Leaving church? Or staying?

A friend posted a church-planter's provocative essay on Facebook today. You can read, "Dear Church, Here's Why People Are Really Leaving You" at ChurchPlants.com. I responded to the essay and to my friend:

Dear Kellie,

I agree with your assessment of John Pavlovitz's thoughtful essay and with many of his observations about how we, the church, are failing to relate to people and to relate people to God.

Faith in God is relational, I believe, and nothing can replace that primary relationship with God, however appealing it might be in the immediate.

Over my nearly 20 years as pastor of one congregation, I have seen many people come but, thanks be to God, many fewer people go.

People come to church and stay because they are seeking not excitement and entertainment, although I understand that some churches provide inducements to bring people into the fellowship of faith and there to nurture them, but people come to church and keep coming back because they are seeking an authentic encounter with the living Jesus Christ and wanting to learn how to be in community with Jesus and with other people. One does so in one congregation, not in a series of them.

Over the years here, I have observed that among the people who leave church, apart from those who enter eternal fellowship with Christ in heaven, some leave because they have grown bored, are restless and are often seeking the perfect church, which often comports with their specific definitions of perfection, including conformity to certain biblical texts, which are interpreted in one, usually literal way.

Some people leave because they want to return to the church of the past, which never existed, and which they hope will provide them the unshakable security they seek in an insecure, changing world (The only security in this world, I believe, is found in daily placing one's ultimate trust in God, not in institutions, including the church, regardless of denomination.)

Some people leave because they are shaken by the challenge of the Jesus of the Gospels--Jesus whose love, compassion, mercy, and justice extend to every human being, even to those who reject and crucify him.

Some people leave because they are distracted and diverted from the commitments and consolations of the Christian faith, including regular worship with other followers of Jesus, because of work pressures, family, Sunday morning sports, and the cares and pleasures of the world.

But what about the rest of us? What about people who stay in church and in one church? People who experience many of these same pressures, temptations, promptings? Why do we stay?

We stay because church--although imperfect and sometimes irritating, dull, wrong, disappointing--is our spiritual home, our family.

We are brothers and sisters in Christ. We need one another. We need Christ in our lives, and we find him with one another in that community called church, faithful and yet flawed.

Leap into God

It was laundry day in the Chumbley household. Christa, our six year-old granddaughter, was standing atop the drier. How she got there, I don't know. I know that she has entered the climbing phase in her development.

"Sweetie," I said. "Sit down before you fall."

She didn't. She turned around, her back to me now, threw her arms out, as if to take a high-dive backwards, and then said, "Poppy, catch me."

And off she came.

I caught her, of course. She laughed. I held her, kissed her. And she was ready to take another leap into my arms. Backwards.

I learned something in that moment.

When Christa took her leap, she could not see me. Still, she trusted me, that I would be there for her. She knows I love her. I love her more than my own life. I would never let her fall. Ever.

And so it is with God. He loves us. He shows his love for us on the cross, loving us more than his own life, and saving us through his sacrifice.

Find your drier. Stand on top of it. Now, turn from that which you can see and to the One you cannot see. Throw out your arms. And take that leap of faith into the arms of our loving God.

And God will catch you. Every time.

125 lives and counting

How many lives do you affect for the good daily? With a hello or kind word? By sending a card to someone who's lost a loved one? Holding the door for someone whose arms are full? Volunteering at a local hospital or school of nursing home or church.

The opportunities to increase the sum total of good in the world every day are endless.

Today, I received an email about a possible project of the Diocese of West Missouri. Ideas are being solicited now.

The 125 Lives proposal will come before the Diocesan Convention in November in the form of a resolution. If approved--how could it not be?--the resolution would urge congregations to identify ministries and projects that are helping at least 125 people.

