The Little Church That Could

by Rev. Tina Campbell

I told them I wasn’t a parish pastor. My first gig was on the streets of the Southside of Chicago and I did no parish field work in seminary. I prayed in long houses in British Columbia and was perfectly at home inside a maximum security prison unit. Addicts and inmates, dying people and rebellious teenagers didn’t daunt me, but I certainly wasn’t a parish pastor. This is not to say that I am without faith. The kind of ministry I have experienced is not for the faint of heart. So ok…I’ll strike a deal. I’ll come and preach and then go home. They agreed to that. Then I watched them.

They did everything at the church. They cleaned the bathrooms. They replaced toilets. They brought food. They prepared the bulletins. There was a dog who sat in the front pew and seemed to listen to my sermons. There was a piano player who could make all my favorite songs fill the sanctuary with joy. They never said, “We’ve done enough.” They always said, “How can I help?” They never said, “I’m too busy.” They always said, “I’ll do that right away.” They didn’t just talk about the unhoused in our downtown Phoenix community, they showed up in person to visit with them. They made hundreds of blankets for our asylum seeking neighbors in Mexico and convinced non-church community members to bring carloads of food to place at our altar before distribution to local food banks. The men clean up the kitchen. They know stuff about addiction, incarceration, poverty, LBGTQ issues and loss.. They’re even fun, and they laugh and tease one another. They recently raised thousands of dollars to provide heat relief during our desert climate crisis.

After awhile,  I started looking at their dear faces from the pulpit, and I realized that I loved them, especially the dog. It seems I’m a parish pastor after all. God certainly has a wild sense of humor.

I will not be among the hand wringers who prophesize the demise of the Christian church. I believe our strength is not in numbers, but in bold faith put into action. If we focus on acting out the Good News of the all inclusive Gospel, we can’t go wrong. Black Mountain United Church of Christ has taught me that. I say this with good authority.  After all, I’m a parish pastor. 

The Reverend Dr. Kristina Campbell

Transitional Minister Black Mountain United Church of Christ

Scottsdale, Arizona 

Oh The Humanity

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

I met Auntie Rose when I was four or five. She had to be 184 years old, give or take 100 years. Old was ancient to me, like the pyramids, dinosaurs, and God. Auntie Rose lived next door to my mom and my mom’s three kids of which I was firmly in the center. My older brother and my baby brother were my orbit. My dad was a satellite across town while my mom was the moon, sleeping during the day and shining somewhere far from me at night. It wasn’t a world with cohesion, just one with intense gravity. 

We lived in apartments with too many kids and too few awake adults so anyone who took an interest in me became family. That was how a stranger named Rose became Auntie Rose and her husband (by association, not at all earned) became Uncle John. And I loved her. She was sweet to me and had a soft lap. She made me eggs some mornings when my mom wasn’t all that aware of my grumbling tummy. She asked me about things like hopscotch and fights with my brothers and my wishes to be the President and a country music singer, dual careers that felt realistic and achievable.

There was another ancient woman on the premises that everyone called Granny. Now Granny really was the oldest person alive, of that I am certain. I don’t have the Guinness Book of Records to prove it, but my memory filed her away as the oldest person ever and I still hold every centenarian up against her. Granny played solitaire, smoked cigarettes, watched daytime television, prayed the rosary, and made cookies. Auntie Rose visited with her several times a week for many years and I would trail over after her. Granny had one of those little plaques with wooden blocks that spelled out JESUS if your eyes adjusted to it in just the right way. I thought that was brilliant. I would let my eyes go in and out of focus while tracing the lines, amazed that blank space could become something else if you saw it the right way. Auntie Rose’s words and Granny’s cigarette smoke would waft around me as they talked about nothing that actually interested me, but held me just the same. I thought Auntie Rose and Granny were actually related. My mom let me know years later that they were not. I guess I was making chosen family for as long as I had the ability.

Auntie Rose wasn’t my neighbor for long, but while she was, she likely heard a lot through the thin wall that separated her home from mine. My mom’s boyfriend, my future step-father, wasn’t a kind man and expressed that loudly in all sorts of ways. She didn’t like him which made me like her more. She also didn’t like her own husband much. I could tell that right away. I could give or take him. He was silent and sullen. She did something that no ancient person ever did in the 1980s: she divorced him. And then she moved away. 

