Three teams to lead your stewardship ministryIF YOU ARE TRYING TO BREATHE NEW LIFE INTO FAMILIAR WORK, TRY CHANGING THE STRUCTURE
Marcia Shetler: 3 Teams to Lead Your Stewardship Ministry
Posted by Nathan Kirkpatrick
“A threefold cord is not quickly broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4:12, NRSV)
Is finding leaders for your congregational stewardship ministry more of a chore than a joy? Is lack of leadership limiting your stewardship ministry to your annual funding appeal? Perhaps it’s time to take a fresh look at your stewardship ministry team structure. Bruce Barkhauer of the Center for Faith and Giving for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) suggests that congregations have three teams for stewardship ministry leadership: the Finance Team, the Stewardship Team, and the Legacy Gifts Team.
The Stewardship Team
The Stewardship Team’s responsibilities focus on Christian stewardship as discipleship, giving as an essential part of our life as Christian stewards, and connecting generosity with the church’s mission and ministry. Activities for the Stewardship Team include educating the church on the many facets of stewardship, overseeing the annual stewardship campaign, and regularly communicating about how the congregation’s generosity is supporting its mission and ministry. Creative, visionary, and spiritual persons who are good communicators have important gifts for this team.
The Legacy Gifts Team
Legacy gifts are a unique type of generosity, and persons should have the necessary knowledge, discernment, and trust of the congregation to be members of the Legacy Gifts Team. This team needs to make sure the required policies and relationships with the appropriate supporting financial institutions exist to receive legacy gifts. This team invites legacy gifts, celebrates the gifts and the givers, and upholds donor intent.
The Finance Team
The Finance Team is the manager of the gifts received and how they support the congregation’s mission and ministry, including monitoring income and expenses and generating financial reports. They also should take responsibility for thanking the givers. Persons with accounting and business experience are often good fits for this team. Other important characteristics are the abilities to analyze trends, understand and interpret the church’s vision, and be realistic without being alarmist.
All Year ‘Round
While certain tasks for these teams may take place at certain times of the year, the overall responsibilities are ongoing. Each team should plan a year-long, or perhaps multiple-year, strategy to accomplish its goals. For example, the Legacy Team can develop a plan for inviting legacy gifts and regularly reviewing policies. The Finance Team can create processes for sharing reports, reviewing financial status, and acknowledging the generosity of congregational members. Along with overseeing the annual stewardship campaign, the Stewardship Team can develop educational and communications strategies that uplift the importance of faithful generosity all year long.
Don’t Function in Silos
While each team has specific tasks and responsibilities, they need to see themselves as complementary components of the congregation’s comprehensive stewardship ministry. Teams should regularly communicate with each other to develop shared understandings and to work effectively and efficiently to best serve the church.
Concepts are Key
If your congregation is small, (or maybe not so small!) the idea of maintaining three teams for stewardship ministry may seem overwhelming. Create a structure that fits your situation and encompasses all the responsibilities of the teams suggested. Providing opportunities for people to serve in a way that best matches their gifts, talents, and skills will be a win-win in the long run.
In addition to their task-related responsibilities, make sure your teams understand these key concepts for stewardship ministry:
claiming Christian stewardship is discipleship: how we live our lives in response to God’s bounteous grace;
naming giving as an essential part of our life as Christian stewards: meant to be practiced generously and joyfully;
celebrating God’s abundance as our opportunity to be channels through which God’s generosity can flow and God’s love can be shared.
So don’t wait! Begin building your stewardship ministry teams today, and you’ll be on your way to creating a more effective stewardship ministry that can help your congregation grow and thrive.
Standing at the intersection of faithful stewardship and generous giving, the Pathways to Generosity: Signs of Hope Conference April 3-5, 2018 offers participants the opportunity to explore their paths to faithful generosity, hear messages of hope, and create new paths of generosity in their ministry contexts. In-person and live streaming attendance options. Learn more at https://stewardshipresources.org/pathways
Marcia Shetler has been serving as executive director/CEO of the Ecumenical Stewardship Center since 2011. She formerly served as administrative staff in two middle judicatories of the Church of the Brethren, and most recently was director of communications and public relations for Bethany Theological Seminary in Richmond, Indiana, an administrative faculty position.
Read more from Marcia Shetler »
REGISTER NOW TO ATTEND
PATHWAYS TO GENEROSITY: SIGNS OF HOPE CONFERENCE
Pathways to Generosity: Signs of Hope Conference
April 3-5, 2018 | Dallas, TX
Register now to attend the 2018 Pathways to Generosity conference hosted by The Ecumenical Stewardship Center. During the conference, you will explore paths to faithful generosity with insights from experts in keynote sessions and workshops. You will see signs of hope through inspiring worship and stories in "Bright Spot" presentations, and you leave ready and able to create new paths of generosity in your church or organization.Keynote presentations will be delivered by The Revd. Dr. Katie Hays, pastor of Galileo Church, Fort Worth, Texas; The Rev. Dr. Eric H. F. Law, author of Holy Currencies: Six Blessings for Sustainable and Missional Ministries; Aimee Laramore, Philanthropic Strategist at Christian Theological Seminary; and The Rt. Rev. Pedro Suarez, Bishop, Florida-Bahamas Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. There will also be more than two dozen workshops about faithful generosity.
If you can't be in Dallas for the conference, you can participate online.
Learn more about the conference and register »
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: STEWARDSHIP
Congregations often plan and budget as though planning were one thing and budgeting another. But the budget is part of a congregation's plan for ministry. The budget must express the congregation's ministry priorities, writes a former Alban senior consultant. Some pundits see a silver lining in our recent economic troubles: Americans have finally kicked the habit of conspicuous consumption. I’ll believe it when I see it. Over the last couple of years, I have consulted with a number of congregations and other religious bodies that have had to cut back their consumption, and it’s not a pretty sight. Typically, the leaders rave and rage and drag their feet—spending down endowments, digging out defensive bunkers, hoping for a miracle. As long as possible, we humans try to make ourselves believe we are exempt from the arithmetic that says a deficit can be reduced in only two ways: by shrinking costs or growing revenue.
For perspective, it is worth remembering that the phrase “conspicuous consumption” was coined by the American economist Thorstein Veblen in 1899 to make sense of the excesses of the Gilded Age. Churches participated fully in those excesses when they could afford to, as anyone can see by touring the old fashionable section of most any city. Not long ago I toured a downtown church that sports two choral robing rooms—one for men and one for women—each with its own brushed-copper door.
The Great Depression changed behavior temporarily, but not attitudes. Of course, people spent less when they had less, and taught thrift as a virtue to their children. The Depression generation spent and borrowed its way gladly through the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson years. Churches and synagogues joined in, building utilitarian “plants” rather than ornate palaces, just as the public sector built useful interstate highways rather than the dazzling town halls of yore. The style of spending changed after World War II, but the scale of spending mostly grew.
From 1950 to 1970, real income per capita—the amount of stuff each person can buy—almost tripled, and spending tripled along with it. Congregations participated fully in those trends: per-member revenue—and spending—of denominational churches also tripled in those decades. Our national concept of the minimum a congregation needs to provide each member has grown with members’ concept of the minimum they are entitled to.
Since 1970, income growth has stalled, but until recently consumption kept increasing. We made the difference up by borrowing: consumer debt, mortgage debt, and—especially since 2001—federal debt. Reliable statistics about church debt are hard to come by, but who can doubt that congregations have participated in this trend also? Over the last forty years, churches became as comfortable with debt as families did, and with the same result. “If you build it, they will come” is a nice slogan, but not Scripture. Like families, churches can go into bankruptcy or foreclosure. Some have, already; others will, if they don’t tighten up their belts, and quickly.
The real silver lining, for congregations as well as for households, is that when you must make do with less, you are forced to figure out what really matters. Here is where an economic crisis may conceal an opportunity. When budgets grow, leaders find it easy to say yes to every good idea. When budgets shrink, they sometimes have to say no to good ideas—even cherished, praiseworthy, excellent, and long-established ones—in order to say yes to what is central to the congregation’s mission.
How can a congregation take advantage of this opportunity? Scarcity alone is not enough: during the Great Depression, the established, mainline churches declined rapidly. One factor, I suspect, is that they generally chose to preserve the externals—clergy, staff, and buildings—and, with too few exceptions, failed to focus on each congregation’s core, distinctive ministry. Even when the ministry itself was vibrant and mission driven, the budget process began—and too often ended—with the institutional externals.
Expressing Ministry Priorities
Congregations still too often plan and budget as though planning were one thing and budgeting another. But the budget is part of a congregation’s plan for ministry. Especially in times of scarcity, the budget must express the congregation’s ministry priorities. The first budget document should have no numbers in it—only words describing the top ministry priorities and goals as understood by the top lay and clergy leaders.
This will seem odd to many finance committee members, who are used to starting work on next year’s budget by opening a spreadsheet with last year’s budget and adjusting. This approach tends to foster an excessive focus on the “fixed costs” of utilities, salaries, and building maintenance, and to assume that maintaining customary services and staffing is the top priority. All of these considerations are important, but before the spreadsheet crew gets started, it needs instruction from the top leadership about the vision that should shape their work.
One way to start the budget process is by holding an annual planning retreat. Typically, this event includes the governing board and senior members of the staff. Ideally the group spends at least a day and a half off-site with a strict no-cell-phone rule. The agenda varies, but the subject matter always is discernment, vision, and strategy.
An essential work product from the retreat is what I call the annual vision of ministry, an answer to the question, “In what new and different ways will we transform lives in the next one to three years?” The vision of ministry is the congregation’s short list of priorities—the things it will accomplish in the coming year no matter what.
