PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS
Where Innovation Begins
CHASING PROBLEMS IS KEY TO SOCIAL INNOVATION
What fuels the minds of people pursuing innovations to make the world a better, more just, more livable place? Problems.
Many of my colleagues like to talk about opportunities. I love the hopefulness and energy that such consideration breeds. But my friends who are social innovators bring that same hopefulness to their discussion of problems. They are irritated by problems that diminish the quality of life for thousands of people. The irritation motivates experimentation, fundraising and risk taking.
Jeff Kaplan of Houston, Texas, saw a problem with the toxins in the "stuff" in our homes -- the paint that coats our walls, the beds where we sleep, the chairs where we lounge. He believes that, over time, the toxins compromise our health.
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INNOVATION, SOCIAL INNOVATION
Dave Odom: Chasing problems is a key to social innovation
Jeff Kaplan saw a problem with the toxins in the stuff in our homes, so he and his partners began selling toxin-free home furnishings. His vision is to transform the industry.
Photo courtesy of New Living
Innovation begins with carefully listening to a community and defining the problems it’s facing. Then social innovators act, learning from failure and building on success, writes the executive director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.
What fuels the minds of people pursuing innovations to make the world a better, more just, more livable place?
Problems.
Many of my colleagues like to talk about opportunities. I love the hopefulness and energy that such consideration breeds. But my friends who are social innovators bring that same hopefulness to their discussion of problems. They are irritated by problems that diminish the quality of life for thousands of people. The irritation motivates experimentation, fundraising and risk taking.
Jeff Kaplan of Houston, Texas, saw a problem with the toxins in the “stuff” in our homes -- the paint that coats our walls, the beds where we sleep, the chairs where we lounge. He believes that, over time, the toxins compromise our health.
After getting into the business of manufacturing and selling nontoxic paint, Kaplan and his partners turned their attention to selling toxin-free home furnishings through their store New Living(link is external). Today, they are linking with local artisans to make such goods, joining forces with those who are chasing the problem of reviving job opportunities in economically depressed areas of their city.
Kaplan’s vision is to transform the home furnishings industry in the way that the local-sourcing movement is transforming restaurants and grocery stores. In essence, he wants to establish “organic” home furnishings as the standard.
My colleague Marlon Hall(link is external) works with social innovators in Houston who are visual artists, musicians, chefs, teachers and more. They are chasing problems, from racism to malnutrition to homelessness.
A couple of years ago, Marlon saw that the Pleasantville community in Houston was downtrodden and feeling hopeless. The community had an illustrious past that had been forgotten -- a problem that Marlon diagnosed as “cultural amnesia.” He chased the problem by applying for a grant from the city to pay for the creation and installation of public art in the Pleasantville community, calling the project “Amnesia Therapy: Remembering Our Future.”
The installation consisted of six 4-by-6-foot aluminum panels featuring the likenesses of historical figures, both local and national, created by Houston artist Robert Hodge. Each panel had a bar code that could be scanned for more information.
Marlon is trained as an anthropologist and uses the skills of that discipline to deepen his understanding of a situation and then describe it. Those of us trained as pastors, counselors, teachers, engineers and the like have skills that can be deployed to listen carefully to a community and refine our description of a problem.
It’s what happens next that sets “social innovation” apart. Innovators chase a problem with solutions. They try something. They learn from failure and try again. When something works, they build on success by scaling to reach more people.
Innovators are often a surprising mix of impatient and patient.
They are impatient with experts talking about other people’s problems and endless meetings to discuss the issues. They are impatient with decision-making processes; they want to act. Yet they are patient with those experiencing the challenges, listening carefully to the story behind the story. They are patient with failure and ready to try again.
What problems are you chasing? Who helps you see the problems? How are you impatient? How are you patient?
The mindset of the social innovator is in the DNA of the church. For generations, the church was a community that identified community problems and started such institutions as hospitals, children’s homes and homeless shelters.
How do we encourage those chasing problems today? What artists, inventors, teachers, caregivers and others are we supporting to chase problems? How can we help identify them and participate with them in scaling the solutions that hold promise?
THE IDEA IN ACTION
Westbury United Methodist's apartment ministry has helped resettled refugees -- and the congregation -- find new life
The church is located in one of the most multicultural cities in America, yet the congregation was not as engaged with its diverse neighbors as it could have been. That changed when they hired an associate pastor to live in intentional community in apartments three miles and a whole world away.
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WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?
Explore the narratives and resources about one Houston congregation's ministry with refugees »
CONGREGATIONS, NEW FORMS OF CHURCH, MISSIONS & EVANGELISM
Westbury UMC's apartment ministry has helped resettled refugees -- and the congregation -- find new life in Houston
The Fondren Apartment Ministry and Westbury UMC reflect the changing face of Houston and America. Photos by Mark Mulligan by: Bob Wells, Associate editor, Faith & Leadership
The church is located in one of the most multicultural cities in America, yet the congregation was not as engaged with its diverse neighbors as it could have been. That changed when they hired an associate pastor to live in intentional community in apartments three miles and a whole world away.
On Easter Sunday 2015, 10 middle schoolers stepped forward with their sponsors, some to be baptized, and all to profess their faith and join Westbury United Methodist Church in Houston. It was one of the largest confirmation classes the church had seen in years.
For four of the class members -- and for Westbury(link is external) -- the journey of transformation to that Easter morning had begun years earlier and halfway around the world.
You could see it in the brightly colored African-print clothing the boys’ family members wore as they stood with them before the altar. You could hear it in the boys’ names as they rang out in the packed sanctuary when the candidates were presented for confirmation.
The boys and their families are refugees who had resettled in Houston just two years earlier. They are some of the 40 to 50 African refugees who now worship at Westbury, a church that was planted in 1955 amid new suburbs sprouting up in southwest Houston.
For Westbury, the boys and the other African refugees are signs of new life after years of decline, the literal confirmation of a long process of self-examination and change.
Under the leadership of two successive pastors, a fiercely protective bishop and a risk-taking associate pastor fresh out of divinity school, Westbury has worked to shift its focus over the past five years.
Reclaiming and building upon its long history as a diverse congregation, Westbury leaders have been asking, “Who is my neighbor?” and, “Where is God already at work?” in a Houston vastly changed by immigration, a city that is now the most diverse metropolitan area in America.
Clergy and lay leaders have been finding answers just three miles away in a place they had long overlooked: a neighborhood called Fondren Southwest, along Fondren Road, a busy four-lane thoroughfare that spans southwest Houston.
There, they have discovered, God is at work in several 1970s-era apartment complexes that now house low-income residents, mostly immigrants, including refugees fleeing war and violence around the globe.
