I was talking in the fall with a student who had grown up in a Lutheran church but hadn't attended to much spiritual at all in several years.
"You should come to my church," I said, thinking that the liturgical Anglican-style service would be familiar to him.
"What's the name of it?" he asked.
I paused. This wasn't going to go over well: "All Saints," I offered.
He grimaced. "It's been a while since I've been a 'saint.'"
Fast forward several months. I'm in a pre-membership class for my church and the pastor is explaining the origins of the name of the church.
"Anglicanism has a reputation for being very clergy-driven. The launch team wanted to quell those fears and they wanted us to be a member-driven church. That's why they chose the name 'All Saints.'"
Hear me: I'm not hating on my church. Read that twice before you go any further.
This is a good example of Godly, wise, intentional and thoughtful Christian leaders putting something in place that un-intentionally creates barriers to the very people they're trying to reach. They chose a name that spoke to .1% of the population (those that would know anything about Anglicanism and how it's historically been run) but did not address the fears of 99.9% of the population (those that are freaked out by church in general). The name they chose preached to the choir.
Here's why I'm blogging on this: Christian communities do this all the time. Most of us, by the time we get into a place of Christian leadership, have been on the "inside" for so long we forget what it's like to be on the outside. And so we must, must, must cultivate an intentional empathy for those who are outside of our communities that we want to engage thoughtfully with the gospel.
Again, I'm writing to those of you who are student leaders and/or very active members of your church communities: be aware of this type of thing, it goes down all the time in just about every Christian community I've ever been a part of.
Something as small as the church name will not prevent our church from moving forward into mission. They're committed to it in the DNA of the church, for which I'm very grateful. The Lord overcomes all types of barriers to get people to himself, and he can and will overcome this one. But let's not make it any harder on him than we have to, shall we?
4 comments:
It seems that "All Saints" is definitely a good core value. The problem that you've shown is when a core value is reactionary rather than intelligible, biblical, and missional (all three). I personally think that "All Saints" is a good core value (and perhaps one of mind) from a biblical perspective, but isn't necessarily intelligible and therefore isn't missional in its presentation. Does that make sense? I think it's what you're saying - though in a different (and maybe not even helpful) way.
"mine," not "mind." sorry.
You should link to the poem "I Stand by the Door"
as usual, burly, you've said what i was trying to say in a much more eloquent way.
marsh, great word, here's the link, I'm sure there's some way I could link to it here in the comments but i'm not smart enough to do that:
http://www.faithatwork.com/history/Shoemaker/Shoemaker_I_Stand.html
Post a Comment