What does membership mean?

In his famous book, Bowling Alone, author Robert Putnam notes the substantial decline of membership in a whole host of clubs, nonprofit organizations, and civic groups in the last 20 years. As we anticipate the beginning of a new year and our upcoming Annual Meeting on Sunday, January 29, it is worth asking: What does membership at St. Edward's mean? What is expected of us as members, if anything? Even the concept of a volunteer organization such as the church might cause some people to bristle at the notion of any expectations whatsoever. Yet as has been demonstrated repeatedly, a growing church does have expectations of those who choose to be its members. Not surprisingly, I believe that membership expectations at St. Edward's mirror our four-fold mission: Welcome all. Worship fully. Witness to God's grace. Walk the way of Christ. Let me explain.

Welcome all.

Part of who we are as members of St. Edward's includes welcoming each and every person, regardless of their faith journey (or lack thereof), political affiliation, or theological opinion. As such, the first expectation of our members is that they will actively seek out newcomers, welcome them to St. Edward's, and facilitate their participation in our worship service or other event. We are always to be on the lookout for another one of God's guests that passes through our doors.

Worship fully.

While it is probably obvious, one of the basic expectations of a member of St. Edward's is that he or she will attend and actively participate in our worship service each week, unless prevented from doing so by illness or other overriding obligation (work-related travel, etc...). Churches are often criticized with the indictment: "They just want my money!" Well, while we're perfectly happy to receive your financial support (see below), what we most want is your participation, not your pledge.

Witness to God's grace.

If you've ever been to an airport, you've seen the signs that say: "If you see something, say something!" One of the expectations that we have for our members is that they will be sensitive to God's work in the world--directly, through them, and through others--and that they will find ways to say something about what they've seen or experienced in this area. Part of this response is to pledge financial support to St. Edward's as a tangible reminder and indicator that God is working in and through the church to accomplish God's mission on earth. In short, we have to put our money where our mouth is! If we believe that the church is God's instrument for the reconciliation of the world, it follows that it both needs and deserves our support.

Walk the way of Christ.

The early followers of Jesus Christ were simply called "The Way." This was a reflection of Jesus' saying "I am the way, the truth, and the life." (John 14:6, NASB) It was also an indicator that to follow Jesus means to be on a pilgrimage, a spiritual path. As members of St. Edward's, and therefore followers of Jesus, it is expected that our service to God does not end at the church door, but that we "seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves" (as our Baptismal Covenant says). In practice, what that means is that every member of St. Edward's is expected to identify and participate in both activities that enhance their spiritual lives and service opportunities that help others. As we do this, we are well aware that we will always fall short of what God has in mind for us, yet as St. Paul writes, we "press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:14, NASB)

Hopefully the above gives you some encouragement, perhaps some challenge, and perhaps a new resolve to make your membership in St. Edward's even more meaningful in 2012. See you Sunday!

To what is God trying to give birth?

I've been thinking over the Gospel lesson for this past Sunday. Several weeks ago, I participated in a "new expressions of church" conference call in which the question was asked: "How are you helping to give birth to something God is doing?" or something like that.

As I was mulling over that, I was directed to the following YouTube video, considering what it would be like if Joseph was on Facebook at the time of Jesus' birth:



As somewhat funny as this is, it also points to the fact that what God was bringing into the world was not something that was even thought of, and was fraught with danger. With two-thousand years of hindsight, we believe Mary was given the greatest gift of all--the opportunity to be theotokos, the "god-bearer." Mary's recorded reaction reinforces that belief, to a point. It also reminds us that even God's gifts come with some associated responsiblities.

2012 will be a year in which we discern what God is bringing into being, or giving birth to, and what we can do to help that process along, to "mid-wife" that process, as it were. While as a man I've never been pregnant, as a father I know the profound changes having children can make in one's life. The birth process is messy, painful, sometimes complex, involves considerable work (that's why they call it "labor"), and generally requires a group of people to help things along. And that's just birth! Actually raising a child requires a whole new set of skills, another group of people (remember "It Takes A Village"), and a long-term viewpoint.

As we celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Jesus, may we be inspired to look for signs of new life and new birth in our own lives and at St. Edward's as well and prepare ourselves to mid-wife and guide that new life that God has for us.

