The Growing Disconnection of Community and Geography

8:30 AM Unknown 1 Comments


I have a hunch that most people who seek a church home are really looking for a community of people. Theology is important, sense of awe in worship is probably significant as well, but I would wager that feeling accepted and a part of a group of people is paramount.  And so we wander around until we find a place where we are embraced for who we are.  My friend Juan shared this about his journey to find a faith community: “One church I visited, I really felt welcomed, but not accepted.”  He found his faith community a few miles farther away. Today, community is no longer defined by geography.

At some point in history, we made a shift in our expectations of religious communities. The term many people use to describe Episcopal churches is as a parish.  We have come to understand parish as the people who attend a church, the community of the faithful. However, that was not always the case. Some of the roots of the word "parish" include the Middle English word "parisshe," the Anglo-French word "paroche" or "parosse," or what I find most significant, the Greek for "para" or “near” and "oikos" or “house.”  Near or alongside the house gives the impression that the parish was more than just the church, but included the area around the church. Community and geography were intertwined. This was the view the English took. 

And in England, this meaning still holds true today. A parish is not just a worshiping community but instead the subdivision of a county together with an ecclesiastical parish which then constitutes a unit of government. Simply, a church has responsibility for an entire geographical area. The needs of the community surrounding the church are also the church’s business.  This is why in England, if a neighbor wants to be buried, married or baptized in a church, it doesn’t matter if they are a worshiping member or not. What matters is their home address. 

I wonder when the shift happened, when churches began to view membership as participation.  I suspect that technology and globalization haven’t helped.  People drive across cities these days, passing several churches of their own denomination to attend a place where they either feel accepted, or where their theological, moral, or political views are affirmed.  Feeling accepted into a community and finding a place where one can authentically be oneself is of tremendous value. However, I am left wondering if the increase in societal mobility has caused us to lose this old understanding of parish.  And has that loss come at a cost to our faith? 

The English idea of parish gives me great hope, incredible possibility as we consider what a renewed faith might look like.  Maybe renewal is taking a few steps back. If we make the assumption that our next door neighbors are members of another faith community, does this cause us to spiritually disconnect our lives from neighbors? But if we view the neighborhoods where our churches are physically located as a part of our parish and the responsibility of the entire church community, we might be able to change the way we relate to each other.

Living in the Bible Belt means there is a church on nearly every corner.  Even today, there are still more churches than Walgreens and Rite Aids. (Although I wonder for how long?) Can you imagine a world where the physical, social, ecological, economic, and spirituals needs of every neighborhood became the concern of the churches in that neighborhood?  Something tells me we would get a greater glimpse of the kingdom of heaven. Maybe the key is in our understanding of language, and finding ways of reverting back to the original understanding of what it means to be a parish.  We are told that the two most important commandments are “love of God” and “love of neighbor.”  We spend a lot of time debating the nature of God.  Maybe we should spend some time rethinking how to love our neighbor.



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Should Christians Quit Outreach

9:00 AM Unknown 0 Comments


Spoiler Alert:  This is just my stream of conscious, a few thoughts, not even a suggestion.

I realize that this is probably a somewhat provocative title, maybe a little unsettling for those who feel especially called to do good deeds in the world. “How could our church give up the sandwiches we make for the poor and homeless in our community, or the trip to South America to build a home or an addition to an orphanage, or the $5000 we give each year to the food pantry downtown?”  “Why, this is how our community spends the 10% of our budget, or time, which we earmark for doing the good work that Jesus has called us to do!” Which is why I want to suggest that the Church really needs to abandon the language, which presents outreach as an isolated concept, not outreach itself. 

Establishing structure and governance can provide the organizational framework for ministries and churches to thrive.  There is the added benefit of holding people accountable for decision-making. And so we segregate the work of the church to make sure that all tasks are accomplished.  We hire ministers who are in charge of outreach or pastoral care.  We create outreach ministries that enable people to occasionally engage in opportunities to serve others.

I read an article from the Harvard Business Review (you can read the article here) that articulates quite well that the goal of mission related enterprises shouldn’t be membership, but engagement.  Every year Episcopal churches measure membership by calculating the average Sunday attendance and the amount of money spent in the operating year. Two factors are supposed to report church wellness: money and membership. 