Auntie Rose kept coming back to visit Granny, though, so I didn’t lose her. It was one of those visits when something shifted that never shifted back. It was a moment I remember so vividly and so clearly you would think something traumatic happened. It wasn’t traumatic, though. I had been in the living room, talking to Granny. Granny asked me to go give Auntie Rose a vase as she was in the back room doing some kind of rearranging of a closet for Granny. I walked down the hall to the bedroom and there was no Auntie Rose. Then I heard her call from the darkened bathroom that had the door wide open. “Need something?” I walked toward her and then froze when I heard the unmistakable sound of urine hitting the water of a toilet. 

She was talking to me. While peeing. And can you even? I could not. I froze and felt my stomach hurt. I said, “Uh, no. Nothing.” I set the vase on the bed and hightailed it out of the apartment, confused and disoriented by the whole experience.

There is such a fragility in early childhood, a constant reckoning with the stimulus all around. A sense of awe or mortification seem equally in reach at any given moment. I had been awed so much by Auntie Rose’s unfailing kindness and love that mortification had an easy entry. She had seemed above need, above doing anything so base as having to use the bathroom. I never forgave her for being so very human when I had cast her as Love.

That memory was created when I was eight-years old and I must think of it at least once a month with a very specific trigger: embarrassment on behalf of another’s humanity. I feel the burn of embarrassment the most intensely when it’s my own humanity revealed at the most inopportune time. 

There’s a great scene from a mediocre show that also occurs to me frequently alongside this memory. The show was Nurse Jackie and the scene depicts a conversation between one of my favorite fictional TV characters Gloria Akalitus and a second character named Dr. O’Hara. Gloria Akalitus is the head of an overtaxed ER. She is every medical administrator I have ever met with a wonderful, lovable, terrifying personality. Dr. O’Hara comes upon Gloria eating and says, “I don’t think I have ever seen you eat before.” Gloria’s response is, “I like to hide my humanity. Or at least keep it to a minimum.”

Why is admitting we are human the hardest thing we do all day? Feels like it has something to do with the red rover game between capability and vulnerability that plays throughout the entirety of our living. 

So what didn’t match up for the eight-year old me that day? Was it that she was in the bathroom with the light off? Was it that the door was open? Was it that it was unexpected? Or was it just too human?

It was being confronted with base need where strength and comfort had been the only resident prior. It made everything feel a bit more fragile in a world that already wasn’t sturdy. I am thankful for that moment now. I know it’s a weird thing to be thankful for – someone using the bathroom with the door open. I am, though, because it serves me. It pops up when I want to run like my young self did. It presents itself when another’s humanity feels far too real or when my own feels far too ugly. I pause now instead of run. I remind myself that we are all just humans working out our needs the best we can. I remind myself of my own capability and of yours. And, most of the time, I stay.

I imagine if I hadn’t run that day then Auntie Rose would have likely finished her business, washed her hands, and come out of the bathroom to take the vase from me. She likely would have had a kind word for me as she often peppered mundane moments with affirmation. I would have likely returned to Granny while she played her millionth game of solitaire and smoked her millionth-and-one cigarette. My stomach would have settled and cookies would have been consumed. Life would have simply continued.

I don’t know what it is about being human that sometimes makes the stomach hurt and causes us to flee, but I do know that most of us have moments that feel too naked and real. May we not change them or run from them. May we wait them out and see what happens. May we accept our need as fully human. May we close the door when we go potty.

“Red rover, red rover, send acceptance right over.”

Grieving Well

by Rev. Lynne Hinton, Conference Director, New Mexico Conference of Churches

At a worship service a couple of weeks ago at St. John’s UMC in Albuquerque, visiting preacher Rev. Scott Carpenter spoke about five tasks churches need to accomplish in order to thrive. The first task was to grieve well.

This focus on grief as the first task for a faith community to grow strong surprised me. Having been a hospice chaplain for years, I spend a lot of time and thought regarding grief, regarding loss. I understand the need to honor grief but I had never seriously considered it as a necessary function for communities of faith to thrive. And yet, grief is necessary to move forward. And if we’ve ever needed to grieve in churches, it’s now.

