Faith & Leadership
CONGREGATIONS, GROWTH & RENEWAL, CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP
Excerpt: ‘A New Day in the City’
A New Day in the City
TWO PASTORS SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCE OF RENEWING URBAN CONGREGATIONS
Mount Vernon Place UMC was in decline when the Rev. Donna Claycomb Sokol was called as its pastor in 2005; today it is a thriving urban congregation. Photo courtesy of Mount Vernon Place UMC
How do you reverse decline in once-grand urban churches? In their new book, Donna Claycomb Sokol and L. Roger Owens share their experience and suggest a framework for seven crucial conversations that Christian leaders can initiate with their congregations.
In A New Day in the City(link is external), we share the stories of these two churches and many more, and the lessons we ourselves have learned from experience and from studying the leadership of others, in order to help fellow pastors and congregations escape the whirlpool of decline and join God in the deep and wide mission of embodying the kingdom. Along the way, we challenge some of the typical clichés about church leadership, offering a fresh perspective on what congregational renewal can look like and how it can become a reality.
This book doesn’t offer easy answers, because churches that need to adapt and change to thrive can’t simply replicate what someone else has done or is doing. Rather, we offer the framework for seven crucial conversations urban churches need to have to find their own way to renewal:
The process of pruning or letting go
From Chapter 2: Destination or Journey? Rethinking Vision
So What Does the Leader Do?
… First, we’ll tell you what she doesn’t do: corner every parishioner at every moment and give a “stump speech” about where the church needs to go. One author has suggested that any conversation a pastor has with a parishioner that doesn’t cast vision for where the congregation needs to go is missing key opportunities, and that every pastoral interaction is a chance to cast vision, to offer a clear picture of where the congregation is going; to make converts to the pastor’s vision. “Think of yourself as a persuader. A good stump speech is trying to make converts even out of those who think they are with you. … People and their finances are attracted to those who believe that they are going to make a difference” (Paul Borden, Direct Hit: Aiming Real Leaders at the Mission Field, Abingdon, 2006).
There’s certainly nothing wrong with being energetic and inspiring when we talk about the future. But churches will be more faithful -- and many pastors will be less stressed -- when pastors lay down the mantle of persuader-in-chief and recover their proper work as pastoral leaders and become theologians again and spiritual guides, helping congregations discern the most faithful way to live in the kingdom landscape.
That proper work means more than giving vision stump speeches and being a persuader. The leader gets to have more fun as she recovers her role as interpreter, storyteller, imagination inspirer, and discernment facilitator.
The pastor as interpreter performs the ongoing task of interpreting God’s kingdom here and now. She spends time in the scriptures and in prayer, trying to understand how the ancient language of God’s reign inaugurated in Christ and witnessed to by the church helps us to see more clearly our identity and purpose here and now. The mission statement at Duke Memorial when I arrived said that the church wanted to be a “sign and foretaste of God’s kingdom in downtown Durham.” But what does that mean? Week in and week out, through sermons and Bible studies and devotions before meetings, the pastor gets to help interpret the reality of God’s kingdom for us here and now.
The pastor helping to lead a church in renewal also becomes a storyteller. He will look for and tell stories of how the church is already embodying its identity and purpose in God’s kingdom. Where are signs of faithfulness as we inhabit together the landscape of God’s kingdom? Where is fruit beginning to grow on the newly pruned branches? Where are shoots of new life already visible? For many churches struggling to live into a future full of hope, despair blinds the eyes to these signs of life and faithfulness. The leader then acts as a mirror -- showing the church’s life to itself, helping it see both the times when it simply wants to bury its head, but also where it is responding faithfully to God’s always in-breaking kingdom.
I (Roger) heard Donna do this once in a particularly memorable sermon. The church had discerned that one of the ways it was being called to inhabit the landscape of God’s kingdom in its particular context was to practice hospitality throughout its life and work. It is not “casting a vision” in the traditional sense when Donna says, “As we continue to grow in faith as a congregation, I’ve learned that there are two things most important to us as a body. One is being a church where all are abundantly welcome. The other is providing a way to be a blessing to people who are currently unhoused.” She’s not telling the congregation where it needs to go or what it will look like in five years. Rather, she’s reflecting back to the congregation the very heart of its life in God’s kingdom that they discerned together. Much of the rest of the sermon tells stories about where she has seen this kind of hospitality happening in the congregation.
This is exactly what Donna did in that sermon. She reflected to the congregation its own commitment to hospitality, told stories about where that hospitality is already being embodied, and then asked what might be next. Where are the places and the ways this hospitality can be extended? She offered examples from her own praying and imagining: “This week I’ve allowed myself to dream. I’ve been dreaming a lot, and my mind and heart have been consumed with what we could do.” And then she shared her dreams -- not to make “converts” to her side, and not to impose a vision untested by prayer and the congregation’s discernment, but to inspire their own holy imagining. Her dreams weren’t an agenda for the church she planned to push. Rather, they were examples of what the congregation could be if it continued to follow Jesus faithfully through the landscape of God’s kingdom.
Finally, the pastor acts as facilitator of discernment. Given our growing understanding of the kingdom, our sense of how we are already faithfully living in its landscape, and imaginations opened and awakened to holy possibilities, we finally get to the question: What do we do next? The traditional answer, imported along with vision-casting from the business world is: Come up with a strategic plan, one that will get you from point A to point B.
Certainly there is planning involved. But if renewal is more about living into God’s kingdom than about what we want to do, then what urban congregations need, more than a strategic planner, is a discernment facilitator -- someone who can create the spaces for the congregation to begin to ask and answer questions like: Given who we are, our unique identity in this time and place -- in this city -- what is God inviting us to do? What new ways are we being invited to embrace?
Excerpted from “A New Day in the City: Urban Church Revival,”(link is external) published by Abingdon Press, 2017. Use with permission. All rights reserved.Read more from Donna Claycomb Sokol and L. Roger Owens»
Faith & Leadership
CONGREGATIONS, GROWTH & RENEWAL, CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP, LITURGICAL SEASONS, EASTER
Rebirth of an urban churchIDEAS THAT IMPACT: URBAN MINISTRY
Rebirth of an urban church
Today, Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Tampa is a growing, missional church -- but it wasn't always that way. Under the leadership of its former pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jim Harnish, the congregation pursued its vision in serving the community.
Update: The Rev. Dr. Jim Harnish retired from Hyde Park UMC in 2014.The call came from the bishop on the Rev. Dr. Jim Harnish’s 45th birthday.
“Can you come by the office tonight?” the bishop asked.
Harnish, pastor of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Orlando, knew an urgent summons from the bishop was serious. He suspected that he and his wife, Marsha, would be asked to relocate.
The prospect of leaving the vital, healthy church he had helped birth 13 years earlier wasn’t a happy one. Exciting things were happening there.
When they met that March evening in 1992, the bishop told Harnish that Hyde Park United Methodist Church(link is external) in Tampa, founded at the turn of the century, was in need of a new pastor. Unlike Harnish’s bustling suburban church, this one was near the city’s urban core.
Harnish’s mind raced: Why leave for a church with half the budget, half the attendance and half the staff?
“Are you asking me or telling me?” he finally said. The bishop assured Harnish it was his choice, but Harnish had to decide overnight.
There was no time for reconnaissance. Harnish turned to prayer.
The answer would be yes. As painful as it was to say goodbye to the congregation where he and his wife had raised their two daughters, Harnish felt he needed to obey God’s call.
“I really had no idea what we were getting into,” he said. “And if I had, I might have turned it down.”
The challenges would be daunting. The frustrations would test his patience. But in the end, Harnish found a place to hone and develop his leadership skills, and members got the guidance they needed to grow in Christ and discover their own gifts.
And a once-thriving church that had become “spiritually shallow and inwardly focused” was reborn as a missional church, serving its community and beyond.
Neither Harnish nor his new congregation knew it at the time, but Hyde Park UMC would experience resurrection -- new life in ways that neither could imagine. But first, both Harnish and the church would have to face death.
Sputtering and stalling
Today, the signs of new life at Hyde Park United Methodist are everywhere. Spread over four city blocks, the church is a model of urban vitality.
Five Sunday services, ranging from traditional to a come-as-you-are worship in a former bar, have a combined average weekly attendance of about 1,100 and an annual operating budget of $2.8 million. They expect 3,000 people to attend Easter Sunday services.
Members take part in dozens of ministries and lay-led missions, such as trips to Cuba, South Africa and Nicaragua and a homeless outreach on the property every Sunday. Children’s programs stretch from cradle to teen. There’s a diverse membership representing all ages, races and incomes.
It was very different 20 years ago.