In particular, they have been finding answers in relationship -- friendship -- with refugees from Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo who live in Los Arcos, a 516-unit complex on Fondren.
Westbury hired a new associate pastor, the Rev. Hannah Terry, who, with a young couple from the church, moved into the Fondren Southwest neighborhood to live in intentional community and get to know the people living nearby. They call their work the Fondren Apartment Ministry, or FAM.
CAN ANY CHURCH DO THIS? »
Not every congregation can do ministry with refugees, writes Hannah Terry. But every church can show up in their community and see where God is already working.
For those looking to learn from Westbury, the congregation’s story is not so much about being in ministry with refugees as it is about embracing a process of change. At a deeper level, Terry said, it is about being present, listening and discerning where God is already at work in the world, in a particular place and context, and then joining in.
“All churches may not be able to be in ministry with refugees, but all churches can do that,” Terry said, referring to the process of change.
This new ministry provided an avenue for movement in both directions -- for Westbury to go into the community, and for the community to come into the church.
“They [the refugees] don’t relate any differently to the church than any other member does,” said the Rev. Taylor Fuerst, Westbury’s senior pastor. “This is their church. They have things to offer here, and they participate in ministries here, and they serve here. They are a part of the church.”
DEEP LISTENING »
A 5-minute video by Houston filmmaker Marlon F. Hall offers a glimpse into this innovative ministry, which is based in deep listening, prayer and openness to the Holy Spirit.
Moise Mukanya, 53, and his family have worshipped at Westbury since August 2013. Originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mukanya arrived in the United States after nine years in a refugee camp in Burundi. He has found a church home at Westbury.
“When we went there, I liked how they preach the word of God and turn out people who love each other,” Mukanya said in Swahili, translated by his 22-year-old son, Jeune Ruhumuriza. “I stay there because the people are full of love.”
Ruhumuriza and his father don’t talk about it much, but they are survivors of the Gatumba Massacre(link is external), in which Hutu rebels killed and injured hundreds of Tutsi civilians in a refugee camp in 2004.
“We were in the refugee camp when they came, and we escaped,” Ruhumuriza said. “They were looking at you and shooting, and you run away.”
He was nearly 11 when it happened -- about the same age as the boys in the confirmation class.
Of the four, three were Hutu and one was Tutsi. Now, they were all members of Westbury.
Westbury UMC has been a landmark at Willowbend and West Bellfort for decades. In 1965, just 10 years after it opened, the church built a new sanctuary -- a larger version of its original post-war A-frame building -- to accommodate the 1,300 people who attended multiple Sunday services. Photo courtesy of Westbury UMC
New life for a church adrift
The Rev. Tommy Williams attended Westbury as a teenager in the 1990s, when his mother worked at the church. Back then, 600 to 700 people worshipped there. That was about half the number from Westbury’s heyday in the 1960s, but still, there was a vitality about the place.
But when he returned in 2010 -- this time as senior pastor -- years of decline had taken their toll. When he looked out from the pulpit each Sunday morning, the 700-seat sanctuary was mostly empty. The two services combined drew only about 300 people.
The church was adrift, Williams believed, no longer clear about its mission. As numbers and giving had dropped over the years, Williams said, the church had become more inwardly focused, losing some of its evangelistic impulse.
Because many in the church knew and remembered Williams and his family, he had immediate credibility with his new congregation. Not long after his arrival, Williams led the church in a process of discernment, spurring members to ask themselves who and what God was calling them to be.
What were the church’s gifts? How would they use them in ministry?
Each Sunday in September 2010, Williams preached on discipleship, ministry, mission and worship with all people. One night a week, people met in homes to study and talk. They pondered Williams’ challenging questions about Westbury and its future.
Later, a discernment working group considered what members had learned and drafted new vision and mission statements and core values.
The process helped clarify and articulate one of Westbury’s core values: its history as a diverse community. That, they realized, was the church’s gift.
Social activists John Perkins (far left) and Shane Claiborne (far right) visited Westbury UMC in 2011 to lead a discussion on race and reconciliation. Beforehand, they met with the pastoral staff at the time, senior pastor Tommy Williams and associate pastors R. DeAndre Johnson and Romonica Malone-Wardley. Photo by Kelsey Johnson
How can diversity shape our life together?
For three decades, Westbury had been a racially diverse church -- one of the most diverse United Methodist congregations in Texas.
Westbury had begun to attract African-American members in the 1980s and, since then, had had several African-American senior and associate pastors.
In 2010, its members included not just Anglos but African-Americans and African immigrants -- doctors and other medical personnel who had moved to Houston to work in the city’s growing health care sector.
Yet that diversity was not shaping the church’s life together in any real way, Williams said. It did not inform the church’s approach to mission or discipleship.
"Is God calling us to do something?"
Tommy Williams
It was more like wallpaper or the church’s 1960s A-frame architecture, just one of many features of Westbury.
Sunday worship, for example, was still a traditional Anglo United Methodist service, Williams said. The mix of people and cultures wasn’t reflected in its music, liturgy or prayers.
The discernment process persuaded the congregation to change that.
“We decided quite clearly that God had gifted Westbury with this diversity, and so we began to discern, ‘What is it about this gift that should shape our life together?’” Williams said.
The Rev. R. DeAndre Johnson, associate pastor for music and worship and an ordained UMC deacon, leads the singing at a recent Sunday service. Photo by Mark Mulligan
They began with Sunday worship. In 2011, the church hired a music director with a passion for cross-cultural worship, the Rev. R. DeAndre Johnson, and moved to a single Sunday service. Ever since, Westbury’s worship has featured an eclectic mix of music, ranging from Wesley hymns to African songs, from black gospel to Spanish hymns.
More changes followed. The church established a volunteer partnership with a nearby elementary school that served mostly immigrant children. They brought in Shane Claiborne and John Perkins to lead a discussion about race and reconciliation.
John Perkins and Shane Claiborne during
their visit to Westbury. Photo by Kelsey Johnson
The changes, particularly with worship, had a mixed reception. Membership, which had jumped to 400 shortly after Williams arrived, dropped once again to 300 or so. Most of those who left drifted away with no explanation, but a few were upfront about it, telling Williams they preferred traditional worship.
“Singing in ‘Kenyan’ is a struggle for me,” one man told him.
But Williams tried not to worry.
“I had my days, but I tried to stay the course,” he said. “I was convinced that the mission of the congregation in the long term was more important.”
About the same time, the discernment group began seeing signs that made them wonder whether they were being called to a new ministry.
A church in the middle of a changing city
One day, the church receptionist buzzed Williams in his office with a call from an apartment manager at one of the large complexes on Fondren Road.
