CongregationalFocusBuilding

Eating, Healing and Announcing--Congregational Focus in Imagining
and Building a House for the Church
by Daniel Benedict

I have been through a church merger and three building projects in local
churches to which I have been a pastor over the years. There was an
upside and downside in each: the excitement of something new being
envisioned and being embodied, and the agony of change, especially for
those whose sense of congregational identity was deeply attached to the
status quo. In all cases, when the final decision was made to go forward,
there was a consolidation of energies that was like the rise of wave over a
coral shelf and the congregation seemed to surf down the face on a ride
that felt like “Now! we were going somewhere!”

As I reflect on it, this feeling of “going somewhere,” exhilarating as it is,
points out some “soft spots” in congregational life. One may be a symptom
of the lack of focus in ongoing primary spiritual formation and mission. The
other, using the surfing analogy, is “falling off the board” when the ride is
over.

I wonder: if a congregation has a robust ongoing sense of encounter with
God in liturgy and mission (witnessing to the coming reign of God), would
building or renovating an existing worship space or other spaces be a rush
and a high, or simply part of that God-oriented life and service? I suppose
someone could argue that if you have to “build,” it must be a sign of vitality
in the congregation. Yes, that may be the case, but if the church is growing
primarily because of the demographics (a community growing dramatically,
a major influx of a new racial/ethnic group or of a generational cohort, etc.)
the church may be “coping” more than grounded in a clear missiology or a
vigorous sense of discovering the Triune God’s activity in its midst.

As for “falling off” I am referring to the experience of having been involved in
an intense “transactional” journey for the organization only to discover that
the heart beat of communal and spiritual “transformation” has been
neglected in the process, or was absent before and during the journey to
build or renovate. There is a vast literature around these terms in the
business world. I will not try to summarize it here because there is neither
space nor am I adequately conversant with the nuances of transaction and
transformation. I will simply use the terms in this way: transactional
congregations and leaders are focused on getting a task done—perhaps
“management” would be a suitable parallel term. Certainly there is a
necessary aspect of management in renovation or building a worship space,
but we can hope that the congregation and its leaders understand that
much more is at stake. Transformational congregations and leaders
continuously work to stay focused on the larger vision—the God’s story in
Scripture and continuously inhabiting that story in their life together as a
means of discerning God’s call and their response in their continuing
journey together.

In either case, the issue I want to raise here for pastors and other
congregational leaders is this: what should be the focus of congregational
life before, during and after engaging in the process of the renovation or
building God’s house for the church?

The language here is intentionally chosen. We are not building something
for God. We are building or renovating a space for the community of faith.
The space may intentionally be designed to point ultimately to God, to
evoke an awareness of God, but the penultimate intent is to house the
church in its birthing, addressing, forming, feeding and commissioning the
children of the Triune God. Dare we go so far as to say that the central
purpose of the space is to birth, awaken, form, and send a community of
Christians as a priestly community who offer themselves to God in Word and
Sacrament for the life of the world into which they go and return as
witnesses to the Incarnation. (See The Incarnation and the Church’s Witness
by Darrell L. Guder)

That vision is demanding and must be continuously recalibrated for the
context in which the congregation “finds” itself. Luke 10 narrates Jesus’
sending the seventy out in pairs to “eat what is set before you, heal the sick
that are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to
you.’” (Luke 10:1-9) In order to inhabit and enact the last two, we have to
“stay” where God has “sent” us and “eat” what is set before us. In my own
musing, at least, the acts of staying in the house that welcomes you and
eating what is set before you is the “context” piece. It has to do with
experiencing and understanding the cultural context in which God places us.
This experiencing and understanding is basic, yet how many North
American congregations are doing this? (See The Missional Leader:
Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World by Alan Roxburgh and
Fred Romanuk.)