Over 600,000 persons have died in our country from Covid 19. Businesses have closed. Churches have had to shut their doors permanently. Dreams have ended. Suicides and mental illness emergencies are on the rise. And in poorer countries, the pandemic continues to ravage entire populations. We need to grieve what has been lost, what we have lost.

In [his book] RealLivePreacher.com, Pastor Gordon Atkinson writes about going to a mountain church in Colorado as part of his annual family vacation. He goes to the little community church alone and he goes to weep.

He writes, “I cry in their church because I can’t cry in my own. I’m not suggesting that we discourage crying at our church. I’m saying I am not ABLE to cry there. Being in charge shuts something down in me, I think. So every summer in Creede I unpack a year’s worth of sorrow, joy, and wonder.

“I cry in church because it is my time to be served. I’m like the woman who prepares the meals for her family each day. One day she comes home, and her children have prepared a meal for her. She bursts into tears because it’s her turn to receive. It doesn’t mean she wants to stop cooking. It’s just nice that it’s her turn.

“I cry for those reasons, but mostly I cry because at Creede Community Church I can see the truth. Sitting in that simple pew on the back row, I see the Church Universal in all her glory and silliness. The truth is, we are not sophisticated at all. We are nothing more than children, sticking our drawings to the fridge with tiny magnets, offering our best to the heavens on a wing and a prayer. We are precious, but perhaps only in His sight.

“I think messy little boys and girls praying in church must be irresistible to God. When God slows down and licks his fingers to slick down my cowlick, I catch a fleeting glimpse of the hem of his robe.

“And a glimpse is more than enough for me.

“That is the moment of true worship, and I always seem to find it in Creede.

“And in that moment, I cry from pure joy and relief.”

Do you have a place where you can weep? Do you have time set aside in your life to mourn your losses, honor the sorrow you carry, and feel free to let your emotions loose? And do you have a place where you receive, a place where you don’t have to be the faith leader or the pastor holding it together, a place where you can be served and know the loving presence of God?

My hope, of course, is that you do and that you have been there this year, that you have wept in sorrow and relief, and that you have been received, and ultimately that you have known joy. That is my hope for us all.

You are the light of the world.

Do You Feel Out of Sorts Lately?

by Amanda Petersen

Ever have one of those days where you just feel out of sorts? There is nothing happening in your life to cause it, yet you feel like that commercial where the little blue cloud is following you everywhere? If that has been happening lately, you are not alone.

One of the side effects of living a Deep Listening life will be days where –for no reason at all– the little blue cloud will show up. It makes sense if one believes we are all connected, and there are tragedies happening in large proportions, that one would feel the pain of others. When there is a lot of sadness in the world, that sadness touches others.

What do you do with these blue cloud days? I could make a list of ways to move through these days, yet I really believe each of you have your own wisdom. I’d love to hear what you do when these days of communal sadness show up.

For myself, the blue cloud days mean reaching out to community, increasing self care and meditation, and balancing the sadness with inspiration. In the midst of all the sad stories there are so many of how people have reached out and loved each other. These seasons are times for me to ask questions like “Is this sadness moving me in a new direction?”

Let’s take a moment and inspire each other with our stories of blue cloud days and how they call us to a deeper and richer life. If that sounds impossible, I encourage you to reach out to one of our community to assist you in finding your way through blue cloud days. In the meantime, may your week be filled grace as we interact with ourselves, others and God/Divine.

Okay, but why?

by Davin Franklin-Hicks 

I remember my 13-year-old self sitting on the altar of a small Southern Baptist church. The altar was brown, carpeted steps. A woman who had shown me incredible kindness sat with me. She was holding my hand. I was wracked with sadness and sobs. She listened to me as I told her about the divorces, the turmoil in my family, the fear that I was not normal (that meant queer, but I didn’t yet have the words for that). She listened. She leaned in. She cared.

After I shared, she opened her Bible and I remember her taking me through “The Roman Road”. I spent most of the time listening for Roman to show up in the story line. The Roman character never made an appearance.

