Our Strategic Plan One Year In - Pastor's Column

It’s been about a year since we finished up the structure of our strategic plan, and we’ve been filling it in more and more as we go. The intention was always that it would be a living document, and that we’d update it as needed, and revisit it often. Our goals, just to review, were to create a new mission statement for Lord of Grace, then have ministry groups meet and pray and brainstorm ways they could implement that mission. So our team met and we came up with this statement:

Love God

Open Our Hearts and Minds

Live Graciously Towards All

So far we’ve been moving along with these. Let me share a few of the accomplishments.

Property brought back the semi-annual clean-up days. I’ve always enjoyed the fellowship as much as the brush cutting. Out next one is March 16th, and we’re doing the pews and chairs inside as well as the grass and brush outside.

Worship started work on the narthex. The last time we did much was back in 2012 when we got a special donation and bought the couches and leather arm chairs. In 2013 the carpet was added to the middle, and since then it’s been a somewhat unintentional collection spot. This time a team met and looked at things like function, values, goals. The team wanted to make the room useful, not just as a hallway, but as a welcome center for visitors on Sundays and a fellowship space after service. Yes, we have the big fellowship hall, but experience shows that after the 10:30am service, we don’t make that left turn.

So the first step was to remove all the things we weren’t going to use. This included the couches, the memorial book stand, the fake ficas, the book shelves that were in my office, then the conference room, then the hallway, then the narthex, and now they’re back where they started. As you can see, the room is pretty empty right now, because the new furniture hasn’t been purchased yet.  The plan is to add some new chairs for seating, some side tables for coffee, a new coffee bar, a designated sign-up table, a shelf for books on prayer and health resources, and some things for children’s ministry. These will be purchased as we go, because the funds from the capital campaign are used up. If you’re interested in contributing to a part of the new narthex, just let me know. Here’s the things on our wish list:

L-shaped sign-in table. Kind of like a “welcome desk” you’d see in places, but big enough for clip boards.

Coffee Bar. Small cabinets on wheels for coffee supplies and refreshments. Primarily for after the second service.

Air Pods. Coffee shop grade brewers that will go in the kitchen, used for both services, and have removeable caraffes to go in the narthex after the second service - or any other event.

Area Rug. The current one is from 2013. We’d like to get one of equal or bigger size, with color.

Acoustical panels for the walls. Custom-made in shapes to mimic the rock wall in the sanctuary. Fabric on batting on a wood frame.

The panels are to deal with the sound problem. The original building committee put in $7/foot (in 2002 money) tile in the narthex for durability, I learned from an original member of the church building committee. . This means we don’t have to replace carpet from coffee spills, but the room echoes so you could do Gregorian chant with ease. The couches and center rug mitigated, but with the high ceiling and the rest of the tile, only somewhat. So the team has a plan to put up homemade sound panels on the walls for both color and echo reduction. Eventually, we’d like to get a new center rug with color as well.

Outreach has been super busy going over all the different projects we did as a church and seeing if we wanted to try some new things and retire some old. Just look in the narthex to see the multiplicity of things they’re spearheading.

A big one I’d like to highlight is the partnership with Roadrunner Elementary. The school is often forgotten, being on the west end of the district. It has a good portion of kids with low income, and we’ve stepped up with drives at Christmas and volunteering with their resource center.

Youth and Family has also jump-started some things. As I’ve written about many times, it’s hard for a church our size to field traditional “youth groups”. They require a critical mass of kids the same age, who also get along well, and a lot of staff/volunteer time. On top of that, they are not proven to be the most effective at keeping kids involved in the faith after graduation, in spite of the popularity they have with parents who are church-shopping. Parental faith witness, adults who know kids and care when they show up, the church being there for them in crisis, and getting involved in leadership all make way more difference than age-segregated youth groups.

