This past Sunday I had the pleasure and challenge of filling in for the pastor of my church to preach and lead worship (putting that M.Div. to work). It is a classic reformed building in the style of a large raised center pulpit, stained glass windows, etc. You have been at a church just like it and perhaps preach in one on a regular basis.

Since my wife and I have been going to this church, now for the past two years, it has been in a rebuilding stage after a less than amicable stage in its development about a year or two prior to our arrival. It is strange because looking around at the congregation demographics of regular attenders, an entire generation is missing. There are a lot of golden agers and a lot fo really young families, including my own, but there is no youth group. We have a lot of small kids, but no real high school age group yet. Our pastor’s vision has been to rebuild what had been damaged.

The weekly attendance is normal for what constitutes most membership roles in the PCUSA. We get about 100-120 each week over three services. As of 2006, almost half of all PCUSA congregations have a membership of under 150. There is something vital and important about the small church ministry that in some ways seems anachronistic in our culture of larger than life spectacle and consumerism. In many communities, such as the one in which I live, the small church still plays a vital and central socio-cultural role.

Yet there I stood, towering above this modest, yet normatively sized congregation behind this massive edifice to bring the Word of God. I felt distant and very alone up there. In short the architecture did not serve its purpose, it actually betrayed its purpose to a degree since it physically spread people apart.

As we continue to build and restructure the identity of my small church, there seems to be something of vitality to the ideas of being incarnational, missional, and non-hierarchical (emergent buzz words) to fostering community development. In many ways, the house church model would seem to cater well to a small church seeking to build and reimagine itself. What I find it hard to do is to wrap our community in these ideas that are so often socio-culturally alien to the expected form of community and worship that people tend to bring to the table namely, the pastor as the traditional head of the church, traditional use of architecture in worship, and on and on. Postmodernity is miles away from these types of communities.

So what are your thoughts? What can the emergent ideas do for smaller congregations such as my own that are trying to rebuild and re-imagine their roles as an important part of the community? What can emergent ideas do in the midst of the rather foundational lives of the local residents? How can these ideas bridge clear generational expectations by continuing to respect the elders while at the same time seek out and be vital to younger generations?

Though on the longer side, this episode is rich with hope for possibilities of our church structures, and ourselves, flourishing in the midst of chaos.

Between recording the opening context essay of the episode and now posting this episode (…please pray for me that future episodes take less time to complete…) the post Concerning Exegesis put words to something I couldn’t quite explain. Why are there natural ties between traditionally mission focused Presbyterians and presbymergents? As that post highlights, we share a desire do thoughtful exegesis of culture, and both gain from writers such as Lesslie Newbigin. This podcast and that posting providentially complement one another as we explore the mission before us.

Episode 02: Vera White, Pittsburgh Presbytery

Vera White is the Pittsburgh Presbytery Director of New Church Development, Stewardship, and the Committee on Ministry. This episode has two main themes that Vera develops in her sharing: presbymergent oriented leadership and presbytery-wide support of presbymergent NCDs. Vera’s role in Pittsburgh Presbytery provides a valuable collection of wisdom for any PC(USA) leader or governing body engaging with presbymergent.

Interspersed among this episode’s pictures are paintings from the walls of a tattoo parlor, created by an artist connected to one of the Presbytery’s NCDs. (BTW if you look with care at the picture that resembles ‘The Last Supper,’ you will realize why it is called ‘The Last Tattoo.’)

• Pittsburgh Presbytery
• Pittsburgh Presbytery’s NCD plan, core values and year one benchmarks

You can download the episode here. Or you can download the file in MP3 format here.

The next podcast will take us beyond Pittsburgh, all the way to the San Francisco Bay Area, for an interview with one of the first presbymergent NCD pastors Bruce Reyes-Chow, who is now also a candidate for moderator of the upcoming General Assembly.