The Roman Road is a fundamentalist evangelical tool often used in explaining the “Plan of Salvation”. I would come to know that well later, but for that moment, I didn’t understand any of it.

This is pretty much how the many conversations would go:

Nice lady (NL): When Eve took that apple and decided to eat from the tree, sin entered the world. We needed a path back to God and we get that through Jesus.

Perplexed 13 y/o Davin (PD): Well, why did God make that tree then?

NL: God wanted us to choose Him. When we don’t we invite sin into our lives and we need salvation.

PD: I don’t get it. If I poisoned candy and put it in a kid’s room, wouldn’t that mean I poisoned the kid if the kid ate it?

NL: blinking with a minorly irritated look.

Our session ended for that day. Two weeks later the nice lady tried again. Same place, ready to dig in, Bible between us.

NL: Okay so please remember that we chose sin.

PD: Yeah, but God kinda made that happen, right? Why did he put that tree there?

NL: Because God wanted us to choose Him.

PD: What? Why?

NL: Because he loves us and wants us to love him.

PD: Then why didn’t he leave out the tree that would ruin everything?

Our session ended again.

We met more and I had many questions:
Why did God make Lucifer if He knew that he would turn into Satan?
Who was Cain afraid of? Wasn’t it just him, Abel, Eve and Adam in the world? Who was Cain afraid would harm him when he was cast out of the garden?
If God made us and the tree of good and evil, isn’t that kinda passive aggressive?
She sighed a lot in those visits.

I was a teenager who just discovered faith community.
I liked the church a lot.
I liked the people.
I liked the adults who worked in the youth group.
I kept coming back and the nice lady kept trying to help me understand why I needed salvation in the form of repentance.

After many sessions with her, I was willing to admit I was a sinner, admit Jesus died for my sins, profess my belief in Christ, invite Jesus into my heart and promise to walk a path of faith, sharing the Good News. This is called a few things in literal, evangelical Christianity: being born again, getting saved, turning my life over to Jesus. Once I was in, I was in. The questions went away and I was determined to be the next Billy Graham.

Much of my theology in those days was slathered with fear and shame. I passed that on to those who took time to listen to my conversion messages. I was going to make sure Heaven was full and Hell was empty.

I was zealous and I was persistent. I was also very scared, brokenhearted, shame-filled and sad. The church kept me busy so my heart didn’t feel so very alone.

I was always angry back then. If you had to find me in a crowd, you could simply look for the kid with arms crossed over their chest, glowering, glaring, guarded and grrrrrr…

All the while I pushed people away, I was super offended when they did not talk to me. Hurt people often long for what they desperately try to convince others they don’t need.

I was creating an emotional wall; I was a teenage emotional construction worker with endless mortar and bricks: Sob the Builder.

There’s reasons for that wall. There’s reasons for everything we think, feel and do. Behavior is to meet a need, or at least a perception of a need. We spend so much time judging actions we rarely think about what is behind those actions. We rarely are compassionate with ourselves.

Everyone’s behavior makes sense to them at the time or else they wouldn’t do it. My fortress was built for a reason. It kept the bad out, but then it started keeping EVERYTHING out.

If I ever write a memoir I will call it “Well, that didn’t work.” And we still try again.

It’s comfortable to think in black and white because there is certainty there. It’s super hard when you let in the colorful world of all sorts of living and needing. It changes everything.

The option of truly being present with someone and learning who they are without an agenda to change them is the only way we get to have honest relationship. I didn’t get that concept for much of my life. I wanted the world to bend, not for me to bend. That’s how brokenness happens, in the not bending and the demanding it be different.

2016 has been awful for me and many I love. It has been the worst year of my life for sure. It also has been a very rich year. I have felt loved more often than not. I have given love more freely than I have in any other year. And 2016 was still the worst ever for me.

I am not someone who believes life’s trials are there to make you a better person. I don’t believe it is orchestrated in that way. I do believe, though, in every situation that sorrow exists, we can see aspects of living we never would have noticed without the sorrow. I don’t believe sorrow exists as a life lesson. I think it’s just part of life and what we choose to do with it determines a lot.