I responded to the email, sending along some of the ways that the people of Christ Episcopal Church are helping others:

FROM the Next-to-New Shop, which I just visited, which is providing clothing to people with modest resources, including job seekers; 

TO the Outreach Team, which provides the food, prepares it, and serves it to homeless teens at Rare Breed (Our team will be there tonight); 

TO the church staff here who daily pass out sack (or, today, box) lunches to hungry people; 

TO the Well of Life Center and our many volunteers there, which is distributing food to the growing numbers of hungry people in the area around church 

(Did you see the story in the Springfield News-Leader on Monday about hunger: Some 250,000 people in the Ozarks rely on food pantries for some of their food, and most of the hungry are working full-time; many of them used to be middle class.); 

TO our Crosslines' volunteers who collect, sort, deliver, and then distribute food to hungry people through the Council of Churches' feeding ministry; 

TO our Bissett Elementary School outreach, which just last week distributed new shoes to the students there, and to the people of the parish who contributed money and time to organizing, fitting, and distributing the shoes to a lot of happy children; 

TO the college work that we (and St. John's Episcopal Church) are doing, with 50 students at the first student gathering here a few weeks ago and some 20 or so attending weekly; 

TO our pastoral care ministers, who help hundreds of people through hospitality at the time of funerals, who cook and deliver meals to parishioners in need, who accompany people on their grief journeys, who deliver flowers to nursing homes and hospitalized people;

TO the St. Gregory Senior Choir, which periodically gives Sunday evening sacred music concerts, which people from the parish and the larger community attend, and which enrich and elevate them; 

TO our Haiti Team--contributors and volunteers, whose giving of time, talent, and treasure daily provides medical and nursing care, high-protein food to malnourished infants, schooling and much more to the people of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere;

TO the Vinton Fellowship, which monthly serves nearly 50 elders--people not just from Christ Church, but also from other parishes and from the wider community;

TO everyone involved in our worship ministries, whose contributions of music, word, and sacrament nourish with spiritual food 250 to 300 people weekly during the regular church year.

As I reflect on our positive impact on many hundreds of lives daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, I am awed and thankful for this community of faith and these people called Christ Episcopal Church. 

Thanks be to God!

Spinning Plates and spiritual food

I like to watch movies about food.

The other night, Penny and I watched a Netflix documentary called, “Spinning Plates.” I think nearly everyone will find something to like in the film.

It tells the story of three restaurants and the people behind them. Hard-working, loving, creative people.

Each restaurant is different. Breitbach’s Country Dining, in rural Iowa, has been in the Breitbach family for four generations now.  La Cocina de Gabby is a Mexican restaurant in Tucson. Alinea, in Chicago, was named the Best Restaurant in North America and received three stars in the Michelin Red Guide.

Spinning Plates reminds me how important food is.

A meal unites people. A restaurant staff works hard—16 hours a day or more--and in unison to prepare the food and serve it. Diners come together to enjoy the meal. A meal sustains people. We must eat to live. A meal is often the setting for celebration—a wedding anniversary, a graduation or a baptism.

A meal can also be a way to find support in a hard time, such as after the death of someone close to us. People often gather after a funeral for a reception or a formal meal. We remember the departed, telling stories of him or her; and often that person seems alive and present. We hug and cry and sometimes laugh. We share not only the food, but also our grief, and we gain strength from one another for living with and through loss.

In the Gospels, notice how many times Jesus and his disciples are having a meal—at the wedding feast in Cana in Galilee, at the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, at the Passover on the night before his death; and, then, at the breakfast by the shore when the resurrected Jesus appears to his grief-wearied disciples during a meal of grilled bread and fish.

Meals not only nourish us physically but also spiritually. Watch Spinning Plates and see how food brings life, how a meal transforms people and communities. (“Babetts’s Feast” is another of those films that is about far more than food.)

For Episcopalians, the greatest meal--and one infinitely superior even to a meal at a three-star Michelin restaurant--is the Holy Eucharist. 

In the Eucharist, the Living Christ, our host, welcomes us. We come to the table needing nourishment and companionship, his and one another’s. He feeds our spiritual bodies with the Word of God (the Scripture readings and the sermon) and with the bread and wine, which become the living presence of Jesus through the power of God the Holy Spirit.

