On Maintenance and Mission

Twelve years ago,  I had just moved to a new parish,  and so both my former parish and my new one were involved in the Lay side of the Fresh Start program.  The question was asked of the laity, "If something happened and your parish ceased to exist tomorrow morning, would anyone miss it,  and if so, who?"  The parish to which I was moving answered among themselves, "Well, apart from the fact that the people who come to worship wouldn't have a place to go,  likely no one would really notice,  and the worshippers would find someplace else."  The place I had just left answered very differently.  They said, "Oh My God,  of course we would be missed!  Who would run the breakfast program in the Southwood Community centre before school?  Who would do the Christmas dinner for the poor?  Who would send the neighbourhood children to Huron Church Camp and Who would cover the support that we have always give to Primate's World Relief and Council of the North?"  The two parishes were neighbouring. They were both a part of the same Deanery.  The difference was that one had an attitude of Maintenance, and the other had their focus set on Mission. One put their time and energy into "keeping the doors open and the bills paid."  The other one put their time and energy into serving the world that God so loves, and somehow, as they did that, the doors stayed open, and the bills got paid.
This morning, I, like many others across the Diocese of Ontario, got an e-mail from the Bishop outlining the Strategic Plan for the Diocese that we will be fleshing out at Synod next week.  It also spoke of the need for the church here in the Diocese to move our faith from maintenance to mission.  It isn't an easy transition to make,  but it is the key to having a living, exciting and enlivening church. The truth though,  is that it cannot be something that we talk about at Diocesan Synod, and then all nod our heads and say that yes, we believe that it is a good thing, and then sit back and wait for the Diocese to do it.  Moving from maintenance to mission cannot begin from the Diocesan level.  It is a transformation in the attitudes of every baptized individual that makes up our church.  Every one of us must individually adjust our focus to considering first, "how does my ministry in the church help others to believe? How do I help to spread the gospel?"  Only then can the parish begin to adjust its focus,  and only when the parishes of this Diocese have changed focus,  can this move from maintenance to mission be accomplished across the Diocese.
I remember Bishop Morse Robinson speaking at my first parish, and challenging them that everything that we do as a parish should have some aspect of helping others to believe attached to it.  Those faithful people,  already convinced of the need to be a mission focused church began to take that question seriously.  Soon,  things started to change.  At the parish bazaar,  food and baked goods that were for sale, came with a little card attached with the words of a grace at meal time.  Knitting and children's clothing were sold with another little card that held a prayer for the child that would wear it.  Soon every little bit of the parish life had some way of declaring that it was from a Christian church, except one.  The parish council made a significant amount of its budget from outside users who came in and used the excellent parish hall facility.  How could that be made to declare the Good News as well.  Eventually,  the parish council hired a local artist to come and paint one of the walls of the hall with a huge mural of the Resurrection, so that every time an outside group came within the walls,  they were reminded that they had come in to a church, and they were faced with the Good News of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That little parish never had more than it needed,  and in fact,  I often would quip that they were "going broke for all the right reasons,"  but there was always enough.
And as years in that parish went by,  we were constantly having to stop and look at ourselves,  and challenge ourselves with the question, "How is this activity going to help others believe."  We had to be pushing ourselves to look beyond the walls and see the needs of the community outside our lovely comfortable gathering.
Loren Meade, in the book The Once and Future Church,  points out that in the Apostolic Church,  the mission field was a reality that the church met the moment that they left their worship gatherings. The mission field was ambivalent to them, and at times even openly violent to them.  But they were a church focused on spreading the Good news.
And then Constantine won the battle of Milvan bridge,  and the world changed.  The Emperor converted to Christianity, and suddenly everyone in the Empire was a Christian, and the Mission field moved to far off shores. Mission became the work of Missionaries,  and the average Christian and the average Christian parish had no need to really proclaim the Gospel.
Let's face it though,  The world has changed once again,  and we no longer live in an age of Christendom.  The mission field is once again there when we step out of our worship spaces,  and like our ancient predecessors, that mission field is often ambivalent or openly violent to the message that we bear.  If the church is to live and grow in such a world,  we must stop focusing on "how are we going to pay the bills?" We must stop fixating on bricks and mortar.  We must change our focus, and in so doing, change the world.
Twelve years after that meeting of Fresh start where my former parish felt that they would not be missed,  I have to tell you,  if they closed today,  the entire city of Kitchener would be devastated.  They left behind their Maintenance mindset.  They moved out in mission, and they are so involved in their community that they are indispensable. They are alive and they are growing.
One interesting observation I would make about their transformation though, is this.  One year,  it was decided that we would build a house with Habitat for Humanity.  That project was going to add an additional $70,000 to the parish outreach budget.  When we first began to discuss it, many people sat wringing their hands, and asking if we could really raise that much extra money without negatively effecting our operating budget. Well,  not only did we raise the needed money and still meet our budget,  but I will add that we had higher attendance in that church that year than there had been in over ten years,  and at the end of the year we had a surplus in givings to the operating budget.
I hold that when the Church operates out of a sense of mission, rather than out of fear and a focus on maintenance,  the people are energized, the community is inspired,  and the church experiences growth.
So I'm with Bishop Michael!  It's time to step out of Maintenance, and get serious about our Mission to go and change that world that God so dearly loves.