It’s been almost a year since I was harmed through sexual assault and there have been oh so many layers of pain my family and I have walked through. It has been horrendous and it has been illuminating. It has been heartbreaking and it has been healing. For me, what makes it or breaks it is my willingness to engage life in hard times vs run, run, run!

Engaging in life requires some courage when everything within wants to retreat. When that’s my reality I take the absolute smallest inching forward I can muster to just stay in the world, stay in my life. I have to get open, drop the mortar and brick, and choose to live in the elements, responding to life and love as it comes and as I co-create it. Dear ones, we are creating our inner world as we participate in life. I want my inner world to be a sanctuary and refuge.

The idea of refuge reminds me of my younger brother who tells a story that when he was about 19 years old or so, his AC busted and he had to have more windows and doors open at night to keep cool. He did this regularly in the apartment he lived in so he had adjusted and slept well most of the time.

One morning he gradually woke from sleep with the cat on his belly. He petted her, she purred and nuzzles. Then the slow dawning: “I don’t have a cat.” Yup. A random cat decided to sleep on my brother’s belly.

I love picturing this story playing out. It’s awesome, funny, and it highlights my gentle brother who awakes with welcome.

What I really love most, though, is the cat. The cat went all rogue and decided this house was as good as any and my brother’s warm belly was just the stuff this felonious cat needed to get a good rest.

What’s hurting within you? What’s preventing you from welcoming warmth and companionship into the core of who you are? What is this fortress you are building? What is keeping you from the wander and the wonder that may lead to new relationship?  What is the smallest inching forward you can muster today to answer the pain with hopeful forward momentum?

Whatever it is, I promise you this: the pain you feel in that place is made worse with isolation and vigilance. Peace to your precious, scared heart and peace to your amazing, enduring spirit.

We all have the “why” questions. Keep that up! The questions are beautiful and welcomed. The altar is within you as you seek your heart out.

Knowing this and living this is my road to salvation.

Some Stories from Appalachia

by Abigail Conley

“They’ve got to come help those poor Appalachian people.” I remember the disdain in my mother’s voice as she said those words. I grew up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. If you look at a poverty map of the United States, my county would be a lighter shade than those farther south or farther east, deeper into coal mining country. This was the place where coal was brought up on trains, then loaded onto barges to float down the Ohio River to Cincinnati.

As the trucking industry has replaced trains, the area has been bypassed. What were once company houses all along the river are now privately owned, though their outlines remain the same. Some Googling tells me that the population in that area was at its highest in the 1960s. My own thirty years of memory holds manufacturing and railroad jobs leaving, sometimes hundreds at a time, as recently as this year.

In high school, I participated in a leadership initiative funded by local businesses. “Leave,” they said. “Get an education. Then come back here. If our best people keep leaving, nothing here will ever change.” Looking back, I realize they had more vision than I gave them credit for. They saw we needed something. We’d do well to look at those somethings as progressive people, so here’s some perspective from someone who grew up in deep red, rural, white America.

Trust takes time. While Appalachia is a closed culture, this is generally true of rural areas. These aren’t places where someone can spend a few weeks or months, knock on doors, and get stuff done. People who have lived in a place for decades are still seen as outsiders. These are places where relationships reach back generations. There, I introduce myself by whose daughter I am. When I needed traveler’s checks in college, the fees were waived because the woman helping me knew my family. I couldn’t tell you who she was. It didn’t matter. There were generations of trust at play.

Drugs are one of the biggest threats. The stories I could tell you are horrifying. I remember an angry obituary a few years ago. One of the women in my high school class died in her mid-twenties. Her family took out their rage in the obituary, naming the “pill mill industry” and a few other things to blame. It’s true. Pharmacies pop up overnight, then disappear just as quickly. Oxycodone is nicknamed “hillbilly heroin” for a reason. These are places hurting from losing their children to drugs that they don’t understand. These are children turning to drugs because jobs are in short supply.

And yes, they need jobs. You’ve heard before that manufacturing jobs are drying up. That’s not just true in cities. The brickyards and railroads that used to be the good jobs are quickly disappearing in rural areas. My parents would love if I moved back there. I have no idea where I’d get a job if I did. Growing up, I never saw teachers as poor. These were coveted jobs because they meant good, steady paychecks and health insurance. Teaching would keep things afloat when the less steady but better paying jobs weren’t in season. A blue collar worker married to a teacher was common and worked out well financially. In the rest of the country, teaching is seen as underpaid and underappreciated.