As our physical bodies are enlivened through a meal, so our spiritual bodies are enlivened through this spiritual meal of the Holy Eucharist. 

Even though you’re meeting your physical needs, you’re still missing something, and you can’t quite articulate it.

A sense of wonder? A connection to something bigger than you yourself? The experience that you are loved unconditionally and forever? A feeling of belonging? Hope that is beyond this world? Purpose outside of the ordinary? Wealth that never loses value, but always gains it? Peace that passes all understanding?

You won’t need a reservation for this holy meal. You’ll always find your place at the Lord’s table. And although there won’t be any spinning plates, the meal served here from that silver paten (and chalice) will be one that will satisfy your deepest hungers.

Journeying with the Jesus of justice

Some church members wonder about my passion for justice, which I understand very simply as doing unto others as I would like them to do unto me.

Why do I care about justice? Because in my spiritual journey, I have discovered that God cares about justice and calls me to do the same. 

God's will, I believe, is for a just and loving world--one in which all God’s children are treated with respect and dignity. God, as I know him and believe in him, creates every human being in his image and likeness, as Genesis puts it. God is in every person, and every person is in God.

In the Lord's Prayer, I pray "thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." I not only say this prayer, but, with God's help, I try to enact it. To paraphrase Evelyn Underhill, the great Anglican mystic, If I pray for God's kingdom to come, then I have to work to achieve it. 

Humbly and feebly, I strive for a better, a more just world for everyone, especially for those people the renowned sociologist Robert Bellah once described as the “underclass.” The underclass includes the working poor, the hungry, people without health insurance, vulnerable children and elderly people. The underclass lacks the power that other classes in America possess, including education and training, political networks, money and access to decision-makers, status.

I see and serve the underclass daily as a pastor, as well as through Christ Church's outreach ministries and my active involvement in community groups and on various boards, including the Board of Directors of the Council of Churches of the Ozarks.

At our recent community dinner at church, with 85 people in attendance, I went from table to table, welcoming our guests and learning a little about their lives and challenges. Most of them never imagined that they would be homeless or would rely on food banks or church suppers to survive. One guest, a former teacher with a master’s degree, told me that she never thought she would have a nervous breakdown and then lose her job.

My concern about justice grew slowly, beginning in the Roman Catholic Church. A child of Vatican II, I learned from Popes John XXIII and Paul VI and from my priests and nuns that Christ cared for the underclass, that he urged his followers to work for their wellbeing. I give God thanks that today Pope Francis is urging all Christians to work for a just and peaceful world.

As a young adult at the University of Louisville, I became active in the Ecumenical Center. At the urging of my Roman Catholic chaplain, I began to read Thomas Merton, a priest, monk, social critic and activist. Merton called Christians, not only to daily conversion to Christ, but also to the conversion of the world, that the world might become God’s kingdom of justice, freedom and peace.

After college Penny and I became active in a house church, a weekly informal gathering of Christians in one another’s homes. Our church was dedicated to Christ and to social justice. Activism was new to me. I felt self-conscious and frightened as I participated in public protests—against the death penalty, the building of a nuclear power plant in southern Indiana and the USwars in Central America.

I never imagined that my faith in Christ would lead me to kneel with others in prayer at the federal courthouse in Louisville as a man was sentenced to death, that I would begin corresponding with a death row inmate in Alabama, that I would spend the day with him in a cell, there getting to know him better and praying with him (This inmate, Wallace Thomas, became my friend and was later executed.), that I would become an active memberof the Nuclear Freeze movement, which sought to abolish nuclear weapons.

I began to write about social justice and to publish articles and reviews in national publications, including The Other Side and Sojourners. I wrote occasional opinion columns about peace and justice for The Courier-Journal and Louisville Times. Colleagues at the public relations agency where I worked thought my views controversial. A family member said I should keep my opinions to myself or jeopardize my career. I kept writing.

