You are the God who makes us.
By your powerful, creative Word
you made the heavens and the earth
and all living things.

By your powerful, creative Word
you are still making new beginnings
where we can only see dead ends;
new life springing forth
from the chaos of our world.

We come to this time of worship
having listened to other voices –
voices that lead us to fear and anxiety,
to despair and resentment,
to cynicism and weariness.
There is no life in them
but they are strong and persistent
and we are easily held in their grip.

We come here wanting to hear your voice
override our fears and our weariness.
We come here waiting to hear your voice
speak a life-giving word –
a word with the authority and power
to create new hope and purpose within us,
among us.

Speak, Lord, for your children wait.

Then, grant us courage to trust your Son
as walk down the road
that leads toward life and joy.  Amen.

This was a question posed to Walter Brueggemann on Thursday at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Worship Symposium. He paused before he answered. Then, he said, “I would wish for the church the freedom and courage to break the cocoon of denial in our society by truth-telling. The force of denial is so massive, it immobilizes us. The truth will make us free.”

As I think about congregations and their resistance to change, it seems to me that one of the largest areas of denial is the myth that we are in control. We arrange our lives to give ourselves a semblance of control. We try to make it as strong as possible; however, it is often just a thin veneer covering over the chaos and vulnerability that surges just below the surface. When change happens, or is proposed, that veneer begins to crack. We get anxious that we shall be overwhelmed by the chaos; that our exposed vulnerability will endanger us.

When Jesus arrived, proclaiming, “The reign of God is at hand,” he was announcing God’s newness at work in our world. No wonder the demon-possessed man asked, “Have you come to destroy us?” (Mark 1: 21 -28)  When Jesus begins to work in our lives, it does feel like he is threatening to destroy the carefully constructed coping mechanisms that we think keep us in control in the face of change. It is frightening to let him to do that. Nevertheless, it is also the only way to be set free enough from our fears and anxieties to be able to live into the new creation that Jesus brings. That new creation offers life, new life, fullness of life.

Baptism initiates us into a daily practice of letting go so that we are open enough, empty enough to receive the new life that the Holy Spirit wants to pour into us. I wonder if a congregation that has a robust, intentional embrace of its baptismal identity is more open to change than a congregation that forgets its core identity as those who have died and been raised with Christ?

You summon us to gather at the river
to be bathed in your grace and your love.

And we have come, longing to hear news
that quenches the thirst in our parched souls.

In your great mercy, turn us:
turn us away from the despair and cynicism
that has given up on your creative power;
turn us away from the aimlessness
that will not risk anything daring and bold.

By your powerful Holy Spirit,
turn us toward Jesus when he shows up
unexpectedly, bringing new beginnings we had not expected.

Turn us toward Jesus who comes to make all things new.

Turn us toward your voice
and open our ears to hear you
naming us “Beloved.”

Then, plunge us into a life of trust and faith,
creating, creative God,
for you are the One
whose voice speaks into chaos
and makes a new start.  Amen.

The desire for change has been simmering for some time beneath the surface of the congregation. It is now beginning to be articulated more openly. Part of what is happening, I suspect, is that the environment of the congregation has been shifting. I have been working to create an atmosphere in which ‘change’ is an acceptable topic of conversation, especially at meetings and in sermons. Using Roxburgh‘s “Model of Missional Change”, I have encouraged people to try ‘small experiments’ in doing something new or different. Those who want changes are not quickly shut down by those who resist doing things differently. Those who make changes are praised and affirmed. The resources needed for changes to take place are made available (money, room availability, publicity). All of this has been rooted in stories of our God who keeps moving people in new directions.

It always takes longer to create such an environment than I expect. It takes more than just telling people that change is needed. Often, they know that already. Some of them are resisting change because they like the way things are. Others are reluctant to let go of the present (as unsatisfactory as it may be) because they don’t know what ‘the new’ might be. Others lack the courage to go against the prevailing opinion. Once they realize that other people are also longing for something different, they are willing to speak up and to try something new. Once they realize that there are resources to help them resist the resistors, they find the courage to step forward.

So much of leading a congregation in a time of transition is a matter of changing the landscape. What gets talked about? What gets affirmed? What becomes unacceptable behaviour? It takes time. And much prayer.

