In the Coracle

Ministries in a Missional Church

PatJune 12, 2008

Yesterday I ran across the website of a church in my town. They’re a great group, I love the pastor, and they’ve been in our community for long years.

It was odd for me to notice, though, that the “Ministries” section of their website listed all of their inward facing work. Ministries were things like Sunday school teacher; hospitality; worship team; Bible study leader. None were ministries from the church to the community.

I’ve been in the worldview of a missional church for so long that I’m surprised to see churches with inward-only impulses. For me, the outward impulse is just more.. normal.

But, that realization got me thinking about how a missional church can describe its ministries. If we as the missional church take seriously the idea that the community and its members are ordained, trained, commissioned and sent into our world, then we should celebrate our mission fields somehow.

What if on Sundays, we made a big deal out of commissioning a missionary who’s going into a new job as a receptionist at the real estate office? Or somebody who’s now a waiter at the Mexican restaurant? Or a financial advisor working with folks planning to retire? Or an at-home mom or dad who’s focused on their family? Or the person who volunteers with the school PTA? Or the executive at Microsoft, or the woman who just made partner at her legal firm? Or the young girl about to enter Kindergarten? Or the retired person who goes to the local diner every day for a cup of coffee and conversation? Or the family moving to a new state with a new job?

What if our church websites, under “Ministries” (or partnerships, or missionary activity, whatever you want to call it), listed all these areas that our church was engaged in?

I can think of at least these benefits:

First, the church would take seriously its role as sending people into the community as an intentional act. We would think about how we would train missionaries to the grocery store, or paralegals. We would have to intentionally commission (and, perhaps, decommission or place on-hold) some of our folks.

Second, the sent ones would take seriously their role as embedded missionaries in their own context. They would be trained and understand that they were sent intentionally.

Third, our websites would be long lists of activity in our community, we would have different ways to tell the story of what the church is doing. For small, missional churches, this would give them a much better way to answer the question “how’s the church doing?” than “we had 18 butts in chairs last Sunday”.

Fourth, new member classes would be different. We would ask new folks what their occupations were, how we could help them there, and what their passions were. How do they want to change the world, and how can the church partner with them?

Those of you who lead missional churches, what do you think about this idea? Those who participate with missional churches, how about you?

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Guest Blogger: Matt Echohawk-Hayashi on Multicultural Church

PatJune 3, 2008

I asked several friends who are leading intentionally multicultural/multiethnic/multiracial churches to share some thoughts about that experience. First up is Matt Echohawk-Hayashi. Matt is one of the pastors of the church I am part of, Ohana Project in Seattle. I value Matt’s voice as a friend, as my pastor, and as somebody who’s been thinking deeply and crafting a faith community with these issues in mind. I hear a fuller story of God’s Good news from Matt than I have heard elsewhere, and I think you’ll get a glimpse of why below.

Here’s what Matt wrote to me. I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions - add them to comments here, and I’m sure Matt will engage them.

The closer we get to it, the clearer we see how tricky it can be to be a diverse community of faith can be.

Popular expectations of faith actually helping to segregate us are hard to deny. It’s 2008, we have presumably have a African American presidential nominee for the Dems, and yet just about all of America’s churches are functioning predominantly not just of a particular ethnos, but for one as well. Clearly, we are not in the same United States that was in part defined by slavery, or Jim crow, or Bull Connor, God’s people have paid heavy costs for leaving those institutions behind. But, the soil still seems to have those same seeds of racism scattered through out our society today.

I do have problems with the “Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America” statement. It is a fact, but not directly because of church. Its because we have a choice on Sunday where to go. If we could choose who we work with without it affecting our pay, everyday would be as segregated as Sunday. Sunday is not the problem. We are.

This leaves us not only ignorant of each other but in my opinion, it threatens our understanding of the gospel.

Even though I’m a fourth generation American, belonging to an ethic group with strong distinctions from the majority group and having others with the same or similar distinctions in proximity to me while I grew up, help to shape me. Some things that I’m naturally going to be more comfortable with, like non-verbal communication have been reinforced my whole life. In some cases, the opposite is true for some who come from other “distinctions”. Add cultural and ethnic bias to the things that are reinforced in our enclaves and real connection between peoples becomes really difficult and group identity that crosses these enclaves is really, really difficult.

But the gospel just repeated to ourselves in our own voices, without the conviction that comes when we hear it from “others” is in danger of becoming no gospel at all. A mentor taught me that without the power of hearing it again for the first time, which can rarely happen without an outcast involved, the good news can become just folk religion, designed to reinforce the status quo of our distinctions and not a force that calls to re-creation in Jesus.

