Moreover, these people were explicit about their identity. They sent out an important message: the Christian community is standing with the victims of the Parkland shooting and those young leaders who fight against gun violence.
I shared with you about our concerns as Christians, Mark 11:1–11, the sermon about Palm Sunday, and the presence of palm branches during the March for Our Lives because these stories teach us how to live out our faith. No, it is not enough to just listen to our neighbors, or to only understand our identity, or to only know God’s story. Faith communities must be able to weave together these three stories to discover: Who is God calling us to be? What is God calling us to do? How is God calling us to show up in this community? Instead of ambiguously saying “we are not that kind of church” or “we are not that kind of Christian,” we must be explicit about our identity and our values—with words and actions. How can we fix our mistakes and/or remove misunderstandings and assumptions that people may have about the church and our faith without actually showing up in the community and being clear about our true Christian values? I strongly believe, as faith communities, we are called to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to challenge the particular bad news in our neighborhood.Only when we show up in the neighborhood—with humility and compassion—can we understand the bad news and truly discern the good news in our specific context. This is how we live out our faith.
As we move through Lent, into Holy Week and eventually Easter, Christian communities across the globe are moving through story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection as they gather together. This three-part blog series by Riverside Innovation Hub Program Manager, Kristina Fruge, reflects on how we struggle to steward the gift of this complex but beautiful story and why we must continue to come alongside each other in our call to live into its promise.
The first post of this series leaned into the truth of life and death’s necessary relationship and the complicated beauty of being called to be a dusty people. This second post reflects on how often Christian communities forget their dusty calling and replace it with musty practices and habits.
Kristina’s children exploring nature. Photo credit: Kristina Frugé
I remember as a young child playing in my Granny’s basement on rainy days when the backyard garden was too soggy for rowdy kids to explore. The cement floor was cold on my bare feet, and the cinder block walls were lined with stacks of boxes and other household items. There was enough room to run and play in the dim light and even kick a dodgeball around for a modified version of soccer with my brothers. These rainy days would bring a burst of energy into what was, on most days, an unlively place. Our shouts of child’s play would cut through the musty air that filled the space—the thick fragrance of time and artifacts of my grandmother’s life and family’s history that had been hidden from the light and elements for years. When the sun would return to dry out the neighborhood, we’d rush up the stairs and out the screen door to join the lady slippers, dragonflies, pine trees, and cardinals playing and alive in the backyard.
Granny’s house and neighborhood hold many of my earliest memories. It was one of several places I felt at home growing up. Another home away from home for me has been the church. The particular faith communities have changed over the years, but together these communities nurtured within me a sense of groundedness in understanding my purpose and identity through the story of Jesus. There have been times in my life when I forgot who I was and whose I was. It was the story of Jesus showing up in my life—through a faith community, a friend, or even a stranger—that helped me remember. I am a child of God, and so is my neighbor—and, this world doesn’t work if we don’t love each other and ourselves as God so dearly loves us all.
I have deep roots within the church and its people. I hold in tension an immense gratitude for the church and a deep heartache for the ways we, as the church, have too often played it safe and fallen short. I have witnessed and contributed to the ways we, as the church, have grown musty in our ways and our places. Much of what I have experienced in this church often reminds me more of my grandmother’s basement than her backyard.
In my experiences of worshiping in and working with the church over the years, it has often felt like an underlying goal of the church is to recruit people to our team, our activity, or our faith. This objective is not always explicit. However, the desire to see people participating in our churches in the ways we have enjoyed being a part of the church seems to, functionally at least, be shaping where leaders and congregations invest much time and energy. Getting people to show up for our stuff is seen as a marker of health and success. If it’s not happening enough, we are anxious and work harder to get people to come. If people are showing up, we assume we’ve found the solution to buck the trend of declining church participation and just need to keep doing more and better of the same thing. But if how we measure “success” or health is based on how many and how often people show up for our stuff, then we have forgotten who we are called to be.
We cannot forget.
The gospel in fact displays a much different way of being church. We are the ones who are supposed to show up—in the world, in relationships, in places of brokenness, of community, of complexity. We are a dusty people, and this should propel us to live boldly and humbly in the unsheltered and uncertain places. Remembering our dusty calling should embolden us to not be afraid of death or loss because we know it’s only part of the whole story, and the whole story is God’s and it is good.
When we forget these truths we are tempted to let cultural markers of success or anxiety about our survival motivate our actions. We default to habits and ways of being church that are musty.
Musty and dusty should not be confused with each other. Both connote a sense of agedness, but one has seen the light, and the other has not. Musty things may have been dusty things when they came to be—ways to worship or be in relationship with others or gather community in ways that were meaningful at the time. But they haven’t been given space to let the light, the neighbor, or the elements shape or change them. Musty things do change, in their own way. The longer they are removed from the impact of the world around them, the less vibrant they become, the less life they hold or offer. They may even pick up an unpleasant odor. They lose their impact, significance, and transformative power because we remove them from a relationship with a world that places demands on us. Yet, we MUST keep them around as they are, inadvertently assuming it’s the thing that brings life—the way we worship, the program we built, the ministry structure that worked, or the building that has housed a particular worshiping community.