After I first posted this blog this morning,  I came upon this article called, "3 common sentences you hear at dying churches."  It is speaking of the opposite side of the Maintenance and Mission discussion,  and does it very well.  It is well worth a read.

http://ministrytodaymag.com/leadership/adversity/23194-3-common-sentences-you-hear-at-dying-churches

Celebration!

It will come as a surprise to no one, that I am very much involved in preparing for a huge celebration.  This Sunday afternoon, the Installation service will go forward according to weeks and weeks of planning, and will celebrate the beginning of something new in terms of my ministry, the ministry of the Cathedral, and the ministry of the Diocese.  Friends and family from all over will be present to join in this celebration.  Former parishioners will arrive by the bus load on Sunday afternoon.  Others will be staying in local hotels and enjoying a week on the waterfront as part of the celebration.  It is a celebration that I will remember for the rest of my life, I am sure.  (I remember my inductions at St. Thomas the Apostle and St. David's in Cambridge and St. George's of Forest Hill in Kitchener with great joy to this day.)

Glorious hymns will raise the roof on the Cathedral and beautiful anthems of praise will inspire the congregation.  (The numbers of the cathedral choir will be swelled for the celebration, and all my friends and family tend to really love to sing).  A dear friend will challenge me, and the entire congregation with the message of the Gospel. Symbolic gifts of the ministry to which this Cathedral has been called will be given, and we will renew the vows of our baptism.

As the last couple days have ticked down,  I also have stopped to think about several other celebrations.  I remember birthdays, and graduations; Ordinations and family days.  I remember the honour of celebrating my parents' 40th anniversary by renewing their wedding vows, and of performing my sister's wedding. Celebrations are designed to help us to create and sustain memories. They are days that draw us together in community, and remind us of what connects us.

Which has brought me to contemplate a different sort of Celebration.  Each time that we as a community gather at the Altar, it is a celebration.  It is so much so,  that the person that leads it is called the celebrant.  Each time the family of God comes to the table, it is to celebrate.  And the celebration is a celebration of anamnesis (Greek: remembering). The gathering is precisely about creating and sustaining memories.  And it is a Eucharistic (Greek: Thanksgiving) celebration. It is an opportunity to remember with THANKSGIVING.

So what is it that we remember.  Well,  the primary anamnesis, is of the death of our Lord.  We gather and remember through bread and wine, the sacrifice of Jesus' own body and blood; an act of incredible love; an act of self-sacrifice.  It is not a joyful memory on the face,  and yet the love that it so clearly communicates to us is an occasion for great joy.  And so as we gather, it is Eucharistic; it is an act of great Thanksgiving.

But the anamnesis of our liturgy is more than simply a bare memorial.  We gather at the table to do much more than to simply remember.  We believe in the real presence of our Lord in the sacrament.  We believe that as we remember, Jesus comes and is present in our community.  In our remembering,  we make that sacrifice real once again.  We make it real in that we receive Christ and his loving sacrifice for ourselves, but also we make it real because in that meal, and in the cross,  Jesus is modelling for us how we must live if we are to change this world into a place where God can reign,  and each time we gather in that meal, we are called to get out into the world and live the self-sacrifice and love that we have experienced in our interactions with the world we meet at the door.

I look forward to the huge celebration that comes with the beginning of this new ministry.  Ultimately, that celebration will build to its ultimate point when we gather at the table with our bishop in that great meal.  But every bit as much as I look forward to that celebration,  I am also called forward by it.  The memories that will be created that day are the memories that sustain me in a calling to get out there and make it so.

I hope I will see you there. I hope I will see you in the Cathedral this Sunday,  and I hope I will see you out in the community following the call of your baptism renewed in that meal, and challenging and changing this world as our Lord has modelled and continues to model for us.

To view the celebration, click here.