State of the Church

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was 1 John 3:1-3:

It has been my practice for most of my years in ministry as the end of an appointment year comes to and end and a new one begins to take the time to look back at what we did in the past year and more importantly where we were going in the next year which I have called the state of the church message. Now I didn’t do that the first two years here, I think it was, because of what was happening it was too hard to plan for the next month, let alone the next year. But we did do it last year, and we do it again as I complete my fourth year serving this congregation, and I’ll be honest that sometimes it feels like it hasn’t been that long, and other times it feels like it’s been at least a decade here. But today we’re not looking back, even though we have some great things we have accomplished but I want to spend the looking at where we are going as a congregation, how we might get there and what all of us, as the body of Christ, need to do to do that work. But let me give just a little context for everything.

In 2008, Phyllis Tickle published a book entitled The Great Emergence, which we have a copy of in the church library, and the Los Alamos Library has a digital copy. But one of the arguments that she has in the book is that every five hundred years or so the church faces a great upheaval, that there are tectonic shifts that happen and, in her words, the church “cleans house” and holds a great rummage sale in which it decides what to keep, what to get rid of and what new things to introduce. And while I’m not going to go into all the details, and there is certainly room for debate in her argument, it think it’s largely correct. And the last time the church went through this major disruption was at the Protestant Reformation. Does anyone know what year the reformation is said to have begun? 1517, so basically 500 years ago. And of course, it didn’t actually begin that year and it didn’t end that year, it went on for a while, as did the other turmoil she cites.

And so, if Tickle is right, then we are right in the midst of all of this, and I can tell you from where I stand I do think it’s right, or at least it feels right. My conversations with other clergy, not just United Methodist, but other protestants, Catholic and Orthodox priests and even Unitarians, they are all saying “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m working harder than ever, and I was not trained to do any of the things the church is now doing, and no one else has been trained for this either, that we are all making it up as we go along.” That there is a disturbance in the force, not to jump ahead in week in our messaging, and we’re all flying by the seat of our pants doing things we never imagined and having to think in new and different ways. And I can tell you that’s unsettling, and scary and daunting, and yet there is also an energy and excitement that are there as well because we are in the vanguard in some ways of how the church will be for a while. I don’t know if it’s 500 years’ worth, but we are creating something new. And so, if you have this sense that things are shifting under our feet rapidly and you’re not sure what’s happening, and perhaps it leaves you worried, or maybe you find it exciting, then you are not alone. Welcome to the party. And so, as I’ve been trying to capture in the newsletter this year these are all the things that are swirling around in my head as I’m trying to figure out these next few years while also wondering how much what we do will change in the next 15 years which gets me to retirement. Although we’re not looking that far ahead yet, but we do have some longer term goals.

And so, the leadership board met for a retreat two months ago to talk through some of these issues and to begin creating goals for the church. We did the same exercise just a few weeks before we closed for Covid, and we actually got many of those accomplished, and others didn’t happen because the world changed rapidly. We were led in this process by Leaven Coaching, whose goal is to help people and groups rise, hence the name, and we set out to create goals to be completed in the next year, starting July 1. Then we had 3-5 year goals, which we are calling the 75th anniversary goals, as the 75th anniversary of the founding of this congregation is September 9, 2026. And then we had 10 year goals. And before we jump into those goals, let me just say that not completing a goal is not a failure, depending on why it wasn’t done. Sometimes the world just rapidly changes, and that goal no longer makes sense, or we have a new opportunity come that is more important, or that changes what we imagined and leads us in new directions. So, we are not writing these in stone and locking ourselves into them, because that’s not how the Spirit moves and works. As the passage we heard today from 1 John says, and you may remember this was the passage that sort of centered our thinking for the Lenten series in which we did a lot of the prep work for these goals. We know that we are children of God. That is who we are now, and who we will always be, but the future is unknown but we will continue to strive after the Kingdom, or doing God’s will here on earth, as it is in heaven, and holding onto the hope we have through Christ. And so, without further ado, away we go.