We forget.
It is not the buildings or programs or things we’ve made that are the source of life and promise and joy. The Holy Spirit’s activity in the world is not contingent on the church’s participation. At best, we work to pay closer attention so we can point to the work of the Spirit and get caught up in it. At times this means we need to get out of the way.
We can also nurture spaces and invest in relationships where the Holy Spirit can show up and do what She does. These spaces and places of community and relationship in its many forms create the gaps in our lives and assumptions where God can get to work touching, transforming, healing, reconciling. When we hold on to the musty practices and programs, we miss the point. We focus on the wrong thing. And stuff starts to stink. The gaps for the Spirit to work within and through get smaller and smaller. We rigidly work to maintain ways of being church that focus on preserving buildings, leadership structures, programs and our sense of control and this distracts from where God is pleading for us to focus—on people, on creation, on the dust present in death and new life.
What is one musty thing in your congregation? What would happen if your congregation got to the work of letting it become dusty? What if we took that musty practice or belief or program out of the basement, into the light and the world and risked how it might be impacted, challenged, or transformed by encountering the neighborhood? Would we be willing to risk even the death of our musty ways, trusting that death and dust are a needed part of new life?
The sky after a rain. Photo credit: Kristina Frugé
The reality of death hits close to home for a declining church, but this absolutely does not mean God’s activity and love in the world is in decline. In the wake of death, we dusty people know that good news is rising to take its first breath. As dusty people we can trust this good news and even participate in it. If we remember who and whose we are, we can let our musty ways die. This is sacred and faithful work. We can lean into the truth of our dusty calling, remembering, not forgetting, that when things die they give over their space and energy for new life to emerge.
The rain is letting up, and the neighborhood is eager for us to burst through the doors, into the sun, and breath in new life together with creation.
As we move through Lent, into Holy Week and eventually Easter, Christian communities across the globe are moving through the life-giving story of Jesus as they gather together. We are reminded in this season that this resurrection story has the reality of death as a cornerstone of the truth it speaks. This blog by Riverside Innovation Hub Program Manager, Kristina Frugé, explores the complexities of being a people whose Christian story requires us to hold death and life in the same desperate grasp. The blog will reflect on how we struggle to steward the gift of this complex but beautiful story and why we must continue to come alongside each other in our call to live into its promise.
Roxy and Marie (Kristina’s youngest daughter) on a beach
Nearly 15 springs ago we brought a tiny spry Vizsla pup home. We named her Roxy. She was our first “baby” as a newly married couple in our new-to-us home. She brought joy and mischief to our family through all it’s ups and downs. She was the constant source of comfort and companionship through the birth of three children, the loss of three other pregnancies and the many other in between moments of our life together. She worked her way into the hearts of our family and our children and taught us all how to love and let others love us.
This winter Roxy also taught us how to grieve. Our family huddled together over her aged body, shedding tears and final kisses knowing that her spirit had accepted the end. She impressed upon the hearts and minds of my young children that love is costly. She also clearly showed how it’s all worth it. After especially long days, I often find my 8 year-old son huddled in a corner or on the stairwell trying to push the tears back into his eyes with his fists. “I miss Roxy,” he sniffles. She was always his most faithful ally, at the ready to comfort and cuddle with him at the close of the day. I sit next to him, with tears welling up in my own eyes and press my hand to his heart. I say, “Do you feel that hurt right here?” He says, “Yes.” I tell him, “This is the greatest gift. Not everyone gets to feel this. This sadness in your heart is proof that you got to love and be loved unconditionally. You will always have Roxy’s love and it will remind you how to keep loving.” Logan shakes his head knowingly and we hold on to each other and the cherished memory of Roxy’s love for us.
This loss has created a gap in our family. It feels similar to what I see when I look out the window at a winter that has overstayed its welcome. Daily, I pine for a glimpse of green grass and the hope-filled promise of new buds on trees. I strain to hear the sweet songs of the birds beckoning spring to takeover the chill of this season. We are in a gloaming, in-between time. Winter’s barrenness holds fast as signs of a fresh season begin to spring to life. Christians have a name for this season that parallels the truths that creation has on display this time of year. It is called Lent.
Lent is a season that works to open a gap in our routines and our false assumptions about ourselves and our neighbors. It parts the veil, shedding light on the vulnerabilities and fears that we work hard to keep at arm’s length. It names the unpopular truth that from dust we have come and to dust we will return. Churches find their pews most full on Christmas and Easter, the joy-filled seasons of the year. We prefer the glad-tidings of celebrating the birth of Jesus and the triumphant Hallelujahs of Easter’s resurrection chorus. But Lent disrupts these two seasons with the harsh, brutal reminder of the necessity of death. The fullness of God’s love for the world as embodied in Jesus is not complete without this part of the story. The most vulnerable truth Lent points us towards is the intimate and integral relationship between life and death.
The rhythm of life, death, and new life is woven into every fiber of the world God created and is creating. Each day on my way to work and home, I drive a few extra minutes out of my way to follow the parkway along the Mississippi River. The trees that reside along the riverbank state this truth each season, a constant reminder of how creation is called to be.