Healthcare works differently.  Or at least most people wish it did. I went to the same doctor as my dad had gone to when he was a child. I think that doctor moved there when my dad was around eight years old. He was one of the people who wasn’t from there—and everyone remembered that—but had earned his place in the community. If you were sick, you just went to the office and they’d get you in. His prices were low enough that my parents didn’t even use their health insurance. In fact, later I learned that his prices were lower than an insurance copay. When he retired, the charge for an office visit was around $30. This was within the last ten years. I have no doubt he saw patients who couldn’t pay that much. I remember meeting him at his office in the night as a child, sick, before urgent care existed. At his office, he treated my sister for what was nearly blood poisoning, saving my parents a hospital stay he knew they couldn’t afford.

The first time I sat in another doctor’s office, I was overwhelmed. I’d never filled out paperwork nor seen my parents fill out more than a single sheet of paper. I’d never needed to find my insurance card. I’d never been somewhere that the office staff was unfamiliar. When we talk about health insurance and the Affordable Care Act, we’re already talking about systems that cause difficulties for these people. No one is inclined to sign up for more of it.

Guns really do matter. I don’t own a gun and doubt I ever will. That’s not true of anyone else in my family. Guns are for hunting. People care about how many points were in a buck’s antlers. Killing your first deer is a milestone. Some families rely on a freezer of meat for food. Also, in a place where police may not be able to get to your house within an hour or more, yes, guns are for protection, too. While there are some people who can’t imagine any gun control at all, there are easier conversations around guns for a large portion of this population. These are also the people who see guns as every bit as dangerous as they are, and treat them that way.

Paternalism never works. My mother’s offense that someone from outside would know better is real. We talk about that reality often with marginalized groups, worrying about being white saviors in black and brown communities. We talk about community empowerment, instead, and try to work with communities rather than dropping things we think they need. When we’re talking about white, rural and often poor people, we’re talking about people who are marginalized. They have to drive hours for services. They don’t have access to transportation. They live in old trailers instead of housing projects, but conditions are still bad. I fully acknowledge white privilege. The color of my skin means that no one assumes my childhood was spent living below the poverty line or questions whether I should be in certain rooms. That doesn’t change the reality that many of these people are struggling and existing systems don’t help them.

It’s easier to love some neighbors than others. I get that. Just this week, I officiated at the wedding of two lovely women. They’ve been together four years. They got married because they didn’t trust that next year they’d be able to. They got married because they were worried about one of them being deported. Most of us could tell dozens of stories of those neighbors who are more afraid now than they were a few weeks ago. Some of us could even tell stories of threats against those same neighbors. Still, Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” As people of faith, we must work as hard to create relationships with the neighbors who offend us, and learn to love them, too. We must learn to see the brokenness they’re experiencing and help heal it, too. Those of us who are most privileged hold the most responsibility for this work; we are the people for whom this work is safe.

It is my deepest prayer that God will help us along the way.

Innovation Lab Making an Impact

guest post by Rev. Sue Joiner

Note by Kenneth McIntosh, Church Growth and Renewal Coordinator for SWC:

“Last October, Sue Joiner and Ann Marie Stranger from First Congregational Albuquerque participated in the Innovation Lab Workshop held at the SWC office in Phoenix and led by Rebecca Glenn. They have attended video conference coaching group meetings in the months since then, and have facilitated an exciting process of innovation and healthy changes at their church. Enjoy this article, be inspired by some of these ideas, and remember that there are still openings for the Innovation Lab Workshop round #2 happening this fall.”

We began our process with a team of a dozen leaders in January. We were inspired by the Innovation Lab technique of experimentation, deep listening, prototyping and learning as we go. We interviewed people about the church to hear what their deep hungers were. The theme that was repeated the most was connection. Then we created a survey to help assess what would most meet that need for connection. We gathered to assimilate the information and discovered some themes:

There is a longing for meaningful relationships and we are addressing that by creating opportunities for people to get to know each other. We did a Lenten series using the book Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life by Philip Simmons. We had four groups meeting at different times and places over a six week period. These were so well-received that we are doing three groups this summer – one group is reading a collection of short stories set in New Mexico, another is reading the book Being Mortal, and a third will gather later this summer to read plays and look at the themes as they relate to our lives. Our Green Justice team is sponsoring a dinner and movie discussion to explore food justice issues in more depth.