Making the Short List
Why a short list? Because when a list of priorities is long, they’re not priorities! The fact that something does not make the list does not mean that it won’t happen. While creating the vision, the board will bank a number of ideas for the future: pieces of a long-term vision to which the board is not prepared to make an ironclad commitment now. There is no way to do this without sometimes saying no to good ideas.
Some congregations decide that one item is the right length for a list of priorities. “This is the year for children.” “This year we will take a big step forward in service to our neighborhood.” “We will become known as a great synagogue for young adults.” Whether the list has one, two, or three items (no more, please!), it becomes a guide for budget-makers who must say yes to what fits the vision, no to what does not. At no time is this more helpful than when the pie threatens to shrink.
The exact process for creating the vision of ministry will change from year to year. In some years the ministry priorities may be so obvious that the board creates the vision quickly and uses the planning retreat for other purposes. Most of the time the vision of ministry emerges from a yearlong conversation, followed by deeper reflection and exchange during the retreat.
Keeping Some Questions Open
In addition to a vision of ministry, the planning retreat produces “open questions.” In discussing the congregation’s work and drawing out the hopes and worries of its leaders, retreat participants may find technical challenges surfacing that all but suggest their own solutions. If the boiler is broken, you fix it. Other challenges do not lend themselves to quick or even slow decision making. Perhaps your congregation needs to decide whether to abandon, renovate, or replace a building that has been the main symbol of its identity for 150 years. Or you may wonder how to serve a neighborhood whose residents are different from the people of your congregation. You may have a nagging sense, as Jonah did, that God is calling you to make radical changes, but the subject is too hot to push it to decision making. The board could make up its mind and announce a solution prematurely, but that seems likely to increase division rather than encourage movement toward a decision. With such challenges, the board can make a major contribution simply by stating the issue clearly as an open question—one it expects the congregation to address sometime in the future, but not now. For now, the next step is sustained, reflective, and inclusive conversation.
Translating Vision into Goals
After the retreat, everyone has work to do. The staff needs to translate the board’s vision of ministry into goals and objectives. In larger churches, the senior staff has goals of its own. Even a slogan like “We will integrate social outreach into everything we do” can be counter to the tendency of staff members to draw back into their departments. The staff’s goals take the board’s vision of ministry and move it to a more practical level. If the vision of ministry says “We will make room to welcome more people,” the staff might say, “After the first of the year, we will add a second session to our children’s Sunday school. By then we will be ready to double the number of parking-lot greeters skilled at hospitality to families with children.”
Individual staff members set goals next. Beginning each staff member’s goal-setting conversation with the board’s vision of ministry and goals set by senior staff helps put parochial concerns into the context of the wider mission. It is the job of every ministry team leader to set the stage for goal setting in this way. Then the team proceeds to set goals for itself and the staff member (in consultation with his or her team, supervisor, and colleagues) sets goals for himself or herself.
The budget itself may be assembled by a finance committee and presented to the board for approval. A better process, though, is to put responsibility for creating the budget in the same place as responsibility for achieving the vision of ministry: the staff. At the very least, the head of staff should be required to sign off on the budget, saying to the board, “I believe this budget is a reasonable plan to achieve our vision.” In many congregations the normal budget process sails right from the committees to the board without the clergy leader having to express an opinion. Under that procedure, it is a stretch to hold the head of staff accountable for much of anything.
With a budget created in this way, the annual fund drive can be based on the vision of ministry. Contributors are asked for amounts that, if most of them say “yes,” will make the vision possible. The board, clergy, and staff make it clear that the vision is not just something they hope to shoot for; it’s a goal they mean to reach. Year after year, people learn that when the congregation asks for gifts it means what it says. If the members give what is asked, the results promised—the vision of lives changed through ministry—will happen.
Money decisions in a congregation are never simply about money. To persuade decision makers to make hard budget cuts and donors to open their reduced pocketbooks, leaders need to connect decision making to a clear-eyed understanding of the congregation’s mission. That’s where the sense of urgency created by a global recession can actually create opportunities. Because we all need to make do with less, it can be easier to get leaders to focus on distinguishing the core mission from the external “nice, but peripheral” cost centers that naturally spring up when funds are plentiful.
In economic hard times, people need the church more than ever—to comfort them when they lose jobs or have to adjust their lifestyles or postpone retirement, to provide them with meaningful opportunities to serve those worse off than themselves, and to advocate for justice for the weak. In the process, we may gain new eyes to see the frills in our own institutional life, and to recommit ourselves to what is most essential.
_________________________
Questions for Reflection:
- What vision will you use to shape your budget process? How do you answer the question, “In what new and different ways will we transform lives in the next one to three years?”
- How might your congregation express its vision in a simple slogan or statement?
- In what budget areas are your congregation’s expenses unusually high compared with others of your size? (For reference, see the “Snapshot of Congregational Finance” at /conversation.aspx?id=3150.
- What’s on your short list of priorities?
- What concerns might best be left as “open questions,” as described in the article?
- What must your congregation manage to afford, no matter what?
Read more from Dan Hotchkiss »
There is one asset that nearly all churches possess-land. Placing buildings on church land does not have to be the land's sole function. Land can also be used advantageously to fund ministry, writes the former executive pastor of Marble Collegiate Church (New York, NY).
The American church is dependent on the generosity of its members, as opposed to some churches that benefit from state-supported taxation.
We are increasingly daunted by challenges in teaching, inspiring and receiving that generosity. While I strongly believe that stewardship should be preached from the standpoint of abundance and not scarcity, the needs of congregations today outpace the will of people to give, especially given the generational differences between “the great generation” and baby boomers and then between baby boomers and millennials.
Churches need money for ministry. We typically generate income from contributions and offerings, program fees and revenue, issuance of debt (yes, it is a source of funds…albeit one that must eventually be returned) and investment income. Fortunately, many churches are investigating and establishing endowments that foster planned gifts from donor assets as opposed to annual gifts from donor income.
But are there other models available – ones that can fund ministry and operate with integrity, but not displace the priority of free-will giving? I believe so.
There is one asset that nearly all churches possess—land. Placing buildings on church land does not have to be the land’s sole function. Land can also be used advantageously to fund ministry.
The Collegiate Churches of New York City, which include the congregation I presently serve (Marble Collegiate), have embarked on a joint project with a recognized developer in New York City. We plan to construct a mixed use facility of some sixty stories that will encompass both needed sacred space for our ministries and residential condominiums for the public at market prices.
Working with a developer enables the church to obtain first-rate connections in navigating the vast legal requirements of the city, while also securing advantageous financing for the project. What did the church bring to the relationship? Land. Valuable land that sits in proximity to Fifth Avenue and the Empire State Building. We will split the profits 50%-50%, and after all expenses, that will more than secure a healthy return for our own endowment.
We’re not alone in this. I am aware of other churches utilizing the same concept with joint ventures. In Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, Sharon United Methodist Church, in the Southpark region, is embarking on a similar mix use approach that will gain the congregation a brand new facility.
Context determines some possibilities, of course. In urban areas, congregations can use land for mixed use projects jointly occupied with other tenants or owners. Additionally, some simply use their land as the investment in the project with no plan to occupy, producing new tenant buildings, commercial spaces and retail ventures. In rural areas, land can be used in leasing opportunities for timbering, oil and natural gas extrapolation, tenant farming or other uses.
Tips for Developing Successful Land-Use Strategy
Before embarking on such an undertaking, keep these strategies and recommendations in play:
Dr. R. Mark King is the executive minister at Marble Collegiate Church in New York, NY.
Read more from R. Mark King »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
R. Mark King: Using an Oft-Neglected Asset to Fund Ministry
The American church is dependent on the generosity of its members, as opposed to some churches that benefit from state-supported taxation.
We are increasingly daunted by challenges in teaching, inspiring and receiving that generosity. While I strongly believe that stewardship should be preached from the standpoint of abundance and not scarcity, the needs of congregations today outpace the will of people to give, especially given the generational differences between “the great generation” and baby boomers and then between baby boomers and millennials.
Churches need money for ministry. We typically generate income from contributions and offerings, program fees and revenue, issuance of debt (yes, it is a source of funds…albeit one that must eventually be returned) and investment income. Fortunately, many churches are investigating and establishing endowments that foster planned gifts from donor assets as opposed to annual gifts from donor income.
But are there other models available – ones that can fund ministry and operate with integrity, but not displace the priority of free-will giving? I believe so.
There is one asset that nearly all churches possess—land. Placing buildings on church land does not have to be the land’s sole function. Land can also be used advantageously to fund ministry.
The Collegiate Churches of New York City, which include the congregation I presently serve (Marble Collegiate), have embarked on a joint project with a recognized developer in New York City. We plan to construct a mixed use facility of some sixty stories that will encompass both needed sacred space for our ministries and residential condominiums for the public at market prices.
Working with a developer enables the church to obtain first-rate connections in navigating the vast legal requirements of the city, while also securing advantageous financing for the project. What did the church bring to the relationship? Land. Valuable land that sits in proximity to Fifth Avenue and the Empire State Building. We will split the profits 50%-50%, and after all expenses, that will more than secure a healthy return for our own endowment.
We’re not alone in this. I am aware of other churches utilizing the same concept with joint ventures. In Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, Sharon United Methodist Church, in the Southpark region, is embarking on a similar mix use approach that will gain the congregation a brand new facility.