What are we expecting?

The Gospel for this past Sunday invites us to take a second look at John the Baptist, after our first look the week before. As attractive as John was to the crowds that flocked to be baptized, he truly puzzled the authorities of the day:

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?" He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, "I am not the Messiah." And they asked him, "What then? Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not." "Are you the prophet?" He answered, "No." Then they said to him, "Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?" He said, "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, `Make straight the way of the Lord,'" as the prophet Isaiah said. Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, "Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?" John answered them, "I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal." This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

Who are you and why are you doing what you are doing? That was the big question to which the authorities needed an answer. They needed to to identify John, classify him, and verify his credentials before they could figure out how he fit into their very carefully constructed world.

But that was the problem--John didn't fit into their very carefully constructed world. Jesus would be even less of a fit. As an aside, I find it interesting that we don't have any record of Jesus baptizing anyone--even though, as the Messiah, he presumably was "authorized" to do so. But just as John's baptizing was a scandal to the authorities of the day, Jesus' teaching and healing were scandalous to the authorities. It seems as if God doesn't have much respect for religious authority when God is doing something new. As one of the designated "religious authorities" of today, that often gives me pause!


One of the biological facts of our lives is that we generally see what we expect to see. We unconsciously screen out things that do not conform to our expectations. Whether we're driving down the street and looking at a landscape we've seen hundreds of times before, experiencing a worship service we've experienced many times, or solving a problem similar to others we've solved in the past, our mind automatically screens out the unusual and fills in the gaps with previous experiences. We naturally classify things to avoid being overwhelmed with stimuli.


Advent is the season of expectation. We wait in expectation of the anniversary of our Lord's first coming at Christmas and in expectation of Christ's second coming. But just as John and Jesus were not at all who people expected them to be and did not do what people expected them to do, we need to keep an open mind about what what Jesus coming anew into our lives might mean. Perhaps our expectation of Christmas is simply another holiday, hopefully with family and friends, with a few tastefully chosen gifts in the bargain as well. But, as the Grinch who Stole Christmas found out, Christmas doesn't come from a store. The challenge for us is to put aside our expectations and instead expectantly ask a different question:


What could God be up to this year?

Invest in Faith or Bury in Fear?

I've been mulling over the Gospel passage from last Sunday for at least a week now. Even though that sermon is over, for some reason God still won't let me let go of that passage. There is a saying that preaching every week is like having a baby on Sunday and waking up pregnant on Monday. I won't claim any expertise in the area of pregnancy, but it seems like there is something in that passage that God doesn't want me (or us) to let go of quite yet. And, since our Priest Associate for Evangelism is preaching and celebrating this Sunday, I have a chance to take another shot at it!

Part of that "not wanting to let go" is a sense that the passage has a lot of application to us at this point in our lives at St. Edward's. I think that there is a huge temptation to follow the world's example and tighten our belts financially, hold out collective breath, protect what we have, and hope that things get better. Essentially, to bury our talent in the ground so that we'll at least have that in the end. I also think that is a fearful, not a faithful, response and a sure recipe for institutional death.

I managed to touch a bit on it in my sermon, but newly-consecrated Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde's first sermon as Bishop of Washington (DC area) said it much better than I could. Go ahead and read the sermon. Or listen to it. Here is how she ends it:

This is our life. This is our Church. We are a unique expression of God’s creative genius.  Never doubt the importance of what you are doing, and what we are doing on earth.

This is likely what St. Paul had in mind when he wrote to the Thessalonians: "Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing."

Planting or re-planting a church is risky business. Like planting a tree, it takes a lot of preparation and planning, much watering, and then a tremendous amount of patience and some pruning as the tree matures. In many ways, St. Edward's has been uprooted from where and what it was, pruned (perhaps severely) and moved to a new context, a new reality. Where we were perhaps once a tall, strong oak, that tree has split and we are now once again a small seedling. We have huge amounts of potential, but a lot of work and worry ahead of us.