“We were a pretty typical Methodist church,” said longtime member Celia Ferman. “Everybody looked like everybody else, and we weren’t growing. We knew something had to change, but didn’t know how to make that happen.”
Harnish’s arrival was met with great anticipation. But soon, he said, he made his own discovery: this congregation had a “very clear sense of its past, was somewhat foggy about its present, and didn’t have a clue about its future.”
Attendance hadn’t changed much in two decades, and the facilities were run-down and depressing. While the church was financially sound, there was no systematic process for giving. Harnish couldn’t even get an updated membership roll or mailing list.
But the most important “to do” on Harnish’s list was getting the congregation to define a vision and mission. He charged a leadership task force with establishing a long-term plan and challenged them to find ways to reach people outside the church.
Many of the church’s decision makers were fundamentalists who held conservative views on the inspiration of Scripture and the nature of salvation. Some said they no longer wanted to be part of the denomination. Harnish pleaded with them to make Hyde Park more inclusive and to welcome other viewpoints, within reason. There’s room for all of us at the table, he said.
Karen Crawford was in the camp that liked Harnish’s message. She and her husband had enjoyed many of the people and the Sunday school classes at Hyde Park, but she admits that the congregation had two glaring problems.
“Spiritually shallow and inwardly focused,” she said. “It was more of a social event to go to church.”
The choice
A year after his appointment, Harnish faced something he had never experienced before. For the first time in his 20 years of pastoral ministry, he did not feel confident that the Staff-Parish Relations Committee would ask the bishop to reappoint him.
So Harnish made the move that would change his and the church’s future.
He felt he had to be true to his own convictions, to follow the Methodist tenets of being biblically rooted, open-minded and service-oriented. He was committed to focusing on the life, words, way and spirit of a loving Jesus. He believed in teamwork and consensus.
He could not change now, even if it meant losing his job.
“If God is calling Hyde Park to be a fundamentalist congregation, you need to be the best one you can be. But I am not the man to lead you,” he told the committee. “If you want to be spiritually alive, warmhearted and a Christ-centered congregation that lives out the center of the Methodist tradition, I’ll give you my life to do that. But you will have to choose.”
In the end, he got seven votes in favor of his reappointment and two against. Some of his well-heeled detractors showed their displeasure by leaving the church and taking their tithes with them. In one year, Hyde Park lost $60,000 in pledges.
But what it gained was an identity and a long-term plan to build upon. It could begin living up to its motto, “Making God’s Love Real.”
Even though he believed that the conversation about the church’s direction was long overdue, Harnish had wrenching moments of self-doubt. In the end, he trusted that God was in control, and that something new and exciting would be created.
“There were days I thought, ‘Wow, this is hard.’ The stress was taking a toll on my own health. I wondered if I was going to die and kill the church at the same time,” he said. “But I’m a rather tenacious person. I had to depend on my instincts that this church needed someone to take hold of the tiller and ride it through.”
Even some of his supporters felt uneasy.
“Absolutely, it was painful,” member Bruce Tigert said, explaining that the people who had first welcomed Harnish “felt betrayed. Some of them were second- and third-generation members.”
What Harnish brought to the table, Tigert said, was the notion of possibilities. Of what members could personally do and where the church could go.
“Before, the attitude was, ‘This is our church, and if you believe the way we do, you can join us.’ Now it’s a church that says, ‘If you want to grow in your faith, come join us. There’s room for different opinions.’ Jim showed us a whole new approach that I had never heard before.”
That attitude and how it would play out would take Hyde Park out of the doldrums and transform it into a thriving urban faith community. What it lost in support from departing members it regained with its welcoming invitation to be part of its vision. Conflict that dominated the discussion in the first two years, Harnish said, “simply went away” as members adopted a sense of common direction.
As attendance and participation blossomed, Harnish was able to tackle that “to do” list.
In a 10-year period, the church embarked on a FutureFaith campaign, raising $11 million to purchase new buildings and renovate existing facilities, with projects including a major overhaul and expansion of the main sanctuary.
Jim Ferman, Celia’s husband, said Harnish was successful in turning the church around in part because he had the attributes of a “successful CEO,” such as vision, team-building skills and persistence.
The external changes were obvious. But it was the internal ones that helped fuel growth.
“The minute I walked in the door, I felt comfortable. Members greeted me like a friend,” said Stephanie Nichols, who first visited Hyde Park in 2007 with her twin infants and husband after moving from Oklahoma. “That dedication to being welcoming is not just talk. It’s in the culture there.
“This is truly an equipping church, in every sense of the word.”
That, Harnish said, is why Hyde Park is succeeding where some other mainline churches are not. Many people envision church life as faithfully coming to worship, giving financial support and serving on committees. But they never envision themselves in ministry to other people in the name of Christ.
“My role isn’t to tell people where they need to go and how to get there,” he said. “We developed the church’s mission by consensus. And my job is to keep those goals in focus and the momentum moving forward.”
Failures, successes and challenges
Hyde Park has endured some misses and backfires. One of its biggest was the Friday night Connection service in the activities center. The church invested about $100,000, buying high-top tables and crates of candles to create a casual meeting place for 20-somethings.
“We had more candles than people,” Harnish said. “We ended up completely missing the target.”
But risking failure goes along with giving more power to the people in the pews. “We believe in grace around here,” he said. “We can fail and be forgiven.”
One of its best success stories is its Open Arms ministry, a Sunday morning outreach to homeless people that began with a handful of volunteers.
Unlike most churches, Hyde Park invites people to its campus, feeding them a hearty breakfast on tables dressed with white linen, giving out clothing, offering counseling and haircuts, and providing a short optional prayer service with live music. Homeless people also have access to the restrooms and can use the church as a mailing address.
The ministry opens its doors at 8 a.m. -- about the time members start arriving for services. It’s a mix of humanity, with well-dressed members emerging from SUVs and late-model cars exchanging parking-lot greetings with men and women in castoff clothing carrying their possessions in garbage bags.
Harnish admits that the on-site ministry on the church’s busiest morning “stretched the comfort level” of some of the members, but overall, it has evolved into one of Hyde Park’s best outreach efforts. Earlier this month, dozens of volunteers served nearly 250 people on a chilly morning.
Though Hyde Park is thriving, it is not immune to challenges.
In early February, Harnish and church members were horrified when maintenance employee Michael Klevene was arrested for multiple counts of possession and distribution of child pornography.
Federal authorities determined that Klevene, who had worked at Hyde Park for 20 years, did not use a church computer to collect or send images of children.
Harnish quickly assembled his crisis team, including member Darren Richards, a vice president at a local public relations firm. Harnish addressed the arrest on a local television report and from the pulpit the Sunday after the arrest, following up with an email to each congregant.
“They appreciated that honesty, and they were assured that nobody had ever been in danger or compromised on church property,” Richards said.
Still, it was a shocking experience, something that Harnish still struggles with. How could he work alongside someone all those years and have no idea of his double life? Did he miss something he should have seen? And though his responsibility is to the congregation, how does he maintain his principles of Christian love and forgiveness to a troubled soul?
“We know we had the right protection policies in place. We know we were transparent in handling the whole situation,” Harnish said. “But we’re humans living in an imperfect world. Things happen that don’t always make sense.”
Leaving a legacy
Now 66, Harnish has been talking about retirement for the last few years. His twin brother, Jack, the senior pastor at First United Methodist Church of Birmingham, Mich., is also planning to take that step soon.
When the day comes -- “in one to three years” -- he will have more time to devote to his grandchildren and to spend on his writing, teaching, prayer life and speaking engagements.
And he will continue to tell Hyde Park’s resurrection story and how it can be achieved elsewhere through a series he developed with commissioned deacon Justin LaRosa, the congregation’s director of discipleship ministries. “A Disciple’s Path: Deepening Your Relationship with Christ and the Church,”(link is external) which includes a leader’s guide, a workbook and a companion reader, has now been purchased by 3,300 churches around the country.
“We’ve been so humbled by the response,” LaRosa said. “It has shown us how hungry people are to take that next meaningful step to transform their hearts and their lives. We’ve seen it work in amazing ways here, and we wanted to share that process.”
This spring, Hyde Park’s future will expand to include the now-closed First United Methodist in downtown Tampa. After a long and painful process, the historic church surrendered last year to dwindling membership and finances. A lay team of volunteers led by LaRosa is now developing a purpose and strategy for a downtown ministry for the former sanctuary and offices.
The idea, he says, is to reach out to people living and working downtown through small groups and events, and to create a pastoral presence. A midweek service is also possible.
In true Hyde Park style, “we are working on the vision first,” LaRosa said. “Once we establish that, we’ll know the direction this will go.”