Context determines some possibilities, of course. In urban areas, congregations can use land for mixed use projects jointly occupied with other tenants or owners. Additionally, some simply use their land as the investment in the project with no plan to occupy, producing new tenant buildings, commercial spaces and retail ventures. In rural areas, land can be used in leasing opportunities for timbering, oil and natural gas extrapolation, tenant farming or other uses.
Tips for Developing Successful Land-Use Strategy
Before embarking on such an undertaking, keep these strategies and recommendations in play:
- Make sure your leadership (and as much as possible, your congregation) is on board with the venture. It will call for many diverse ways of thinking and acting over the life span of the project. Once a contract is executed, there is no reversal. Just because you are a church does not mean that even the best of business partners will allow you to back out. They can and will use any means necessary, including the courts, to enforce the agreement.
- Seek out professional consulting or support before even attempting to explore a possible land use swap or investment. Consultants such as real estate or capital developers, legal counsel, professional property management and banking/financial companies are a few desirable resources.
- If a project seems possible, do not “step over dollars to save dimes.” You will need to be prepared to spend some funds on legal and professional counsel to measure the project for economic feasibility as well as legal stipulations. You will need to enter the project with a very well-defined partnership agreement.
- Finally, it takes time. It will take tremendous time. You will need a project manager to work on your behalf and solely on your behalf. But such expenses can be drawn from the financing you arrange. Be patient, knowing that you are in this for the long haul and be as flexible as necessary.
Dr. R. Mark King is the executive minister at Marble Collegiate Church in New York, NY.
Read more from R. Mark King »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Preaching and Stewardship: Proclaiming God's Invitation to Growby Craig A. Satterlee Both new and veteran preachers alike find the annual stewardship sermon a challenge and are eager for encouraging, practical advice. In Preaching and Stewardship, Craig Satterlee offers a nuts-and-bolts handbook on preaching stewardship, raising issues preachers need to consider when preparing stewardship sermons and offering advice on how to address them. Satterlee argues that stewardship preaching must include a bold and concrete proclamation of God's love, will, and justice, as well as an invitation to grow as stewards in response to this proclamation. He focuses each chapter on a question preachers ought to ask themselves as they prepare the stewardship sermon, beginning with, 'What do you mean by stewardship?' and 'Why should we give to the church?' In chapters 3 through 6, he explores what the Bible says about stewardship. In chapter 7, he names some of the assumptions both preachers and worshipers bring to the stewardship sermon. The final chapter a variety of ways congregations can support the stewardship sermon. Satterlee illustrates the premise of each chapter with anecdotes from congregational life. Preachers who desire examples of stewardship sermons will especially appreciate stewardship sermons he shares from various preachers to illustrate points in the main text.
Learn more and order the book »
Alban Weekly - PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS "Liturgy in the valley of the shadow of death" Alban at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina United States
Faith & Leadership
Liturgy in the valley of the shadow of death
A PASTOR AND HER CONGREGATION LET LITURGY LEAD THEM AFTER THE DEATH OF A PREVIOUS PASTOR
CONGREGATIONS, WORSHIP, CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP, PASTORAL LEADERSHIP
Ashley Goff: Liturgy in the valley of the shadow of death
A PASTOR AND HER CONGREGATION LET LITURGY LEAD THEM AFTER THE DEATH OF A PREVIOUS PASTOR
CONGREGATIONS, WORSHIP, CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP, PASTORAL LEADERSHIP
Ashley Goff: Liturgy in the valley of the shadow of death
Members of Church of the Pilgrims pray over a blanket for a former pastor, shortly after he was diagnosed with cancer. Photo courtesy of Ashley Goff
Beset by grief at the imminent death of a beloved former pastor, a minister and her congregation let liturgy lead them amid death and dying.
“Can you call me? I have some difficult news to share.”
It was a voicemail last March from my friend and former colleague Jeff Krehbiel. For 16 years, we had worked together at Church of the Pilgrims (PCUSA) in Washington, D.C. Only a few weeks earlier, he had left for a beautiful new job in Chicago.
When I called Jeff back, his words punched me in the gut:
“I’ve been diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer. It’s spread to my liver.”
My head felt hot.
We talked for a few minutes about his tender spirit and how that would help him in the days to come. I adamantly assured Jeff that Pilgrims, though far away, would be with him as he faced his life-threatening illness.
But the truth was, once I hung up, I had no idea what to say or do. How exactly would Pilgrims be with Jeff in his dying? How would I lead? More urgently, what would I possibly say to the people who had known and loved him for so many years?
For 16 years, Jeff and I created liturgy together with the feisty folks at Pilgrims. In our liturgical work, we learned to tell biblical stories by heart. We created beautiful,boundary-pushing liturgies, rooted in biblical texts and our Reformed tradition.
“Can you call me? I have some difficult news to share.”
It was a voicemail last March from my friend and former colleague Jeff Krehbiel. For 16 years, we had worked together at Church of the Pilgrims (PCUSA) in Washington, D.C. Only a few weeks earlier, he had left for a beautiful new job in Chicago.
When I called Jeff back, his words punched me in the gut:
“I’ve been diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer. It’s spread to my liver.”
My head felt hot.
We talked for a few minutes about his tender spirit and how that would help him in the days to come. I adamantly assured Jeff that Pilgrims, though far away, would be with him as he faced his life-threatening illness.
But the truth was, once I hung up, I had no idea what to say or do. How exactly would Pilgrims be with Jeff in his dying? How would I lead? More urgently, what would I possibly say to the people who had known and loved him for so many years?
For 16 years, Jeff and I created liturgy together with the feisty folks at Pilgrims. In our liturgical work, we learned to tell biblical stories by heart. We created beautiful,boundary-pushing liturgies, rooted in biblical texts and our Reformed tradition.
On Jan. 29, 2017, Ashley Goff and Jeffrey K. Krehbiel preside at communion during Krehbiel's final service at Pilgrims before moving to Chicago. Photos by Mike Morones.Over the coming weeks, as all of us at Pilgrims wrestled with our grief, I let liturgy lead me and ultimately the congregation through truth telling amid death and dying.
Let me share with you how this worked and what we created liturgically in D.C. as Jeff was dying 700 miles away in Chicago.
MARCH 26, 2017, FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT, FIRST SUNDAY AFTER JEFF’S DIAGNOSIS
The lectionary gave us the story from the Gospel of John about the man who had been born blind.(link is external) I preached that Jesus affirmed the man’s belovedness with mud, water and a holy welcome. The crowd and the man’s parents, on the other hand, kept their distance.
Jeff, in a sacred act of hospitality, had welcomed us into his dying, I told the congregation. We would let Jeff’s transition to death mark us so we could birth God’s holy love at a time of dying.
That Sunday, we used our Lenten prayer stations as a way to respond to people living in their own uncertain and tender places -- refugees, those working to care for the planet and others.
As part of our communion prayers, we blessed a fleece blanket for Jeff, stretching it out and holding it within our prayer circles as people tearfully prayed for him. Ten-year-old Jamie Ernesto prayed for Jeff’s happiness, and when our prayers shifted to the suffering in the world, he prayed for the people suffering in Syria.
APRIL 9, 2017, PALM SUNDAY
As we have done for several years, Pilgrims started off our Palm Sunday liturgy with a New Orleans-style jazz funeral procession around our block, with members carrying eco-palms, decorated umbrellas, drums and cardboard signs proclaiming justice.
We had already sent Jeff’s purple blanket to Chicago, where he received it gratefully. Now we had three more blankets: one for Cheryl, Jeff’s spouse, and for each of his two daughters, Andrea and Kelsey. They, too, needed to be wrapped in Pilgrims’ love.
The three blankets became our cloaks as we carried them with us in our procession. During our communion liturgy, we placed the blankets at the foot of our 8-foot wooden cross, its base now covered with palms.
WEEK OF APRIL 17-21, CHICAGO
The week after Easter, I flew to Chicago to spend time with Jeff and his family.
On my third and final day with Jeff, the two of us went up to the 40th floor of his apartment building overlooking Lake Michigan and planned our final liturgy together -- his memorial service.
I took notes on my phone as we talked: “Let’s sing ‘Marching in the Light of God.’ Yes, let’s have communion and the story of the feeding of the 5,000.”
Later that morning, as we sat in the living room with Cheryl and Jeff’s sister, Sue, I realized that the time to say goodbye was fast approaching. Again, I fell back on liturgy.
First, we washed each other’s hands and shared communion. Then, I asked Jeff to tell the foot washing story. Despite his weakened condition, he sat up straight in his chair and told it by heart. In that moment, I recognized Jeff’s embodied gift to Pilgrims: storytelling.
We shared the bread, a baguette from lunch, and the cup, a Naked-brand berry drink that Jeff was having to boost his energy.
I took my Chicago story back to Pilgrims, and the following Sunday, April 23, I shared what I had experienced and witnessed.
APRIL 26, 2017, HEALING SERVICE
A few days later, on Wednesday, we had a healing service at Pilgrims.
We told the foot washing story and washed each other’s hands. We shared communion. We set up prayer stations throughout the sanctuary where people could sing, process and be together.
The next day, April 27, Jeff died.
MAY 6, 2017, CELEBRATION OF LIFE AND RESURRECTION
Nine days later, Jeff’s family and friends gathered for a service of life and resurrection. Because Pilgrims could not accommodate the anticipated crowd of more than 500, the service was held two miles away in the much larger sanctuary of D.C.’s New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. There, we sang “Marching in the Light of God,” shared communion and listened to Kelsey recount the feeding of the 5,000, carrying on her dad’s gift of storytelling.