Eternal God,
you call us to ventures,
of which we cannot see the ending,
by paths as yet untrodden,
through perils unknown.

Give us faith
to go out with courage, not knowing
where we go but only that your hand
is leading us,
and your love supporting us.

and surprising invitations:

you summon us to journey

beyond our comfort zones

if we want to see the ‘great things’

which you are creating in our midst.

We are a people much attached to our comfort

and fearful of newness that we cannot control.

Yet, we are Your people,

claimed by you in our baptism.

Your steadfast love and faithfulness

has been our constant companions

every step of the way.

So, today, we dare to trust you again.

Lord Jesus,

show us the mangers where you are being born

in our time and in our place.

We bring before you our hopes and dreams

for a world where people may live in peace;

where justice is done;

where human communities flourish;

where joy marks all our days.

And we bring before you

the world as it is

– beset with worries about an economic meltdown;

– teetering ever more dangerously at the brink of environmental crises

– uncertain of how to find a way forward

into a good future for all people.

Speak your word

once again into the space

between our yearnings and our fears.

Open our eyes to the light that

your Spirit is shining

- the light that the darkness cannot overcome.

Then, grant us courage and grace

to journey with you,

speaking Your Word in our lives.

We pray in your name,

Wonderful Counsellor,

Mighty God,

Eternal Father,

Prince of Peace. Amen.

Declining churches play fast and loose with core beliefs but defend to the death (literally, it seems) peripheral customs. They blithely dilute what they proclaim about God, and Jesus in particular; however, they resist ferociously any changes to things like the style of music, the place of the pulpit in the sanctuary, the wall hangings.

Growing churches, on the other hand, hold fast to the basic core beliefs but are willing to change the nonessentials if that will help them participate more fully in God’s mission.

Anybody have any insights into how the priorities got reversed among declining churches? Did it happen when churches began to be seen as religious social clubs rather than as outposts of the reign of God? Just wondering.

” The great obstacle may be not greed but the modern hankering after glamour.

A lot of our smartest, most concerned people want to come up with a big solution to a big problem. I don’t think that planet-saving, if we take it seriously, can furnish employment to many such people.

When I think of the kind of worker the job requires, I think of Dorothy Day (if one can think of Dorothy Day herself, separate from the publicity that came as a result of her rarity), a person willing to go down and down into the daunting, humbling, almost hopeless local presence of the problem–to face the great problem one small life at a time.”

Source: Sex Economy Freedom and Community

It occurred to me that this could also be said about congregational life. As more and more churches in our denomination  are closing, there is increased attention given to planting new churches. We probably should have been doing more of this all along. Now there is a sense of urgency about it –”This will save our denomination!” is the underlying cry of hope.

I know the theory and statistics behind it: denominations start to decline not so much because they are closing churches as because they stop planting new congregations. New life can emerge in new ways, unhindered by the weight of traditions and of existing politics and power-plays in established congregations.

That said, I wonder if some of the attraction to planting new churches comes from the perceived glamour of starting fresh and the experienced frustrations that come with working with an actual existing congregation. Planting a new church is hard work and most new churches don’t survive the first five years. But the prospect of ‘starting with a blank slate’  holds so much promise it is enticingly attractive. Transitioning an established congregation also takes a lot of hard work. However, there are many frustrations along the way as existing patterns of behaviour and attitudes are confronted — behaviours and attitudes that have contributed to the congregation’s decline. It is a lot more difficult to make that work attractive and exciting.

It seems to me, though, that it is work that should receive more attention. Existing congregations usually already have land and a building — resources that can take a lot of energy for a new congregation to gather, energy that could be better spent being on mission. There is a community of people already gathered together by the Holy Spirit with some of the relational groundwork already done. Aspects of those relationships may be problematic; however, addressing those problems is part of the work of transitioning. That takes energy, but so does establishing new relationships among people who are strangers.

I’m wondering how many of our established congregations could survive and thrive if appropriate resources were made available to them? Here’s some questions for which I have had to find answers over the years that I have worked with congregations in transition: What are some workable strategies for dealing with persistent resistance to new initiatives? Where does a leader need to spend the majority of her time? What are some ways in which she can handle the congregation’s expectations for her to spend her time doing what has always been done?  What attitudes among the congregation must be cultivated? How long does the process of transition take? What do some of the stages look like? (Is this feeling of being in the midst of chaos an essential part of the transition and not a sign that things are going off the rails?) Where does a congregation find the “strength to endure” in the midst of some very difficult stages? What are the signs that the work of God in a particular congregation really is over and the congregation needs to consider closing? What are the most helpful practices that keep the people of the congregation discerning what the Spirit is saying to the church?