That said, our focus has shifted back the old “Family Fellowship Sundays”, now called Community Days, we used to do them monthly after the second service, until Covid came. Now they’re back with a bit more organization, including often a theme and specific activities for after eating. It’s taking the little family church potluck and putting some steroids on it. Given that intergenerational witness is the most effective, I love the concept, and they’ve been well attended. We’ll keep these going at least through the school year, and review for fall 2024.

I met with the preschool teachers and our director, America Trujillo, to set goals for their ministry. It’s been a back and forth over the years how we define what it means to be a “church” preschool, as opposed to just a secular one that uses the building. Since there is no one prototype, I decided to have the teachers work on answering this question themselves, and, of course, they came up with far better ideas than I could have. Look for some new art and decorations, some things added to worship, some special drives for the community, and ways for us, as a congregation, to help out.

Of course, all these things are just a sampling, and they happen in addition to the regular work of ministry here at Lord of Grace.

Reflecting on the whole process, I always come back to the slogan about working smarter, not harder. There was a time, mostly in the 80’s and 90’s, when you could grow a church by adding buildings and adding programs. In fact, the more the merrier. People would see either how busy you were, and assume that as an indicator of quality, or would see a program for people “like them” – whatever that means – and find a connection to join. Really big churches still operate this way, because they have finances for large staffs to run things on an ongoing basis. For the rest of us, which is probably 99% of US churches, we run on volunteers and tight budgets. And, as the years go by, we are all finding that the supply of “labor” is not getting any bigger. Fewer people go to church, and those who do are often either busy with kids and family, or wish to retire from regular committee work. So we have to do more with less. It can be disheartening, if you’re trying to keep up with the big place down the road that always seems to have the giant youth group that does whitewater rafting and Christian rock concerts every month. But it’s the relationships, the connections, the spiritual practices, the community being community for each other and the world that has the biggest impact. That we can do by:

Doing what we do better, nor necessarily more.

Making a point to get to know who we’re worshiping with, learning each others’ names and asking each other, honestly, about how life is going 

Pray together and support one another in time of need

Invite people to worship and invite people to join us in our service projects

Get involved in, and support one another, in spiritual practices that help people experience Christ.

Christianity is growing through conversion in large parts of the world, in countries with little money and in churches that are small and meet underground. Programs are not why Chinese churches are getting bigger. We can step back, take a deep breath, and see the gifts we have and the impact we can make by working smarter, and more spirit-led, with what God has given us, and get off the treadmill of trying to compete with laser shows and adventure camps.

The new stations of the cross images

12 posters of stations will be set up around the sanctuary from 11am-1pm and you can soak them in at your own pace. At night the images will be on the screen with the worship liturgy.

On that note, this month is Lent, and Holy Week, and Easter. We get it all. Lots and lots of opportunities to worship, pray, reflect, and come closer to God. Worship is something we do well, and a great way to encounter God and one another. So whatever you volunteer in, I’ll personally invite you to join us at the Lent services on Wednesdays, where we contemplate, reflect, and discuss Bible stories about the disciple Peter. We even get original music by Stuart Oliver, composed just for our services. They’re casual and interactive, and you get wine and cheese after (we’re going full Episcopalian for Lent).

Then comes the agape meal for Maundy Thursday, and a new format for Stations of the Cross. We’re adding an 11am-1pm walk through the stations on your own in the sanctuary. The stations are on posterboard, and you’ll have a chance to go around and write and look and pray over each one at your own pace. At night will be a full worship service, with music and sermon and the pounding of nails.

So many ways to step back, breathe deep, and let the Holy Spirit soak in. What happens next happens next, and God will show the way.

Peace,

Pastor Lars

Experiencing God in Wilderness -pastor's column March 2023

These past few weeks I’ve been doing an online study of selected passages from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters from Prison. It’s been a fun experience to go back and look at one of my favorite writers and theologians, as well as someone I feel pretty comfortable recommending as a model of Christian faith. In case you aren’t familiar with him, he was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian in the 1930’s and 1940’s. He taught for a while at Union Seminary in New York City, and decided to go back to Germany with the rise of Hitler. He could have stayed out the war, but he felt his Christian calling was not to avoid the cross of discipleship, but embrace it. I’m not sure I would have been as bold.