Although it will be difficult to say goodbye to their longtime leader when the moment comes, church members say what Harnish did best is show them that the church is a collection of voices, not a singular force.
“He was just what we needed at that time,” Karen Crawford said. “And when his time comes to leave, we will know that a system is in place here that will keep our mission alive. That will be his legacy.”
That’s what Harnish wants to hear. Despite the difficulties and mistakes, when he sees members taking what’s in their hearts and offering it to the world, he can’t help but smile.
This is what faith looks like, Harnish says.
“Hyde Park and I have been very good for each other,” he says. “It’s been an incredible journey for both sides.”Read more »
Changing our perspective
Urban congregations have a unique opportunity to be flexible. From a theological standpoint, we follow an ever-creating God whose Spirit came to the first church and blew like a mighty wind through their little preconceived ideas, but the reality of how we do church in many established, urban congregations is rather, well, staid.
That Sunday I finally felt we were ready for something new and maybe even a little bit radical in worship. Very slowly over the course of our time together, the congregation of Calvary Baptist Church and I had been piecing together worship that was intentional and reflected our calling as a community. We introduced variations and new efforts very gradually; we worked on subtle changes like tuning the piano, dusting the sanctuary, proofreading the bulletin…you know, things like that.
This urban congregation, over 140 years old and inhabiting a much-too large and increasingly needy facility, had once been a grand Baptist church of Washington, D.C., a place everyone who was anyone went to worship, an important part of the social and political fabric of this important town.
As the urban landscape changed and people moved out to the suburbs and Sunday brunch with the New York Times became the preferred activity of most on Sunday mornings, the faithful people who sat in the pews on the corner of H and 8th Streets, NW, were determined—if it was the last thing they did—to concentrate on the task of getting things back to the way they used to be when everything was going so well at Calvary. Remember those days?
I learned soon after my arrival that my primary job as a young, inexperienced, overly enthusiastic pastoral leader was to help the congregation come to terms with the idea that change could be good. At least, that’s the only thing I could think to do, as it seemed blatantly obvious to even me that there really was no other option for keeping the doors open. So, I set out to try to help redefine success, and convincing the congregation to consider an alternative perspective took most of my energy. I likened it to taking a drink of water from a fire hose…or turning an aircraft carrier. Slow, plodding, incremental…change.
That Sunday I had planned to hold a healing service, with music and liturgy supporting a sermon on the Gospel text followed by an interactive anointing ritual, where worshipers could come forward to have the minister make the sign of the cross on their hands with oil.
Very radical.
Not very traditional.
Change!
I couldn’t wait.
All went well through the first part of the service. Worshipers seemed engaged, liturgy flowed smoothly, music sounded beautiful; it was one of those Sundays where you could just feel the energy. I remember that I was talking about one of the Gospel healing stories of Jesus, and that the very last word in my sermon, right before I’d planned to introduce the healing ritual, was, in fact, “Jesus.”
Just as I said “Jesus,” however, the fire alarm went off.
We all got out of the building eventually. Sadly, my brilliant homiletical point was lost somewhere in the process of screaming, “Please leave the building as calmly as you can,” at the top of my lungs into the microphone and helping to carrying a 90-year-old member of the choir down the front stairs. The worst thing was, since we worship in an aging urban building whose fire alarm goes off pretty consistently because of some glitch in the ancient boiler/electrical/plumbing/generator/air conditioner/sound system, there was no fire. I knew there was no fire.
In the eight years I have served as Senior Pastor at Calvary, I’ve had experiences like the fire alarm healing service over and over again. While it’s true that hardly any experience I’ve had as pastor conforms to the textbook explanations I learned in school or even the stories of many of my suburban colleagues, I’ve come to understand and celebrate the fact that pastoral leadership in an older, urban, mainline congregation can be uniquely trying and, at the same time, utterly wonderful.
Consider some of these challenges and opportunities of urban ministry:
Urban congregations have a unique opportunity to be flexible. From a theological standpoint, we follow an ever-creating God whose Spirit came to the first church and blew like a mighty wind through their little preconceived ideas, but the reality of how we do church in many established, urban congregations is rather, well, staid.
Witness: it’s over 2,000 years later, and our churches are full of little more than preconceived ideas. We have buildings—big ones. And constitutions (with by-laws). We have boxes and boxes of books from the church library that somebody’s father’s uncle donated because he was a minister that we can’t throw away or the world will end. We also have the way our pastor of 32 years (who retired in 1971 but we still talk about him every Church Council meeting) always did it; four generations of one family who are members in this church (though nobody still attends and some live in another country last time we checked …); and memories of how it used to be when the sanctuary was packed and everything at church was PERFECT! (Wistful sigh.)
So what happens to a church filled with tradition when we determine that we want to be faithful followers of this ever-creating God who blows in and turns everything on its head?
It’s unsettling, yes, but it’s also a fundamental exercise of discipleship to follow Jesus faithfully and to hold our traditions loosely. Urban congregations, with years of tradition, have the unique opportunity to practice the quality of responsive Christian living, to honor tradition and history while still making room for the rushing wind of God’s imagination.
Urban congregations also have the special gift of required intentionality. Because our congregations are so unique in facilities, setting, and history, we consistently face opportunities to redefine ideas, tweak typical approaches, modify the traditional prescribed, prepackaged program.
For example, our congregation, like any other, is filled with people recovering from surgery or welcoming new babies. Like all good church folk, we enjoy casserole dinners provided by caring members. But the reality of our urban situation is that our congregation is spread out over a 75-plus mile radius, and some of us get to church by car, but many walk, bike, or ride the Metro. Delivering full casserole dishes and returning empty ones is a logistics nightmare almost too difficult to comprehend in this city. Good thing our deacons have devised a process for some to deliver their contributions to a central location, where they are picked up for delivery by others who live near the person receiving food. And, everybody brings their food in disposable containers that do not require returning.
It’s the reality of being the church in a huge urban setting.
After years and years of facing situations for which traditional solutions have little relevance, I’ve begun to see this quality of our unique ministry setting as a gift. We think a lot more about why we do what we do because we have to. And because we know why we do things a certain way, we have the rare gift of clarity around our mission, vision, and identity.
An older, urban congregation faces ongoing challenges related to material stewardship. Many of us, for example, find ourselves responsible for large, historic facilities that, while well-suited to the needs of the congregation that worshiped here in 1898, are sometimes an overwhelming financial and practical burden for the congregation inhabiting them now. Ancient boilers, crumbling plaster, historic preservation boards, downtown developers…we urban pastors and congregations spend inordinate time struggling to make good decisions about how we manage life with the facilities we’ve inherited. But because of these unique challenges, we also are given the opportunity to learn and practice creative stewardship.
For example, someone in the church in 1920 thought it would be a good idea to build a full-sized stage, subsequently outfitted with a red velvet curtain and full spotlight system, in a large hall in the church building. Though the demand for such facilities is currently not that high in the worshiping congregation, the trustees are still required to keep the space clean, safe, and functional. Meanwhile, we all sit around wondering how on earth we can ever keep this up.
But what if we were listening to NPR one day and heard a story about a local nonprofit who helps kids learn to sing and perform but has suddenly found itself homeless, thanks to budget cuts in the school system? Could we explore a new way to think about our space, engage in relationships with partners who might be interested in sharing resources with us, expand our congregation’s mission and presence in the community by cooperative, creative stewardship?
Well, maybe we could!
When we apply creative stewardship to our urban congregational situations, we suddenly find things we used to think of as liabilities transformed into invaluable assets.
All of these gifts and so many others punctuate the life of an older, urban congregation, but we keep hearing messages that tell us the way we do church is not the way of the future, and that our best option is to conduct a beautiful funeral and get on with doing church in a more modern way.
But when perspective shifts, it becomes readily apparent that the gifts and potential of the urban ministry setting are numerous…bountiful…unique! Here we sit, with years and years of tradition undergirding us, ready to move and be and explore everything God has for us. We have been given tremendous, richly wonderful gifts for sure.
Amy Butler has served as Senior Pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, DC since 2003. Before entering parish ministry, Amy directed a shelter for homeless women in downtown New Orleans, Louisiana. Amy has a passion for urban engagement and blogs at www.talkwiththepreacher.com .
Comments welcome on the Alban Roundtable blog
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Adapted from the Summer 2011 Congregations article, “Changing Our Perspective,” copyright © 2011 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved. Read more »
Faith & Leadership
CONGREGATIONS
Mark R. Gornik and Carrie Myers: Sensing the city -- Practicing Christianity in an urban world
Sensing the city: practicing Christianity in an urban world
Ministry in the city begins the same way New York's High Line did, say leaders from City Seminary of New York. It begins with how we see, hear, taste, smell and touch the city.
