What struck me most however — since the lectures teased out implications for church vitality and growth — were these comments:
• Vital congregations make a difference in their communities.
• Before congregations can meet the needs of the world, they must pay attention to what happens within their own doors.
• They must take their spiritual mission seriously.
• Before we can learn to speak of God in public, we’re going to have to learn to speak of God among ourselves.
Perhaps it is because at Second church, Richmond, we have just recently ordained and installed elders and deacons, and because our staff is in the middle of planning a session retreat that the comments jumped out at me. We are a vital downtown church and in recent years have been “bucking mainline trends.” We have grown numerically; we have increased our staff to keep up with that growth; we have sponsored international mission trips while sustaining our historic outreach into downtown Richmond. We have completed a massive historic restoration project that was in fact deferred maintenance from the last 75 years. None of this would have been accomplished without the Spirit’s power at work among us, but I rarely hear our lay leadership “speaking of God among ourselves.” This does not mean that they are not devoted Christian disciples and faithful Presbyterians individually. It is our corporate life that is puzzling.
To that end our session will spend the better part of a day discerning afresh what it means to be stewards of the spiritual life of our church. How does our monthly oversight of mission, education, worship, property, finance, evangelism and personnel (within an often crowded meeting agenda) foster spiritual growth among us, so that from a vital center such a spirit will radiate out into the congregation.
I write this neither to crow about the congregation I love and am privileged to serve, nor to criticize us for “not doing (or being) the right thing.” I write because I believe that many pastors, elders and deacons ask similar questions about their own necessary and faithful service in the church.
My suspicion is that in the mainstream, we’re beginning to crawl out from under outmoded “corporate” models of church organization, energized more by fear than by faith. We are barely beginning to understand and appreciate a variety of other models of responsible governance of and service in the congregation, models grounded in a trust in God’s providence, rather than a sometimes slavish dependence upon market performance, or tightly constructed regulations to ‘control’ each other’s dreams. I believe that mainline churches, where we have genuinely been influenced by our contacts with the church in the developing world, have become weary with meetings that could just as easily take place at the United Way, at the seminary development office, or at any number of social service agencies in our communities. What, after all, are the spiritual dimensions of a session’s decisions about roof and beam, carpet and paint, and the never-ending claims made between operating budget and mission funding?
Before the session can speak of God to the congregation with thanksgiving and joy, we are going to have to learn to speak about God among ourselves.
O. Benjamin Sparks is interim editor of The Outlook and pastor, Second church, Richmond, Va.
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