MAY 7, 11 A.M. WORSHIP
The next day at Pilgrims, we honored Jeff’s life by weaving his spirit through our Sunday worship. We had flowers in the sanctuary from More Light Presbyterians, an organization working for the full participation of LGBTQ people within the PCUSA. We chanted Psalm 23,(link is external) heard Acts 2:42-47(link is external) and its description of the radical acts of sharing in the early church and sang “Here Comes the Sun” with a new appreciation.
We laid hands on Jeff’s siblings and his mom after they announced that they would be giving a handmade communion set to Pilgrims in his memory.
We shared communion together, all of us clumped around the table. At one point, a basket of bread got separated from the cup that was supposed to be accompanying it.
As Cheryl stood in the circle with a piece of bread and no cup in which to dip it, she looked right at me and smiled.
“Maybe we should get some of that Naked berry drink,” she said.
After communion, with drumming and our Pilgrims kids leading the way, we processed out to Pilgrims’ urban garden. Gathered together, we heard words from Cheryl, sang “What Does the Lord Require of Us” and watched Andrea “water” our garden with her dad’s ashes.
Coffee hour that day was in the garden. In honor of Jeff, we also offered wine and scotch, including the “peaty single malt” he favored so much it was mentioned in his obituary.(link is external)
Long before Jeff died, Pilgrims had become rooted in the “work of the people,” thanks in large part to his efforts. As we had learned over the years after other deaths -- and again after Jeff's -- liturgy had prepared us to trust that nothing in life and death can separate us from the buoyancy of God’s love.
Read more from Ashley Goff »
Charitable organizations are invited to submit proposals for up to $1 million that may be used for up to a five-year period to develop new or strengthen existing programs that help pastors build relationships with other clergy who can serve as role models and exemplars and guide them through key leadership challenges at critical moments in their ministerial careers.
While the Endowment is interested in supporting a variety of approaches, it is especially interested in supporting efforts that: 1) attend to key professional transitions in a pastor's career and/or 2) focus on challenges posed by particular ministry contexts and settings.
Thriving in Ministry Initiative 2018
Request for Proposals
Lilly Endowment is pleased to announce Thriving in Ministry Initiative 2018. Through this endeavor, the Endowment seeks to support charitable organizations (especially organizations committed to supporting pastoral leaders in congregations) located in the United States in developing new or strengthening existing programs that help pastors build relationships with experienced clergy who can serve as role models and exemplars and guide them through key leadership challenges at critical moments in their ministerial careers. The primary aim is to help pastors thrive in congregational leadership and thus enhance the vitality of the congregations they serve.
Charitable organizations may submit proposals for up to $1 million that may be used for up to a five-year period to plan and implement programs. While the Endowment is interested in supporting a variety of approaches, it is especially interested in supporting efforts that: 1) attend to key professional transitions in a pastor’s career and/or 2) focus on challenges posed by particular ministry contexts and settings.
In this open and competitive grants initiative, the Endowment anticipates awarding approximately 30 grants to charitable organizations that submit exceptionally promising proposals that advance the aim of the initiative and demonstrate the capacity of the organization to design, implement and sustain a high-quality program.
Instructions
Please complete and submit an Interest Form to indicate the organization’s intent to submit a proposal. Interest Forms must be postmarked by April 6, 2018.
The links below provide complete instructions for preparing and submitting grant applications.
Proposals must be postmarked by June 1, 2018.
Links to Documents
The links below provide complete instructions for preparing and submitting grant applications.
Interest Form
This form indicates the organization’s intent to submit a proposal and names a key contact involved in this effort. Its primary purpose is to assist the Endowment in gauging interest in this initiative and in preparing for the review of completed proposals. Interest Forms are due by April 6, 2018 (postmarked).
Request for Proposals
This document provides guidelines for submitting full proposals to develop programs for this initiative. Proposals are due June 1, 2018 (postmarked).
Guide to Budget Preparation
This document is intended to assist organizations in preparing program budgets. Program budgets include two parts: 1) a detailed line-item budget and 2) a budget narrative that explains how you have calculated specific line items.
Lilly Endowment Forms
This document provides required forms that must be completed and submitted with grant applications. These forms include: 1) Proposal Summary Information Form and 2) Exempt Status and Foundation Information Status Form.
Deadlines
Interest Forms Postmarked by April 6, 2018
Proposals Postmarked by June 1, 2018
Questions
If questions arise as you develop the proposal, please email: thrivinginministry@lei.org.
Please send your completed proposal to:
Jessicah Krey Duckworth
Program Director, Religion
Lilly Endowment Inc.
2801 North Meridian Street
Post Office Box 88068
Indianapolis, Indiana 46208-0068, United States
A NEW OPPORTUNITY FROM LILLY ENDOWMENT INC.
Lilly Endowment is pleased to announce its Thriving in Ministry Initiative 2018, a competitive grant program open to any charitable organization committed to the support of pastoral leaders in congregations and located in the United States. Charitable organizations are invited to submit proposals for up to $1 million that may be used for up to a five-year period to develop new or strengthen existing programs that help pastors build relationships with other clergy who can serve as role models and exemplars and guide them through key leadership challenges at critical moments in their ministerial careers.
While the Endowment is interested in supporting a variety of approaches, it is especially interested in supporting efforts that: 1) attend to key professional transitions in a pastor's career and/or 2) focus on challenges posed by particular ministry contexts and settings.
Request for Proposals
Lilly Endowment is pleased to announce Thriving in Ministry Initiative 2018. Through this endeavor, the Endowment seeks to support charitable organizations (especially organizations committed to supporting pastoral leaders in congregations) located in the United States in developing new or strengthening existing programs that help pastors build relationships with experienced clergy who can serve as role models and exemplars and guide them through key leadership challenges at critical moments in their ministerial careers. The primary aim is to help pastors thrive in congregational leadership and thus enhance the vitality of the congregations they serve.
Charitable organizations may submit proposals for up to $1 million that may be used for up to a five-year period to plan and implement programs. While the Endowment is interested in supporting a variety of approaches, it is especially interested in supporting efforts that: 1) attend to key professional transitions in a pastor’s career and/or 2) focus on challenges posed by particular ministry contexts and settings.
In this open and competitive grants initiative, the Endowment anticipates awarding approximately 30 grants to charitable organizations that submit exceptionally promising proposals that advance the aim of the initiative and demonstrate the capacity of the organization to design, implement and sustain a high-quality program.
Instructions
Please complete and submit an Interest Form to indicate the organization’s intent to submit a proposal. Interest Forms must be postmarked by April 6, 2018.
The links below provide complete instructions for preparing and submitting grant applications.
Proposals must be postmarked by June 1, 2018.
Links to Documents
The links below provide complete instructions for preparing and submitting grant applications.
Interest Form
This form indicates the organization’s intent to submit a proposal and names a key contact involved in this effort. Its primary purpose is to assist the Endowment in gauging interest in this initiative and in preparing for the review of completed proposals. Interest Forms are due by April 6, 2018 (postmarked).
Request for Proposals
This document provides guidelines for submitting full proposals to develop programs for this initiative. Proposals are due June 1, 2018 (postmarked).
Guide to Budget Preparation
This document is intended to assist organizations in preparing program budgets. Program budgets include two parts: 1) a detailed line-item budget and 2) a budget narrative that explains how you have calculated specific line items.
Lilly Endowment Forms
This document provides required forms that must be completed and submitted with grant applications. These forms include: 1) Proposal Summary Information Form and 2) Exempt Status and Foundation Information Status Form.
Deadlines
Interest Forms Postmarked by April 6, 2018
Proposals Postmarked by June 1, 2018
Questions
If questions arise as you develop the proposal, please email: thrivinginministry@lei.org.
Please send your completed proposal to:
Jessicah Krey Duckworth
Program Director, Religion
Lilly Endowment Inc.
2801 North Meridian Street
Post Office Box 88068
Indianapolis, Indiana 46208-0068, United States
Read more about this initiative and find the request for proposals »
The Rev. Ashley Goff (left) and the Rev. Jeffrey K. Krehbiel invite congregants to the communion table. Photos by Mike Morones.
At Church of the Pilgrims, vulnerability is a virtue and worship is an innovative and deeply collaborative experience between clergy and congregants.
Editor’s note: Church of the Pilgrims in Washington, D.C., is one of four organizations recently honored with the Traditioned Innovation Award(link is external) from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity. The following is the second in an occasional series of articles about the award winners.
Update: The Rev. Jeffrey Krehbiel died on April 27, 2017.
Melissa Scaggs had attended Church of the Pilgrims in Washington, D.C., for about a year when the Rev. Ashley Goff, the church’s minister for spiritual formation, invited her to share a personal story during an upcoming Sunday service.
Scaggs, a Connecticut native, had begun to consider the Presbyterian church her home away from home, its congregation her extended family. But she was worried. What if the story she wanted to tell -- the story she needed to tell -- wasn’t appropriate? What if people were offended?
Uncertain what to do, Scaggs told Goff the story she’d told almost no one else.
“This is absolutely appropriate,” Goff assured her.
CHURCH OF THE PILGRIMS AMONG 2016 WINNERS(LINK IS EXTERNAL)
Leadership Education at Duke Divinity recognizes institutions that act creatively in the face of challenges while remaining faithful to their mission and convictions. Winners receive $10,000 to continue their work.
So on a Sunday morning in October 2012, Scaggs, then 24, walked to the center of the Pilgrims sanctuary, took a deep breath and shared how she’d been sexually assaulted when she was 14, how she’d struggled for years with depression, how even in recent years she’d wrestled with thoughts of suicide.
When she was done, she sat down in a pew next to Goff and rested her head on the minister’s shoulder. It was Goff’s first Sunday back at Pilgrims after losing her father to a sudden heart attack.