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, a long stretch of abandoned elevated railway sat decaying on the West Side of Manhattan. Once a vital part of an industrialized Hudson River waterfront, the railway was eventually slated for demolition.
Two area residents, however, had a different idea. Although they were just ordinary citizens with no expertise in development or land use, the two saw something that the developers and planners didn’t see. Where others saw only a rusting eyesore, they envisioned a “park in the sky,” an elevated green space weaving between buildings and above traffic.
Over the course of 10 years, from 1999 to 2009, the two brought together architects, business leaders and philanthropists, persuaded public officials, and overcame a host of skeptics to bring their ideas to fruition. The result was the High Line(link is external), a beautiful elevated park that stretches over 1.5 miles.
Today, walking along the High Line, you can hear children running and playing and feel the tracks beneath your feet. You can taste food and coffee from a kiosk, see the city and the Hudson in whole new ways, and smell the native grasses and flowers planted along the walkway. Engaging all the senses, the High Line is now an integral part of New York’s urban fabric, designed with simplicity and attention to detail, and deeply connected to the city and its history.
The High Line, though, is not just an object lesson in urban planning. To us, it also holds valuable lessons for what it means to be in ministry in the city. Ministry in the city that works well is ministry that flourishes and is sustainable, working with the city, its history, people and potential. It sees new possibilities for the kingdom in the materials right in front of us, within the networks and complexities of everyday life.
Even if we don’t live in a city, we all live in an urban age. More than half the world’s population now lives in cities, and over the next three decades, demographers report, that number will climb to at least two-thirds. Whether we live in the Mississippi Delta or Chicago or Mumbai, cities influence all aspects of our lives, from energy to food, from economics to the environment.
Not surprisingly, scholars say planetary urbanization is a present reality with important implications for the church. Consider just these two: the average Christian throughout the world lives in a city, and the church, whether it uses this language or not, is increasingly an urban church, with all the challenges and opportunities that urban life presents.
Yet typically, when Christians think about “urban ministry” -- what we at City Seminary of New York prefer to call “ministry in the city” -- we picture experts or religious specialists whose job it is to do ministry in the city. We might think about how to start or renew congregations, reach different groups, meet a deep need or speak out about some important issue. And we likely think about a metropolis such as New York or Chicago -- and rarely, if ever, the city in which we live.
But, alone, this approach is incomplete. It can keep ministry fixed in isolated and preconceived roles and make us more passive in our own communities and everyday lives. It can keep us focused on programs and cause us to miss the importance of presence.
At City Seminary of New York, we have found that ministry in the city is most generative and sustainable when it begins with the senses, with our everyday experiences as embodied beings with diverse callings and vocations. Our approach to ministry begins with how we see, hear, taste, smell and touch the city.
It begins with relationships, with being attentive to the world around us, with taking time in a fast-paced world to experience and understand the city. Rather than being limited to a project or plan, ministry is foremost about our everyday life in the city.
Focusing on the senses brings us in touch with the richness of Christian thought and tradition in ways often neglected in the West. At the heart of this tradition is the incarnation, an affirmation of God’s life given for our world.
The writer of 1 John begins: “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life” (NRSV). To think of the Eucharist or baptism, or to consider the history of reading Scripture in the ancient church, is to be very much aware of different senses at work in the living Word.
The senses form the basis for ministry, because knowledge and actions are related to our bodies; we learn the practice of ministry by engaging in it. Indeed, we are sensate beings, and the city tells us its story through the senses. As others have noted, we can think of the city itself as a body, a living organism with a multitude of unique, interdependent parts. Through our living bodies we encounter the living city.
One of the key ways we bring all the senses together at City Seminary is through an activity we call “pray and break bread.” In this ongoing series of events, which has been part of the school from the beginning, we literally pray and break bread in neighborhoods throughout New York. In the process, we introduce students and other participants to an understanding of theological education in the city that is grounded in sensory, bodily life.
Several times each year, faculty, students, family and friends gather in each of the five boroughs of New York to walk, pray and eat together. A typical “pray and break bread” event begins with everyone meeting on a Saturday morning in Queens or Harlem or some other location to learn about the history and contemporary dynamics of a particular community. After reading Scripture, we walk and pray in small groups, regathering at the end to reflect on our experiences and to share a meal at a local restaurant.
This year, in keeping with the seminary’s current theme -- “Create for the peace of the city” -- we have expanded our “pray and break bread” events to explore several neighborhoods that are also sites of art and culture -- areas such as Long Island City in Queens, Stapleton on Staten Island, the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, Chinatown in Manhattan and Greenpoint in Brooklyn. Along the way, we witness and celebrate creation and the restoration of goodness all over our city. We partner with God and neighbor in sensing that more is going on than we see with our eyes alone.
Walking together, praying in styles from silent to Pentecostal, we see church life intertwined with the creative and economic life of the city. We listen to people and to Scripture. We touch the surfaces of the city. We smell the air, taste the food and build community together. In all these experiences, we learn more of the city’s complexity and diversity. We see in new ways that God is already present.
“Pray and break bread” is also a response to the prophetic call of Jeremiah: “Pray to the Lord for the city, for if it experiences peace, you too will experience peace” (Jeremiah 29:7). It nourishes a way of being in the city, creating a space for us to see, participate in and imagine anew what God is doing and inviting us to do in the city. Over the years, as we take part in more and more “pray and break bread” events, we develop a set of habits that can also become a way of life -- a prayerful way of knowing the city rather than just knowing about it.
We also become formed in patterns of attentiveness and discernment vital to the faithful practice of ministry. The senses, and their cultivation, become the foundation and the building blocks for our gifts and callings in the church and the city. They help us to learn about ourselves, and to become aware of our own development in communion with God.
Listening, for example, is foundational to all areas of work and life, and essential for pastoral ministry. Truly listening to people’s stories, struggles and cries -- especially cries that often go unheard -- is critical for ministry. And being able to listen -- not just speak -- is crucial -- for transmitting the gospel to young people.
Generative and faithful ministry is for the whole people of God in the whole city. It occurs where we live, work, worship, play and raise our families -- whatever city we live in, whether in North America, Africa, Asia or Latin America. It occurs whether we are longtime residents or new immigrants, young or old, full-time pastors or bi- or multivocational church workers, stay-at-home parents or students, finance leaders or building superintendents, health care workers or artists.
As Michael Kimmelman, the New York Times architecture critic, has noted, walking along the High Line allows us to see the city in a new way.
As you walk around your city, use all your senses to perceive it afresh. Then, as each of us walks, observes, and experiences in our own particular contexts, we can together cultivate the practice of innovative and adaptive ministry in the city, for the flourishing of our urban world.
Editor’s note: This reflection was written as part of the Practices of Ministry in the City Project at City Seminary of New York. Funded with a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., the project is gathering stories, strategies, emerging questions, case studies and theological reflections from local, national and global urban ministry practitioners and theologians in order to better understand the practice of ministry in our present urban world.Read more »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
New Life through Shared Ministry by Judith Urban
In New Life through Shared Ministry, Judith Urban creates a pathway for building a shared ministry system. She assists readers in transforming their congregation into one where members are invited into volunteer ministry; people are matched according to their gifts and interests with ministry opportunities; volunteers are offered support, training, and appreciation; and all grow to spiritual maturity through that ministry.
This comprehensive guide is based on Urban's consulting, training, and planning with shared ministry directors and teams the past 12 years, her experience building a shared ministry system in a congregation, and her own studies in the field of volunteer management. Urban observes that shared ministry is a way of being church together that creates a distinctive congregational culture. It encompasses the many ways members of a congregation serve their faith community and the wider community. It is based on the concept that all are called to participate in the work of the church bringing the good news of God s saving grace to the world. It is also a system of interrelated parts that work together to bring the concept into reality. Congregations that grow a shared ministry culture are able to facilitate the unique work God gives each member and the community as a whole, creating a system that supports the people of God as they carry out excellent, effective ministry.
Learn more and order the book »
TWO PASTORS SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCE OF RENEWING URBAN CONGREGATIONS
Mount Vernon Place UMC was in decline when the Rev. Donna Claycomb Sokol was called as its pastor in 2005; today it is a thriving urban congregation. Photo courtesy of Mount Vernon Place UMC
How do you reverse decline in once-grand urban churches? In their new book, Donna Claycomb Sokol and L. Roger Owens share their experience and suggest a framework for seven crucial conversations that Christian leaders can initiate with their congregations.
From the introductionWe pastored urban congregations that managed to grow again, reversing decades of decline. For the past eleven years, Donna has been the pastor of Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. Roger, with his wife Ginger Thomas, were the copastors of Duke Memorial United Methodist Church in Durham, North Carolina, for five years. Over these periods of time, each of these congregations learned to let go of their nostalgic dreams and tired habits and walk with God into a new day of vibrancy, mission, and ministry.