When he got to Germany he joined the Abwehr – German military intelligence. It gave him clearance to travel to gain secrets about the Allies, while also working as a sort of double-agent. He ended up joining a plot to kill Hitler, and when he was found out, was sent to the Tegel prison in Berlin. He stayed there 18 months before being quietly transferred to an SS camp, where he was interrogated, tortured, and, eventually, hung naked with piano wire a couple months before the war ended.

All this sacrifice has put a credibility behind his writings that most theologians don’t have. But there’s one part of him that is getting renewed attention these days, from an unlikely source: American fundamentalists.

When Bonhoeffer was in New York, there was a theological movement at the time in mainline churches called “liberalism”. Nowadays we call it “classical liberalism” because it isn’t the same as today. The word means different things. But back then it was about how we could build the kingdom of God here on earth through social programs and science, and that doctrine and beliefs were largely unimportant. What mattered was the social outcomes. This was a reaction to the “quietism” of so much of American Christianity then that taught, basically, forget about the world and prepare yourself for heaven. Actions have reactions.

What Bonhoeffer found disillusioned him on classical liberalism, as he felt it didn’t address the issues of discipleship and personal responsibility for one’s faith. But this is not to say he was a quietist, or against churches taking social stands. Here’s just one quote

“Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise. To me it seems that peace and social justice are such things, as is Christ himself.”

He was not a social conservative, he just had issues with this particular brand of liberal Christianity.

Fast-forward to the early 2000’s, and suddenly you see his name being trumpeted by American Christian fundamentalists as one of their own. He’s now the doctrinal evangelical who died resisting the weak-kneed liberals who wouldn’t stand up to Hitler. So many things are wrong here, but most people wouldn’t catch them. In Germany, the Protestant “Lutheran” church actually calls itself the Evangelische Kirche. They don’t use the word “Lutheran”. In fact, our own doctrinal book, the Book of Concord, says “These are the writings of the Evangelical churches”. Lutheran was a nickname.

To conflate Dietrich Bonhoeffer with the modern evangelical movement, and all its literalism and politics, is simply wrong. He was anything but. Today he would go to a mainline Lutheran church, talk about “social justice” and “systemic injustice” along with the individual’s call to discipleship. He would in no way support the evolution-denying or science-denying politics of today’s evangelicals. But you have to dig a little to find that.

His earlier books, the Cost of Discipleship and Ethics have a heavy focus on the individual and the personal cost of being a follower of Jesus. They don’t delve as much into systemic and social things. It’s in his later writings, where he’s sitting in prison, with lots of time on his hands, that he starts to really rethink a lot of the Christian faith. It isn’t that he loses faith, even seeing WW2, it’s just that he gets disillusioned with how faith did not lead to action where it mattered. And so he begins to wonder if maybe the “religion” of his time – the practices, theology, unwritten belief systems, need to get jettisoned to get back to following Jesus. This is what he calls “religionless Christianity”, and this is what I’ve been exploring in the video series.

And yet, even here, his words got spun. You have fundamentalists talking about how they’re getting rid of “religion” to get “back to the heart”. And when pressed what that means, it’s something along the lines of: traditions, denominations, liturgy, robes, communion, written prayers – anything that might resemble Catholicism. They’re going to just sing and pray and listen to a sermon, and that’s “getting rid of religion”. The problem was, Bonhoeffer’s exploration of religionless Christianity has nothing to do with liturgy or bishops or robes, and everything to do with questions like:

• How can you talk about the cross if people are not believing in sin?

• Why is so much of “religion” just focused on life after death, instead of this world?

• What do we have to say that adds Christ to the world of experience and science, instead of saying that God is either not working in the world, or only is there to answer the questions we can’t (the God of the gaps)?

• Is it ethical to encourage people  to have an existential crisis so that you can solve it?

• What does it mean to talk about redemption if the world doesn’t think they need to be saved?