By the late 1970s, Penny and I were attending Christ Church Cathedral, the Episcopal cathedral in Louisville. I was attracted to the cathedral because of its beautiful music and traditional worship, its focus on fostering the life of prayer, its lively, engaged community and its strong commitment to serving the poor and needy.

The more I learned about the Episcopal Church, including its history of championing justice and peace, the more convinced I was that the Episcopal Church was the church God was calling me to join. The lively preaching of the canon, the assistant minister, with whom I sometimes disagreed, challenged me to see Jesus more fully, as God’s compassion for all human beings--be they homeless, hungry, people of color, gays and lesbians. I am glad I listened to the canon. Listening to him, I was listening to Christ, God’s living word.

I moved from my birth church, the Roman Catholic Church, into my new spiritual home, the Episcopal Church, on Trinity Sunday, June 1, 1980. The Episcopal Church continues to shape my vision of what it means for me to follow Jesus.

My graduate theological education at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and, later, at The General Theological Seminary in New York City exposed me to the prophetic (speaking the inconvenient truth) tradition of both Judaism and Christianity. I studied the Hebrew Scriptures and language and immersed myself in the world and work of the prophets of Israel, who spoke for God to his people. The prophets urged the Israelites to abandon their idols and to be faithful to God alone, living according to his law and loving and caring for the poor, the oppressed and the vulnerable.

I studied the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and later martyr in Nazi Germany, and of Karl Barth, a Swiss theologian who famously said that the preacher should prepare his sermons with the Bible in one hand and The New York Times in the other. I discovered the Social Gospel Movement, which called for the transformation of society. I studied Liberation Theology, learning to read the Bible with the help of modern social, economic and political analysis. Evangelical Christians and Quakers of 18th and 19th century America who sought to abolish slavery inspired me, as did Anglicans and Episcopalians who served the poor in the slums of London and American cities in the 19th century.

Also during my seminary days, I saw poverty first hand when I served an African-American church in Louisville and, later, a church on New York's West Side, which ministered to the homeless and hungry. I also saw the power of the pulpit to awaken Christians to Christ who lived in the needy. To paraphrase Jesus in Matthew 25, as I show compassion to the needy, I show compassion to Jesus himself.

I met and was challenged by modern-day prophets, including Philip Berrigan, a Roman Catholic priest, who opposed the Vietnam War. Humbly, Father Berrigan said that he hadn’t yet become a Christian but that he was “becoming a Christian.” I know that I will never become fully Christian in this world. But I trust that Christ is pleased by my desire to see him more clearly, to love him more dearly and to follow him more nearly, as the blessed Richard of Chichester prayed. 

At General, I studied with Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Archbishop Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize while there because of his anti-apartheid work in his homeland. The Bible came to life through his lectures on the church in the modern world and in his preaching in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd. Small in size, he is nevertheless a spiritual giant who is ablaze with God’s passion for a new world of justice, freedom, peace and reconciliation. Archbishop Tutu has left a lasting imprint upon me--my faith, my concerns, my writing, my teaching and, especially, my preaching

My formation in Christ makes me the person I am, the Christian I hope to be, living into the fullness of my Baptismal Covenant, and the priest I believe God called and ordained me to be.

As a priest in southern Kentucky, then in New York state and now at Christ Church for nearly 19 years, I have sought to live my faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior and my Lord, my faith in Christ and my commitment to him constantly evolving as I have dealt with the needs of the people in my parishes and my communities. When AIDS appeared in the early 1980s, I helped found the first regional support ministry in southern Kentucky for people living with the disease. With hunger growing in the Southern Tier of New York, church members and I opened a food pantry in our church. When white power groups started recruiting in the area, I spoke out against the evil of racism. With my encouragement, the church opened our classrooms to Laotian and other Asian refugees so they could learn English.




In reflecting here on some of my journey with Jesus, I hope you have a better understanding of who I am, why I am passionate about the well-being of all of God’s children, why I see advocacy for and service to the poor and needy as an integral part of my faith and my calling from God.This history of mine shapes my faith and spirituality, my values and core beliefs and my actions for a better and more just world.