A significant example: In the US, a Christianity that does not recognize the perspective of the Christians who survived (and died) through over four-hundred years of legal slavery, is not real Christianity. How can it be without claiming such glaring truths of evil, redemption, and forgiveness that have scarred the landscape of this country in almost every way?

But, as the recent election processes have revealed, we cannot recognize the perspectives of the other, while we are still separated from each other.

For us, the calling to be multi… is not possible to be separate from the calling to be Christian. It just seems like the gospel demands it.

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Marks of Spiritual Maturity

PatMay 31, 2008

Over at my friend Kedge’s blog he’s started a discussion that I think is really helpful. I recommend that you go over there and jump in, and maybe even copy your discussion thoughts into comments here.

Here’s what he’s wrestling with:

How do we know if someone (ourselves included) is spiritually mature?

How do we know if someone is growing spiritually?

What are the marks of spiritual maturity and depth?

I’m wrestling with this question and really need some help…

He goes on to make some first attempts at what we’re talking about. Of course there are no easy answers - which is why the topic is so great - but also, these are things we want to be able to measure in our selves and others (especially those of us called to leadership and pastoral work…)

Oh, Kedge has the best blog tagline ever. it’s been shortened a bit, but he’s all about “unpimping and remonking the church”. If you wanna know more, you should ask him. It’s good stuff.

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United By Faith - Section 2, Multiracial Congregations in the United States

PatMay 30, 2008

I blogged a bit about race here last week as I began to read “United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation As an Answer to the Problem of Race”. Here is my summary of Section 1 of the book.

Section 2 is “Multiracial Congregations in the United States”.

Chapter 3 - Congregations and the Color Line (1600-1940)

British colonists evangelized Native Americans but did not integrate them into their churches. Instead, they established “prayer villages” for Christianized natives who then were removed from their own tribal culture, and not assimilated into the British Christian culture. (44)

The institution of slavery in the American colonies was the result of a growing capitalist economy and “required the creation of the philosophy and the practice of white supremacy” (44). This philosophy was justified by whites who trumpeted the benefit of African slaves becoming Christians in the New World, ignoring the possibility that Christianity had been in Africa for centuries.

As African-Americans were evangelized, biracial congregations grew. In the second half of the 1700s, congregations were blended - African Americans and whites worshiped together; they “even addressed each other as family using the terms ‘brother’ and ’sister’ (46).

Even more startling was the fact that African Americans served in pastoral roles at some biracial congregations. [....]

When the pastor of a mixed-race Baptist congregation in Virginia resigned from leadership the church invited an African American man to preach for them. The church was so delighted with his sermons that they paid for freedom for the man and his family.” (46-47)

However, by the late 1800s, biracial congregations had failed. Congregations separated the races by different pews, different entrances, and even at times erected dividers between white and black sections so that whites would not have to see blacks when worshiping.

In response, African Americans formed their own religious communities, precursors to African American congregations and denominations. (49).

In parallel with what occurred in the Protestant churches, the Catholic church also failed to reconcile the races. In addition to separate seating and doorways for African Americans, African Americans were not invited to enter the priesthood. In the Catholic view, the priest is the mediator between God and humanity, and ordaining blacks to the priesthood would “trumpet the moral and intellectual equality of blacks and whites” (50).

Various opportunities for racial reconciliation occurred in the years head. After the Civil War, white racism and the African American desire for freedom quashed meaningful reconciliation. (53) A promising movement, the Church of God, practiced racial unity but resulted in separate congregations for whites and blacks. The Azusa Street Revival in the early 1900s, pastored by an African American, showed promise for several years until white racism made reconciliation difficult. (57-59)

Although there were “brilliant moments when reconciliation was being practiced” (60), “the history of the church in the United States leads one to believe that sustaining multiracial congregations is a near impossibility due to racism.” (61)

Chapter 4 - The Emergence of Multiracial Congregations (1940-2000)

Mystic theologian Howard Thurman became the foremost proponent of racial reconciliation in the United States from the 1940s through the 1970s, in response to a trip to India in which Thurman was repeatedly asked, ‘Why is the church powerless before the color bar?’ (62).

In response, Thurman established The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, California, which he co-pastored with a white man, Alfred Fisk. They “alternated their preaching in order to maintain an interracial character in the pulpit” (64).