In A New Day in the City(link is external), we share the stories of these two churches and many more, and the lessons we ourselves have learned from experience and from studying the leadership of others, in order to help fellow pastors and congregations escape the whirlpool of decline and join God in the deep and wide mission of embodying the kingdom. Along the way, we challenge some of the typical clichés about church leadership, offering a fresh perspective on what congregational renewal can look like and how it can become a reality.This book doesn’t offer easy answers, because churches that need to adapt and change to thrive can’t simply replicate what someone else has done or is doing. Rather, we offer the framework for seven crucial conversations urban churches need to have to find their own way to renewal:
The process of pruning or letting go
- An invitation to rethink vision
- Ways to rethink strategy
- How to overcome the divide that’s created between mission and evangelism
- How excellence can and should be embodied in a few key ways
- Thoughts on worship
- How the pastor, staff, and laity can more effectively work together
From Chapter 2: Destination or Journey? Rethinking Vision
So What Does the Leader Do?
… First, we’ll tell you what she doesn’t do: corner every parishioner at every moment and give a “stump speech” about where the church needs to go. One author has suggested that any conversation a pastor has with a parishioner that doesn’t cast vision for where the congregation needs to go is missing key opportunities, and that every pastoral interaction is a chance to cast vision, to offer a clear picture of where the congregation is going; to make converts to the pastor’s vision. “Think of yourself as a persuader. A good stump speech is trying to make converts even out of those who think they are with you. … People and their finances are attracted to those who believe that they are going to make a difference” (Paul Borden, Direct Hit: Aiming Real Leaders at the Mission Field, Abingdon, 2006).
There’s certainly nothing wrong with being energetic and inspiring when we talk about the future. But churches will be more faithful -- and many pastors will be less stressed -- when pastors lay down the mantle of persuader-in-chief and recover their proper work as pastoral leaders and become theologians again and spiritual guides, helping congregations discern the most faithful way to live in the kingdom landscape.
That proper work means more than giving vision stump speeches and being a persuader. The leader gets to have more fun as she recovers her role as interpreter, storyteller, imagination inspirer, and discernment facilitator.
The pastor as interpreter performs the ongoing task of interpreting God’s kingdom here and now. She spends time in the scriptures and in prayer, trying to understand how the ancient language of God’s reign inaugurated in Christ and witnessed to by the church helps us to see more clearly our identity and purpose here and now. The mission statement at Duke Memorial when I arrived said that the church wanted to be a “sign and foretaste of God’s kingdom in downtown Durham.” But what does that mean? Week in and week out, through sermons and Bible studies and devotions before meetings, the pastor gets to help interpret the reality of God’s kingdom for us here and now.
The pastor helping to lead a church in renewal also becomes a storyteller. He will look for and tell stories of how the church is already embodying its identity and purpose in God’s kingdom. Where are signs of faithfulness as we inhabit together the landscape of God’s kingdom? Where is fruit beginning to grow on the newly pruned branches? Where are shoots of new life already visible? For many churches struggling to live into a future full of hope, despair blinds the eyes to these signs of life and faithfulness. The leader then acts as a mirror -- showing the church’s life to itself, helping it see both the times when it simply wants to bury its head, but also where it is responding faithfully to God’s always in-breaking kingdom.
I (Roger) heard Donna do this once in a particularly memorable sermon. The church had discerned that one of the ways it was being called to inhabit the landscape of God’s kingdom in its particular context was to practice hospitality throughout its life and work. It is not “casting a vision” in the traditional sense when Donna says, “As we continue to grow in faith as a congregation, I’ve learned that there are two things most important to us as a body. One is being a church where all are abundantly welcome. The other is providing a way to be a blessing to people who are currently unhoused.” She’s not telling the congregation where it needs to go or what it will look like in five years. Rather, she’s reflecting back to the congregation the very heart of its life in God’s kingdom that they discerned together. Much of the rest of the sermon tells stories about where she has seen this kind of hospitality happening in the congregation.
Try this:
By yourself or (preferably) as a group, think of three stories that show how your church is embodying God’s kingdom right now, then decide how you will tell these stories to the wider congregation.
Along with interpreting God’s kingdom here and now and pointing to ways the congregation is already living in that kingdom, the pastor inspires the imagination. No one can see the future with certainty; so we are unable to say, especially amidst constant change, exactly where we will be and what we will be doing. But that doesn’t mean we can’t inspire the imagination and help people to ask: If we continue to live our identity in God’s kingdom with increasing faithfulness, what can we imagine we might see happen? What might our fruit begin to look like?This is exactly what Donna did in that sermon. She reflected to the congregation its own commitment to hospitality, told stories about where that hospitality is already being embodied, and then asked what might be next. Where are the places and the ways this hospitality can be extended? She offered examples from her own praying and imagining: “This week I’ve allowed myself to dream. I’ve been dreaming a lot, and my mind and heart have been consumed with what we could do.” And then she shared her dreams -- not to make “converts” to her side, and not to impose a vision untested by prayer and the congregation’s discernment, but to inspire their own holy imagining. Her dreams weren’t an agenda for the church she planned to push. Rather, they were examples of what the congregation could be if it continued to follow Jesus faithfully through the landscape of God’s kingdom.
Finally, the pastor acts as facilitator of discernment. Given our growing understanding of the kingdom, our sense of how we are already faithfully living in its landscape, and imaginations opened and awakened to holy possibilities, we finally get to the question: What do we do next? The traditional answer, imported along with vision-casting from the business world is: Come up with a strategic plan, one that will get you from point A to point B.
Certainly there is planning involved. But if renewal is more about living into God’s kingdom than about what we want to do, then what urban congregations need, more than a strategic planner, is a discernment facilitator -- someone who can create the spaces for the congregation to begin to ask and answer questions like: Given who we are, our unique identity in this time and place -- in this city -- what is God inviting us to do? What new ways are we being invited to embrace?
Excerpted from “A New Day in the City: Urban Church Revival,”(link is external) published by Abingdon Press, 2017. Use with permission. All rights reserved.Read more from Donna Claycomb Sokol and L. Roger Owens»
Faith & Leadership
CONGREGATIONS, GROWTH & RENEWAL, CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP, LITURGICAL SEASONS, EASTER
Rebirth of an urban churchIDEAS THAT IMPACT: URBAN MINISTRY
Rebirth of an urban church
Today, Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Tampa is a growing, missional church -- but it wasn't always that way. Under the leadership of its former pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jim Harnish, the congregation pursued its vision in serving the community.
Update: The Rev. Dr. Jim Harnish retired from Hyde Park UMC in 2014.The call came from the bishop on the Rev. Dr. Jim Harnish’s 45th birthday.
“Can you come by the office tonight?” the bishop asked.
Harnish, pastor of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Orlando, knew an urgent summons from the bishop was serious. He suspected that he and his wife, Marsha, would be asked to relocate.
The prospect of leaving the vital, healthy church he had helped birth 13 years earlier wasn’t a happy one. Exciting things were happening there.
When they met that March evening in 1992, the bishop told Harnish that Hyde Park United Methodist Church(link is external) in Tampa, founded at the turn of the century, was in need of a new pastor. Unlike Harnish’s bustling suburban church, this one was near the city’s urban core.
Harnish’s mind raced: Why leave for a church with half the budget, half the attendance and half the staff?
“Are you asking me or telling me?” he finally said. The bishop assured Harnish it was his choice, but Harnish had to decide overnight.
There was no time for reconnaissance. Harnish turned to prayer.
The answer would be yes. As painful as it was to say goodbye to the congregation where he and his wife had raised their two daughters, Harnish felt he needed to obey God’s call.
“I really had no idea what we were getting into,” he said. “And if I had, I might have turned it down.”
The challenges would be daunting. The frustrations would test his patience. But in the end, Harnish found a place to hone and develop his leadership skills, and members got the guidance they needed to grow in Christ and discover their own gifts.
And a once-thriving church that had become “spiritually shallow and inwardly focused” was reborn as a missional church, serving its community and beyond.
Neither Harnish nor his new congregation knew it at the time, but Hyde Park UMC would experience resurrection -- new life in ways that neither could imagine. But first, both Harnish and the church would have to face death.
Sputtering and stalling
Today, the signs of new life at Hyde Park United Methodist are everywhere. Spread over four city blocks, the church is a model of urban vitality.
Five Sunday services, ranging from traditional to a come-as-you-are worship in a former bar, have a combined average weekly attendance of about 1,100 and an annual operating budget of $2.8 million. They expect 3,000 people to attend Easter Sunday services.