A violent crime had occurred at her complex, and she was asking whether someone from Westbury would come to the apartments and lead a Bible study.
“I was moved by her call, but I didn’t know at the time where that would go,” Williams said.
For various reasons, the Bible study never happened, but the woman’s call piqued curiosity about the apartment complexes and the people who lived there.
“We began wondering, ‘Is God calling us to do something?’” Williams said. “The clergy and lay leader team began connecting the dots and decided, ‘Yes, God is calling us. Perhaps we want to plant a community and build relationships there.’”
About the same time, Nusura Mtendamema, a woman from Burundi who lived in one of the Fondren complexes, began attending Westbury. Mtendamema became a key connection between the church and the people living in the apartments.
Westbury members and leadership began to understand as never before that Houston had changed dramatically. And they were right in the middle of it.
Pie_Graphs_Diversity_862.jpg
Texas Annual Conference Bishop Janice Riggle Huie, who is based in Houston, supported the congregation’s desire to take action.
“We need to learn how to connect with the new Houston, the new people of Houston,” she said.
And she saw that the people of Westbury were well-positioned to take on the challenge. “It’s the right people, it’s the right place, and it’s an opportunity to make all things new,” she said. “It’s not often all that lines up in one place.”
The church knew it would require a leap of faith. They’d never done a ministry like this before, and weren’t quite sure how it would work. They were not a wealthy congregation.
Westbury was in the middle of its budget year, and money was tight after years of decline. But with financial support from the Texas Annual Conference and donations from members and others, the church decided to move ahead.
They decided to start by creating a new full-time ministerial position. And that person would live and work in the Fondren neighborhood.
Hannah Terry sits at the wheel of her car, Pearl. The two became a familiar sight in the Fondren area of Houston, especially during Terry's first year, when they logged thousands of miles exploring the neighborhood.Photo by Mark Mulligan
‘Listening with others to the Holy Spirit’
Terry fell in love with Westbury’s story the first time she heard it.
When she met with Westbury leaders for her job interview and they told her about their plans for the Fondren Apartment Ministry, it sounded like what she had been dreaming about.
The previous summer, she had ministered in a field education placement at New Song Community Church in Baltimore. New Song had grown from small and fragile roots planted in 1986 when three people -- Mark Gornik, along with Allan and Susan Tibbels -- had moved into the area and simply lived there.
That summer, Terry discovered her call: to be in a neighborhood parish and do community development over the long haul, “listening with others to the Holy Spirit” and working on problems that don’t allow for quick fixes.
Now she’d been hired to do exactly that.
Her first day on the job, Terry could hardly contain herself. It was June 1, 2012, barely three weeks since she had graduated from Duke Divinity School.
That morning, she’d bought a brand-new car: a black Honda Fit she named Pearl. By midafternoon, she and Pearl were cruising down Fondren Road, surveying her new parish.
Terry took in everything around her -- the flat, chaotic sprawl of no-zoning development, with mile after mile of apartment complexes interspersed with nondescript strip malls.
Alone in the tiny black car, Terry prayed and sang out loud, talking to God as she passed cellphone stores, a check cashing office, used-tire stores, tiendas and fast-food restaurants.
“All right, God,” she said aloud. “Where do you want me to go? What do you want me to do?”
Four days later, the bubble burst. In the extended-stay motel that was serving as her temporary home, Terry sat on the bed and cried.
What had she been thinking?
Houston was the fourth-largest city in the country, with almost 2.4 million people. She knew virtually none of them. What was she even doing in Texas?
She was from West Groton, N.Y., a town of 2,400, where her dad was a Baptist pastor.
Houston was different from anywhere she’d lived. It was busier and more fast-paced, at once cramped and sprawling. The sheer number of people living in the apartments along Fondren Road was mind-boggling.
And it was hot. So hot. It was the first week of June and already 97 degrees.
Worse, she had no idea what she was doing.
Is this going to fail? What if it’s a flop? Is God going to be doing something with us?
Figuring out a puzzle
Terry dried her eyes, literally and figuratively, and with only the broadest of job descriptions, set out to learn all she could about the neighborhood and its history. For her entire first year at Westbury, she was a deliberate presence in the Fondren community.
She spent hours driving and walking around the neighborhood, meeting people -- residents, community leaders, police officers, shop owners, apartment managers, case managers with refugee-resettlement agencies -- and listening to them.
"We need to learn how to connect with the new Houston, the new people of Houston."
Janice Riggle Huie
“I needed to understand this neighborhood and Houston and Westbury, and I wanted to learn from any source that I could learn from,” she said. “It was like a big puzzle that I was trying to figure out.”
At this point, the church did not have a specific plan or outcome in mind. Anything was possible. The ministry might become a house church. Or maybe a church plant or a storefront mission. Who knew?
The only thing Terry was sure of was that she wasn’t there to recruit new members to Westbury. This would be a new way of doing church -- not old-fashioned outreach, with its implied superiority.
“We don’t like the theological implications of ‘outreach’ that say, sort of, ‘Let us come and help you and fix you’ to another group of people,” Fuerst said.
How can the church be there in the gaps?
Soon after she arrived, Terry met Nusura Mtendamema, the Burundian woman who had been attending Westbury. Mtendamema, a community leader, provided a key entree into the refugee community.
Though Mtendamema spoke little English, and Terry even less Swahili, the two became friends. Terry began accompanying Mtendamema when she applied for jobs or met with her case manager.
Nusura Mtendamema takes a break in the family parlor at Westbury UMC. A refugee from Burundi, Mtendamema became a key link between the church and the refugee community at Los Arcos. Photo by Mark Mulligan
“Walking with her as much as I could in her shoes, I began to see where the gaps were in various refugee services,” Terry said. “I began to wonder how the church could show up as a community and be there in the gaps with her.”
The smallest tasks of daily life were so complicated. When Terry tried to help Mtendamema cash a paycheck from a temporary job, the effort was a complete failure.
The tellers couldn’t cash the check, because Mtendamema didn’t have an account, and even if she opened one, it would be days before she could withdraw any money. They couldn’t set up direct deposit with her employer, because there was no guarantee Mtendamema would have the same job the following week.
'GOD ANSWERED OUR PRAYER' »
Three refugees share their stories.
Terry felt awful for her new friend. The experience drove home the boundaries of race, ethnicity, class and socioeconomics. It also raised bigger questions about how Terry should be in ministry with people like Mtendamema.
“I was really scared,” Terry said. “I remember thinking, ‘What are we doing? What is my role as pastor with people who are so on the margins and so vulnerable?’”