We talked about connecting in worship. We have found ways to integrate children in worship and relocated our children’s corner to give children better access to their own resources. We have added some visual arts for Easter and Pentecost. We did a community Candlelight Memorial Service for the victims of the Orlando shooting. Our sanctuary is now 100% LED lighting (a result of the Green Justice committee and our commitment to making the space more welcoming).

We are looking at our building as a resource and seeking to make it friendlier. We put rainbow doors on Lomas (a major street outside our church) that say, “God’s doors are open to all”. We want to do more with the inside of the building. We are committed to a master plan for the building. We have a trainer and opened a fitness room in our basement that is open to the community.

We became a Green Justice Congregation on May 22 so we are finding new ways to live out this commitment.

We are planning to send care packages to any UCC student at University of New Mexico (we are counting on churches to send us the names of students who are coming to school here).

We are committed to finding new ways to make our building and our community a place of connection. We are finding new ways to get the word out about our extravagant welcome. We are committed to the whole person and to a welcome that is long lasting.

Love Manifesto

by Karen MacDonald

In the midst of a disheartening, divisive election season, the last few days have brought even more disgust and deep dismay.

A Stanford University student who raped a young woman for “only” 20 minutes last year was given a 6-month jail sentence, and he could be released after 3 months for good behavior.  Good behavior?!

On Friday in Orlando, FL, a young woman singer was shot by a man who came to her concert for that purpose, and she died shortly after.

In the early hours of this morning in Orlando, a young man walked into a LGBT nightclub with a handgun and an AR-15 assault rifle and massacred at least 50 patrons, injuring at least 50 more.

What the —– is going on?

As a woman, a defense mechanism, literally, is to recognize that I and my sisters are always potential targets of male power.  As a lesbian woman, I know full well that I and my queer sisters and brothers, for all the legal progress being made, are still despised by many.  It would be easy to put up a wall or to lash out or to pre-judge everyone harshly.  It would be easy—and it would be deadly, to my spirit and to our communal life, to life itself.

Among many diverse spiritual sages over the centuries, Jesus taught another way.  “Love your enemies.”  “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled.”  “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”  “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”  Our spiritual sages keep pointing us to what our spirits already know deep down—love is the only way.  That takes faith and courage and community.  

And it probably takes anger.  And weeping.  Both of those emotions are evidence that the way things are isn’t the way we want it to be.  We don’t want hatred and fear and violence.  So we weep when it seems like those things are holding sway, because our hearts are breaking.  So we get angry at the suffering we humans continue to perpetrate, because we can be and do so much better.

And then we channel the energy that rises in weeping and anger to act for wholeness, for peace; we act in love.  That will mean resisting powers-that-be, in politics, in economics, even in religious institutions, heck, maybe even in our families.  Just make sure that our acting, our speaking, our resisting is done in a spirit of open-heartedness, rather than vengeance or defensiveness.  

What’s going on?  Let’s make sure love is going on….and on….and on…….

Chair Number Two – The gift of seeing and being seen.

by Amanda Petersen

The second chair is labeled “friendship”. This is more than an acquaintance; this is about seeing and being seen. This is about giving the one that is discovered in solitude a place to experience the depth of connection.

Joan Chittister in Monasteries of the Heart puts it this way in regards to true community:

“Community is the backdrop against which we do what we do. It give us the underpinning that enables us to go on when we’re tired, to go forward when we’re afraid, to go more deeply into the unmasking of the self when everything inside of us seems to go to stone, goes dry and dull and lethargic. Community building does not just happen; it cannot be taken for granted. It requires both great faith and great trust that is generated by continuing display of great human care that  begins with me and then comes back to me.”