Members take part in dozens of ministries and lay-led missions, such as trips to Cuba, South Africa and Nicaragua and a homeless outreach on the property every Sunday. Children’s programs stretch from cradle to teen. There’s a diverse membership representing all ages, races and incomes.
It was very different 20 years ago.
“We were a pretty typical Methodist church,” said longtime member Celia Ferman. “Everybody looked like everybody else, and we weren’t growing. We knew something had to change, but didn’t know how to make that happen.”
Harnish’s arrival was met with great anticipation. But soon, he said, he made his own discovery: this congregation had a “very clear sense of its past, was somewhat foggy about its present, and didn’t have a clue about its future.”
Attendance hadn’t changed much in two decades, and the facilities were run-down and depressing. While the church was financially sound, there was no systematic process for giving. Harnish couldn’t even get an updated membership roll or mailing list.
But the most important “to do” on Harnish’s list was getting the congregation to define a vision and mission. He charged a leadership task force with establishing a long-term plan and challenged them to find ways to reach people outside the church.
Questions to consider:
- How would your constituents describe your institution? Would they use words like “welcoming and warm” or “spiritually shallow and inwardly focused”? How has that culture developed in your setting?
- When have you faced moments of decision about the nature of your institution?
- How does your institution recognize and celebrate its resurrection moments?
- What do you most hope your legacy will be when you leave your current leadership role?
Many of the church’s decision makers were fundamentalists who held conservative views on the inspiration of Scripture and the nature of salvation. Some said they no longer wanted to be part of the denomination. Harnish pleaded with them to make Hyde Park more inclusive and to welcome other viewpoints, within reason. There’s room for all of us at the table, he said.
Karen Crawford was in the camp that liked Harnish’s message. She and her husband had enjoyed many of the people and the Sunday school classes at Hyde Park, but she admits that the congregation had two glaring problems.
“Spiritually shallow and inwardly focused,” she said. “It was more of a social event to go to church.”
The choice
A year after his appointment, Harnish faced something he had never experienced before. For the first time in his 20 years of pastoral ministry, he did not feel confident that the Staff-Parish Relations Committee would ask the bishop to reappoint him.
So Harnish made the move that would change his and the church’s future.
He felt he had to be true to his own convictions, to follow the Methodist tenets of being biblically rooted, open-minded and service-oriented. He was committed to focusing on the life, words, way and spirit of a loving Jesus. He believed in teamwork and consensus.
He could not change now, even if it meant losing his job.
“If God is calling Hyde Park to be a fundamentalist congregation, you need to be the best one you can be. But I am not the man to lead you,” he told the committee. “If you want to be spiritually alive, warmhearted and a Christ-centered congregation that lives out the center of the Methodist tradition, I’ll give you my life to do that. But you will have to choose.”
In the end, he got seven votes in favor of his reappointment and two against. Some of his well-heeled detractors showed their displeasure by leaving the church and taking their tithes with them. In one year, Hyde Park lost $60,000 in pledges.
But what it gained was an identity and a long-term plan to build upon. It could begin living up to its motto, “Making God’s Love Real.”
Even though he believed that the conversation about the church’s direction was long overdue, Harnish had wrenching moments of self-doubt. In the end, he trusted that God was in control, and that something new and exciting would be created.
“There were days I thought, ‘Wow, this is hard.’ The stress was taking a toll on my own health. I wondered if I was going to die and kill the church at the same time,” he said. “But I’m a rather tenacious person. I had to depend on my instincts that this church needed someone to take hold of the tiller and ride it through.”
Even some of his supporters felt uneasy.
“Absolutely, it was painful,” member Bruce Tigert said, explaining that the people who had first welcomed Harnish “felt betrayed. Some of them were second- and third-generation members.”
What Harnish brought to the table, Tigert said, was the notion of possibilities. Of what members could personally do and where the church could go.
“Before, the attitude was, ‘This is our church, and if you believe the way we do, you can join us.’ Now it’s a church that says, ‘If you want to grow in your faith, come join us. There’s room for different opinions.’ Jim showed us a whole new approach that I had never heard before.”
That attitude and how it would play out would take Hyde Park out of the doldrums and transform it into a thriving urban faith community. What it lost in support from departing members it regained with its welcoming invitation to be part of its vision. Conflict that dominated the discussion in the first two years, Harnish said, “simply went away” as members adopted a sense of common direction.
As attendance and participation blossomed, Harnish was able to tackle that “to do” list.
In a 10-year period, the church embarked on a FutureFaith campaign, raising $11 million to purchase new buildings and renovate existing facilities, with projects including a major overhaul and expansion of the main sanctuary.
Jim Ferman, Celia’s husband, said Harnish was successful in turning the church around in part because he had the attributes of a “successful CEO,” such as vision, team-building skills and persistence.
The external changes were obvious. But it was the internal ones that helped fuel growth.
“The minute I walked in the door, I felt comfortable. Members greeted me like a friend,” said Stephanie Nichols, who first visited Hyde Park in 2007 with her twin infants and husband after moving from Oklahoma. “That dedication to being welcoming is not just talk. It’s in the culture there.
“This is truly an equipping church, in every sense of the word.”
That, Harnish said, is why Hyde Park is succeeding where some other mainline churches are not. Many people envision church life as faithfully coming to worship, giving financial support and serving on committees. But they never envision themselves in ministry to other people in the name of Christ.
“My role isn’t to tell people where they need to go and how to get there,” he said. “We developed the church’s mission by consensus. And my job is to keep those goals in focus and the momentum moving forward.”
Failures, successes and challenges
Hyde Park has endured some misses and backfires. One of its biggest was the Friday night Connection service in the activities center. The church invested about $100,000, buying high-top tables and crates of candles to create a casual meeting place for 20-somethings.
“We had more candles than people,” Harnish said. “We ended up completely missing the target.”
But risking failure goes along with giving more power to the people in the pews. “We believe in grace around here,” he said. “We can fail and be forgiven.”
One of its best success stories is its Open Arms ministry, a Sunday morning outreach to homeless people that began with a handful of volunteers.
Unlike most churches, Hyde Park invites people to its campus, feeding them a hearty breakfast on tables dressed with white linen, giving out clothing, offering counseling and haircuts, and providing a short optional prayer service with live music. Homeless people also have access to the restrooms and can use the church as a mailing address.
The ministry opens its doors at 8 a.m. -- about the time members start arriving for services. It’s a mix of humanity, with well-dressed members emerging from SUVs and late-model cars exchanging parking-lot greetings with men and women in castoff clothing carrying their possessions in garbage bags.
Harnish admits that the on-site ministry on the church’s busiest morning “stretched the comfort level” of some of the members, but overall, it has evolved into one of Hyde Park’s best outreach efforts. Earlier this month, dozens of volunteers served nearly 250 people on a chilly morning.
Though Hyde Park is thriving, it is not immune to challenges.
In early February, Harnish and church members were horrified when maintenance employee Michael Klevene was arrested for multiple counts of possession and distribution of child pornography.
Federal authorities determined that Klevene, who had worked at Hyde Park for 20 years, did not use a church computer to collect or send images of children.
Harnish quickly assembled his crisis team, including member Darren Richards, a vice president at a local public relations firm. Harnish addressed the arrest on a local television report and from the pulpit the Sunday after the arrest, following up with an email to each congregant.
“They appreciated that honesty, and they were assured that nobody had ever been in danger or compromised on church property,” Richards said.
Still, it was a shocking experience, something that Harnish still struggles with. How could he work alongside someone all those years and have no idea of his double life? Did he miss something he should have seen? And though his responsibility is to the congregation, how does he maintain his principles of Christian love and forgiveness to a troubled soul?
“We know we had the right protection policies in place. We know we were transparent in handling the whole situation,” Harnish said. “But we’re humans living in an imperfect world. Things happen that don’t always make sense.”
Leaving a legacy
Now 66, Harnish has been talking about retirement for the last few years. His twin brother, Jack, the senior pastor at First United Methodist Church of Birmingham, Mich., is also planning to take that step soon.
When the day comes -- “in one to three years” -- he will have more time to devote to his grandchildren and to spend on his writing, teaching, prayer life and speaking engagements.
And he will continue to tell Hyde Park’s resurrection story and how it can be achieved elsewhere through a series he developed with commissioned deacon Justin LaRosa, the congregation’s director of discipleship ministries. “A Disciple’s Path: Deepening Your Relationship with Christ and the Church,”(link is external) which includes a leader’s guide, a workbook and a companion reader, has now been purchased by 3,300 churches around the country.
