Chapter Eight: "The Church and the Public Square" Guest Blogger Jean McCarthy

Changing the Conversation

Chapter 8:  The Church and the Public Square

By Jean McCarthy

“Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore!”

This line from The Wizard of Oz came to my mind as I read this chapter.  It feels that way to me quite often, as the world around us seems to change overnight into a global village connected in a web of communication on the internet, collapsing time and space, and connecting ordinary folk with other ordinary folk.  We cannot live in our own little spaces anymore and ignore the rest of the world.  We can no longer afford to make assumptions about church or country or life, for that matter.  Robinson talks about the end of American Christendom in candid terms, naming the tensions that we feel in this country and around the world today.  So what do we do?

The challenging question that Robinson puts forth as one of the most important conversations we need to have is, “What is the role of the church in public life?”  His challenge is for all of us to rethink, reframe, and embody our public life and role.  As I write this, I am packing to fly to Louisville for a Board of Directors Meeting of JustFaith Ministries.  Their motto has been “JustFaith changes people; People change the world”.  That could easily be the mission statement of Christians everywhere. 

JustFaith Ministries was formed with the vision that Robinson articulates in his book.  They work toward changing the conversation in a variety of communities of faith today, concentrating on poverty and systemic injustice.  Robinson stresses that we must take sin and evil seriously, recognizing its complexity and depth.  Perhaps the hardest of all is the systemic injustices that seem so impossible to change in this violent and polarized world.  We need the strength to name the pain honestly and realistically, tell the stories, and then point to the sure and certain hope that is our faith.

Leap to the end of the chapter and read Robinson’s conclusions:  Our world is global.  We are not the center.  What is our faithful response?  How do we become what Robinson calls a church that is “centered yet open”?  

Are we about bringing more people through our doors into the church – or are we about forming Christians who go out the door and live their faith where God has called them to be? 

St. Paul wrote of the body made up of many parts, many “gifts that differ”.  At St. Mark’s we have been exploring faith in many different ways on Wednesday nights for years.  As a Christian and as a rector, I have grown and learned, and have been challenged and humbled, as well as affirmed.  I think that is the gift of diversity that is offered to each of us if we truly seek our center as Episcopal Christians.  We do not have to agree, but we do need to stand in solidarity with each other and learn from each other.

So how do we grow to understand, articulate, and use core Christian convictions that Robinson says is critical to a congregation’s health and vitality?  I had a wise pastor once that considered scripture study to be a wrestling match.  Scripture and our core convictions needed to be planted deep in our bones.  Out of that struggle came one of the best preachers and teachers that I have ever known.  We need “theologians in residence” who are able to bring core Christian convictions and principles into dialogue with congregational life in the wider culture.  Academics have their place, and so do those who fill in the gap between academia and what the church needs and finds helpful.   

Last spring Mike and I attended a gathering of academic scripture scholars, social justice activists, and “folks in the pews” who came together to dialogue with each other, rather than living in their own “ivory towers” – to learn from each other how better to embody the gospel in today’s world.  Our churches work to do that kind of dialogue in respect and openness.  We don’t have to agree, we just have to stand together in solidarity and respect. 

The Indaba process we engaged in as a diocese at our last convention is perhaps a step in this direction.  Such a model asks people to “grow and to grow up in Christ”.  Indaba asks us to truly listen in respect to each other, and to become accountable to each other.  The purpose of the church is to grow Christians who engage the world as people accountable to the gospel.  Church equips all of us for a vital role in the public sphere for the common good.

There is a rich mine of challenges for the future direction of the Christian churches in this 8^th chapter.  May we companion each other well on this journey.  We may no longer be “in Kansas”, but we are deeply rooted and grounded in faith. 

Jean McCarthy

Rector, St. Mark’s Church

Des Moines, IA

Chapter Seven: "Let’s Get (Less) Organized!" Guest Blogger Judith Crossett

Changing the Conversation, 

by Anthony Robinson 

Chapter Seven – "Let’s Get (Less) Organized!"

By Judith Crossett

Every summer, our parish sends a number of youth choir members (and a few adults) to a Royal School of Church Music summer course—a choir camp.  Driving into the grounds, the Lord’s Prayer is on road-side signs, phrase by phrase; the youth I drive always read them in chorus as we pass each.  But as you leave, the last sign before the state highway says “Entering the Mission Field”(which they ignore).  That’s what we are looking for: a church organization which, like that road, first brings us into retreat and worship, then thrusts us out to the mission field.  Robinson sets us some questions; as others have said, he makes the reader uncomfortable frequently.  But he also leaves me convinced that we need to set about the work he suggests to make a church which equips us for ministry and sends us out doing it.

His topic is organization—he starts by describing why our “Christendom/modernity” models aren’t working well for us, and then doesn’t tell us what to do instead.  He gives us some ways to think about structure (“systems”, with organic rather than mechanistic analogies), but leaves us with a lot of thinking to do.  He talks about starting with a mission statement, but gives very little to help us craft our own mission statements, except that all our actions (in the general triad of welcoming, teaching, sending) should be driven by the mission statement.  It sounds like hard work, re-forming the parishes; it’s reassuring that he says it will take a few years.  Maybe we should form a committee to work out a timetable for that, next month, after we’re done with Easter.  Does the hospitality committee have enough people to prepare for the extra attendance?  