Living in community
Even before Terry started work, Williams had approached a young couple, Daniel and Lindsey Heathcock, about joining her in a small intentional community in the Fondren area -- part of the vision for the new ministry from the outset.
Lindsey and Daniel Heathcock
Photo by Kelsey Johnson
“We were excited,” said Lindsey Heathcock, who was then working at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. “It was very in line with Jesus’ call and how Jesus was an incarnational minister who went into the context of people and lived with them and among them.”
With the support of the Texas Annual Conference, Terry went to various programs on church planting. Four times a year, she attended the Academy for Missional Wisdom(link is external), learning how to start missional faith communities from the academy’s founder, the Rev. Dr. Elaine A. Heath. (Heath, the McCreless Professor of Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, was recently named dean of Duke Divinity School.)
The Heathcocks and Terry spent a year getting to know each other, sharing meals at each other’s homes. Slowly, through prayer and discernment, they began to sketch a vision for an apartment ministry and their life together.
Early on, Terry and the others had decided to focus on one particular apartment complex -- Los Arcos. Mtendamema lived there, and Terry was already getting to know some of the residents.
Built in 1977 to house young professionals in Houston’s oil industry, Los Arcos is a jumble of 30 to 40 nondescript two-story beige buildings. It’s now filled with immigrants and refugees from around the world -- from El Salvador to Eritrea, Burundi to Bhutan, Congo to Thailand and beyond.
Two girls play with one hula hoop at a Wednesday evening gathering at the Los Arcos apartments in October 2013. The apartments are home to immigrant and refugee families from around the world. Photo by Kelsey Johnson
Terry and the Heathcocks wrestled with the question of where to live, finally deciding against moving into the Los Arcos complex. They felt it would be wrong of them to take up spaces that refugees needed. So in March 2013, Terry and the Heathcocks moved into another complex, less than a mile north on Fondren Road.
Locator_Map_Houston_800.jpg
The first few months, they were joined by Eric Mukuba, a young Congolese asylum-seeker from Dallas; eventually, Mukuba decided to move back to Dallas.
They lived in separate apartments, but at 6 a.m. every Sunday through Thursday, they gathered for morning prayer, and on Sunday evenings shared a meal together. They adopted a rule of life to guide their small community.
About this time, Williams was appointed senior pastor at St. Paul’s UMC in Houston. Fuerst replaced him; she too was enthusiastic about the experiment, committed to a ministry of presence, patience and the long, slow work of relationship building.
The Rev. Homer Williams and the Rev. Taylor Fuerst invite the congregation to the table of Holy Communion at a March 2016 service. Photo by Mark Mulligan
A few weeks after the move, Terry and the Heathcocks invited some of the Africans Terry had met at Los Arcos to dinner at the Heathcocks’ apartment.
“We had translation issues from the start, but that was OK,” Daniel Heathcock said. “It was beautiful that they were there and engaged and told their story through translation.”
About eight people attended; the next week, there were 16. And by the third dinner, 35 people crammed in together, eating, laughing and singing.
“We were singing so loud that our neighbors were threatening to call the police,” Terry said. “So we thought, ‘All righty! This is not what we expected.’”
Joy, suffering and surprises
Soon, they were hosting a weekly gathering on Wednesday evenings in the courtyard at Los Arcos. A mix of church, Vacation Bible School and sheer celebration, it drew mostly children at first, but then more and more adults.
Over the next year and a half, the crowds grew to as many as 120 people, including Africans and others who lived at Los Arcos, as well as Westbury members.
After Sunday worship on November 17, 2013, Westbury members joined with people at the Los Arcos Apartments to celebrate the Fondren Apartment Ministry. Photo by Tommy Behrman
Afterward, back in their apartments, Terry and the Heathcocks would stay up late, talking and debriefing. Flopped down on a couch, a favorite chair or the floor, they’d process the evening’s events.
“All these things would come spilling out,” Lindsey Heathcock said. “Just sharing in the joy of connecting with people was exhilarating and exciting.”
Some evenings, they also came home stunned by the stories they’d heard.
They met a man who lived in an upstairs apartment overlooking the courtyard. For eight months, he had lain in his apartment suffering from a gunshot wound that hadn’t healed.
Although they helped the man get medical care, they were deeply disturbed by what he had been through.
Again and again, as the ministry slowly unfolded, Terry and the others were surprised.
“It’s interesting how many expectations I had coming into this about how it would go,” Terry said. “But generally, the Holy Spirit tips that upside down and says, ‘Oh, really?’”
Food was a constant issue at first. For weeks, Terry and the Heathcocks served one kind of food after another, cooking big pots of rice and beans, goulash, chili, and curry and lentils. But none of it was a hit, especially with the children.
Food has always been part of Fondren Apartment Ministry.
Photo by Tommy Behrman
The worst failure was peanut butter and jelly. The three made 80 sandwiches and came home with 78.
“Everybody likes peanut butter and jelly, right?” Terry said. “No. They don’t. Americans do, but other people don’t. It didn’t make any sense to them. The kids were disgusted and grossed-out.”
Finally, a leader in the African community offered a suggestion: try pizza.
They did, and it was a huge success. From then on, every Wednesday became a giant pizza party, one that began with everyone in a circle, reciting the Lord’s Prayer over the savory feast.
Open to the vision of the people
Terry and the Westbury leadership had tried to avoid having expectations about the ministry. But after only three months, the Wednesday events were going so well that Terry started to wonder whether the gatherings themselves might be their end goal.
“Maybe this is the church,” Terry thought to herself. She was excited that in an era when the United Methodist Church and other denominations are searching for new ways of doing and being church, she might be part of creating an alternative.
But after a Wednesday gathering in August 2013, Terry was brought up short when a dozen children crowded around her, tugging at her and jumping up and down.
“We want to come to your church!” they said. “We want to come to your church!”
A few adults standing nearby chimed in as well, and with their children translating, asked, “How can we get there?”
Terry was stunned. The one thing she and the Heathcocks had been certain of was that the Fondren Apartment Ministry wasn’t about putting “butts in the pews” to boost a flagging congregation, Terry said.
It was an uncomfortable dynamic for Terry. God was already at work here, she knew. It was her job as a pastor to interpret the needs of the world for the church, not to save people’s souls by bringing them into her congregation.
“I was definitely disappointed, because I was this young pastor who wanted to do everything new, outside the walls of the church building,” she said. “I was disappointed, because I wanted to push the envelope more and more, to experiment with church.”
But as Terry talked with leaders in the African community and others, she began to understand. The refugees wanted to be part of life at Westbury.
Daniel Heathcock visits with the Rev. Hannah Terry after a March 2016 worship service. Photo by Mark Mulligan
They had been forced to leave homes more than 8,000 miles away. After all they had been through, they wanted the safety and stability of a building and an established church.