“When Melissa told her story, it was really intense, really deep,” Goff said. “And I was like, ‘Oh my God, someone just met me where I’m at, in that deep place.’ How many other people walk in here and need someone to meet them in that deep place?”
After the service, members greeted Scaggs and thanked her for telling her story. One approached Goff and told her that all the church’s many changes in recent years had been worth it.
What story are you most afraid to tell? How would your church respond?
“Someone told me, ‘For every decision and every penny that’s ever been spent on this place, it was all leading up to that point where Melissa could put her head on your shoulder,’” Goff said.
“I needed that moment, too,” Goff added. “She didn’t know that, but I did.”
Such moments typify Sundays at Church of the Pilgrims, where vulnerability is a virtue and worship is an innovative and deeply collaborative experience between clergy and congregants. Liturgy means “work of the people,” and at Pilgrims, the people truly share in the work of worship. They help plan each liturgical season and share the pulpit nearly every week, offering personal stories of pain and healing, celebration and reflection, awakening and transformation.
Church members shake hands and greet one another during the passing of the peace.
Over the past 17 years, Goff and longtime pastor the Rev. Jeffrey Krehbiel have worked hard to create what one member called “a culture of unconditional love and support,” an intimate space where people feel safe enough to journey regularly to that “deep place.”
Too often, Goff said, worship can be a passive, lonely affair. At Pilgrims, she said, it’s a community effort that inspires people to action. By helping the congregation push past discomfort and connect with God and each other, worship at Pilgrims prepares people to embody their faith outside the church, serving others.
“If we want to take this outside the walls, we have to practice that type of risk-taking in liturgy,” Goff said. “Ultimately, when we go out of here, we have to take serious risks: housing people who are unhoused, getting health care for those who don’t have it, creating safe spaces for the LGBT community.”
If worship stays the same, people will stay the same, Goff said: “But we can’t stay the same. If we want the world to change, liturgy has to change.”
Members enter the Church of the Pilgrims, a D.C. congregation long known for its commitment to inclusivity and social justice.
What about your church needs to change in order to help change the world?
Church of the Pilgrims, inside and out
A rainbow-colored flag declaring ALL ARE WELCOME is draped above the entrance to Church of the Pilgrims(link is external), and a 42-foot-long #BlackLivesMatter banner hangs from the bell tower, publicly affirming the church’s commitment to inclusivity and social justice.
Inside, the sanctuary is set up like a theater-in-the-round, the result of a 2005 renovation to promote community and intimacy. Above the communion table at the center of the room, a crown of lights hangs from the high ceiling, and four banners, each with a quatrefoil motif, lend an air of coziness to the otherwise cavernous space.
Billy Kluttz, director of music, leads the congregation in song during worship at The Church of the Pilgrims.
On a recent Sunday, early arrivals for worship affixed nametags to their shirts and sipped coffee in the pews, while Billy Kluttz, the director of music, helped the small choir warm up. As children entered, they scattered to prayer stations around the perimeter of the room. There, using magnets and sand trays, magnifying glasses and binoculars, crayons and books, they explored basic concepts of worship -- making connections, seeing things differently and telling stories.
Though the church’s original raised pulpit remains on the chancel, Krehbiel never uses it, preferring a simple wooden lectern on the same level as the communion table and pews.
“It’s a democratization of the space,” said Kluttz. “We’re figuring out what the priesthood of the believers looks like.”
A 10-minute drive from the White House, Church of the Pilgrims was founded in 1903 and its current building constructed in 1928 with donations from Presbyterian churches throughout the South. Back then, the church was considered the national church of Southern Presbyterians, but by the 1950s and ’60s, it was at the forefront of the civil rights movement, with the Rev. Randy Taylor(link is external) preaching equality and marching alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
By the time Krehbiel and Goff arrived -- he in August 2000, she 18 months earlier as the church’s director of Christian education -- the church’s heyday had long passed. Attendance was sparse, the building was run-down, funds were scarce, and morale was low after a rough parting with a previous pastor.
“Pilgrims was in a sad place,” Goff said. “Their sense of identity was gone. They didn’t know who they were, so worship felt of those things.”
When Krehbiel interviewed at Pilgrims, he could tell that members were proud of their past but anxious about the future.
“Our history didn’t save us,” one search committee member told him.
Not long after he became pastor, Krehbiel led a goal-setting session, asking members to identify their top priorities for the church and what changes would need to be addressed with the utmost caution and sensitivity.
“Changes in worship” topped both lists.
What are your church’s top priorities for change? Which would require the most sensitivity and caution?
The message?
“This is what we need to do, and this is the thing that makes us most nervous,” Krehbiel said.
For Krehbiel and Goff, the challenge was to help Pilgrims worship in a way that reflected who they actually were rather than who they thought they were supposed to be in the historic old space.
The congregation lays hands on Amanda Rocabado as she is ordained as an elder for education.
From passive to participatory“The big shift was from the passive to the participatory,” Krehbiel said. “How do we take worship from something we watch to something we do?”
That’s a question many congregations wrestle with, said the Rev. Susan A. Blain, the minister for faith formation and curator for worship and liturgical arts for the United Church of Christ. An authority on worship, Blain has helped Goff brainstorm about liturgical creativity and is familiar with the changes at Pilgrims. Having laity play a more active role in worship requires courage and commitment from clergy, who must yield some control in order to create a safe environment where the congregation is willing to share what’s happening in their lives, she said.
“You begin to move away from this passive notion that worship is something that’s received,” Blain said. “It’s not a pastor declaiming something up front. It’s a pastor in the middle of everybody, encouraging whatever the response is, whatever the spirit is.”
Amanda Rocabado hugs the Rev. Jeffrey K. Krehbiel after being ordained as an elder for education.
As at most churches, members at Pilgrims had always played some role in worship, primarily logistical, organizing communion or procuring candles. But if worship was going to be relevant and imbued with a sense of belonging, then congregants needed to have a stake in the content, Krehbiel said.
At first, he asked for volunteers to help plan worship each week. After a while, to broaden the group, he and Goff recruited a cross section of congregants to the planning workshops. Now, a different group plans each season of worship, generally following the lectionary calendar, about four to six weeks in advance.
Krehbiel and Goff provide each group with the liturgical texts, and then, with Kluttz, they host an evening of brainstorming, encouraging lay leaders to unpack patterns, themes and symbols that might guide worship.
They ask the group questions: What has stayed with you from the past season? What’s the relationship between the text and what’s happening in our lives, in our community and in the world? What is the mood of the text? What are you wondering about? How do we make this season come alive?
“We discovered that members of the congregation were sometimes more venturesome than we were,” Krehbiel said. “When you do it yourself, you’re taking on all the risk. Now, we’re all kind of sharing in the risk.”
Krehbiel and Goff are still the church’s spiritual leaders, but sharing the pulpit and the planning process with others has allowed everyone to experience worship on a deeper level, said member Diana Bruce.
Diana Bruce speaks from center of the sancturay during Sunday worship at Pilgrims, a church where members are invited to be open and vulnerable.
The ‘thin space’
“Ashley talks about the ‘thin space,’ when God is close,” Bruce said. “That happens here more than I’ve experienced in any other congregation. You’ve been invited to be so open and vulnerable that sometimes God is so close you can almost touch God.”
How and when does your community experience “thin” spaces? How can it make such moments more likely to happen?
That’s not to say the changes came easily or without fear. Stan Lou, a member since 1989, said some members grumbled when church leaders discussed renovating the sanctuary or altering long-standing traditions. A few people left, but the process was so inclusive that most embraced the changes.
Altering sacraments can be a sticky issue, Krehbiel said. Before he arrived, Pilgrims offered communion on the first Sunday of the month, distributed by elders to congregants as they sat in the pews. With maybe 65 worshippers scattered about a sanctuary built for 350, communion could be a solitary experience, Krehbiel said.
Eventually, at Krehbiel’s urging, the schedule became more flexible, with communion also being offered on Easter, World Communion Sunday and, some years, every Sunday during Lent. Perhaps more important, the church also changed how it did communion.
Now, communion is usually held around the table at the center of the sanctuary and is served not just by elders but also by other members and even children, in an effort to better reflect the community.
Beneath the fear of change, Goff said, is a deeper question: Will I still belong?
“And the answer is always yes,” she said. “In the spirit of the promise of the resurrection, something has to die for new life to come. That is what has happened here: constant resurrection of us, of liturgy, of how we are together. We worship as if we really trust God’s promise that as something is dying, something will come back to life.”
What might need to die within your church so that something else can come to life?
Krehbiel said one or two worshippers objected to walking up to a communion table, but getting up and moving about the sanctuary is now the custom at Pilgrims. Exchanging the peace might take 10 minutes as congregants shake hands and greet one another. Individual prayers of thanksgiving are shared aloud in a circle and affirmed by everyone in the room.
And with each season, new temporary prayer stations are often created where worshippers can reflect on themes such as healing and groundedness, impermanence and new beginnings. During Advent last year, the historic pulpit was decorated to look like a mountain, and worshippers could climb inside and write poetry.
Children take part in the worship service, while also working on activities at one of several prayer stations placed around the sanctuary.
No mistakes in improv and liturgy
Sundays at Pilgrims require a fair amount of improvisation as clergy and congregants share duties, and adults and children share worship space, Goff said. But fortunately, in both improv and liturgy, there are no mistakes.
“Do things go not as planned?” Goff said. “Yes. There are awkward moments, but it roots you. How do we react to each other when things don’t go as planned? Are we still kind? Loving? Do we have mercy for each other? When those moments happen, how has liturgy trained us to be loving people?”