When we share our stories with one another in the spirit of love, we build relationships of respect, trust and lively concern for one another and for others. In conversation, then, let us all grow more fully into the image and likeness of Jesus, the compassion of God.And let us find our unity in him and in service to all his children.

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Easter is all around

As I walked early this morning, I heard and saw spring all around. It shouted, Alleluia. Cardinals, robins, blackbirds were trilling; trees exploded in colors, their sap arising after a long winter's sleep, pushing shoots of green from their branches. The wind carried the sweet smell of lilacs. The rain-softened earth offered up tulips and daffodils. Creation surged with life.

God is behind it all--bringing forth life in response to the promptings of his love.

In the readings from the Prayer Book Daily Office for Easter Week (The Book of Common Prayer, page 959), Exodus tells the story of the Passover and of God delivering his chosen people, Israel, from the darkness and death of slavery in Egypt. The readings go on to recount how God leads an often fearful and wavering Israel into new, abundant life in the Promised Land, that land "flowing with milk and honey." Canaan is a kind of everlasting springtime.

The New Testament writings from Corinthians contain St. Paul's profound meditation on the meaning of Christ's resurrection for believers, while the Gospel readings tell in their particular ways that amazing story of Jesus' resurrection and of his miraculous appearances in his risen body. Once again, God is bringing freedom and new life out of the slavery of sin and of death. It is springtime.

God, who is love and life, is at work in creation, in the church, and in the lives of all people who put
their faith in the Risen Lord Jesus Christ.

Believing in him is committing ourselves to follow him, and when we do, we see him in all his power. He is continuing his work, freeing us from every tomb and from all our chains--be they addictions, selfishness, fear of the future, loneliness, depression. And for those of us who follow Jesus in faith from the tombs of this world, we find our Promised Land. That land is not a place, but a state of being called resurrection and our daily awareness that God is always greater than our problems, our pain, our suffering, even our deaths. Only God is almighty. Do we believe? How does our believing change our way of being and of living?

Easter is all around--in the glorious spring of bird songs and blossoms and beauty. And it is in us and in all who put their faith in Christ on earth, who proclaim by our words and our actions, Alleluia! Christ is risen. May your 50 days of Easter be filled with joy in the God of all life.

Truth served at Rotary luncheon

I enjoy my Downtown Rotary Club. I like the fellowship over lunch, working with others for a better world and learning something from the speakers.

Today, a room-full of Rotarians gathered on the Missouri State University campus, despite the swiftly accumulating snow fall, and we heard about a problem that is becoming increasingly visible in our community.

It is the problem of increasing poverty, hunger, even homelessness--including among public school students here. Today, we learned that more than 60 percent of Springfield Public School students are on subsidized or free school lunches.

The presenters, Morey Mechlin of Care to Learn, a community-wide response to poverty, and her son, Christian, who works with needy, at-risk public school students, briefed us on the reality of poverty in our community.

Morey and Christian talked about generational poverty and, now, increasingly, situational poverty.  Many of the situationally poor had once been middle class but have now become poor because of catastrophic illness and lack of health care insurance, divorce and family disintegration, chronic unemployment or underemployment, among other causes.

I know and minister to people who are poor generationally--they are resigned to it as the way of their lives--and who are poor situationally. Morey said we need to care about both groups of people.

After their presentation, I commended the Morey and Christian for their courage in talking about this problem. I know they might be criticized for their advocacy for the poor.

I think about Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan. Far too people simply hurry by the need. I have been that person who hurried by.

It will be hard for us Rotarians to hurry by the need now.

Poverty can eradicated or, at least, greatly reduced. Morey said education and relationships--healthy and nurturing--are a big part of the solution.  

I am proud of my fellow Rotarians for attending the meeting on this snowy Tuesday, for their courage in listening to this sobering presentation and for wanting to do something about it.

I am also proud of the many churches--Baptist, Assembly of God, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist and non-denominational--for stopping and helping the many people at the roadsides of our community.

This is love. This is true religion. This is what Christianity is all about.