Within weeks, people from the apartments began going to church at Westbury. Because very few had cars, Terry organized Sunday morning car pools with church members.
“That was a learning curve for me -- realizing that, yes, I’m a vision-caster, but I’m also learning, and need to be open to what is the vision of the people with what God is creating,” she said.
Naming what the ministry needs to do
A few months after the Los Arcos residents began attending Westbury, a dozen African women at Los Arcos approached Terry with a problem: they needed help learning English.
Imfura Martha and Feza Mukagatare at ESL class.
Photo by Kelsey Johnson
Crowding into an apartment at Los Arcos, they explained to her through a community leader that they were glad she was their pastor, and they trusted her -- and Westbury -- and wanted her help.
The ESL classes they had been taking as part of the resettlement program presented many obstacles: they could be difficult to get to, often conflicted with their work schedules, required them to leave their children at home, and sometimes had long waiting lists, they said.
“They knew that English was the gateway to life in America,” Terry said.
Navigating the health care system. Buying groceries. Getting around Houston. Knowing which bus to catch. Difficult enough for any Houston resident, such tasks were nearly insurmountable without at least some ability to understand and speak English.
It was a pivotal moment in the ministry, Terry said. People were naming out loud what they thought the Fondren Apartment Ministry needed to do and were approaching Terry as their pastor. It was a vivid example of what it means to be in ministry with people.
Within a few weeks, Terry had arranged for Holly Welty, a Westbury member and ESL teacher, to begin holding classes in the Los Arcos clubhouse. Twice a week, Welty lugged teaching materials to an upstairs meeting room for the two-hour class.
Westbury member Holly Welty leads an ESL class in the Los Arcos clubhouse. Photo by Kelsey Johnson
“We got it started, God blessed it, and we had to be satisfied that, even if no language was learned, they knew I had showed up and cared enough to do that,” Welty said.
After a year and a half, the classes grew to the point that the ministry began offering instruction through the nonprofit organization Literacy Advance, in partnership with other nonprofit agencies.
The ESL program had a huge impact in connecting people at Los Arcos to Westbury and to resources throughout the community, Terry said.
“Holly is a very strong leader and a deeply spiritual person,” Terry said. “Knowing they would see their teacher here on Sunday mornings was important. There is a continuity and a connection between church and who’s leading these things in the neighborhood.”
A refugee from ethnic violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Moise Mukanya greets other Westbury members. Photo by Mark Mulligan
‘Who we’re becoming’
With the Fondren Apartment Ministry as a catalyst, Westbury is no longer a church adrift, as Tommy Williams had sensed in 2010.
“Because the people from Los Arcos are here, we as a community change,” Terry said. “Your story, and you telling your story here in this community, actually changes us. We really believe that.”
About 40 to 50 Africans, including children and adults, now regularly attend worship at Westbury and participate in various ministries. That, in turn, has drawn other newcomers to the church, and offered a powerful example to their fellow worshippers.
“For me personally, hearing the witness of these people is powerful,” said Andrew Kragie, a journalist and Westbury member. “Hearing about a steadfast trust in God through terrible trials, from hunger to losing loved ones to 15 years in a refugee camp, challenges me to emulate that faith.”
Though the church has not seen explosive growth in attendance, giving or other traditional measures since the new ministry began, those numbers are no longer in decline, Fuerst said.
African young people are active at Westbury in many ways, partly because the language barrier is not an issue for them. The most visible is a youth choir, organized in September by Emile Nsengiyumva, a 31-year-old from Congo. Nsengiyumva, who grew up in a Pentecostal church, threw himself into life at Westbury shortly after arriving in Houston in 2015.
Ruhumuriza, the young man who survived the Gatumba Massacre, is a member of the choir, as well as the Fondren Apartment Ministry leadership team, and is an active participant in the young adult Sunday school class.
Moise Mukanya with three of his children, daughter Rehabu and two of his sons, Famille and older brother Vianney. Photo by Mark Mulligan
African young people participate in confirmation class, youth group on Sunday mornings and weekend retreats. And when the church dedicated one Sunday morning to acts of service, lending their help to a meal-packaging event and an elementary school cleanup, African families were part of that effort alongside everyone else.
Laurie Sturdevant, a longtime Westbury member and the chair of the church council, said the past few years have challenged the church and moved it to a new place.
“It’s who we’ve become and who we’re becoming,” she said.
Ministry in transition
Although Terry understands the heart of her work to be rooted in prayer and deep listening, there also are practical concerns.
Sustainability was always on her mind -- Terry had spent hours writing grant proposals and seeking funding to support the work.
In the early years, the ministry was not part of the church budget but was instead underwritten from other sources, including grants from the Texas Methodist Foundation, the Path 1 Church Planting Residency -- a United Methodist program that supports young church planters -- and gifts from individual donors.
Last year, its budget was $82,000. About a quarter of that, 24 percent, came from the church budget; another 18 percent from individual Westbury members over and above their regular church contributions; 8 percent from other individual donors; 30 percent from foundations; 16 percent from partner churches, including St. Peter’s UMC in Katy, Texas; and 4 percent from other nonprofit organizations.
Today, the church is exploring the possibility of incorporating the ministry as a free-standing nonprofit, a structure that could allow for greater accountability, financial sustainability and smoother leadership succession, Terry said.
And the shape of the Fondren Apartment Ministry continues to shift and change in exciting -- and sometimes unsettling -- ways.
In August 2014, the intentional community was joined by newlyweds Russell LaGrone and Erin Randolph, who had been inspired by what they were seeing at Los Arcos and Westbury.
LaGrone, an M.Div. student at Perkins School of Theology’s extension program in Houston, described his first visit to Los Arcos, a year earlier, as his “Aldersgate experience.”
And Randolph, who had joined him one Sunday shuttling people between Los Arcos and the church, said she was stirred by the ministry as well.
“There were a lot of different people, and nobody spoke the same language, but there was something very powerful about being part of something so multicultural, with all these people trying to worship God together,” she said.
Their home church, St. Peter’s UMC in nearby Katy, became a covenant partner of the Fondren Apartment Ministry, contributing financial and other support.
A vendor offers produce that she has grown at this Plant it Forward farm, located in a utility easement in the Fondren area of Houston. Photo by Tommy Behrman
For her part, Terry has worked hard to connect refugees with jobs partners such as Plant It Forward Farms, a nonprofit that creates stable employment for refugees, setting them up with training, tools, urban farm spaces and business support to grow and sell their own produce.