I left the Bible study with my mind already on my next task. I had to deliver a check from the ministerial alliance to another church in town. I like the pastor of the church where I made the delivery. We may be from very different traditions, but we get along really well. When I noticed aloud that he had Brian McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy among his books, we entered into a discussion about the Emerging Church Movement. I’m 43 and my colleague is probably only ten years older. We both expressed the same concern: we’re out of our depth when it comes to the emerging culture. We commiserated that, no matter what we do to keep up with innovations in technology and culture, we know we’re falling behind. That’s when my friend spoke the first half of the epiphany. He said, “When I went to seminary, the emphasis was on exegesis of scripture. I think that’s very important and seminaries should continue to do that. But I wish someone would have taught us how to exegete culture.” What a marvelous way to put the need in terms “classically” trained clergy can understand: Would someone please teach us how to exegete culture?

The conversation continued as we discussed what our two congregations think about the ECM. My input was brief because the ECM isn’t on the radar of most of the congregants I serve, no matter how often I raise the issue. We’re too rooted in institutional Presbyterianism to do much but grumble about “the loss of loyalty and respect for the Church.” My friend’s congregation, however, has many members deeply interested in — and concerned about — the ECM. They met with him, studied current literature (like McLaren), and discussed emerging issues. When it came down to it, they were comfortable with missional emphasis to a point, but were nervous about relativism.

After comparing notes, we confirmed that we each have a fair number of members who believe that converting to the Christian faith includes converting to the dominant culture of the congregation. That means that outsiders are required to do most, if not all, of the work, while the congregation critiques the results. “It’s their job to change, not ours.” That’s when I spoke the second half of the epiphany. I said, “It’s Paul and James all over again. Paul was willing to reach outside the tradition to include people in the gospel. James was willing to include others, as long as ‘we remain true to the faith’.” The Church has never been a monolith. I now think of the emerging movement as Paul to the conventional Church’s James. Is the Church willing to accept that the tension currently experienced between conventional and emerging perspectives has been with us since the early Church? I ask, as someone who lurks on the margins of Presbymergent, if the “loyal radicals” can and will teach people like me to exegete culture? Perhaps with proper training we could help the Church learn to recognize and balance the tension between James and Paul.

As a one-year of presbymergent.org anniversary gift, I am overjoyed to share the launch of this new resource for the Church. Details on how to subscribe to the podcast feed can be found on the brand new Podcast page. Below is more of the story behind the creation of this podcast, and here are the show notes for our first of many introductions to PC(USA) ‘loyal radicals.’

Episode 01: BJ Woodworth, The Open Door

BJ Woodworth is the founding pastor of The Open Door NCD (New Church Development) in Pittsburgh, PA. This episode begins with a general introduction to the presbymergent podcast by Karen Sloan. It then follows BJ to traffic court, contains an interview with BJ at his local vegetarian diner, and shares a poem he wrote in systematic theology class.

• The Open Door
• BJ’s blog

You can download the episode here. Or you can download the file in MP3 format here.

Why a podcast?

In many ways this podcast is an extension of the in-person presbymergent events that have happened this past year. A primary purpose for the traveling I’ve been doing is to network presbymergents, to hear and share their stories. This led to a very full travel schedule for me, and a ton of stories about all manner of Emergent happenings throughout PC(USA). But what would often happen is I wished presbymergents I met at one event could meet, and learn more about, what presbymergents were doing whom I had met at another event. I found out that traveling and meeting with folks was a fairly inefficient means of spreading presbymergent stories.

To overcome this challenge when I started traveling last fall, I brought a recorder with me to capture, on digital storage, some of the stories I heard. Also, the one specifically presbymergent event this fall had several folks recording most of the sessions. Big thank yous to Brian Wallace for that resource! So upcoming episodes of the presbymergent podcast will have a mixture of recordings from the interviews I conducted and presentations from the presbymergent conference.

In summary, the subtitle for our podcast as it begins is - Presbyterian and Emergent conversations: mostly stories from PC(USA) ‘loyal radicals’ - enjoy!

