I really liked the sermon I preached this weekend. In it I focused on how God is at work reconciling the whole world to himself through Christ. I get very excited about this theme, but my "Finnish Charisma" often doesn't show how excited I feel.
After the service was over, as I greeted people coming out of church, one of our most respected members spoke to me briefly about the sermon. He told me that what I said was very discouraging and that it would have the effect of making people not want to come to church any more. He asked me, "Why do you keep talking about that stuff?"
Why did he say that? Because in my 8 a.m. sermon I referred to a rather startling presentation and report I received this week at the meeting of our synod's Conference of Deans. I guess it was so much in my mind that when I got to a certain point in the sermon, I just started sharing what I learned this week, right in the midst of what was otherwise a good sermon.
He was right in his criticism of my sermon. My anxiety about the grave situation our Metro New York Synod is facing right now should not be shared right in the middle of a sermon on hope. It isn't fair to the hearers for me to just unload my sadness on them in such a fashion. They may need to know the content of what I was saying, but there are better ways to communicate that. In effect I clobbered them with information they could not readily assimilate or act on.
As a result of what his "9:03 Sermon," I simply left out the mention of our synod's grave situation and kept the sermon focused on the good news we have in Christ. I think I did the right thing.
But it's a strange dilemma I'm dealing with. For about eight years I have been one of only a few voices in our synod urging our synod to take seriously the rapid state of decline that many churches are experiencing. Having learned how Christians in other parts of the globe have dealt positively and creatively with similar problems, I have spoken again and again about what we could accomplish if we simply began thinking about how we might do our ministry differently.
But it's not easy to change any system, and the system we are living with in the larger church context (our synod and our denomination) has been working for a long time. But add to that the fact that there are a lot of people who are simply in denial of what is happening to their church and the churches all around us, and we have a real problem.
Simply put, the presentation asserted that within the next five years as many as 2/3 of the churches in our synod will be in a situation where they will probably no longer be able to sustain a traditional full-time Lutheran ministry as we have know it for decades. The implications of such a thought are overwhelming, and the "solution side" of the presentation did not hold out much hope.
As someone said to me after the 8 a.m. service, "I wonder how it must feel for people who have been members of the same congregation for decades to have to think about it all coming to an end, especially so soon." I know that the members of St. Mark's still feel the pain of the closing of their church.
I don't know what to say. For all these years I have been advocating certain actions that might offer a new way of "being church," but it's hard for people to understand such ideas, much less take them seriously. Yet I still think there is an alternative to "triage" as a strategy for "mission renewal" in our synod. Please pray for our bishop, his staff, and for the Commission for Evangelical Outreach that I still chair. We may be in serious trouble as a synod, but Christ is still Lord over all.
Pastor, I read your comment regarding my comment.I I wrote a response by could not send because i did not understand url name? So here goes .Negativism can be a self fulfilling prophecy. The person who said to you that 2/3's of congregations could disappear in five years should turn in his robe unless he included a studied plan of action to reverse the tread. By now the church should fully understand the problem and have solutions. Suggesting that doom is coming and not have a clue as to how to counter it with positive proven solutions, that person is no dynamic leader and should step down. Maybe the church should adopt a rule that the President of the church can not be older than 35. A new age has dawned and it requires new young enthusiastic ideas with the energy and commitment to match. Wisdom is also important and that comes with age. Leaders like yourself who have continually searched the world first hand for answers can and should play a significant role in assisting this new thinker. Christianity is not dead, and many other progressive denominations are flourishing beyond our wildest dreams and we should swallow our stuffy pride and learn from them.. Close personal contact with the problems we have is part of the solution. One thing I would recommend for our leaders is to enlist the help of Messianic Jews and regain the fire of the spirit and heighten our lust and commitment to the messiah. Anyone who has risked being called the "living dead" by their families has got something we need and we need to hear their story first hand. I have many cd's by Marty Goetz and your can hear and feel his love for the lord. We should find some Jews for Jesus and get them to inspire us. Some of the things that you have previously written about joining efforts with other congregations to solve common problems has potential. Maybe there are some battlegrounds that we should abandon and pool our resources where there is more hope of success. Communities that have seen a major change is ethnicity say from German to Indian are a lost cause and we should move on. Close the church, sell off the property and build and expand the facilities in adjoining communities that have real promise. Converting Moslems, Hindu's etc.to Christianity is a bigger challenge then we have resources right now. Enjoy the youth convention, all should come back and get ready to step up and take the baton. It's their future church. Regards Rich
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