As Pilgrims has grown into its new style of worship, some congregants have become “liturgical artists” who love experimenting with how the Word is delivered. Indeed, some of their suggestions resemble performance art.
Who are the liturgical artists in your congregation? How can they be best equipped to deliver the Word?
One year, during the church’s “Homecoming season” -- Sundays between September and November -- the planning group focused on the theme of food and faith, using visuals to illustrate dying and rising. Members were invited to toss scraps of fruits and vegetables for composting into a wheelbarrow just outside the sanctuary doors.
Inside, the baptismal font was filled with food that had begun to rot, and at the center of the sanctuary, the communion table was replaced with a large pile of compost topped by a pitcher, cup and bread. At a later service, the table returned, covered in newly harvested produce, symbolizing the resurrection and hopes for a restored planet.
World and national events can also shape worship. Last summer, after several high-profile shootings of black men by police officers, the church spent weeks exploring white privilege and the importance of “disrupting the center.”
Based on those discussions, they decided to break from their usual communion practice, in which members surround the table and pass the bread around the circle. Instead, members carried the bread across the circle, asking people on the other side whether they had been served. The change required people to pay attention and listen to each other, Goff said.
“What if that’s how we acted in the world every day?” she said. “‘What we’re asking people to do is mash up against each other. That’s what we’re asking them to do when they go outside. This is preparation for being in public space.”
One Sunday, to connect worship to service in the world, congregants spent part of the service making and delivering sandwiches to homeless people in nearby Dupont Circle or working in the church’s garden, which provides food for a Sunday communal meal for hungry neighbors.
“The stuff we do in worship wouldn’t make sense if we didn’t do the stuff outside of worship,” said Krehbiel. “You need a context that grounds your worship in what you’re doing in the world.”
Later this month, Krehbiel will begin taking that message and others to new congregations. After 17 years at Pilgrims, he’s starting work with The James Co.,(link is external) a church consulting firm, where he will help congregations with strategic planning and fundraising.
He’s leaving behind a much-changed church.
The Rev. Jeffrey K. Krehbiel thanks the congregation at the conclusion of his last service after 17 years at The Church of the Pilgrims.
Even after several years of the “new” worship, Stan Lou said he’s still amazed by how it connects to his own experience. The son of Chinese immigrants, Lou said that hearing people’s personal stories in worship has helped him come to terms with the racism he experienced growing up. Krehbiel and Goff always find a way to make Scripture relevant to 21st-century life, he said.
“It’s not just rehashing old Bible stories,” Lou said. “They’ve brought out the word of God as a living, dynamic word that still has relevance in our lives today. It’s always real here.”
Questions to consider:
Read more about Church of the Pilgrims »
Steven Kepnes’ terrific book “Jewish Liturgical Reasoning”(link is external) is not about leadership. It’s about the way that Jewish liturgy creates a specifically Jewish, post-critical form of reasoning in service to the world. But it has a short portion about the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning for the dead, and what it says about leadership.
This second-most famous prayer in Judaism (after the Shema) is based on Daniel 2:20 and its refrain, “Blessed be the name of God from age to age.” It’s a prayer offered in a sort of future passive tense, announcing that God’s name will be praised. There is very little in it that sounds obviously like a mourner’s prayer. It is more like a praiser’s prayer, except the praiser is barely present as well. It’s a prayer that is first and last about God.
And it is not offered alone. Jewish liturgy always requires a quorum of ten people, and this is never more appropriate than for the sake of one who mourns a death, for the “mourner should not be left alone but needs the support of the community.” And not support simply in a passive sense. “Instead, the mourner is thrust into the role of leading the Kaddish prayer.” The one who has just lost parent or spouse or child stands and addresses not only God but also the gathered community, offering them this blessing: “May He establish His Kingdom during your life and during your days.”
“By making the mourner the leader,” Kepnes writes, “the liturgy expresses the confidence in the spiritual resources of the mourner who now, at this low point of doubt, is still able to praise God.” The Kaddish is further an affirmation of faith in the goodness of creation, here in the face of death, to the point that it forges “a link across the abyss of death over to eternal life.” As the newest mourner prays, those praying along pray also in memory of those whom they have loved and lost. God remembers them. And the living offer them a good deed that the dead, being dead, cannot repay. The whole cluster of acts represents a reminder that “all of life for the Jew is a liturgical act.”
This is how to lead in the face of death. To stand and announce with a community of fellow praying people that God is King, that God will establish his reign over creation, that God’s name will be praised, and to ask that God would bring all this about soon.
What’s this have to do with how we lead our organizations? I honestly don’t know. Except that we’re all barreling toward death faster than we’d like to imagine. That our organizations, if they’re worthy of our work, are meant to establish a sort of hedge against death and its effort to creep into portions of life where it should not be. So we call on a great God, the only one who can push back this creeping tide, this one whose name will be praised-- if not by us then by the stones themselves. And perhaps that leadership is the sort of chutzpah to spit in death’s eye precisely when it looks to have won a not-insignificant victory.
Read more from Jason Byassee »
As early as the fifth century, the church proclaimed Lex orandi, lex credendi, the law of praying is the law of believing, or more commonly put, “as we pray, so we believe”. This means if you want to know what Christians believe, you study what we do and say in worship. And what we say and do in worship not only expresses what we believe, it also forms what we believe. And what we do.
Ideally, worship strikes a balance of awareness of both the immanent and the transcendent nature of God — that God is among us and forever beyond us. At its best, liturgy also forms our individual faith and forms us as a community of people, the church, for ministry in the world.
I wonder if, in a world that is increasingly polarized and detached from the moorings of faith and meaning, God might be calling the church to consider anew how we can more intentionally form faithful people through worship to be witnesses in the world, a witness not just to the teachings of faith, but to the way of faith, engaging with others and offering an alternative to the dominant self-serving, profit-seeking narrative of the world and culture, helping others to find meaning and goodness. If so, how we might adjust our week-in and week-out worshipping practices to that end? Before we get to the liturgical benediction, how might worship strengthen people to engage with others faithfully “out there”?
We can start by finding ways to engage with each other in worship.
See and hear each other.
Read more from Lisa Fischbeck »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: LITURGY, THE WORK OF THE PEOPLE
Faith & Leadership
D.C. church changes worship from passive to participatory
The Rev. Ashley Goff (left) and the Rev. Jeffrey K. Krehbiel invite congregants to the communion table. Photos by Mike Morones.At Church of the Pilgrims, vulnerability is a virtue and worship is an innovative and deeply collaborative experience between clergy and congregants.
Editor’s note: Church of the Pilgrims in Washington, D.C., is one of four organizations recently honored with the Traditioned Innovation Award(link is external) from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity. The following is the second in an occasional series of articles about the award winners.
Update: The Rev. Jeffrey Krehbiel died on April 27, 2017.
Melissa Scaggs had attended Church of the Pilgrims in Washington, D.C., for about a year when the Rev. Ashley Goff, the church’s minister for spiritual formation, invited her to share a personal story during an upcoming Sunday service.
Scaggs, a Connecticut native, had begun to consider the Presbyterian church her home away from home, its congregation her extended family. But she was worried. What if the story she wanted to tell -- the story she needed to tell -- wasn’t appropriate? What if people were offended?
Uncertain what to do, Scaggs told Goff the story she’d told almost no one else.
“This is absolutely appropriate,” Goff assured her.
CHURCH OF THE PILGRIMS AMONG 2016 WINNERS(LINK IS EXTERNAL)Leadership Education at Duke Divinity recognizes institutions that act creatively in the face of challenges while remaining faithful to their mission and convictions. Winners receive $10,000 to continue their work.
So on a Sunday morning in October 2012, Scaggs, then 24, walked to the center of the Pilgrims sanctuary, took a deep breath and shared how she’d been sexually assaulted when she was 14, how she’d struggled for years with depression, how even in recent years she’d wrestled with thoughts of suicide.
When she was done, she sat down in a pew next to Goff and rested her head on the minister’s shoulder. It was Goff’s first Sunday back at Pilgrims after losing her father to a sudden heart attack.
“When Melissa told her story, it was really intense, really deep,” Goff said. “And I was like, ‘Oh my God, someone just met me where I’m at, in that deep place.’ How many other people walk in here and need someone to meet them in that deep place?”
After the service, members greeted Scaggs and thanked her for telling her story. One approached Goff and told her that all the church’s many changes in recent years had been worth it.
What story are you most afraid to tell? How would your church respond?
“Someone told me, ‘For every decision and every penny that’s ever been spent on this place, it was all leading up to that point where Melissa could put her head on your shoulder,’” Goff said.
“I needed that moment, too,” Goff added. “She didn’t know that, but I did.”
Such moments typify Sundays at Church of the Pilgrims, where vulnerability is a virtue and worship is an innovative and deeply collaborative experience between clergy and congregants. Liturgy means “work of the people,” and at Pilgrims, the people truly share in the work of worship. They help plan each liturgical season and share the pulpit nearly every week, offering personal stories of pain and healing, celebration and reflection, awakening and transformation.
Church members shake hands and greet one another during the passing of the peace. Over the past 17 years, Goff and longtime pastor the Rev. Jeffrey Krehbiel have worked hard to create what one member called “a culture of unconditional love and support,” an intimate space where people feel safe enough to journey regularly to that “deep place.”
Too often, Goff said, worship can be a passive, lonely affair. At Pilgrims, she said, it’s a community effort that inspires people to action. By helping the congregation push past discomfort and connect with God and each other, worship at Pilgrims prepares people to embody their faith outside the church, serving others.