I believe that, through this Gospel passage, God is calling us as a community to choose to move forward and risk what we have in faith rather than to shrink back and bury what we have in order not to lose it, or lose it any faster than necessary. This will not be an easy task. We are naturally a risk-averse people, and many of our congregation have a significant financial, emotional, and spiritual investment in St. Edward's. But we cannot go back. We cannot recapture any sort of glory days of half a century ago. And there is no point in wishing for more money, more people, more of anything we don't currently have. As Bishop Budde said at Washington National Cathedral, I say to you: "This is our life. This is our Church. We are a unique expression of God's creative genius. Never doubt the importance of what you are doing, and what we are doing on earth."

Never doubt the importance of what God will do through us, either....

Pondering (Re-)Planting

This coming Sunday, October 16, we will kick off our Fall Pledge Campaign, with the overall theme "Giving is..." with a weekly tie-in to our fourfold mission of welcoming all, worshipping fully, witnessing to God's grace, and walking the way of Christ. This Sunday it is "Giving is Serving Jesus" and will focus on the "welcome all" portion of our mission. This is not a "welcome all, and help us meet our budget" mission, it is a "welcome all into the Kingdom of God" mission.

I just ran across the following video talking about planting a church. God-incidentially (rather than coincidentally) he is talking about San Jose! He is planting a church not far away from St. Edward's, called The Garden City Church.



As I listened to this fellow pastor, and his desire that many, many churches be planted in San Jose, it fanned the flames of my passion for us to be one of those "planted" churches. What would that look like? What do the people of our area need? What are their hopes and dreams? What can we as an Episcopal church offer them?

Given this pastor's and the church's more conservative theology (see this belief statement), we are likely not going to attract the same people to St. Edward's as they will attract to their church. We offer a more sacramental, more theologically moderate, and more anciently rooted experience of God's church that may well attract people that would never think of attending Garden City. So, as we continue to travel down this (re-)planting road, may we be awake to and aware of opportunities that God sets before us.

See you Sunday.

The Joy of the Lord is Our Strength

As I prepared and preached a sermon on the scriptures for last Sunday, I was struck by two things: the question "Is the Lord among us, or not?" and the pronouncement of Jesus that "the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him."

As I mentioned in my sermon, too often we operate under the assumption that God is somehow absent and that it is solely up to us to do what God has called us to do. That almost directly translates into a lack of joy and to eventual burnout. The Pharisees' desire to preserve the religious institution dedicated to God blinded them to the new thing that God was actually doing in their midst. It was the tax collectors and prostitutes, the lowest of the low who had nothing to lose, that were the most receptive to John the Baptist's message and Jesus' ministry.  The mention of prostitutes and talking about the danger of a lack of joy, reminded me of this passage from The Kingdom of God Is a Party, by Tony Campolo:

After I finished, Harry leaned over the counter and with a trace of hostility in his voice, he said "Hey! You never told me you were a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to?" In one of those moments when just the right words came, I answered, "I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning." Harry waited a moment and then almost sneered as he answered, "No, you don't. There's no church like that. If there was, I'd join it. I'd join a church like that!" Wouldn't we all? Wouldn't we all love to join a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning?"

I'm not announcing a new ministry to prostitutes at St. Edward's, although a colleague of mine runs a quite successful one called Magdalene House in Nashville, Tennessee (shop their Thistle Farms site for great products for a great cause). What I am saying is that when we allow ourselves to take risks, to think outside of the church box, to really connect with the needs, hopes, and dreams of our community, the news that we proclaim goes from old news to good news.

One of the key things we'll be doing as a "new re-plant" church is something that churches that are planted often do--look around at the neighborhood and ask the question "What do people need?" As we do that, we also need to be aware of what gives us joy. Perhaps my favorite quote comes from Frederick Buechner, an author and Presbyterian minister: "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." Being able to discern where our deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet will be a key part of our re-planting process.

Jeremiah 8:10 says "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength." The old St. Edward's gave us much to grieve--the loss of friends, resources, and passion. To successfully plant the new St. Edward's, we need to do what God has called us to do, not of our own strength out of a sense of duty, but out of God's strength with all the joy that God has for us. See you Sunday for another celebration!

Pressing on Towards the Goal

I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. - Philippians 12b-14

This past Sunday morning, coincidentally on the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, I announced that we had reached the point in our life together where we needed to be about the work of (re-)planting St. Edward's and announced that we were formally beginning that replanting effort. Replanting a church means re-launching the church in a fresh new way that honors the past yet looks towards the future. In other words, while we do have already existing buildings, budgets, and committed members, we need to look to the world and essentially say "We're planting a new church. How should we go about doing that, assuming we were just starting out with nothing?"