I know resources to answer those questions are available. I have accessed and used many of them. Perhaps what is needed at this point are mentors — a way of connecting actual congregations who have made the transition with congregations that want to.

Does anyone know of denominations that have tried that?

God of mystery and miracles,

Your Word brings light into the dark places of our lives;

Your presence gives us strength to endure

when we are pushed beyond our own strength.

You find us in our lostness and,

with love beyond our imagining,

you lead us home.

All this you offer in and through Jesus Christ.

Yet, we resist you.

We resist loosening our tight grip on our lives.

We hesitate to trust you

for you may lead us where we do not want to go.

You know the places in our hearts

and in our minds

where we are well-defended

against your intrusions.

In this season of longing,

grant us grace to bring all that we are to you, O Christ

– all the broken places

– all the lost wanderings

– all the weariness from trying to live lives that are pleasing to you.

Hold them all in the fullness of your love.

Then, be born in us,

that we may find our home,

our life,

our joy

in You, Lord of light and love.

Scriptures:  Isaiah 9: 1-9;  Psalm 23;  Mark 1: 14-20

Who is imagining your life for you?  (from an article by Michael Paul Gallagher,  Anchors in an Ocean of Change)

One of the highest values of our culture is that we should be imagining our own lives. We should be the ones choosing our lives. We become what we choose.

This past week the Royal Society of Canada said that assisted suicide and euthanasia should be legal in Canada: people should have a choice about when they die and how they die. Their recommendations will resonate with many people because for decades now our culture has been vigorously nurturing the notion that choice is the highest virtue.

Some of you will remember when ‘duty’ was the highest virtue. If you did your duty, the world would progress to become a better place. ‘Duty’ now has been replaced by ‘choice’. “You can be anything you choose to be”, we tell our children. Now, the millenials — the group of young people between the ages of 13 and 29 — are what someone called ‘the Choice Generation’. They have been part of family decisions since about the age of 4. They are characterized by their “unrelenting demand for choice in every aspect of their lives.”

There is, of course, every chance that we are fooling ourselves — that we are not really the masters of our choices that we think we are. Many of the choices we make have already been chosen for us by marketing companies. They want to imagine our lives for us. They spend billions of dollars and enormous amounts of energy shaping our desires and our fears, our hopes and our dreams. They want to ensure that the choices we make are the choices they want us to make. And they are experts at making us imagine that we our making our own choices about the things we choose.

I remember hearing years ago about a government official from the Soviet Union who was visiting North America. He wasn’t here too many days before he turned to his host and said, “Everybody looks the same. How did you do that?”

We may not be as in control of our choices as we think we are. Even the notion that ‘personal choice’ is the highest virtue was chosen for us. We were trained to think that way. It makes us very good consumers.

As we enter more and more deeply into that season of the year when the marketing companies are moving into high gear, it is helpful for followers of Jesus to take time to take stock: “Who is imagining our lives for us?” Are the images they offer us helping us to become more deeply human — sensitive and compassionate to others? Are they nurturing in us moral courage?  extravagant hope? Do they inspire our imaginations so that we live creatively? Are they shaping our desires so that we are being set free from ego and pride? Are we being set free to love in more radical and risky ways?

Someone once described Jesus Christ as “the Lord of the imagination”. He came to subvert all unworthy images we might have for our lives. In his words and in his actions, he coaxes us out of narrowness and fear — anything that leaves our lives small and pre-occupied with trivial matters. He awakens us to new possibilities for our lives. By his stories and his actions, he pulls us into the great, expansive imagination that God has for our world. He nurtures us toward goodness and holiness and beauty and truth.

To follow Jesus is to enter into his imagining of the way the the world is meant to be.