So, we start with the one year goals, I guess that would be obvious, but maybe not, and we start  with sort of a very practical one. And by the way those in the sanctuary you will find these as an insert, and those online as this is live, they were available in the Friday worship email, which if you don’t receive that, you can subscribe on our website, and for those who are watching this later, you’ll just have to see them in the bottom corner. Anyways, since we want to a one board model under Steve Trout, one of the areas that we have struggled is with the trustees, which have multiple roles. One is a fiduciary one of overseeing insurance and incorporation stuff, and the second is that of dealing maintenance and upkeep of the building. The Leadership board does the fiduciary stuff, and even some of the larger decisions, but we really need volunteers for the maintenance team. They don’t meet, we do most things by email, but we need more people, men and women, skilled and unskilled, who can take on tasks that happen throughout the year. ( So, one of our goals is to get that team created and operating effectively. Another, and this you will find covers multiple years, is to increase and improve our online worship as well as discipleship making activities online. This is a growing edge for us, and last week we posted a new high for those watching line on Sunday with 27 households with us, beating our old record by 2. While there are some churches who are moving away, or want to move away, and are encouraging people to be in-person, as if that’s the only appropriate way to worship, but we’re going the other way for multiple reasons. One is that’s the way the world is moving, and more importantly because its an inclusivity issue. We can reach more people in more ways and in more times, who otherwise might not otherwise be able to worship with us at all. But, right now those online are just observing what’s happening in the sanctuary, but that’s not, in my opinion, the right way to do that. Just think of a sporting event, or even a Broadway show. Is the in-person experience the same as watching it on tv or online? No, they are very different because the experience itself is different, and so we need to program for that. And we are preparing to make another upgrade to our system to assist that as well as to form a team to help us improve that as well as to connect those who are worshipping online together, and with the rest of the congregation, and build in other fellowship and faith development activities. We are also, as part of this, going to try to reach out to United Methodist’s who have lost their churches to become a temporary worship home, as well as becoming a leader in the conference in online worship and online community so that we can assist and train other congregations to do the same thing. A goal is to create a welcoming statement for the website, and other things, for those who are looking for a church to know who we are and that we are called to love all. And that flows out into how we interact with our community as the church, and you’ll see a list of potential things there, including also increasing our ecumenical work by partnering with other faith groups to do more things together. Now one of the things I hear a lot about from both the church and also the community is about skates. But here's the thing about skates. Don has been doing it for thirty years, and while he’s had help over that time, he cannot do this alone. And so, I have told him we won’t start skates up until he has a team to help him. this cannot be, and will not be, a ministry of one person. If we want to have skates again, to restart that institution, it needs to be owned by the congregation and supported by the congregation. And finally, as part of this work is to do a demographics study of who is living in the area now and how we can work with them better and meet some of the needs of the community.

Then we move onto what we are calling the 75th anniversary goals, because we will celebrate the 75th anniversary of our founding in 2026, and so these are really 3-5 year goals. But the first is that we will hold a celebration for that anniversary, and what that looks like is yet to be determined. But what we do want to also celebrate at that time is having paid off the remainder of our mortgage, which currently stands at just a little more than $220,000, and to which we contribute $37,000 a year. Paying off the debt, not only removed that weight from us, but frees up those funds to be used in ministry. We continue with goals for worship and faith development of creating another worship service not on Sunday and that takes place out in the community, along with a second program night like program, which means it could be very different, but combining families coming together, and that too might be off campus and will include a digital component to it. And let me just add that I think some are worried from some of the things I’ve said that I am going to eliminate the traditional service. And nothing could be further from the truth. But we do need to look at how we do worship because while we call the contemporary worship contemporary, it’s not. This model is now 40 years old and the generation it was built for are now entering retirement age, and so that means we need to look at where young adults are finding and encountering God and respond accordingly. But, just like with online worship, this is not an either/or but a both/and. One of the areas in which I need to focus is on creating a leadership development pathway, along with our current leaders, in order to raise up and train new leaders in the congregation, which I think also goes alongside the creation of a discipleship pathway, as leadership in the church and discipleship go hand in hand. And the final one here that we haven’t yet covered is one that I am excited about and I think has lots of potential for us, and that was the goal of creating and/or partnering with others to create life skills classes. And this is targeted at all ages. So, for example, it could be technology classes or classes on how not to get scammed, for seniors, and planning for retirement for younger, and finance classes for all ages, or classes on how to change a tire and check the oil and other maintenance for teenagers. It’s really responding to the needs we see and hear about in our community, so that we continue to build on our identity of being the church that is in service to the community, that we become known as God’s love in action.

And then we have what we are identifying as our 5-10 year goals. And so, one of our long-term goals is continued increasing our outreach opportunities, or building on what we already have. The next goal is to move towards environmental sustainability as a congregation, or to have a zero-carbon footprint, and there are lots of ways that could happen. Someone also suggested that as we do these things, it could also be an opportunity for us to make it a learning opportunity for high schoolers to learn a trade, or be exposed to a trade, which is a great way of thinking broadly to try and accomplish multiple goals through one project. And then finally it was to work on what we have said is to dispel misconceptions about what it means to be a Christian. When we say that we are Christians, especially to people who are unchurched or of other faiths, many or even most probably have a very different meaning of that word that how we might understand it. So, this is a way for us to communicate what it means for us, that it doesn’t mean that all Christians do this, believe this, or that we all vote the same way. It’s to broaden the understanding of Christianity and therefore to be welcoming to those who might be favorable to hearing about our understanding of God and of the good news which is different than what they imagine it to be.

That was a lot of information in not a lot of time and with not a lot of details. We are going to be holding what we are currently calling an opportunity expo sometime in the early fall, at multiple times and in multiple ways, so that you can hear more about these goals and even better to say that you are interested in participating because these cannot be done only be the members of the Leadership Board. But, in the meantime for those in the sanctuary, you will find an insert in the worship guide that has all of these on there, with little boxes next to it, and we are strongly encouraging you to mark in the box next to the ones you are most interested in and that turn it in with the offering. Marking this does not mean you are committing yourself to any of these, it just gives us a starting place to begin gathering and disseminating information. For those online, again you will find this in the Friday worship email and also on the church center app. Fill it out and then send it in to the church and we will get you added to the list.

Right now, we are children of God, beloved children, disciples of the way seeking to be God’s love to the world, and what we will be is not yet known, but we are moving boldly and bravely into the future in the sure and certain hope that God is with us  and guiding us, and that when we work with God, and abide in God and God’s dreams and visions, just as God abides in us that all things are indeed possible. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.