But the new initiatives have stretched the ministry’s resources, and in December 2014 they suspended the Wednesday night gatherings at Los Arcos. They plan to begin them again this spring, but just twice a month.
Some of the key people are also in transition. The Heathcocks moved out of the intentional community because Lindsey, a second-year medical student, needed to be closer to the hospital as part of her training. But they are still members at Westbury and active participants in the apartment ministry.
Mukanya and his family recently moved from Los Arcos. They plan to continue worshipping at Westbury, despite the half-hour drive, but Terry worries that other refugees without reliable transportation might move away and lose their ties to the church.
Members of the Mukanya family head home after Sunday worship at Westbury UMC. Photo by Mark Mulligan
Fuerst recently announced that she is moving to Austin, and Huie is retiring in September.
These changes and challenges may give the Fondren Apartment Ministry a tenuous feel, but that is part of the process of showing up and accepting that God is in charge.
“There is a deep, palpable sense that we are joining in God’s work, that we are being carried along by the wind and the Holy Spirit, and that that is changing people’s lives by bringing them in contact with one another,” Fuerst said.
‘You will have everything that you need’
Terry and Pearl now move with ease through Houston -- at least, as easily as anybody does.
Terry’s smartphone is filled with numbers for caseworkers, pastors and others throughout the city. She has been completing her ordination process and expects to be ordained as a deacon in May.
Hannah Terry and Pearl -- and all of Westbury UMC -- have journeyed a long way since she arrived in 2012.Photo by Mark Mulligan
She regularly wears cowboy boots, and when she enters one of the many Mexican restaurants in the Fondren area, the waiters recognize her and greet her warmly.
Last April, Terry preached at Westbury, assisted by Thony Ngumbu, a Westbury member and a senior official with IEDA Relief, an international aid organization headquartered in Houston.
It was a bilingual service, with Terry preaching in English and Ngumbu in Swahili. The text was Matthew 6:5-34(link is external), the passage where Jesus tells the disciples not to worry, citing the example of the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.
“Have you ever known the feeling of being overpowered by worry?” Terry asked at the outset of the sermon.
“Je, umewahi kujisikia unavamiwa na wasiwasi?” Ngumbu translated.
Thony Ngumbu and Hannah Terry at the bilingual service.
Back and forth the sermon went -- a line in English, then a line in Swahili.
“And then Jesus says: ‘Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, what you will drink, about your body, about what you will wear.’”
“Na kisha Yesu anasema: ‘Musiwe ne wasiwasi kuhusu maisha yenu, nini mtakula, nini mtakunywa, kuhusu mwili wako, nini mutavaa.’”
“But instead, desire God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you, too.”
“Lakini badala, muwe na hamu ufalme wa Mungu na haki ya Mungu, na haya yote mtapewa pia.”
“All these things will be given to you, too. You will have everything that you need.”
“Haya yote mtapewa pia. Utakuwa na kila kitu unahitaji.”
For many of the refugees from Los Arcos who attended that Sunday, Terry wrote later, it was the first time they had ever heard a sermon in their own language at Westbury.
It was the first time they had really heard a sermon in years.
Andrew Kragie and Marlon F. Hall(link is external) contributed to this story.
What We Teach
Christian wisdom is nurtured over the course of time in institutions that act as bearers of tradition, laboratories for learning and incubators of leadership, says L. Gregory Jones.
- Thriving Communities
- Vibrant Institutions
- Christ-Shaped Leadership
- Traditioned Innovation
- Transformative Leadership
- Generative Organization
- Sustainable Design
CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP, ARTS & CULTURE,SOCIETY
L. Gregory Jones: Christian institutions as cities
Cities have a vibrant core, permeable boundaries and strong networks. But many of today’s Christian institutions are more like corporations, tightly bounded and working alone.
Learn alongside other innovators Explore your gifts and cultivate the practices essential for creating transformation within Christian organizations during Foundations of Christian Leadership. Through this formational program, participants may apply for a $5,000 Innovation Grant to design and implement experiments in their institutions. Our next cohort of emerging leaders will gather in Houston --apply today!
The faces of change: six congregations' stories of innovation
That congregations are changing is not a surprise. But how they are changing is infinitely intriguing. These stories of six congregations serve as a reminder to all congregations -- especially those contemplating uncomfortable change -- that the discomfort may well be worth it.
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"The Faces of Change: Six Congregations’ Stories of Innovation"
As history’s greatest writers and philosophers have told us for centuries, nothing endures but change. Life is change. Change is the nature of the universe. That congregations are changing should therefore come as little surprise. But how they are changing is infinitely intriguing. In the midst of a bewildering array of congregational “types” being touted as the way-showers for future congregations are thousands of congregations who are finding their own paths, identities, missions, and visions. In an effort to learn more about these individual examples of change, the Alban Institute recently surveyed the readers of its online newsletter,Alban Weekly, asking for stories of innovative congregations. Of the responses received, the following examples were particularly interesting. While these congregations may not be the only ones to have tried the approaches described here, that they have had the courage to step outside their comfort zones, abandon old ways, and attempt the unfamiliar is of value in and of itself. Their stories serve as a reminder to all congregations—especially those contemplating uncomfortable change—that the discomfort may well be worth it.
Modular Worship Down Under
Our survey begins in Australia, where experiments with a modular worship approach are proving promising. With this type of system, not only is worship offered in different styles at different times on Sunday mornings, but a connecting module offers activities both worship groups can share, such as announcements, intercessory prayers, and baptisms. In many congregations, this modular approach has been helpful in satisfying the disparate worship tastes of the various generations within a congregation and thus has resulted in increased church membership and participation. It’s also been helpful in easing tensions in some congregations, where “worship wars” were previously rampant. At the same time, the system addresses one of the primary concerns voiced by congregations considering offering separate worship services—that they will become separate congregations because they will no longer be worshiping together. Because of the central, connecting event in the modular system, this is no longer such a great concern.
For instance, at Gungahlin Uniting Church, a suburban new church plant in Canberra, Australia, where Rev. Mark Greenlees serves as pastor, three modules are used. The first 45-minute module offers a traditional, contemplative-style worship service featuring prayers, hymns, Bible readings, and a sermon. At the end of this service, participants may either leave or stay for module 2, where they are often joined by families just arriving. At Gungahlin, module 2 is a 30-minute time intended to be common for those attending module 1 and those attending module 3. Module 2 is a time of all-age worship which features contemporary music, announcements, intercessory prayers, celebrations (such as baptisms, dedications, and confirmations), and time for a cup of tea, which is a further expression of worship that people are encouraged to see as “prayer in action.” Following this, a third module offers Christian education in a variety of forms, including intergenerational small-group activities. There are those who attend only this third module, but congregants who arrive at the beginning of the second module tend to stay for the third. In all of these modules, the use of multimedia is a significant aspect of encouraging people of all ages to connect with the message in a multisensory way.