“If we want to take this outside the walls, we have to practice that type of risk-taking in liturgy,” Goff said. “Ultimately, when we go out of here, we have to take serious risks: housing people who are unhoused, getting health care for those who don’t have it, creating safe spaces for the LGBT community.”
If worship stays the same, people will stay the same, Goff said: “But we can’t stay the same. If we want the world to change, liturgy has to change.”
Members enter the Church of the Pilgrims, a D.C. congregation long known for its commitment to inclusivity and social justice. What about your church needs to change in order to help change the world?
Church of the Pilgrims, inside and out
A rainbow-colored flag declaring ALL ARE WELCOME is draped above the entrance to Church of the Pilgrims(link is external), and a 42-foot-long #BlackLivesMatter banner hangs from the bell tower, publicly affirming the church’s commitment to inclusivity and social justice.
Inside, the sanctuary is set up like a theater-in-the-round, the result of a 2005 renovation to promote community and intimacy. Above the communion table at the center of the room, a crown of lights hangs from the high ceiling, and four banners, each with a quatrefoil motif, lend an air of coziness to the otherwise cavernous space.
Billy Kluttz, director of music, leads the congregation in song during worship at The Church of the Pilgrims.On a recent Sunday, early arrivals for worship affixed nametags to their shirts and sipped coffee in the pews, while Billy Kluttz, the director of music, helped the small choir warm up. As children entered, they scattered to prayer stations around the perimeter of the room. There, using magnets and sand trays, magnifying glasses and binoculars, crayons and books, they explored basic concepts of worship -- making connections, seeing things differently and telling stories.
Though the church’s original raised pulpit remains on the chancel, Krehbiel never uses it, preferring a simple wooden lectern on the same level as the communion table and pews.
“It’s a democratization of the space,” said Kluttz. “We’re figuring out what the priesthood of the believers looks like.”
A 10-minute drive from the White House, Church of the Pilgrims was founded in 1903 and its current building constructed in 1928 with donations from Presbyterian churches throughout the South. Back then, the church was considered the national church of Southern Presbyterians, but by the 1950s and ’60s, it was at the forefront of the civil rights movement, with the Rev. Randy Taylor(link is external) preaching equality and marching alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
By the time Krehbiel and Goff arrived -- he in August 2000, she 18 months earlier as the church’s director of Christian education -- the church’s heyday had long passed. Attendance was sparse, the building was run-down, funds were scarce, and morale was low after a rough parting with a previous pastor.
“Pilgrims was in a sad place,” Goff said. “Their sense of identity was gone. They didn’t know who they were, so worship felt of those things.”
When Krehbiel interviewed at Pilgrims, he could tell that members were proud of their past but anxious about the future.
“Our history didn’t save us,” one search committee member told him.
Not long after he became pastor, Krehbiel led a goal-setting session, asking members to identify their top priorities for the church and what changes would need to be addressed with the utmost caution and sensitivity.
“Changes in worship” topped both lists.
What are your church’s top priorities for change? Which would require the most sensitivity and caution?
The message?
“This is what we need to do, and this is the thing that makes us most nervous,” Krehbiel said.
For Krehbiel and Goff, the challenge was to help Pilgrims worship in a way that reflected who they actually were rather than who they thought they were supposed to be in the historic old space.
The congregation lays hands on Amanda Rocabado as she is ordained as an elder for education. From passive to participatory“The big shift was from the passive to the participatory,” Krehbiel said. “How do we take worship from something we watch to something we do?”
That’s a question many congregations wrestle with, said the Rev. Susan A. Blain, the minister for faith formation and curator for worship and liturgical arts for the United Church of Christ. An authority on worship, Blain has helped Goff brainstorm about liturgical creativity and is familiar with the changes at Pilgrims. Having laity play a more active role in worship requires courage and commitment from clergy, who must yield some control in order to create a safe environment where the congregation is willing to share what’s happening in their lives, she said.
“You begin to move away from this passive notion that worship is something that’s received,” Blain said. “It’s not a pastor declaiming something up front. It’s a pastor in the middle of everybody, encouraging whatever the response is, whatever the spirit is.”
Amanda Rocabado hugs the Rev. Jeffrey K. Krehbiel after being ordained as an elder for education. As at most churches, members at Pilgrims had always played some role in worship, primarily logistical, organizing communion or procuring candles. But if worship was going to be relevant and imbued with a sense of belonging, then congregants needed to have a stake in the content, Krehbiel said.
At first, he asked for volunteers to help plan worship each week. After a while, to broaden the group, he and Goff recruited a cross section of congregants to the planning workshops. Now, a different group plans each season of worship, generally following the lectionary calendar, about four to six weeks in advance.
Krehbiel and Goff provide each group with the liturgical texts, and then, with Kluttz, they host an evening of brainstorming, encouraging lay leaders to unpack patterns, themes and symbols that might guide worship.
They ask the group questions: What has stayed with you from the past season? What’s the relationship between the text and what’s happening in our lives, in our community and in the world? What is the mood of the text? What are you wondering about? How do we make this season come alive?
“We discovered that members of the congregation were sometimes more venturesome than we were,” Krehbiel said. “When you do it yourself, you’re taking on all the risk. Now, we’re all kind of sharing in the risk.”
Krehbiel and Goff are still the church’s spiritual leaders, but sharing the pulpit and the planning process with others has allowed everyone to experience worship on a deeper level, said member Diana Bruce.
Diana Bruce speaks from center of the sancturay during Sunday worship at Pilgrims, a church where members are invited to be open and vulnerable. The ‘thin space’
“Ashley talks about the ‘thin space,’ when God is close,” Bruce said. “That happens here more than I’ve experienced in any other congregation. You’ve been invited to be so open and vulnerable that sometimes God is so close you can almost touch God.”
How and when does your community experience “thin” spaces? How can it make such moments more likely to happen?
That’s not to say the changes came easily or without fear. Stan Lou, a member since 1989, said some members grumbled when church leaders discussed renovating the sanctuary or altering long-standing traditions. A few people left, but the process was so inclusive that most embraced the changes.
Altering sacraments can be a sticky issue, Krehbiel said. Before he arrived, Pilgrims offered communion on the first Sunday of the month, distributed by elders to congregants as they sat in the pews. With maybe 65 worshippers scattered about a sanctuary built for 350, communion could be a solitary experience, Krehbiel said.
Eventually, at Krehbiel’s urging, the schedule became more flexible, with communion also being offered on Easter, World Communion Sunday and, some years, every Sunday during Lent. Perhaps more important, the church also changed how it did communion.
Now, communion is usually held around the table at the center of the sanctuary and is served not just by elders but also by other members and even children, in an effort to better reflect the community.
Beneath the fear of change, Goff said, is a deeper question: Will I still belong?
“And the answer is always yes,” she said. “In the spirit of the promise of the resurrection, something has to die for new life to come. That is what has happened here: constant resurrection of us, of liturgy, of how we are together. We worship as if we really trust God’s promise that as something is dying, something will come back to life.”
What might need to die within your church so that something else can come to life?
Krehbiel said one or two worshippers objected to walking up to a communion table, but getting up and moving about the sanctuary is now the custom at Pilgrims. Exchanging the peace might take 10 minutes as congregants shake hands and greet one another. Individual prayers of thanksgiving are shared aloud in a circle and affirmed by everyone in the room.
And with each season, new temporary prayer stations are often created where worshippers can reflect on themes such as healing and groundedness, impermanence and new beginnings. During Advent last year, the historic pulpit was decorated to look like a mountain, and worshippers could climb inside and write poetry.
Children take part in the worship service, while also working on activities at one of several prayer stations placed around the sanctuary. No mistakes in improv and liturgy
Sundays at Pilgrims require a fair amount of improvisation as clergy and congregants share duties, and adults and children share worship space, Goff said. But fortunately, in both improv and liturgy, there are no mistakes.
“Do things go not as planned?” Goff said. “Yes. There are awkward moments, but it roots you. How do we react to each other when things don’t go as planned? Are we still kind? Loving? Do we have mercy for each other? When those moments happen, how has liturgy trained us to be loving people?”
As Pilgrims has grown into its new style of worship, some congregants have become “liturgical artists” who love experimenting with how the Word is delivered. Indeed, some of their suggestions resemble performance art.
Who are the liturgical artists in your congregation? How can they be best equipped to deliver the Word?
One year, during the church’s “Homecoming season” -- Sundays between September and November -- the planning group focused on the theme of food and faith, using visuals to illustrate dying and rising. Members were invited to toss scraps of fruits and vegetables for composting into a wheelbarrow just outside the sanctuary doors.
Inside, the baptismal font was filled with food that had begun to rot, and at the center of the sanctuary, the communion table was replaced with a large pile of compost topped by a pitcher, cup and bread. At a later service, the table returned, covered in newly harvested produce, symbolizing the resurrection and hopes for a restored planet.
World and national events can also shape worship. Last summer, after several high-profile shootings of black men by police officers, the church spent weeks exploring white privilege and the importance of “disrupting the center.”
Based on those discussions, they decided to break from their usual communion practice, in which members surround the table and pass the bread around the circle. Instead, members carried the bread across the circle, asking people on the other side whether they had been served. The change required people to pay attention and listen to each other, Goff said.
“What if that’s how we acted in the world every day?” she said. “‘What we’re asking people to do is mash up against each other. That’s what we’re asking them to do when they go outside. This is preparation for being in public space.”
One Sunday, to connect worship to service in the world, congregants spent part of the service making and delivering sandwiches to homeless people in nearby Dupont Circle or working in the church’s garden, which provides food for a Sunday communal meal for hungry neighbors.