“We’ve been so humbled by the response,” LaRosa said. “It has shown us how hungry people are to take that next meaningful step to transform their hearts and their lives. We’ve seen it work in amazing ways here, and we wanted to share that process.”
This spring, Hyde Park’s future will expand to include the now-closed First United Methodist in downtown Tampa. After a long and painful process, the historic church surrendered last year to dwindling membership and finances. A lay team of volunteers led by LaRosa is now developing a purpose and strategy for a downtown ministry for the former sanctuary and offices.
The idea, he says, is to reach out to people living and working downtown through small groups and events, and to create a pastoral presence. A midweek service is also possible.
In true Hyde Park style, “we are working on the vision first,” LaRosa said. “Once we establish that, we’ll know the direction this will go.”
Although it will be difficult to say goodbye to their longtime leader when the moment comes, church members say what Harnish did best is show them that the church is a collection of voices, not a singular force.
“He was just what we needed at that time,” Karen Crawford said. “And when his time comes to leave, we will know that a system is in place here that will keep our mission alive. That will be his legacy.”
That’s what Harnish wants to hear. Despite the difficulties and mistakes, when he sees members taking what’s in their hearts and offering it to the world, he can’t help but smile.
This is what faith looks like, Harnish says.
“Hyde Park and I have been very good for each other,” he says. “It’s been an incredible journey for both sides.”Read more »
Changing our perspective
Urban congregations have a unique opportunity to be flexible. From a theological standpoint, we follow an ever-creating God whose Spirit came to the first church and blew like a mighty wind through their little preconceived ideas, but the reality of how we do church in many established, urban congregations is rather, well, staid.
That Sunday I finally felt we were ready for something new and maybe even a little bit radical in worship. Very slowly over the course of our time together, the congregation of Calvary Baptist Church and I had been piecing together worship that was intentional and reflected our calling as a community. We introduced variations and new efforts very gradually; we worked on subtle changes like tuning the piano, dusting the sanctuary, proofreading the bulletin…you know, things like that.
This urban congregation, over 140 years old and inhabiting a much-too large and increasingly needy facility, had once been a grand Baptist church of Washington, D.C., a place everyone who was anyone went to worship, an important part of the social and political fabric of this important town.
As the urban landscape changed and people moved out to the suburbs and Sunday brunch with the New York Times became the preferred activity of most on Sunday mornings, the faithful people who sat in the pews on the corner of H and 8th Streets, NW, were determined—if it was the last thing they did—to concentrate on the task of getting things back to the way they used to be when everything was going so well at Calvary. Remember those days?
I learned soon after my arrival that my primary job as a young, inexperienced, overly enthusiastic pastoral leader was to help the congregation come to terms with the idea that change could be good. At least, that’s the only thing I could think to do, as it seemed blatantly obvious to even me that there really was no other option for keeping the doors open. So, I set out to try to help redefine success, and convincing the congregation to consider an alternative perspective took most of my energy. I likened it to taking a drink of water from a fire hose…or turning an aircraft carrier. Slow, plodding, incremental…change.
That Sunday I had planned to hold a healing service, with music and liturgy supporting a sermon on the Gospel text followed by an interactive anointing ritual, where worshipers could come forward to have the minister make the sign of the cross on their hands with oil.
Very radical.
Not very traditional.
Change!
I couldn’t wait.
All went well through the first part of the service. Worshipers seemed engaged, liturgy flowed smoothly, music sounded beautiful; it was one of those Sundays where you could just feel the energy. I remember that I was talking about one of the Gospel healing stories of Jesus, and that the very last word in my sermon, right before I’d planned to introduce the healing ritual, was, in fact, “Jesus.”
Just as I said “Jesus,” however, the fire alarm went off.
We all got out of the building eventually. Sadly, my brilliant homiletical point was lost somewhere in the process of screaming, “Please leave the building as calmly as you can,” at the top of my lungs into the microphone and helping to carrying a 90-year-old member of the choir down the front stairs. The worst thing was, since we worship in an aging urban building whose fire alarm goes off pretty consistently because of some glitch in the ancient boiler/electrical/plumbing/generator/air conditioner/sound system, there was no fire. I knew there was no fire.
In the eight years I have served as Senior Pastor at Calvary, I’ve had experiences like the fire alarm healing service over and over again. While it’s true that hardly any experience I’ve had as pastor conforms to the textbook explanations I learned in school or even the stories of many of my suburban colleagues, I’ve come to understand and celebrate the fact that pastoral leadership in an older, urban, mainline congregation can be uniquely trying and, at the same time, utterly wonderful.
Consider some of these challenges and opportunities of urban ministry:
Urban congregations have a unique opportunity to be flexible. From a theological standpoint, we follow an ever-creating God whose Spirit came to the first church and blew like a mighty wind through their little preconceived ideas, but the reality of how we do church in many established, urban congregations is rather, well, staid.
Witness: it’s over 2,000 years later, and our churches are full of little more than preconceived ideas. We have buildings—big ones. And constitutions (with by-laws). We have boxes and boxes of books from the church library that somebody’s father’s uncle donated because he was a minister that we can’t throw away or the world will end. We also have the way our pastor of 32 years (who retired in 1971 but we still talk about him every Church Council meeting) always did it; four generations of one family who are members in this church (though nobody still attends and some live in another country last time we checked …); and memories of how it used to be when the sanctuary was packed and everything at church was PERFECT! (Wistful sigh.)
So what happens to a church filled with tradition when we determine that we want to be faithful followers of this ever-creating God who blows in and turns everything on its head?
It’s unsettling, yes, but it’s also a fundamental exercise of discipleship to follow Jesus faithfully and to hold our traditions loosely. Urban congregations, with years of tradition, have the unique opportunity to practice the quality of responsive Christian living, to honor tradition and history while still making room for the rushing wind of God’s imagination.
Urban congregations also have the special gift of required intentionality. Because our congregations are so unique in facilities, setting, and history, we consistently face opportunities to redefine ideas, tweak typical approaches, modify the traditional prescribed, prepackaged program.
For example, our congregation, like any other, is filled with people recovering from surgery or welcoming new babies. Like all good church folk, we enjoy casserole dinners provided by caring members. But the reality of our urban situation is that our congregation is spread out over a 75-plus mile radius, and some of us get to church by car, but many walk, bike, or ride the Metro. Delivering full casserole dishes and returning empty ones is a logistics nightmare almost too difficult to comprehend in this city. Good thing our deacons have devised a process for some to deliver their contributions to a central location, where they are picked up for delivery by others who live near the person receiving food. And, everybody brings their food in disposable containers that do not require returning.
It’s the reality of being the church in a huge urban setting.
After years and years of facing situations for which traditional solutions have little relevance, I’ve begun to see this quality of our unique ministry setting as a gift. We think a lot more about why we do what we do because we have to. And because we know why we do things a certain way, we have the rare gift of clarity around our mission, vision, and identity.
An older, urban congregation faces ongoing challenges related to material stewardship. Many of us, for example, find ourselves responsible for large, historic facilities that, while well-suited to the needs of the congregation that worshiped here in 1898, are sometimes an overwhelming financial and practical burden for the congregation inhabiting them now. Ancient boilers, crumbling plaster, historic preservation boards, downtown developers…we urban pastors and congregations spend inordinate time struggling to make good decisions about how we manage life with the facilities we’ve inherited. But because of these unique challenges, we also are given the opportunity to learn and practice creative stewardship.
For example, someone in the church in 1920 thought it would be a good idea to build a full-sized stage, subsequently outfitted with a red velvet curtain and full spotlight system, in a large hall in the church building. Though the demand for such facilities is currently not that high in the worshiping congregation, the trustees are still required to keep the space clean, safe, and functional. Meanwhile, we all sit around wondering how on earth we can ever keep this up.
But what if we were listening to NPR one day and heard a story about a local nonprofit who helps kids learn to sing and perform but has suddenly found itself homeless, thanks to budget cuts in the school system? Could we explore a new way to think about our space, engage in relationships with partners who might be interested in sharing resources with us, expand our congregation’s mission and presence in the community by cooperative, creative stewardship?
Well, maybe we could!
When we apply creative stewardship to our urban congregational situations, we suddenly find things we used to think of as liabilities transformed into invaluable assets.
All of these gifts and so many others punctuate the life of an older, urban congregation, but we keep hearing messages that tell us the way we do church is not the way of the future, and that our best option is to conduct a beautiful funeral and get on with doing church in a more modern way.
But when perspective shifts, it becomes readily apparent that the gifts and potential of the urban ministry setting are numerous…bountiful…unique! Here we sit, with years and years of tradition undergirding us, ready to move and be and explore everything God has for us. We have been given tremendous, richly wonderful gifts for sure.