Many are focused on generic “attractional” approaches seeking to get
people whose lives they have not experienced or understood to come to
“our” church, rather than taking the emergent route of “staying with”
(stability) and “eating” their food and receiving their hospitality (recognizing
the grace of the risen Christ who “is going ahead of you to Galilee [the
place of ministry]; there you will see him…” (Mark 16:1-8, especially v. 7).
What if we who gather together around font, word/story and table heard
more clearly and dangerously the paradoxical words, “This is my body”
along side “He is not here”? The One who was crucified is here and not
here! What if we held heuristically to the juxtaposition of the real presence
and the real absence? And in so doing struggled to live boldly in the rhythm
of gathering in our worship spaces to meet the risen Christ and scattering
apostolically into our neighborhood and community to find him where he has
gone before us? (A caveat here on the Luke 10:1b—“[He] sent them ahead
of him…to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” Might
this be a post-resurrection reading that connects well to “he is going ahead
of you…there you will see him”?

Here I suggest that building or renovating a worship space before we have
done this important work will almost certainly miss the mark in the near and
far term. Unless the congregation has inhabited the narrative of Luke 10
and experienced their context (“staying and eating”), how will they faithfully
understand themselves and engage in experiments in ministry in their
context? And how will they create a worship space in which the community of
faith experiences itself as the primary agent (Christ’s royal priesthood—1
Peter 2) both in worship and mission rather than the clergy and
professionals? There are profound implications here for the design of
worship space and for the congregation’s life in the local community. (We
will be exploring these more fully in Worship Space 101.)

So, you may ask: then why bother with any present talk or imagining of the
worship space different from what we now have? Why not just leave the
space alone and get on with mission? My caveat: as you and your
congregation seek to experiment in experiencing and understanding your
context, you can experiment with rearranging the furnishings (font, pulpit,
altar-table and seating). It is a journey in and outside the worship space. In
many cases it will take as long to come to terms with a suitable space to
house God’s people for its liturgical prayer as it will to form, equip and send
God’s people to stay and eat in their neighborhood.

So then, the focus of the congregation and their leaders before, during and
after engaging in re-imagining a house for the church is experiencing and
understanding itself as led by the Spirit to discern the risen Christ in its
cultural context and to engage in experiments with “healing” (in the full
biblical sense of that word, inclusive of peace with justice) and announcing
that the reign of God has come near.

With this line of thinking in mind, I invite you to wrestle with some
implications and questions:

•        What would it mean for your congregation to make a transition from
an attractional and performative (in stable environments) or
reactive/regulative (in environments experiencing discontinuous change)
modes, to an emerging missional approach? With whom in your
congregation would you engage in starting this journey?

•        What new or more faithfully observed practices would you need to
keep in modeling and leading your congregation into inhabiting the Luke 10
narrative?

•        Imagine the links between your congregation’s worship (and its spatial
arrangement) and your context for mission? What are the connections? How
could they be teased out and more evocatively experienced by your
congregation?

•        Draw a “roof off” diagram of your current worship space. Then on
another sheet of paper draw a schematic of your church’s neighborhood,
using words or pictures to illustrate or illuminate its character. Then indicate
(1) on the first sheet, where your people sit/stand/move in relationship to
the primary centers of action in your liturgical space (font, lectern/pulpit and
altar-table), and (2) on the second sheet, where your membership
individually or communally interact with and relate to the people and “tribes”
in your church’s neighborhood and community—where your people are
eating, healing and announcing the reign of God. (Neighborhood here is not
necessarily limited to the immediate vicinity of church buildings.) Look at
these side by side and listen for what the Spirit prompts in you. Or, better
yet do this exercise with a group of people in your congregation. You will get
a more 360 degree view.

•        If you are serious about being a missional leader, read Alan J.
Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk’s The Missional Leader: Equipping Your
Church to Reach a Changing World. This book reads our North American
context well and calls congregational leaders to take an unflinching journey
facing the perils and transitions brought about by discontinuous change.

“Eating, Healing and Announcing: Congregational Focus In Imagining And
Building A House For The Church” © 2007 Daniel T. Benedict, Jr.

You can find out more about the course, “Worship Space 101: Designing
and Renovating a House for the Church” that begins on September 24,
2007 by clicking here and register at www.BeADisciple.com. If you have
questions, contact Daniel at stlukebysea@yahoo.com.

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