Becoming Community

The few of you out there that read this blog know that on October 3, World Communion Sunday, we made the unusual move of gathering 4 DOC churches and 2 nesting non-Anglo churches together for worship. The fact that so many people actually voluntarily came together was a wonderful surprise. The fact that probably 20% of the people who would have normally attended worship at their "home" church but did not attend this service was unfortunately not a surprise at all.

All four churches are declining in attendance and increasing in age. Some have been at it longer than others, and some are further down the line toward extinction than others. But they all have one thing in common: there are some in every congregation that refuse to acknowledge that unless something changes that their beloved congregation will die. It doesn't matter what statistics you present them with; they refuse to believe that there are any changes that need to be made.

I realize that it takes a lot of faith to step into the unknown. But isn't that what living is all about? No matter what illusions we have that our lives are under our control, the truth is that we cannot control everything around us. Doesn't faith in God require us to acknowledge that we aren't the center of our universe?

While I don't believe that God is a puppet master, I do believe that there is a higher order to the universe, that God has a preferred outcome for us, and if we open ourselves up to God's leading that we can pursue that outcome. But opening myself up to God's leading probably means that I need to be willing to put aside my own predetermined ideas about what God might have in mind.

It is a joy to say that many people who came together that day ARE willing to explore what God might desire for our churches. The vision that the 5 pastors received during a retreat in August was that our congregations would "die" in order to be resurrected as one new thing. The economics suggest that it is possible, particularly if we leased commercial space instead of trying to build something new.
Yet even though we are very convinced that this was indeed a vision from God, what we are most hopeful for is that all of our congregations will be open to whatever God might be able to do through us.

Growing a new community out of the ashes of four former communities is the real issue. In the days when these churches were established, there was a full church on every corner, and having buildings two to three miles apart was not a problem. There were plenty of people to fill them. There are still as many people to fill them now as there were then -- it's just that the people of today associate our buildings and our way of being "church" as outdated and irrelevant. We can try to survive by struggling to lure people into our crumbling facilities with a handful of people sitting throughout our sanctuaries. But the odds are against us. It hasn't worked so far, so it's hard to imagine that it will work in the future.

Just how different are we, anyway, that trying to build a community would be so difficult? With minor exceptions we worship the same way, our committee structures are similar and we're all the same denomination. The majority of us are fairly "middle of the road" theologically, with some on either side of the middle in each congregation. What's the only thing that is REALLY keeping us apart? The attachment we have to the bricks and mortar.

We are drowning and instead of climbing onto a life raft we are insisting on hanging on to the hull of our respective ships. We'd rather go down with the ship than sail into new life. Does this make any sense?

It's never easy to build a community.