Amy Butler has served as Senior Pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, DC since 2003. Before entering parish ministry, Amy directed a shelter for homeless women in downtown New Orleans, Louisiana. Amy has a passion for urban engagement and blogs at www.talkwiththepreacher.com .
Comments welcome on the Alban Roundtable blog
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Adapted from the Summer 2011 Congregations article, “Changing Our Perspective,” copyright © 2011 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved. Read more »
Faith & Leadership
CONGREGATIONS
Mark R. Gornik and Carrie Myers: Sensing the city -- Practicing Christianity in an urban world
Sensing the city: practicing Christianity in an urban worldMinistry in the city begins the same way New York's High Line did, say leaders from City Seminary of New York. It begins with how we see, hear, taste, smell and touch the city.
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, a long stretch of abandoned elevated railway sat decaying on the West Side of Manhattan. Once a vital part of an industrialized Hudson River waterfront, the railway was eventually slated for demolition.
Two area residents, however, had a different idea. Although they were just ordinary citizens with no expertise in development or land use, the two saw something that the developers and planners didn’t see. Where others saw only a rusting eyesore, they envisioned a “park in the sky,” an elevated green space weaving between buildings and above traffic.
Over the course of 10 years, from 1999 to 2009, the two brought together architects, business leaders and philanthropists, persuaded public officials, and overcame a host of skeptics to bring their ideas to fruition. The result was the High Line(link is external), a beautiful elevated park that stretches over 1.5 miles.
Today, walking along the High Line, you can hear children running and playing and feel the tracks beneath your feet. You can taste food and coffee from a kiosk, see the city and the Hudson in whole new ways, and smell the native grasses and flowers planted along the walkway. Engaging all the senses, the High Line is now an integral part of New York’s urban fabric, designed with simplicity and attention to detail, and deeply connected to the city and its history.
The High Line, though, is not just an object lesson in urban planning. To us, it also holds valuable lessons for what it means to be in ministry in the city. Ministry in the city that works well is ministry that flourishes and is sustainable, working with the city, its history, people and potential. It sees new possibilities for the kingdom in the materials right in front of us, within the networks and complexities of everyday life.
Even if we don’t live in a city, we all live in an urban age. More than half the world’s population now lives in cities, and over the next three decades, demographers report, that number will climb to at least two-thirds. Whether we live in the Mississippi Delta or Chicago or Mumbai, cities influence all aspects of our lives, from energy to food, from economics to the environment.
Not surprisingly, scholars say planetary urbanization is a present reality with important implications for the church. Consider just these two: the average Christian throughout the world lives in a city, and the church, whether it uses this language or not, is increasingly an urban church, with all the challenges and opportunities that urban life presents.
Yet typically, when Christians think about “urban ministry” -- what we at City Seminary of New York prefer to call “ministry in the city” -- we picture experts or religious specialists whose job it is to do ministry in the city. We might think about how to start or renew congregations, reach different groups, meet a deep need or speak out about some important issue. And we likely think about a metropolis such as New York or Chicago -- and rarely, if ever, the city in which we live.
But, alone, this approach is incomplete. It can keep ministry fixed in isolated and preconceived roles and make us more passive in our own communities and everyday lives. It can keep us focused on programs and cause us to miss the importance of presence.
At City Seminary of New York, we have found that ministry in the city is most generative and sustainable when it begins with the senses, with our everyday experiences as embodied beings with diverse callings and vocations. Our approach to ministry begins with how we see, hear, taste, smell and touch the city.
It begins with relationships, with being attentive to the world around us, with taking time in a fast-paced world to experience and understand the city. Rather than being limited to a project or plan, ministry is foremost about our everyday life in the city.
Focusing on the senses brings us in touch with the richness of Christian thought and tradition in ways often neglected in the West. At the heart of this tradition is the incarnation, an affirmation of God’s life given for our world.
The writer of 1 John begins: “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life” (NRSV). To think of the Eucharist or baptism, or to consider the history of reading Scripture in the ancient church, is to be very much aware of different senses at work in the living Word.
The senses form the basis for ministry, because knowledge and actions are related to our bodies; we learn the practice of ministry by engaging in it. Indeed, we are sensate beings, and the city tells us its story through the senses. As others have noted, we can think of the city itself as a body, a living organism with a multitude of unique, interdependent parts. Through our living bodies we encounter the living city.
One of the key ways we bring all the senses together at City Seminary is through an activity we call “pray and break bread.” In this ongoing series of events, which has been part of the school from the beginning, we literally pray and break bread in neighborhoods throughout New York. In the process, we introduce students and other participants to an understanding of theological education in the city that is grounded in sensory, bodily life.
Several times each year, faculty, students, family and friends gather in each of the five boroughs of New York to walk, pray and eat together. A typical “pray and break bread” event begins with everyone meeting on a Saturday morning in Queens or Harlem or some other location to learn about the history and contemporary dynamics of a particular community. After reading Scripture, we walk and pray in small groups, regathering at the end to reflect on our experiences and to share a meal at a local restaurant.
This year, in keeping with the seminary’s current theme -- “Create for the peace of the city” -- we have expanded our “pray and break bread” events to explore several neighborhoods that are also sites of art and culture -- areas such as Long Island City in Queens, Stapleton on Staten Island, the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, Chinatown in Manhattan and Greenpoint in Brooklyn. Along the way, we witness and celebrate creation and the restoration of goodness all over our city. We partner with God and neighbor in sensing that more is going on than we see with our eyes alone.
Walking together, praying in styles from silent to Pentecostal, we see church life intertwined with the creative and economic life of the city. We listen to people and to Scripture. We touch the surfaces of the city. We smell the air, taste the food and build community together. In all these experiences, we learn more of the city’s complexity and diversity. We see in new ways that God is already present.
“Pray and break bread” is also a response to the prophetic call of Jeremiah: “Pray to the Lord for the city, for if it experiences peace, you too will experience peace” (Jeremiah 29:7). It nourishes a way of being in the city, creating a space for us to see, participate in and imagine anew what God is doing and inviting us to do in the city. Over the years, as we take part in more and more “pray and break bread” events, we develop a set of habits that can also become a way of life -- a prayerful way of knowing the city rather than just knowing about it.
We also become formed in patterns of attentiveness and discernment vital to the faithful practice of ministry. The senses, and their cultivation, become the foundation and the building blocks for our gifts and callings in the church and the city. They help us to learn about ourselves, and to become aware of our own development in communion with God.
Listening, for example, is foundational to all areas of work and life, and essential for pastoral ministry. Truly listening to people’s stories, struggles and cries -- especially cries that often go unheard -- is critical for ministry. And being able to listen -- not just speak -- is crucial -- for transmitting the gospel to young people.
Generative and faithful ministry is for the whole people of God in the whole city. It occurs where we live, work, worship, play and raise our families -- whatever city we live in, whether in North America, Africa, Asia or Latin America. It occurs whether we are longtime residents or new immigrants, young or old, full-time pastors or bi- or multivocational church workers, stay-at-home parents or students, finance leaders or building superintendents, health care workers or artists.
As Michael Kimmelman, the New York Times architecture critic, has noted, walking along the High Line allows us to see the city in a new way.
As you walk around your city, use all your senses to perceive it afresh. Then, as each of us walks, observes, and experiences in our own particular contexts, we can together cultivate the practice of innovative and adaptive ministry in the city, for the flourishing of our urban world.
Editor’s note: This reflection was written as part of the Practices of Ministry in the City Project at City Seminary of New York. Funded with a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., the project is gathering stories, strategies, emerging questions, case studies and theological reflections from local, national and global urban ministry practitioners and theologians in order to better understand the practice of ministry in our present urban world.Read more »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
New Life through Shared Ministry by Judith UrbanIn New Life through Shared Ministry, Judith Urban creates a pathway for building a shared ministry system. She assists readers in transforming their congregation into one where members are invited into volunteer ministry; people are matched according to their gifts and interests with ministry opportunities; volunteers are offered support, training, and appreciation; and all grow to spiritual maturity through that ministry.
This comprehensive guide is based on Urban's consulting, training, and planning with shared ministry directors and teams the past 12 years, her experience building a shared ministry system in a congregation, and her own studies in the field of volunteer management. Urban observes that shared ministry is a way of being church together that creates a distinctive congregational culture. It encompasses the many ways members of a congregation serve their faith community and the wider community. It is based on the concept that all are called to participate in the work of the church bringing the good news of God s saving grace to the world. It is also a system of interrelated parts that work together to bring the concept into reality. Congregations that grow a shared ministry culture are able to facilitate the unique work God gives each member and the community as a whole, creating a system that supports the people of God as they carry out excellent, effective ministry.
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