It’s pretty clear in this chapter that Robinson thinks most of our parishes have too many committees—and rely on them too much as how we think we’re to be involved in church. Newcomers? Get them on a committee, so they’ll meet people and feel involved and stay with us. Election to Vestry? Do some committee work so people will know you.  And bylaws—though our parish doesn’t actually have bylaws, we do have policies, lots of them. 

There is something comfortable about being on a committee and organizing things.  Many of us love to do it—on a committee, you feel valued, recognized, kind of important.  You know how committees work—all those group projects in school (all the way through graduate school, in my experience), they’re preparation for working in a committee, the adult form of “plays well with others”.  So I’m very comfortable with committees, but . . .  best department chairman I ever worked with NEVER appointed committees. He had the minimum number of committees the administration required of academic departments.  

Robinson talks about “well-oiled machines” of church organizations—and that makes me wince.  A committee I once led was so described, once.  That machine is now in the shop for overhaul—we’re beginning to recognize that the “machine” that served us pretty well through the 90s doesn’t work now.  Now that “machine” feels more like a community organization, a social service agency, or (when we had more budget to devote to it) a small-grant-awarding foundation, not the body “Christ-led and Spirit-empowered.” 

Those committees have us talking to each other (not a bad thing, in itself), but do they help us go out into the world to meet and show—by words, or works, or both, but by building relationships with others—and show the Gospel?  I’ve heard sermons about “encountering the Other”, holy places, “thin places”—you’ve probably heard them to.  What about encountering the others, the world that is not on our committees?  Robinson is most convincing when he’s talking about having members of the church doing ministry—showing God’s grace to the world.  That is difficult; it’s more comfortable to sit in a committee meeting.  But time in committee meetings does not, ultimately, engage and energize most people—most of us, once we get out of our chairs, find that active ministry is the most exciting thing of all.  With God’s help, and our hard work, we’ll find the structure that will free us to get there.

The Rev. Judith Crossett is a deacon at Trinity Episcopal Church in Iowa City.

Chapter Six: "Write the Vision" - Guest blogger Steve Godfrey

Changing the Conversation, by Anthony Robinson 

Chapter Six – “Write the Vision?” 

By Steve Godfrey

Like Kathleen Milligan, I find myself inspired by one of the saints of the church as I write this on the Feast of St. Joseph, one of my favorite mentors in the Bible. Joseph had a vision and what a vision Joseph had! Life-changing for sure. How wonderful that he was able to let go of the safe choice and take a chance on such an audacious plan, acting on what seems to me like crazy information, but grounded in deep and abiding faith and purpose and trusting in this vision of God With Us (see Matthew 1:18-2:23). Joseph actually had four visions. The first led him to 1) marry Mary; and 2) name the Child Jesus because he was to be the savior. The second vision led him to 1) flee to Egypt with Mary and Jesus and 2) remain in Egypt until it was safe to return. The third led him to go back to Israel and the fourth to go to Galilee and make a home in Nazareth. Grounded in his understanding of his purpose as the protector of the vulnerable young Son of God and his mother, he discerned the most pressing challenges before him and figured out what steps to take to respond to them.

Would that it were as easy for us to articulate our visions as it appears to have been for Joseph, although I am glad not to face the life threatening challenges he did and I suspect Matthew’s account leaves out a fair amount of difficult conversation and decision making. But to be honest, “Write the Vision” was not my favorite chapter in Anthony Robinson’s Changing the Conversation. Although I have facilitated a lot of vision writing and strategic planning in my career, I am in a place of transition in my life and working with people just at the beginning of transition time in the lives of their faith communities, so it is hard to focus on specifics.

Right now I am finding the more existential conversations about understanding and responding to change and discerning purpose to be more exciting than actual planning. And yet it seems like an important invitation because sooner or later we will have to get up from pondering postmodern quandaries and do something, to come down from the balcony to the dance floor and dance, to use Ronald Heifetz’s analogy. In a recent parish retreat we wrestled at length with the changes and challenges that Robinson describes in the first part of the book and with what all that means for discerning the church’s purpose. When we got to the topic of vision we were pretty tired, but ultimately a consensus emerged that we need to do something now: “remember that planning is planning and doing is doing” (Changing the Conversation, p. 127).

Joseph’s visions remind me that while we need to discern an underlying sense of purpose we also need to be nimble and adaptive in our visioning and planning. Robinson challenges us to have a variety of conversations that balance reflection, discernment and practice. If our purpose is reflected in our intentional spiritual practices, our vision needs to stretch us to look beyond our current situation to see where God is leading us in mission and to take steps toward realizing that vision and fulfilling our purpose. If we can develop even a working or underlying sense of purpose, say being a prayerful, worshiping community of followers of Jesus, sharing his Good News with the world, then we can envision and plan strategically based on the particular challenges before us, which will be different depending on where we are on our journeys. Perhaps you already have a workable mission statement that adequately defines your purpose and could be a starting point. Discerning a fresh sense of purpose can even be part of your vision and plan.

If we keep in mind Robinson’s seven process principles – the foundational importance of purpose; discernment of God’s will for the community; valuing everyone’s input; clarity about the process; good communication; gratitude and action – we can become communities of practice that tend to vision and planning as a matter of responsible, ongoing adaptation in the face of rapidly changing circumstances. We can be like Joseph, grounded in faithful purpose and able to see where God is leading us and what steps we need to take to get there, always ready and able to adjust course nimbly as needed.

Once you begin to have a sense of God’s purpose for your life as a faith community, what are you going to do about it? Have fun imagining and planning!

Steve Godfrey

Interim Priest, Grace Church, Boone, & St. Martin’s, Perry