Have you ever been in an Eastern Orthodox church? How did you feel? Did you feel like you were entering into a very strange world? — a world very different from the one just outside the doors through which you entered?  Orthodox churches are intended to help you see the world that surrounds us all the time   but a world that usually remains invisible to us. It hovers just beneath our consciousness. The walls are filled with icons — stylized art that is meant to be a window into the spiritual world. The icons at eye level depict saints of the church throughout the ages. As your eyes travel upwards, you see the apostles and first disciples of Jesus — Mary, Peter, John, Paul.  At the highest level — often in a great dome at the centre of the ceiling, there is an icon of Jesus, Christus Pantocrator — Jesus, ruler of all, Lord of history, ruler of the nations.

There is lots of gold everywhere. The gold is trying to help us imagine the splendour of the God’s glory. The beauty of the light of Christ that shines in our world.

You enter this space and you smell incense — a reminder of the prayers of God’s people. Both the prayers of the congregation that are said every Sunday, but also the prayers of the saints being continually offered to God who rules over all.

In a book called “The Russian Primary Chronicle”, there is a story about Vladimir, a prince of Kiev in the tenth century. He was not a Christian. He was what we today would call a seeker. He sent envoys to various countries to discover the true religion. One day his envoys entered the Eastern Orthodox Church of St. Sophia in Constantinople (now Istanbul). They reported back to Vladimir, “We knew not whether we were in heaven or one earth, for surely there is no such splendour or beauty anywhere on earth. We cannot describe it to you. Only this we know, that God wells there among humans, and that their service surpasses the worship of all other places. For we cannot forget that beauty.”

There is a saying that, “We shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us.” Orthodox churches are decorated so that the beauty and splendour of the building will shape the lives of the people who worship there: shaping what they see, what they value, what they value, what they hope for.

If you come into a sanctuary week after week whose exquisite beauty points you to the glory of God, your eyes and spirits are being trained to look for that glory out in the world. You learn to recognize it as you go about shopping and working and sitting in the doctor’s office. More than that, you become discontented with anything that mars or disfigures the beauty that God intends for all creation and are moved to change it.

If you come into a sanctuary week after week, aware that you are surrounded by saints through the ages who even now watch over us, joining our prayers with theirs, it becomes more possible to live your life with courage and in truth. You go out into the week, facing the challenges you face, knowing that you are not facing them alone. The saints of the church have journeyed through such discouragements before — some even greater than our own– and they are whispering to us, “Courage, courage”. Their words keep pulling you towards the finish line where you will see how your little story has been part of the great drama of salvation and reconciliation and peace that God is writing.

If Sunday by Sunday, you see an image of the crucified but risen Christ presiding of all things, making the sign of blessing over your life, you are being trained to go into the world aware that Christ really is Lord. In spite of all the darkness that can cover the earth, the great light of Christ is shining.

We are part of a tradition that has emphasized the word more than images. But those words invite us into an alternative imagination for our lives. We don’t put an icon of Christus Pantocrator at the highest spot of our sanctuary; we tell stories that shape a world for us. We hear Isaiah tell us that the world is presided over by one whose name is Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. We hear Isaiah promise us that, in spite of all the precious things that are ending, God is at work, bringing unexpected newness.  That newness is small and fragile as a child is small and fragile, but the authority of Mighty God, Lord of the cosmos, rests upon the newness. It will grow because God is determined to move his beloved creation towards goodness and truth. The resurrection of Jesus is God’s promise that nothing in all creation can ultimately defeat God’s purposes. In all the moments of our lives, Christ is offering the blessings of God’s redeeming grace. In every situation, we can be on the lookout for the blessings that Christ is inviting us to receive.

The most elemental confession of the Christian Church is “Jesus is Lord”. We don’t have to be jerked around by every television commercial.

Jesus is Lord. Christ defines your life and he defines you as a beloved child of a good and loving Father.

Jesus is Lord.  All the structures and systems of this world are not. We do not have to settle for a world of violence and injustice. God’s Spirit is on the move and we can be part of the new creation.

Jesus is Lord. What ultimately shapes your life is not your choices. As important as they are, what ultimately shapes your life is God’s choice of you. In Christ, God chooses you to receive love and grace, forgiveness and the possibility of beginning anew. God is Christ chooses you and he longs for you to choose Christ.

Allow that word to dwell richly in you. Let it shape your imagination and it will transform your life in good and compassionate and holy ways. And you will live to the glory and praise of God.