For months, their brittle branches arch naked through the chilly sky until spring emerges with signs of new life budding and humming and growing larger as the days get longer. This makes way for summer’s flourishing green cover that helps the planet breath and shades the soil and its critters from the sun’s warmest days. Finally, and always, autumn arrives with a vibrant burst of color as the trees beautiful hues point to what always must follow life and flourishing—death. This dying display of beauty gives way to the barren and dormant winter season, and the waiting begins again.
And so as this gap in the seasons daily displays the complexities of death and life, how do we pay attention to the truth? How do we let the soil filled with decayed bits of life from last summer teach us? How do we be aware that the stuff of loss all around us is also creating the space for life to breath anew again? These are the things I will ponder this week as we honor what would have been Roxy’s 15th doggie birthday. We will spread her ashes in the places she loved to run, play and explore, adding them to the mix of muck and spring mess that is preparing for a new thing.
The season of Lent begins by reminding us that from dust we came and to dust we will return. This is not a morbid sentiment, but a statement of the sacredness of the cycle of life and death and new life again. The trees along the Mississippi River speak this truth as they move through the seasons, just like the memories of our silly, loving, bed-hogging dog Roxy will remind my kids that love is worth the risk of loss. The dust pressed into our foreheads on Ash Wednesday reclaims this holy life giving element of dust, soil, ash—the remains of what was once living which holds the power to bring about life and love again.
We are a dusty people. This is our calling. In a culture where death is perceived as the enemy, we are called to embody this mystery and live it out defiantly.
This week, we hear from Baird Linke, an Innovation Coach at the Riverside Innovation Hub. Baird shares what came out of the panel on “Purpose & Community in Young Adulthood” at our 2019 February Learning Workshop event.
In February, we gathered people from various faith communities working with the Riverside Innovation Hub at our Learning Workshop. I was fortunate to work with my fellow Coach Amanda Vetsch to prepare a panel of young people with diverse perspectives to share about their relationships to faith and faith communities and how they make meaning in the world.
Panelists sharing their stories and thoughts at the panel. From left to right: Emily Kindelspire, Nick Jordan, Erik Olson, Grace Corbin, Luke Paquin, and Baird Linke (facilitator)
We had a wealth of experience in the room — an artist, an organizer, a seminarian, a healthcare professional, a legislative supervisor, and an Innovation Coach — all with varying relationships to faith and church. Some of them have chosen to step away from the Christian tradition they were raised in; some value the church but are not connected to a congregational community, and others have made working for and in the church their daily work.
In spite of the different paths and faith backgrounds, all panelists articulated the belief that what they chose to do is a part of making the world a better place. Some of the major concerns people brought up were climate change, access to health care, the rights of children and others, and the need to love and be loved. These young people care about the world around them, and they build communities in their lives with people who share similar passions.
This transformative motivation showed up again in our conversation about whether or not the panelists are involved with communities of faith and why. Panelists who have centered the church in their lives expressed they experience meaningful transformation in faith communities. They were also quick to point out some of the ways the church could stand some continued transformation. Some of the folks who are not involved with a church wondered whether or not the church was ultimately willing to be transformed by them. Others shared they did not find an understanding of the world that lined up with their own in the church or in Christianity. The commonality that came up in these conversations was the importance of the relationships that help our panelists live out their values in transformative ways — inside and outside the church.
An audience asked what needs to die in the church for there to be a resurrection along the lines of these transformative relationships. One response, in the limited time we had, was that the current business model needs to die. There was a sense from the panel that, if we are concerned primarily with the participation of a demographic category, we are looking for consumers for a product instead of genuinely loving fellow children of God in a way that changes the world.
Of course, the church needs resources to exist in our economy, and relationships do not happen without getting people through the door. In the time we had, we were not able to come up with the perfect spiritual practice to stay grounded in the face of those realities. I’d like to give you a straightforward answer to the question “how do we get young people back to church” because then, as a Coach, I would feel like I did my job well and now it’s up to you to do the work. But that’s not quite how it works. The truth is: there is no one perfect answer to this question.
There is NOT a golden program or rock-solid theology that will change people if it is not done from a foundation of genuine, mutually transformative relationship that some call love. And I do not think love is about answers that let you close the book. Love is about finding wonder in another person, and that is a practice that is never finished. Thanks be to God.
The church can be a place where this kind of love happens, but we cannot take it for granted that it just will. Instead of asking how to get young adults back to church, I would invite you to dwell into the question of what kind of church we want to invite them into.
Great thanks to our panelists (in both sessions): Emily Kindelspire, Nick Jordan, Erik Olson, Grace Corbin, Luke Paquin, and Korla Masters
Bethlehem’s innovation team recognized Siri’s vision and leadership. We built our vision around the growing garden and our growing partnership with folks doing conservation and reforestation in the cloud forest of Guatemala. Siri will be one of the young adults traveling to Guatemala come January, after our garden is harvested. She kept asking me if I should send someone else instead, someone who has more clarity about God and church. I think of Ezekiel and smile. “No, you are perfect.” 