“The stuff we do in worship wouldn’t make sense if we didn’t do the stuff outside of worship,” said Krehbiel. “You need a context that grounds your worship in what you’re doing in the world.”
Later this month, Krehbiel will begin taking that message and others to new congregations. After 17 years at Pilgrims, he’s starting work with The James Co.,(link is external) a church consulting firm, where he will help congregations with strategic planning and fundraising.
He’s leaving behind a much-changed church.
The Rev. Jeffrey K. Krehbiel thanks the congregation at the conclusion of his last service after 17 years at The Church of the Pilgrims.Even after several years of the “new” worship, Stan Lou said he’s still amazed by how it connects to his own experience. The son of Chinese immigrants, Lou said that hearing people’s personal stories in worship has helped him come to terms with the racism he experienced growing up. Krehbiel and Goff always find a way to make Scripture relevant to 21st-century life, he said.
“It’s not just rehashing old Bible stories,” Lou said. “They’ve brought out the word of God as a living, dynamic word that still has relevance in our lives today. It’s always real here.”
Questions to consider:
- What story are you most afraid to tell? How would your church respond? How would you want them to respond?
- What about your church needs to change in order to help change the world?
- What are your church’s most-needed changes and which would require the most sensitivity and caution?
- How and when does your community experience “thin” spaces? What steps would make such moments more likely?
- What might need to die within your church so that something else will come to life? How willing is your church to take that risk?
- Who are the liturgical artists in your congregation? How can you best encourage and equip them to deliver the Word?
- What does your church do inside that prepares congregants to serve outside?
Faith & Leadership
Jason Byassee: The mourner as leader
Jewish liturgy shows us that the one who mourns should lead the rest of us in praising God.Steven Kepnes’ terrific book “Jewish Liturgical Reasoning”(link is external) is not about leadership. It’s about the way that Jewish liturgy creates a specifically Jewish, post-critical form of reasoning in service to the world. But it has a short portion about the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning for the dead, and what it says about leadership.
This second-most famous prayer in Judaism (after the Shema) is based on Daniel 2:20 and its refrain, “Blessed be the name of God from age to age.” It’s a prayer offered in a sort of future passive tense, announcing that God’s name will be praised. There is very little in it that sounds obviously like a mourner’s prayer. It is more like a praiser’s prayer, except the praiser is barely present as well. It’s a prayer that is first and last about God.
And it is not offered alone. Jewish liturgy always requires a quorum of ten people, and this is never more appropriate than for the sake of one who mourns a death, for the “mourner should not be left alone but needs the support of the community.” And not support simply in a passive sense. “Instead, the mourner is thrust into the role of leading the Kaddish prayer.” The one who has just lost parent or spouse or child stands and addresses not only God but also the gathered community, offering them this blessing: “May He establish His Kingdom during your life and during your days.”
“By making the mourner the leader,” Kepnes writes, “the liturgy expresses the confidence in the spiritual resources of the mourner who now, at this low point of doubt, is still able to praise God.” The Kaddish is further an affirmation of faith in the goodness of creation, here in the face of death, to the point that it forges “a link across the abyss of death over to eternal life.” As the newest mourner prays, those praying along pray also in memory of those whom they have loved and lost. God remembers them. And the living offer them a good deed that the dead, being dead, cannot repay. The whole cluster of acts represents a reminder that “all of life for the Jew is a liturgical act.”
This is how to lead in the face of death. To stand and announce with a community of fellow praying people that God is King, that God will establish his reign over creation, that God’s name will be praised, and to ask that God would bring all this about soon.
What’s this have to do with how we lead our organizations? I honestly don’t know. Except that we’re all barreling toward death faster than we’d like to imagine. That our organizations, if they’re worthy of our work, are meant to establish a sort of hedge against death and its effort to creep into portions of life where it should not be. So we call on a great God, the only one who can push back this creeping tide, this one whose name will be praised-- if not by us then by the stones themselves. And perhaps that leadership is the sort of chutzpah to spit in death’s eye precisely when it looks to have won a not-insignificant victory.
Read more from Jason Byassee »
Lisa G. Fischbeck: Formed by worship to be in the world
Could it be that, in a world that is increasingly polarized and detached from the moorings of faith and meaning, God might be calling the church to consider anew how we can more intentionally form faithful people through worship?As early as the fifth century, the church proclaimed Lex orandi, lex credendi, the law of praying is the law of believing, or more commonly put, “as we pray, so we believe”. This means if you want to know what Christians believe, you study what we do and say in worship. And what we say and do in worship not only expresses what we believe, it also forms what we believe. And what we do.
Ideally, worship strikes a balance of awareness of both the immanent and the transcendent nature of God — that God is among us and forever beyond us. At its best, liturgy also forms our individual faith and forms us as a community of people, the church, for ministry in the world.
I wonder if, in a world that is increasingly polarized and detached from the moorings of faith and meaning, God might be calling the church to consider anew how we can more intentionally form faithful people through worship to be witnesses in the world, a witness not just to the teachings of faith, but to the way of faith, engaging with others and offering an alternative to the dominant self-serving, profit-seeking narrative of the world and culture, helping others to find meaning and goodness. If so, how we might adjust our week-in and week-out worshipping practices to that end? Before we get to the liturgical benediction, how might worship strengthen people to engage with others faithfully “out there”?
We can start by finding ways to engage with each other in worship.
See and hear each other.
- Anything we can do in worship to break free of the idea that we are there as individuals to get our own needs met and to worship God for our own sakes, will help us to be attentive and engaging in the space outside of church. Pews facing forward can inhibit this move, but turning to face one another in occasions in worship can break things open. To have some form of an exchange of the peace is a good start, as is extending a welcome at the beginning of worship. The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, regularly encourages people to turn to one another at the start of the service and say, “I’m glad you are here.” or “I’m glad to see you.” It’s corny perhaps and uncomfortable even, but it’s formative. Whatever we practice in church we can more readily do in the world.
- Processions provide another opportunity to see others and be pulled from our personal-needs-based worship. Too often limited to the clergy and the choir and to the beginning of worship, processions often serve as a means of getting worship leaders into the room and calling the attention of the worshippers to the front of the worship space. Thus, processions are vastly underutilized in the church. For churches that have a processional cross, what if it, as a point of focus and a symbol of Christ coming among us, encircled the congregation? Or what if the procession could wind its way among and through the people, just as God moves among and through us all the time, sometimes inconveniently, sometimes causing us to adjust our posture? What if this happened, not just at the start, but after the reading of the Gospel, too? What if we add a procession at the offering, as many of the churches in Africa, and their descendants, do, acknowledging that we give ourselves to God, as well as whatever we might otherwise passively drop in the basket as it goes by? What if we, on occasion, processed the whole congregation out of the church into the world, even if the world looks much like our own parking lot?
- Hearing others can make also us more attentive to God and the other. Singing a cappella invites us to hear God in the voices of those around us. Allowing for prayers from the congregation does too. Is it just a coincidence that Quakers, who speak so that others may hear, and Mennonites who sing in such a way as to be attentive to each other’s voices, are also among the most consistent moral voices for the common good in our society?
- Pray for the laity in their life and work in the world. Pray so they can hear it. Consider commissioning lay ministers, not just as Sunday School teachers and church board members, but as caregivers in the world, as people who work in business or government, or law, or the arts. Let the congregation say to them: “We commission you to this work and pledge to you our prayers, encouragement, and support. May the Holy Spirit guide and strengthen you, that in this and in all things, you may do God’s will in the service of Jesus Christ.”
- Find opportunities to worship in the public square.
- Take the liturgy to town. Be on the lookout for occasions to gather in prayer in public spaces, and to invite others to join. Any time we worship in a public rather than within the walls of a church building, our awareness of our identity as Christians and people of the Way, is heightened. Two Holy Week services are especially suited to public worship — Palm Sunday, in which we are invited to re-enact Jesus’ triumphal entry in Jerusalem, and Good Friday, in which we are invited to re-enact Jesus’ way to the Cross. Prayers in response to a natural or societal disaster can also be shared in public. While we may experience some discomfort in public expressions of faith, moving through it can be empowering and formative.
- Let go of perfect worship and the perfectionism it models.
- The downside of carefully thought out, even perfect, worship, is that it suggests that anything to do with faith and faithful living needs also to be carefully thought out, even perfect. This inhibits a whole lot of spontaneous faithful interaction outside of church. Many of us with liturgical sensibilities may fear a free-for-all. But the truth is, there is a whole lot of space between what we usually practice and what we fear. Without letting go of the reins altogether, we can show that it’s okay to make mistakes, we can model the giving and receiving of forgiveness, and good humor, too.
Read more from Lisa Fischbeck »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
With All Thy Mind: Worship that Honors the Way God Made Us by Robert P. GlickThe worship terrain has changed, but a consensus has yet to emerge even about what worship is, let alone how we should worship. Increasingly, however, people are hungry not just to know about God, but to experience God with all they they are-mind, heart, body, and soul. Worship must engage all of the senses.
Recalling the biblical and early church's witness regarding worship and denominational worship traditions, Robert Glick examines the place of words, songs, sacraments, and symbols in worship-in light of what we now know about the complexities of the human brain. He also examines roadblocks to more balanced worship and identifies the characteristics of a "well-tempered worship service." Glick expresses how our understanding of the wonders of our God-given brains can lead us to worship that is fuller, richer, and more truthful, and thus more receptive to the Spirit.
Learn more and order the book »
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Alban at Duke Divinity School
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