“Last night our Session did something different. Instead of the annual assignment of committee chairpersons, we talked about options to committees. With the exception of the Nominating Committee (which is mandated by the Book of Order), we’re doing away with committees. (The truth is, our committees died off long ago due to lack of interest.) Instead, we’re going to experiment with the idea of ministries that flow out of discernment groups. Congregants who are interested in a particular ministry will gather for ongoing conversations centered around that ministry. And instead of each elder serving as the chairperson over her or his own group, the elders will work in partnerships of two or more per ministry to help facilitate discussion and the ministries that result from discussion. We’re not sure how this is going to work, but the elders seem to be encouraged by this less hierarchical, more relational approach.”

What have you heard or tried along the lines of reworking Session committees? Any failures? Any encouragements?

What is taking place in events, until this summer, are a number of region-specific gatherings. If you’re anywhere in the South, the combination of top quality speakers (Shane Claiborne, Tim Keel, Troy Bronsink) and low registration fee ($25 online), makes A Sustainable Faith in St. Petersburg, Florida, Feb 2-3, a must-attend event.

The main series of events is Brian McLaren’s The Everything Must Change Tour, taking place in eleven cities around the USA (Charlotte NC, Boise ID, Dallas TX, St. Petersburg FL, Washington DC, San Diego CA, Chicago IL, Seattle WA, Kansas City MO, New York City NY, Goshen IN). Currently two of the tour stops, Boise and Washington DC, have presbymergents who volunteered to connect Presbyterians going to these events. To learn more about how the First Presbyterian Church in Bend, OR, is getting ready for the tour, see this post, and email Nate Bettger for connecting with them in Boise. Brian Wallace is planning a gathering in Washington DC, email Brian for more information. If you are willing to volunteer for gathering presbymergents in any of the other tour cities, please email and/or write a post for this site by registering or logging in. I will also update the events page with your contact info and any other details you provide.

Finally, there will be a very special event this April 8-10, “Emerging Church for the Existing Church” designed to bridge gaps between Emergent explorations and established Mainline churches. All of the presentations at this conference will directly relate to what it means to be a presbymergent, a convergence of existing church and emerging church. This is an opportunity for both on-ramp questions of figuring out what Emergent is about and for higher-level practitioner questions of being Emergent in Mainline contexts.

If you’re planning a presbymergent-related event, or are even considering the possibility of an event, feel free to email about getting connected with other presbymergents.

I have decided to write this post in response to last weekend to share some reflections as well as to encourage anyone in the Presbymergent community that it is possible for traditional congregations to transform themselves into the hope of the Great Emergence. Many of the emergent churches out there are new plants which have the potential to try amazing things! Then there are those of us who are in declining Presbyterian churches wondering if there is any hope at all!!! Well, yes, and yes, and yes.

Over the past several months I have read the posts on Presbymergent, visited blogs of many folks, websites of Presbymergent churches and been left with more questions rather than affirmations. When I compared our church with many of the other like-minded churches, we did not fit in! So the question of “who we are” as a congregation has haunted me until this weekend. Well, we do not fit in! And that is a good thing. (As Martha Stewart would say!) What makes us emergent is not that we all look and talk alike, but how we are transforming in, through and with Christ to co-create with the Spirit in this Great Emergence. So I boldly declare that our small community is emergent. And it is fantastic!!!!

Our church is located in a 90% white, quite provincial, community with many folks who are either at or below the poverty level. Westminster had been declining for over 25 years (like many mainline churches) when my husband James and I arrived as co-pastors in 2000. In the past seven and a half years, we have tried many programs to grow the church. Folks who were first crazy about us became the most resistant. We gained a few here and there but we lost many to age and death.

In the midst of all the activities and programs, James and I focused on helping those who were willing to truly learn and grow as disciples of Jesus. We focused on connecting the head to the heart. There was a core group of 30 folks who responded as we prayed, deeply delved into the Scripture, practiced the spiritual disciplines, made retreats…. (Some in the congregation actually accused us of teaching new age and witchcraft…)

Three years ago, we went to a spirituality conference with Phyllis Tickle at Montreat. There were five of us. Everything changed after that conference. We came back convinced that God was leading us in this new direction, and the Spirit would show us how to seek and pray. This was the moment when we truly turned to God, praying on our knees (literally!!!), asking God to show us what we needed to do. We knew we wanted to be a community where we can taste and smell the Kingdom of God. We knew we want to be bold in our Christian discipleship. We knew Jesus is the center.