There are two challenges we face as we re-plant St. Edward's. The first challenge is that our mission context is vastly different from the one that existed 55 years ago at our first "planting." The culture of sometimes explicit, often tacit, social supports to our faith--often called "Christendom"--is dead and is not returning. The world outside our doors is almost completely secular and often, at best, looks upon the church as a curious anachronism of a bygone era. It is thus a huge challenge to convince any twenty-first century American that church has anything to say that would be applicable, much less transformational, to his or her life.

That is not to say that people are not spiritually hungry and thirsty--they very much are. Sometimes, especially around significant life events, the pull of ritual and church ceremony exerts itself. This past weekend we had over 200 people at St. Edwards. Those people were spread over four services (two funerals, our 9 a.m. Eucharist, and the 9/11 commemorative service) but I would like to think that we made at least a minimal impact for Christ on the life of each person who came through our doors. Note that since neither of the funerals were for current members, fully three-fourths of the people who sat in our pews at some point during the weekend were not our members. This doesn't even count the many Christian brothers and sisters who were here as part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church that meets in our church building on Saturday mornings! It also doesn't include the many twelve-step or other groups that use our social hall and Fireside Room. Clearly our buildings have been and continue to be well used by God, if not necessarily by us.

The key, of course, is (to use Diana Butler Bass' terminology) to help the spiritual "tourists" who are here for a single experience to join us as spiritual "pilgrims" on a long journey of faith. To even hope to do so, we have to admit to the second challenge: we often succumb to "tourist Christianity" (my term) ourselves. We sometimes think of our financial contributions to the church as a mere payment for services rendered, we ask "what am I getting out of being here" and, if the answer seems to be "nothing," we are tempted to move on. Sometimes we even find a good spot along our own pilgrimage trail and set up housekeeping, not very much interested in moving forward to new things.  No one is immune from these temptations, even clergy! A more pointed version of this indictment was recently expressed by The Rev. Frederick W. Schmidt, an Episcopal priest and avid blogger, who wrote:

What Muslims have rightly criticized in western culture is that it is spiritually flaccid and self-indulgent. The churches of Europe are empty. While they are not as empty in the United States as they are in Europe, Christians here often live remarkably dissolute and directionless lives that are not easily distinguished from the lives of those around them. We are without discipline. We live as if our faith in God doesn't matter. And in our desire to not be thought of as fundamentalists we have crafted churches that are a studied attempt to avoid deep commitment.

In today's post-Christendom, post-9/11, and increasingly post-Christian society, any attempt to plant (or re-plant) a church that is "a studied attempt to avoid deep commitment" is doomed to failure. People do not seek out hospices unless they or a loved one are dying. People do not seek out churches designed to be (or that have come to be) spiritual hospices unless they simply want to be comfortable as they decline. Offering Karl Marx's "opiate to the masses" is no longer an effective long-term growth strategy, if it ever was.

If you are a member of St. Edward's, please don't read this as some sort of blanket condemnation of your commitment to St. Edward's, much less your commitment to Jesus Christ. A great many of you have served long, faithfully, and well in a variety of capacities over the many years St. Edward's has been here--some of you from the very beginning of its existence! You have left a lasting legacy for future generations and continue to come and support the church as best you are able. As wonderful as that is, however, I am asking everyone to actively support, commit to, or at the very least not oppose the inevitable changes that every new effort like (re-)planting a church brings.  Stay with us, ask for help on the pilgrimage if you need it, and pray and expect God to do wonderful things in your life and in the life of those who have yet to walk through our doors.

So, to borrow from St. Paul, we are forgetting what lies behind--the difficulties of the last decade at St. Ed's, the pain and loss involved in the split in March 2009, some of the initial missteps of the last couple of years, and the lingering fear and uncertainty that follow such things--and we are straining toward what is ahead and pressing on toward the goal of responding faithfully to our own call from God to welcome all, worship fully, witness to God's grace, and walk the way of Christ. I invite you to pack up your spiritual backpack and join me on the adventure.