“The modular worship system is being used as a creative way to assist people with different spiritualities to engage with the faith in a comfortable manner while keeping the whole group in contact with each other. It can also help establish a new, separate worship service as attendance grows over time,” says Wendy Snook, an ordained minister and UCA Canberra Region Presbytery mission development worker, whose job is to assist ministers, lay leaders, and their congregations in fulfilling their missions. Part of that job is to set up training programs where the presbytery can share effective systems other congregations have employed. Snook is keeping a close eye on experiments with modular worship to see how this system works in rural and suburban settings. “We’ve found that it works in the city and are now trying to see how it will work in the country,” she says.
Another church using the modular worship system is Kippax Uniting Church, located in the outer suburbs of Canberra. Under the leadership of Rev. Gordon Ramsay, Kippax has employed a modular approach to its Sunday morning services for the last eight years. In addition, it concentrates heavily on accommodating the various intelligences (logical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, visual/spatial, auditory, etc.) throughout the modules. “In many ways I’d say the most novel and exciting part of the worship is the way people who learn and process things in any of the various intelligences will be able to engage well on any one Sunday,” says Ramsay.
The first module is a 45-minute traditional/contemplative service—“a peaceful way to begin the day,” says Ramsay. This is followed by a 30-minute morning tea. The congregation then participates in a 45-minute interactive/intergenerational module of worship, which often involves making things together or working on activities drawn from the same Biblical theme as the first two modules. “It aims to bring people together (literally) from several generations,” says Ramsay, and to give them opportunities to learn in ways other than simply listening. Next are two simultaneous modules—“Sunday Café,” which Ramsay says is “deliberately more focused as a café than as a church set in a café,” and a 45-minute contemporary service, which features a multimedia approach. Each of the services is planned in close coordination with the congregation’s discipleship and formation coordinator, John Emmett.
The novel use of media is a strength of Kippax, and this is of particular interest to Snook. “Gen X-ers—the 35-and-under people—are not used to people just standing and talking,” she explains. “The younger generation is visual, so we have to do worship accordingly; we have to speak their language. I have been trying to get the churches in my presbytery to be more visual, which doesn’t have to be multimedia, but it can be. Kippax is a hub for multimedia. Every room in the church is Internet-connected. Not only that, they create their own animations.” Especially popular is “Lego Jesus,” where a multi-generational group creates figures built from Legos to represent the characters in a Bible story that they enact using their own voices and videotape for presentation to the entire congregation later. “As with most things at Kippax, we deliberately try to have people from across the generations working together,” says Ramsay. “Unplanned things are always happening in these productions, which makes them funny, and what Kippax has found is that, because of the funny things, people really watch these homemade productions,” adds Snook.
Another church that creates its own animations is UCA Café Church in Glebe, Sydney, which recently hired digital artists with backgrounds in theatre, poetry, and music to create animated prayers, scripture passages, and themes. A CD of 160 of these animations is currently being sold on the church’s Web site (www.cafechurch.org.au).
A Merger of Vision
Across the globe, in Canada’s British Columbia province, a vibrant new congregation has emerged from the conscious merging of three previously existing congregations, all of which had been in decline. This transformation did not take place overnight, however, and not at the time of the churches’ initial merger—at least on paper.
Although the three United Church of Canada churches—Shiloh, Sixth Avenue, and Queens Avenue United Churches of New Westminster
—were officially amalgamated on January 1, 2002, they continued to operate as separate worship centers within their own spaces for another 34 months. “Ultimately we decided to do a visioning process,” says Rev. Bethan Theunissen, who leads the new church, Shiloh-Sixth Avenue United, “because it became clear that the three congregations did not have a common vision. They were really very different cultures.” After months of study and reflection, Shiloh and Sixth Avenue joined together to form Shiloh-Sixth Avenue United Church in July 2004, and some members of Queens Avenue transferred their membership to the new church as well. “We moved out of being the three old congregations and into a new one with a new vision,” says Theunissen. Perhaps the most explicit sentence in the congregation’s vision statement is its commitment to inclusivity, which reads,
Based in the hospitality of Jesus Christ, we practice an open door/table policy, where all are welcome to worship and explore Christian faith with us regardless of age, race or colour, family status, physical or mental dis/ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex, class, income level, nationality, ancestry or place of origin, marital status, or religious point of view.
The congregation’s composition reflects its commitment to diversity. “We have a curious mix of people in our congregation,” says Theunissen. “Some have had very little religious training. Others are more steeped in church. We also have a large gay and lesbian contingency and a number of Taiwanese members.” In keeping with the congregation’s commitment to inclusivity, every service is translated into Taiwanese.
A promise to be open to new ideas shows up in such offerings as its “Yoga in a Christian Context” group. And the congregation’s promise to serve the community is evident in a number of initiatives. For instance, beyond just allowing the use of its facility to daily 12-step groups and a food bank, the church has provided the hundreds of people who pass through its doors to gain access to these services with a triage receptionist and community advocate who assist them with health, housing, literacy, and other issues.
“We are both very discipleship-oriented and also very progressive in our theology,” Theunissen says, but in the congregation’s early days, many of its members were what she calls “Christians by default,” people who knew little about scripture or discipleship. Theunissen and the church council set about changing that when she assumed the leadership of the new Shiloh-Sixth Avenue congregation. “No one was grandfathered in,” she says. During the first two years of the church’s existence, everyone (except seniors) was asked to participate in an eight-week program Theunissen designed to enable members to build community in a deep way and to be trained in a variety of spiritual disciplines, such as Bible study, contemplative prayer, and meditation. “These spiritual disciplines were very new for many people. It was the first time many had had a devotional life. These are processes in which people are rediscovering faith for themselves.”
Creating the Faith Journey
In the United Kingdom, a country where only two to three percent of the population are in church on Sundays, doing church in a way that supported people’s faith journeys was a key goal of Rev. Chris Dowd’s when he set about establishing his own church, Journey Metropolitan Community Church in Birmingham. In particular, Dowd saw that there was a disconnect between the church and younger generations. “The reality of Christianity for most people is weddings and funerals. We’re just missing a whole generation. I was really clear I wanted to set up something that was different from the churches I had experienced.”
One of Dowd’s inspirations came from Celtic Christianity, which he describes as being less hierarchical than other Christian church models and more focused on individual responsibility and doing things in harmony with the local environment—both the land and its people. “They were real communities—serving themselves and others at the same time.”