As we sought more of God, we saw more clearly what needed to be done. So we sold our building in 2007, and moved to a rental facility where we worship, fellowship, nurture, challenge and are growing as a community. There were only 30 of us when we moved. The rest left! Now we have about 50 in our community. God asked Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” You bet! God’s breath has entered our congregation and now we have come to life.

The majority in our congregation is over 40 years old, and we have several who are above 80! We have many children, as well as young adults, single moms and dads, and those with no kids. There are those who are Postmodern, and those who cannot spell Postmodern. There are Republicans, Democrats, independents, veterans, some who have graduate degrees, and some with only high school diplomas! Some are on Facebook, some have blogs, some don’t even have computers.

Some only go to the early emergent/contemporary/… service and some only go to the traditional Reformed service. Some alternate in between and some go to both every Sunday.

We use the Discipleship Project as our congregational formation tool. Everyone participates. (If you don’t know what it is, please do check it out, it works: www.thediscipleshipproject.com.) We have a Christian formation center, Wellspring, where we teach and nurture the spiritual disciplines. We host High Teas (Tea with a Purpose) as a part of our hospitality ministry. We hold Bible studies at a local coffee shop, have outreach with the local artists through the Arts Council of Jamestown, host concerts for local bands…, and we have just established a ministry for families in crisis, Faithful Hands. [Thanks to the efforts of Tara, our Worship and Outreach Director...]

I have wanted to share this community life with you beacuse this is who we are. We are not trying to do programs, but desire to be available in our life and work to the presence of God in and through us. We believe there are three standards for us as an emergent congregation which centers us: Christ, prayer, and community. And the Scripture holds all these three strands together. We will face many challenges in the near future (financial being one of them) but we go ahead, knowing that God will not abandon us, and we continue to seek us as we follow Christ in a world living in fear and chaos.

So friends, let us have hope, because God is indeed doing a new thing. Can we percieve it? May you experience the wonder of God in this holy season of Advent.

• The Open Door, an emerging Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh pastored by BJ Woodworth, received $8,000 to help them assess the needs within their lower-income and culturally diverse neighborhoods; conduct surveys and meet neighbors in hopes to learn their stories; research, train and develop strategies for becoming the multicultural church they hope to be; hire an intern (for two consecutive years) to work with their church in building bridges with minority populations in their urban neighborhood and developing indigenous leaders from the neighborhood.
• The Living Room, an emerging Presbyterian chuch in the Westside neighborhood of Atlanta, GA, pastored by Tom Livengood, received $5,000 to help them more fully develop their website/virtual community for their New Church Development. The Living Room will be working with BreenSmith Advertising, a Westside advertising firm, to develop their identity and look.

We are excited for BJ and Tom and their respective communities - we look forward to seeing how this financial assistance helps them to bring about the Gospel and the Kingdom in their midst. It’s also encouraging to see the denomination help out in this way. Congratulations!

I will be the first person to admit that even our lowest standard of living is higher than many countries average daily income levels. We are not the worst. We are also sitting atop a volatile mountain of debt, spending, and imaginary power cells. What the fuck are we living for? Where is the service to Christ? Where is the transformation? We are dying as a church in the west and people say they care but they are not supporting it.

I wrote this in response to Carol’s post. I am not a pastor, but a seminarian on the verge of graduation. I am terrified to go into ministry. All of the fears you spoke of add to my anxiety. What shall I do to ensure I can afford to raise a family or even serve a congregation? I heard far too much, “trust God! It is a matter of faith.” I agree trusting God is the beginning. Where is the practice of trust when it comes to financial support from the congregations? Folks will complain, but they will not support.

We are all to blame in the decline. We are part of the problem. This stance of “trust God and if you do not then you have no faith” removes the responsibility from congregations, the Body, and all have in supporting the church. We do not train pastors for free. Is it fair and good stewardship to expect these individuals to shoulder the cost of training that is required?

