Resurrection, when you think about it, can be very specific: one man, one cross, one life sacrificed for others.
But the Easter celebration also is a story across all time, a story of rebirth and new beginnings and hope.
Some Presbyterian congregations have their own Easter stories to tell. Some are of brand-new life, some of exciting new combinations, some of coaxing fresh growth out of old roots. In each case, these are Christians willing to do what Jesus did at Easter: to listen faithfully for God’s voice, and to follow.
Starting from scratch
Cornerstone Presbyterian church in Jackson, New Jersey will be formally chartered as a new congregation the Sunday after Easter, more than three years after Rob Morrison and his wife, Kathe, came east from Oklahoma with the dream of reaching people for Jesus Christ. One of the first things this pastor learned: the Bible Belt is nothing like New Jersey.
In Oklahoma, “we assumed that people would jump into the church. Once they knew the church was there, they would come,” Morrison said. In New Jersey, people throw their children’s birthday parties on Sunday mornings or schedule swim lessons. When Morrison called people up to invite them to church, all he ever spoke to was an answering machine.
But the Morrisons have felt called by God to start new churches. They’d done it before, in Texas and Oklahoma, and this time chose New Jersey because that’s where they’d both grown up and they saw it as a place with room for a greater Presbyterian presence.
So, in the fall of 2001, they started Cornerstone, a congregation with no building of its own, no sanctuary — the congregation now worships in an elementary school cafeteria and since its inception has moved a half-dozen times. This past Christmas Eve, with the school building closed, about 65 people worshipped outside a Dairy Queen in the cold under a tent. Another December Sunday, when their worship space at the school was taken over by a holiday bazaar, Cornerstone responded by announcing a “Sleep-in Sunday” and switching worship to 5 p.m. at a nearby Catholic church.
“The people have been very resilient and flexible and willing to do whatever was needed to make it work,” Morrison said. He said of that flexibility: “Now it’s part of our DNA.”
In this part of central New Jersey, rural land is fast being diced up into new subdivisions filled by people from the New York metropolis willing to trade a long commute for a little land, more space, some peace. Their numbers include immigrants from many countries — from Ghana, Hungary, Scotland, Central America and Africa, people who have brought to Cornerstone their own traditions and encounters with God.
Many people here lead hectic lives and they often don’t have a history of saving space on Sunday mornings for church. To many of them, the idea of church as a welcoming place filled with God’s love — rather than someplace boring, cold and impersonal — is completely new. At Cornerstone, “the music is upbeat, people can wear whatever they want to wear,” Morrison said. “All the taboos or legalisms they had in their mind about the church have suddenly been unshackled.”
To get the word out, the people of Cornerstone have been both creative and energetic — they know they can’t just sit around and wait for new folks to miraculously show up. They’ve mailed out thousands of postcards. They’ve put up signs all over town. The Morrisons drive cars with magnetic signs advertising the church. “We believe in taking every single possible opportunity to spread the word,” Morrison said. And, having no place to call their own, the people of Cornerstone work hard at making God’s presence felt wherever they happen to be. On Sundays, the first worship service begins at 9:30, but Cornerstone can’t begin to use the school until 8 a.m.
All the supplies are kept in storage and moved each week in a trailer and two vans — Bibles, maps, audio-visual equipment, art and craft supplies for the Sunday school classes, everything. Worship is held in the school cafeteria, and the entry area is set up with coffee and posters and displays; “we bring in rugs and carpets so that when the kids are invited up front they’re not sitting on cold linoleum, they’re sitting on carpet,” Morrison said.
Crossroads also isn’t afraid to link what happens at church with the secular world — recognizing that “the liturgical year doesn’t mean that much to these people,” Morrison said. So he’ll take what’s happening outside the church — March Madness in the college basketball world, for example — and build a theme around that, asking the congregation “to have the same enthusiasm and fervor for going to church as people have for basketball,” Morrison said. He challenges folks to come to worship for four weeks straight, culminating in Easter — advertising the event, marking their attendance with stickers on bulletin boards and handing out prizes such as Bible verse bookmarks each time they show up.
In three years, Crossroads has built its worship attendance up from a handful of people to about 130 — what can other Presbyterian churches that want to grow learn from the Crossroads experience?
“We need to believe in our people and believe the Holy Spirit can work through our people” — have faith that God is at work in their lives, Morrison said.
Put Jesus at the center of the teaching and preaching.
And in a culture that is disconnected, don’t forget the power of a phone call or a handwritten card. When people don’t show up at church, someone from Crossroads calls or sends a note to say they’ve been missed. Crossroads hands out postcards at church and asks people to write a message to someone they know inviting them to worship. For baptisms or confirmations, people are given a stack of invitations to send to their relatives and friends.
All of this brings in more people, builds more enthusiasm, Morrison said. “People start to say it’s not such a bad thing to go to church.”
Bonita Springs merger
In this part of Florida, near Fort Myers, change is coming whether people are ready for it or not. Property values are doubling every few months. Last fall, a series of hurricanes ripped through in less than two months.