These are questions driven by the rise of secularism, science, atheism, philosophy. Nothing about robes or hymns or weekly communion. Nothing about Jesus “in your heart”. Much more deep.

Where I find the questions the most convicting and engaging for me center around the idea of finding God in the world, and not in what’s after or beyond. If God is only the answer to questions we can’t answer, the more science answers the less room there is for God. And in a world that could care less about hell and heaven, do we have something to say about life now?

There’s this common phrase I hear among my fellow wilderness-hiking-types that they don’t need to go to church because “nature is my church” and “I find God in nature/mountain/stream/rainbow/sunset”. I have spent a lot of time in nature, and while I feel that I can better connect with God there, because there is more beauty and less distractions, I have not found God. I missed the community, the Word, the communion, the songs. Just me and nature eventually got kind of lonely.

Ragged Top Mountain, in Ironwood Forest National Monument.

But I see where they’re coming from, and because of Bonhoeffer I understand it better. They’re not denying that God exists, or that there is more to life than the physical world, or that there is transcendent experience. They’re just placing it IN THE WORLD. Church, they believe, is all about after death and outside of experience. They want a richer experience of God IN NATURE, not a God who tells you to destroy it because it’s all going to hell in the rapture anyways. They want to find God now, not just after death. And they want more life now, not a deprived life now in order to prepare for the good one later.

With that, I can’t disagree.

But our music, our hymns, so much of what we do is not geared towards finding God IN the pleasure and beauty today. If anything, pious Christianity has viewed pleasure as the first step on a slippery slope to debauchery and hell. Better to hold it all in. And if you listen to the songs about after I die, they go on and on about the “far side of Jordan”, but nothing about the near side of my life.

It's made me rethink how we can talk about God with no reference to heaven and hell, afterlife, punishment. It’s made me rethink how to talk about Jesus as someone to find IN the experience of the world, not as an escape from it.

Jesus being tempted to rule the world by The Tester

And how do we do that, and keep Jesus distinctly Jesus, and not fall into “God is in everything, so everything is God” sort of mushy-ness? Bonhoeffer suggests going back to the Old Testament, where no one believed in hell or an afterlife, and where Jesus, he believes, considers that of minor importance (though he does believe in resurrection). The message is there, the way is there, but it will involve some re-experiencing the world around you.

My thoughts meander, but let me bring it all back. This Lent our theme is “wilderness”. You can take that a couple ways. One is that it’s a place of emptiness, disorientation, deprivation. In those places, like Jesus, we can hear the Spirit more clearly because of our lack of distractions. The other way is to look at the wilderness as a place of rich experience, peace, harmony, and presence of mind – a place where God is MORE present, and deprivation is less. In both cases, we can go on our journeys away from the endless to-do lists that kill any experience of holiness and transcendence, that separate us from daily experience of God.

We’ll explore this theme in our mid-week services through the use of meditation, conversation, and contemplation of visual art. God will be present in both the non-seeing, and in the rich visuals. The sermons on Sunday will emphacize this two-sided journey, and, I hope, we will all have a new perspective on faith as followers of Jesus in this world.

Peace,

Pastor Lars

Vase-Making for Lent

This lent we’re following a theme of “wilderness” throughout our mid-week services, and our sermons. In preparation, we put together all these vases (based on an idea from sanctifiedart.org) to place in front of the sanctuary for the Lenten season.

To build them we had a lunch after the second service, and then had a little liturgy where we would read a poem, based on the idea for each part of the vases, complete that part, and read again and so on.

All ages were there, kids through seniors, and we made some really cool additions to our sanctuary. A big thanks to the liturgical arts team for all the work of hunting down all the supplies, especially finding all those big vases at thrift stores.

Lent Sermon Series - Questions for God 2.0

For Lent, the forty days before Easter, this year we will continue our series on “Questions for God”, exploring topics of faith, doubt, struggle, and loss. Why do we find God in darkness? Does God really help those who help themselves? Why aren’t we all promised victory?

Both services.

March 10, 17, 24, 31, April 7