Deep relationships with others allow us to practice being vulnerable, real, and to participate in grace, mercy, and deep joy and love.  It gives the self discovered in solitude a place to be seen and heard and allows us to be the mirror of Love to others in the same way. The gift of that second chair of community/friendship is the reality of Holy Ground.

This week find someplace where you may truly connect with another person.  Let that person know what a gift they are.

2 Ways to Make your Church Exits Less Attractive

by Kenneth McIntosh

Late last summer there was an article in the Huffington Post titled “Are you Fed Up with Church? 30 Million Say Yes!” The Writer, Patrick Vaughn, is a Presbyterian Minister and the article summarized the findings of research by Dr. Josh Packard. The full report by Dr. Packard is available from Group Publishing for $25.00. Vaughn’s article can be accessed here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patrick-vaughn/are-you-fed-up-with-churc_b_7941012.html

I wish I could say that I was shocked by the article, but I’m not. Other research—such as the Pew survey of American religious life– confirm similar results: http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/

But the Huff Po article does more than report weal and woe; Vaughn pulls out two lessons from Packard’s study that can be helpful for congregations desiring to be an exception to the rule of decline. The study is basically an exit interview on a mega-scale, finding out why those who are “done” with churches (plus those headed for the exit at the time they were surveyed) are walking away.

Vaughn says, “the Dones are not giving up on God. They are giving up on an institution.” Parenthetically, this contrasts with my own first-hand observations (which are vastly more limited, and confined to my politically liberal college town setting). Over the past decade, I’ve spoken with the majority of people who’ve left my congregations, and the largest single cause has been loss of religious belief; people’s beliefs changed from Theist to Atheist or Agnostic, and they felt incongruent in a Christian worship setting. But again, this is apparently not the case on a larger scale national-scope survey; the broader majority left their churches while still identifying as believers in God.

The first major reported cause for being ‘done’ with church was failure to experience deep and meaningful community. The people surveyed wanted very much to be part of a group, where they belonged, were supported by others, and were connected to other church members in substantial ways—and they were largely disappointed by the lack of such experiences.

The second reason for the disappointment of the Dones was the failure of churches to engage them in activities that were of value to the larger world. While churches were eager to solicit volunteers, the content of volunteer activities was focused on institutional maintenance, such as committees, classes, work days and etc. that were purposed for the continuation of the congregation. In other words, churches were internally focused, rather than seeking to better their cities or planet.

This survey of those leaving churches can be useful for those of us still active in churches insofar as they suggest a dual focus of our energies. There are manifold aspects of church life, and proponents and enthusiasts of each aspect can make good case why more effort be expended in their sphere of interest (I recently blogged in this forum suggesting the neglected importance of contemplative spiritual disciplines). Looking at the big picture of Dr. Packard’s work, it behooves us to focus on two things:  building community, and encouraging participation in social action.

Efforts at building community within a church are sometimes disparaged as “social club,” with the insinuation that they are less valuable than “spiritual” or worship events. This survey suggests that they are, however, essential for continuity of healthy congregations. Worship itself can be re-designed to foster community; by seating people facing toward one another, inviting lay members to share the rites and symbolic actions of worship, inviting prayers from the congregation, framing the sermon as more of a dialogue, and so on. Likewise, all other activities of a church—small groups, classes, and even the dreaded committees—can be re-designed to facilitate fellowship. And activities that smack of “social club” such as dinners for eight, or amateur talent night, or microbrew tasting (for the hipster church) should perhaps be elevated to more valued status.

It’s good news for UCC churches that people wish to be involved in activities that better society. Our churches are premier social justice centers, and even our small congregations tend to be outward-focused. Perhaps we can refine this area of our expertise? Rather than simply posting meetings for the homeless, racial justice, refugee advocacy and so-on, make sure that every notice is an invitation with the clear message that newcomers are welcomed and encouraged to participate. And when mobilizing, make sure that new volunteers can be incorporated into ongoing projects with the least possible amount of hurdles to jump (accountability and safety are always paramount—but sometimes we have rules that are just unnecessary barriers for new participants).

In this age of church decline, it’s a valuable gift knowing that there are ways to make the church exits less appealing. By shoring up our ministries of community-building and mission, we can lessen the flow of members toward the exits and strengthen the Body of Christ.