And in the midst of the hurricanes, two Presbyterian congregations merged to form something new. Grace, a congregation about 40 years old and unsure about its future, merged with Estero, a new church development started in May 2002 by First Church in Bonita Springs, a congregation in a booming area a few miles away.
According to its pastor, James Berger, the new merged congregation — Hope United — combines strengths from both, blending the maturity of an established congregation with the energy and enthusiasm of a new church plant. And it shows a willingness to go in new directions that hadn’t always been there.
Earlier, a former pastor of Grace had opposed the creation of a Bonita Springs satellite congregation, Berger said. Peace River presbytery had tried church plants in the area that hadn’t worked out.
But minds had changed and hearts had been opened; maybe this year, the timing was right. There were discussions and meetings. Grace has a church building and property along a busy road. Estero was finding land too pricey to buy. (Berger said a Baptist group bought 10 acres of swampland 15 months ago for $300,000 and now is offering it for $2 million. The Estero congregation wanted to bid $1.4 million for land that increased in price to $1.8 million in three weeks.)
After months of conversation, the sessions of both congregations agreed that joining forces made sense. They proposed a merger, started worshipping together in July 2004 as sort of a test run, and scheduled a vote for September 12, 2004.
Then Hurricane Charley ripped through in August, delivering a chop to the roof of Grace church.
Hurricane Frances arrived the first week of September, Hurricane Ivan the second week — Berger calls it “44 days of dread.” The vote was postponed. During one of the storms, Berger — who’d been called by Bonita Springs as an associate pastor to work with its satellite church — was on vacation, and the pastor he’d arranged to fill in during his absence couldn’t get there for Sunday worship. The leadership of both congregations decided to go ahead and worship together that Sunday without a minister.
By the time the vote was taken — on the only Sunday in September without a storm — the margin was about 96 percent in favor of merger, Berger said, adding: “The hurricanes gave a feeling of, ‘Nothing is going to stop this church.'”
Still, Hope United faces the challenges of finding a new direction, hiring staff, setting up a ministry structure. “People who were tired now find others who have the energy,” Berger said. “People who were chafing at the bit now find they have the resources” to get things done.
So this is a congregation in transition, in an area in transition. Hope needs to find a way to minister to “snowbird” retirees who come for the winter and to college students from three nearby campuses and to the people filling the subdivisions — 100,000 people in five zip codes, including thousands of single parents, families who need preschools and divorce recovery programs and help caring for their aging parents.
Berger said Hope United contacts every family that moves into the neighborhood, using real estate transfer information published in the local paper, sending each new family a handwritten letter inviting them to worship and other programs.
“I’m excited,” Berger said. “I made the mistake years ago of saying to God, ‘I’ll do anything for you in ministry — I just don’t want to be bored. Be careful what you pray for. God will provide.”
The next step
Pullman Church in Chicago is a congregation with a deep history, and definite ideas about the future as well. It began in 1892, starting as a mission school in the community founded by rail sleeping car magnate George Pullman. The church has moved five times since then and is preparing to do so again, as soon as construction on its new building is complete this summer.
It’s a proud step into the future for Pullman. Two decades ago, attendance had dropped so low that maybe 35 or 40 showed up for worship and the congregation relied on supply pastors each Sunday to lead worship.
But the people made a commitment to find the money and find a way to make things work.
They called Eddie Knox Jr. as their pastor; he’s been there since 1986.
Today, children who grew up in the church, went off to school and got married come back with their own children. Leaders of the church did research to find out what the neighborhood needed; the church has started programs to meet those needs. People here aren’t afraid to try something new — an intergenerational liturgical dance ministry, for example, is just getting underway. Pullman emphasizes Bible study, and some people from the neighborhood who may not be Presbyterian have come to try that and then stuck around.
“Rev. Knox, he teaches from the Word,” said Angela Armstrong, a mother of four grown children and an elder. “People get a sense of the Word, and not just a sense of the pastor and who he is. People are searching for the real thing.”
John Hawkins, another elder, remembers the hard times, how Knox “came and blessed us,” and said: “What made the difference was we do a lot of praying.”
Before Knox arrived, people expected the church might have to close or merge. It was his first call after graduating from McCormick Theological Seminary; he was a second-career pastor with a background in business. He was hired through a special program in which congregations on the verge of closing could hire pastors with a twoyear commitment, giving them that much time to try to turn things around.
At Pullman, it’s taken time — the growth has come bit-by-bit, but the current sanctuary can hold 120 and “we’re squeezed into there,” Knox said.
To what does he attribute the change? “Number one, prayer. A strong degree of faith and commitment. Developing closer relationships in these groups of prayer and faith.”
And Knox said the people of his congregation have worked hard to identify their spiritual gifts, to figure out what each of them has to contribute in serving God.
In August, he hopes, Pullman will move into its new sanctuary. From that new place, a few blocks away, the journey ahead will continue.