In his own church, Dowd wants people to have the experience of being part of a community of people who are searching for belief and spirituality. “We are inviting people to journey with us.” The question Dowd says he perpetually contemplates is: What is the spirit of our age and how do we capture that?
Members of the congregation are highly varied in background and belief, ranging from evangelical Christians to New Agers, which has spawned an agreement among congregants—“that we might not necessarily agree, but we will respect each others’ opinions and learn from each other, myself included,” Dowd says. The church is also a lot less formal than many of the churches formed decades ago. “This is based on the idea that people come to God as they are,” Dowd explains.
Dowd views himself as more of a facilitator and guide to the congregation than as an authority figure, and he turns a lot of planning and decision-making over to the congregation. The church offers an evening worship event that is planned exclusively by a worship team. The group’s planning begins with a Gospel reading from the Common Lectionary, from which a theme and activities for the evening service are developed. The events change from week to week and range from simple events involving meditation and the lighting of a single candle to multimedia events calling for active participation. For instance, at one worship service a Star Trek video was used to launch a discussion of the afterlife. At another, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a film based on the book by Douglas Adams, inspired a service that gave congregants an opportunity to examine various aspects of their lives. The transformational effect of this event, which featured an art exhibit and church members dressed as aliens, is still being talked about.
A morning service is also held, but not in the traditional fashion. Rather than delivering a sermon at services, Dowd hosts a discussion of a scriptural passage, followed by prayer and communion. Because he doesn’t deliver sermons, Dowd writes a homily that he distributes each Monday to the church e-list, a list that continues to evolve as people log onto the church’s Web site (www.journeybirmingham.org.uk). The list currently consists of about 150 people—several times the church’s membership.
Journey MCC’s collection plate isn’t run of the mill, either. Instead of collecting money for the church, “any money that goes into the plate goes to charity,” Dowd says. A requirement of membership is support of three charities selected for focus this year—Crisis, a national charity for the homeless; Trans-Shropshire, a local transgendered support organization that runs a nightly hotline; and Salt, a small international organization that provides food and training to the needy in India. Each year, the congregation will vote to select the charities it will support that year. “It’s all about the act of giving, not what amount you give,” Dowd explains. “It’s an action people take to have a stake in the church.”
One innovative initiative that is an integral part of Journey MCC’s life is that every member has a guide—someone in the congregation who has been trained in active listening who will meet one-on-one with five people once every two months. “It’s a bit like proactive pastoral care,” Dowd says. “The guide is there to hear what’s going on for you in your life and in your spiritual life.” The agenda for each session is up to the individual. “It’s different for each person,” says Dowd. “It could be a Q&A session about something they’ve read, an informal chat, or a spiritual discussion.” Aside from being a way to provide support (and possibly outside intervention), the guide sessions provide congregants with the knowledge that there is someone to turn to in times of need. The sessions have also proven to be a good way to keep conflicts from growing and festering.
Building from the Outside In
At Palisades United Methodist Church in Capistrano Beach, California, pastor Jeff Conklin-Miller and his congregation are exploring a variety of ways to offer what is most needed, both to each other and to the local community.
The location of the church presents unique challenges. Palisades is a stone’s throw from a number of megachurches, including Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, but Conklin-Miller sees this proximity in positive terms: “It presents a real opportunity for us to create an expression of church that is truly an alternative to the megachurch and at the same time a church that connects people to God and one another.”
Palisades is a church with a high percentage of members who are 65 or older. Recently, though, more youth and young families have begun to enter the congregation, which Conklin-Miller believes is due to the presence of two new planned communities in the area, Ladera and Talega. The United Methodist Church has no presence within either of these communities and, because of limited land availability, will be unable to establish a physical presence there. Palisades therefore has had to be creative in finding ways to reach out to and serve these communities. A recent effort along these lines—the brainstorm of Geoff Peters, Palisades’ former outreach and evangelism coordinator and a marketing professional—was to establish a Web presence for Palisades and two other United Methodist churches in the area, which together form a triangle around the two new commuter communities. Now there are links to all three churches at www.laderachurch.com, and 200 signs have been handed out to members of the three participating congregations, many of whom have posted them in their yards to advertise the Web site. So far, this attempt at outreach hasn’t generated significant results, but Conklin-Miller believes it sends an important message. “I can’t point to this as a ‘strategy that works,’” he says. “Still, I do see it as a step beyond the walls of this church into the community. It’s a way to communicate that we care about the community. And if the congregation sees that they can take that one step, then we can pray for the strength for other steps to follow.”
To further its outreach, the church is considering the establishment of a preschool in one of the new communities. The preschool in the Palisades building filled to capacity in record time this year. “That was a clear sign that the demand is up, and that presents a real opportunity for us,” says Conklin-Miller. “We could open a preschool in Talega that would allow us a presence and visibility there, and the space could be used in the school’s off hours for other programs.”
Earlier this year, the church launched Holy Joe’s, a book group that meets in a coffee shop for its discussions. The group was initially started at Easter for new members, but there are plans to expand it. “There’s a Starbucks every 40 feet in California, so we could advertise the event as ‘meeting in a Starbucks in your area’ and we could schedule it at a different Starbucks each time as a way of saying ‘we’re willing to meet you where you are,’” Conklin-Miller says.
A program begun last year to offer people an additional opportunity to connect to God is the church’s open-sanctuary candlelight prayer time. “It started with a conversation about what we could do to help us grow, which led us to a recognition of the theological lack in that question. That took us to a different conversation, one in which we asked what it is that makes us a church. And from that emerged the feeling that there isn’t enough space on Sunday morning alone for us to develop a relationship with God.” To create additional “space,” several members of the congregation took it upon themselves to create a candlelight prayer time, a simple yet profound practice of lighting 100 candles in the sanctuary on Friday evening and opening this silent space to those wishing to enter it. “The moment you walk into the stillness you realize how hungry you are for it,” says Conklin-Miller. “People come there to practice the presence of God.”
Despite the new things being tried at Palisades, Conklin-Miller expresses an uncertainty about whether or not his congregation belongs in this story since theirs is not a story of innovation that has resulted in escalating membership, at the same time wanting to celebrate “the amazing people who make up this church, the commitment they have to the way of Christ, and the ways God works through them.” As he explains, “We haven’t done anything here to serve as a radical story of success and growth, but for us the deeper issue is theology, ecclesiology—what it means for us to be church in this community, with these people, in this time. The success isn’t in astronomical growth but that sense that we, as a congregation, see worship, spiritual formation, and the practice of faith as closer to our center than before. In some parts of the mainline church, seeing those practices move closer to the center may not be signs of innovation but reclamation, and thanks be to God for that.”
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FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
IMAGINING THE SMALL CHURCH
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