And yet money and membership have never been part of the goal. To quote Ed Bacon, Rector of All Saint’s Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, “But what really makes our hearts beat fast is transformed people transforming the world. Membership isn’t our business. Turning the human race into the human family is.”[1]  The goal of being Church is not increasing the budget or number of people on Sunday. It is to be a part of the divine work of God that is restoring all people and all things to God’s glory. It is to be a part of helping to build God’s kingdom on this earth.  If we need metrics to assess our success, we could be measuring how our own community is being transformed and how we are part of the transformation of individuals and entire communities.

I wonder if the problem of having explicit outreach programs or an outreach budget, is it establishes a disconnection from the whole mission of the church. I worry outreach then becomes the focus of a handful of people in the community, something that a few do for the benefit of the rest. Instead we should learn how to make all of ministry, everything we are engaged in a part of transforming our lives and the lives of everyone we encounter.  We are called to love God and to love our neighbor with all our heart, mind and soul. These are the greatest commandments given to us.  What if our liturgy, our Christian formation, and our pastoral care shaped our relationships with our neighbors?  Maybe we should drop the whole outreach language so that everything can become outwardly focused.  Isn’t that what the Gospel is really about? 



[1] https://hbr.org/2015/07/what-to-measure-if-youre-mission-driven

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Opening Our Door: A Paradigm Shift in Being Church

2:48 PM Unknown 2 Comments


Many years ago, I was on the staff of a large church which was asking the question, “Where are all the visitors?”  The church was well positioned in the heart of the city, well-known, and very visible.  The front door rested on top of a hill, located on one of the busiest intersections in town. At the time it was estimated that 30,000 people passed these doors each days. We all wanted to know why people weren’t flooding in.    

The church was planted about 60 years ago. Since then the bushes and trees have grown tall, blocking a clear view from many sight lines.  There was plenty of signage on the front of the building, but the church was in decline.  I can remember a three-month period where we spent way too much time discussing the front doors.  Should we paint the doors the iconic red that to many have been a symbol of welcome and inclusivity? Many were convinced that if the door could be made more visible and welcoming, the church’s problems would all disappear. We wanted to know how to open our doors so people could come flooding in. 

Seven years later, that church is beginning to see signs of new life, resurrection as we call it.  No trees have been removed and no bushes have been cut back. The doors of the church are right where they have always been.  But a shift has begun taking place. The church has become intentional in building relationships with the outside community. The church has found valuable partnerships with other churches, with schools, and nonprofits.  The staff and congregation have used technology and social media exceedingly well to connect to others, building networks of relationships with people outside of the church walls. They are beginning to make a shift.  

It is no secret that participation in faith communities is declining.  Average Sunday attendance in my own tradition, The Episcopal Church, has declined by 24% in ten years.[1] The comments I hear from faith leaders today often begin with the same premise as the church I worked at years ago.  Fear and anxiety about survival are the driving force for much of church programing. More and more churches are looking for ways of opening the doors to get people into the pews. 

But what if there exists a whole new purpose for having an open door policy? What if the real benefit of opening our church doors is to move ourselves out into the world to be church?  How can we see our Christian identity not grounded in where we gather for few hours on a Sunday morning, but our expression of God’s love conveyed in every relationship we encounter?  

This is the paradigm shift that the Church must make.  An assumption can no longer be made that people will find a church to be involved in.  We can no longer wait for people to come in our doors. This shift means we must leave the church in order to share the Gospel.  We must build relationships with our neighbors, not with the expectation that they will follow us back on Sunday morning, but instead so that we can learn their story in order that we ourselves are transformed.  We must divest from doing charity work that makes us feel better about ourselves and invest in relationships that foster wellness in our communities and our neighbors’ communities.  Maybe we have to move from being an Incarnational Church to being Incarnational communities, communities that stretch far beyond the walls of our infrastructure.


My hope is that this blog can be a catalyst for change, a collection of stories of people and communities already participating in this shift.  Can we all help open the doors of Christendom to not only share the Good News, but to embody the Good News as we work to see the Kingdom of Heaven in our very midst.  If you have a story, I would love to hear it.

[1] http://anglicanink.com/article/episcopal-church-down-24-ten-years

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