We have to pay 80 dollars per ordination exam — that is 400 dollars if you can pass these antiquated monsters in the first shot. Not many do! Then there are the psychological evaluations, anywhere from 600 to 2500 dollars. Then the cost of seminary itself, from 10,000 to 15,000 per year for tuition and an additional 10,000 or so to live each year. That is about 60,000 to 75,000 in debt to begin your service with. We need to be smarter with this. If we say we are concerned with the death of the church then we need to step up and support.

The day of the full time pastor maybe behind us. I for one think it is. We must seek sustainable ways to minister in the context to which we find ourselves. Does this mean we have to do away with seminaries and the education they provide? No, the seminary education is foundational to service in the reformed tradition. We must change our lives to live responsibly and centered on Christ.

I used to joke that I wanted to open the First Presbyterian Church of Holy Rollers Bowling Alley. I am no longer joking. Is a coffee house, pub, bowling alley, or restaurant the answer? It is sustainable and attracts folks. In some areas it would respond to the desire and need of a distanced population. It would provide a place for community, care, warmth, outreach, and financial resistance. We just need folks to grasp the idea. Like one of my favorite groups would said, “Rage full on!”

In conjunction with a new way we can inventory our stuff and ask: Do we need the ipod? The newest phone? The cable TV? The two cars? The this or the that? All of this stuff is nice. What does it say about what you live your life for and for whom you live for? I am a f’king hypocrite right along with many of us. I crave the technologies! The Apple computers. The name brand running shoes, the jeans, the shirts, the designer vitamins and food. I love to eat out and am overweight and a burden to this world. I do not practice all that I preach. I need grace, forgiveness, and courage to be what I have witnessed in this world. To stand against the tyranny of consumerism and stereotypes, and hopelessness.

There is a better way. Please pray about it and pray that we can find the way to the cross and sit at the feet of Jesus. The rebel rousing Jesus that roundhouse kicks the money lenders out of a house of Prayer. WTFWJD?

There has been much ado about postmodernism these days. There is postmodern architecture, postmodern philosophy, postmodern art, postmodern film, postmodern literature, postmodern music, postmodern theater, postmodern theology, and even postmodern postmodernism. You cannot escape conversation in many circles without postmodernism entering into it and mocking your modern intellectual vision.

The effects upon the cultural landscape moves today into tension with tomorrow. It begs us to ask the questions of where, when, why, and how of the very human fabric that weaves history, time, and space into a society or does it?

No matter how you interpret postmodernism you must contend that it is a reaction to the status quo. It is rooted in an outsider perspective that mounts attitudes of “us verses them” upon a position of entitlement.

What is Postmodern Theology?
Postmodern Christian theology is a theology rooted in reaction to the status quo. It should be counter-cultural in nature. It seeks to disturb and transform those engaged in the practice of theology. It looks to the pervading culture for means to express and illuminate the gospel message of Jesus Christ. It must not be comfortable or commodified. Theology that seeks to transform cannot and should not be consumed like fun size Halloween candy. To partake in the radical transforming nature of the gospel direct opposition to the status quo is called for.

Gone is the ability to stoically sit by as the gospel is used to propagate a conquering message that excludes and builds division. We are far to concerned with difference rather than similarities.

All are called to ministry. All are sought after to serve. In the Presbyterian tradition being a Minister of the Word and Sacrament does not entitle you to anything more than service. There is no difference between congregation and pastor. We are a body of Believers! Some of us have lost our salt. We are SALboosT as a denomination already.

Where must we go from here?

My outcome in this process
In the course of researching the topic of Postmodern understanding of call I conducted many interviews. I came across a few conclusions:

1. Call is relative to one’s culture.
2. Postmodern understanding of call is rooted in vocational understanding and a longing for security.
3. Action is called for today. we must seek to engage the culture around us to become effective instruments of witness.

There is need for ministers, pastors, and preachers. There is also a need for the understanding of these roles to sift and become more flexible. Churches would benefit from becoming uncomfortable and challenge he status quo. What are you protecting and from what are you protecting it from? In a world full of adjectives, may we be a people of verbs.