As Thurman stated, ‘Fellowship Church was a unique idea fresh, untried. There were no precedents and no traditions to aid in structuring the present or gauging the future.’ yet Thurman felt he had two insights from his experience to aid him: ‘a profound conviction that meaningful and creative experiences between peoples can be more compelling than all the ideas, concepts, faiths, fears, ideologies ,and prejudices that divide them; and absolute faith that if such experiences can be multiplied and sustained over a time interval of sufficient duration any barrier that separates one person from another can be undermined and eliminated. (64)

Fellowship Church was rare in the 1940s and 1950s, but there were others. The Catholic church began also to integrate its congregations in the 1950s. (67) The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s did much to provide congregational ground for racial reconciliation, and the Pentecostal movements from the 1970s onward have had strong multiracial components.

The 21st century “holds the potential to be the century of the multiracial congregations, despite the relatively small percentage such churches represent among total congregations” (74).

Chapter 5 - A Closer Look at Four Multiracial Congregations

Four multiracial congregations are now examined. A multiracial church for these authors is

a congregation in which no one racial group is 80 percent or more of the people. We use the cutoff of 20 percent of the people of a different race or races because this is the point of critical mass. (76)

These congregations have “a history of being multiracial for a number of years and through mroe than one pastoral administration.” (76) Therefore, they have remained multiracial through shifting sociological trends in their neighborhood, and through more than one leader’s vision.

The first congregation examined is The Riverside Church in New York City. Riverside is an interdenominational, liberal, mainline Protestant church. It is a racially integrated church whose members tend to be middle class.

It was at Riverside church in 1969 that James Forman delivered the “Black Manifesto”, calling or reparations for slavery from white churches (80).

Current pastor James Forbes has intentionally fostered reconciliation between blacks and whites in the church , and states a “75 percent” philosophy on compromise and on the comfort level at a church:

A truly diverse congregation where anybody enjoys more than 75 percent of what’s going on is not thoroughly integrated=. So that if you’re going to be an integrated church you have to think, “hey, this is great, I enjoyed at least 75 percent of it,” because 25 percent you should grant for somebody’s precious liturgical expression that is probably odious to you; otherwise it’s not integrating. So an integrating church is characterized by the need to be content with everything. You have to factor in a willingness to absorb some things that are not dear to you but may be precious to some of those coming in. (82)

“The Riverside Church is an example of a “successful multiracial congregation that is bound together by theological liberalism, a legacy of tolerance and inclusion, a tradition of community outreach, a conscientious leadership, and a healthy sense of compromise for the sake of unity.” (82)

The next church examined is The Mosaic Church of Los Angeles, California.

Mosaic’s major goal is to evangelize the urban areas and the arts and entertainment district. It is now pastored by its second pastor, Erwin McManus, a Hispanic born in El Salvador. His philosophy of ministry emphasizes evangelism, cultural relevancy, and artistic creativity.

One of the lessons to learn from Mosaic is that a multiracial congregation possesses the potential for drawing individuals who are comfortable with a multiracial social atmosphere and individuals from a uniracial social atmosphere who become interested in surrounding themselves with people of other races. (86)

Mosaic has been successful at developing a highly multiracial Christian community of mostly young adults.

The authors next examine St. Pius X Catholic Church of Beaumont, Texas.

St. Pius has been racially integrated for at least forty years, and has done so quietly without grand communication outside its community or even among its own members. As a congregation, it has been on the leading edge of innovations within the Catholic community.

It was the first to adopt changes from the Second Vatican Council, the first congregation to hae a full-time social worker; the first to use lay people to distribute Communion at Mass and for home visitations, and Father Perusina was the first priest to join the Beaumont Ministerial Alliance. (88)

Members have forged deep bonds across racial boundaries, and members who were interviewed for the book repeatedly spoke of the joy of their shared life across races.

The fourth congregation is Park Avenue Methodist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Begun as a white congregation, it is now mixed between whites, African Americans, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans. Its early integration came as a result of a thriving youth ministry to the neighborhood.

Robert Stamp, the pastor beginning in 1988, recognized the need to bring on board an African American pastor who would share preaching duties with him in order to facilitate racial reconciliation. He also placed into leadership worship leaders who would blend a wide range of musical styles.

After Stamp’s departure, Mark Horst became Park Avenue’s pastor. The picture painted of Horst as a leader is powerful:

Even though he had a background in urban and multicultural settings, he made himself vulnerable at many points to grow in his leadership abilities. He even invited one of the leading African American preachers in the area to critiique his preaching and coach him in ways to connect with his diverse congregation. (93)

As the surrounding community is becoming more populated with Latinos, Horst chose to go to a language immersion program in Guatemala.

Each of these four congregations is intentionally multiracial. Each congregation got there by a different path, and each has different theological traditions and leadership styles. But each proves that multiracial churches can happen, and are powerful expressions of Christian reconciliation.