I like
Buddhism because it starts with the obvious. The 1st Noble Truth is
Suffering. It doesn’t say “life is suffering” or suffering is the foundation of
anything. It just says there is suffering. We don’t have to look far to find
it. If we check our own lives, we are apt to find some unhappiness. If we look
at our friends and families, we will find some unhappiness. If we look around
the world at the poverty, the sickness, the war, the crime, the prejudice, the
injustice – the list goes on – we see suffering.
There is a
Buddhist story about a woman whose little boy had died, so she rushed in
desperation to the guru to ask him to resurrect her son. He said, “Yes, I can
do this. You need to do only one thing. Bring me a cup of rice from a home that
has not been touched by sorrow.” She rushed back to her village and went door
to door. Everyone she met was ready and willing to give a cup of rice to save
her son, but there was no home that had not been touched by sorrow. So she
returned to the guru and told him she had learned the lesson he had meant to
teach her. Suffering touches all of us.
I love
Christianity because it has something helpful to say in response to Buddhism’s
1st Noble Truth – the gospel – the good news, the excellent news,
the tears of joy news of God’s healing, liberating, transforming love signed,
sealed, and delivered in the person of Jesus.
An old gospel song says it straight out:
When
nothing else could help
Love
lifted me.
Sharing
that good news with suffering people is The First Mark of Mission. To be clear,
it is The First Mark Of Mission. To put a point on it, evangelism, sharing the
good news of God’s love is the Episcopal Church’s Number One Reason To Exist. We get around to offering social
services to the poor, advocating for justice, and saving the environment after
that. First, first, we proclaim the
gospel.
Yet, I
often hear our people say they want no part of evangelism. They are in fact
against it. And I believe them. The fact that our Church achieved a growth rate
of zero (0) during a time when the population of our state doubled evidences
how sincere we are about repudiating the First Mark Of Mission. One of our
critics from another diocese compared our remarkable no-growth statistic to
having “walked through a hurricane without getting wet.”
So that we
can actually discuss the issue: let’s burn the straw man. No one is talking
about offensive, arm-twisting sales pitches. No one is talking about
manipulation and coercion. That is sales at its worst. It is not evangelism of
any kind. We are talking about three simple steps:
Invitation --- Welcome --- Inclusion
Invitation is saying right out loud in an
honest and attractive way: “we are here for you.” There are a lot of ways to do
that. Here are a few key steps:
1. Engagement with the Community – that could be through service like Communities in
Schools, advocacy like Nevadans for the Common Good, having a float in a
parade, or participating in a community cleanup project. To be inviting, a
congregation must be in the game of civic life. What we do says who we are.
What we fail to do says we are irrelevant.
2. Secular Events At Church –
the people who need Jesus most are the ones who aren’t going to come to Sunday
worship. So host a concert, a poetry reading, a lecture, a square dance. Have
something at the church that people who don’t come to church will attend. It’s
your chance to make contact. Grace in the Desert has had great success with
this. It isn’t as helpful to advertise the not-so-surprising news that we
worship on Sunday as it is to advertise a special event that will attract the
secular minded. The event just happens to be in our church because we are the
kind of church that appreciates what they appreciate. Connection.
3. Offer programs that help people –
we do a decent job with the homeless and the imprisoned. But there are a lot of
other folks out there who need help. Take the divorced. The recently divorced
are one of the most likely groups to start attending church. But, to my
knowledge, not one of our churches offers a divorce recovery group. People
entering recovery from addictions are also likely to begin attending church.
Fortunately several of our churches host 12 step groups, through we sometimes
keep them at arms length. Offering your community what it needs starts with
asking your community what it needs. St. Catherine’s did that and formed a
strong mentoring and supportive relationship with a local school and a low-income
apartment complex. Asking what a community needs is different from offering
what we feel like giving. It’s about them. That’s gospel.
4. Advertise – Is that a bad word? Think about
Mother Joan’s ads for St. Mark’s, Tonopah. Go to our web site welcome page http://www.episcopalnevada.org/About%20Us/welcome.html, click the audio clips, and have a 2-minute
listen. Have you seen the billboard in Ely with a picture of Fr. Red and a
young family? We don’t advertise to get a pledge unit. We aren’t selling
anything. We advertise to share some gospel with people who need some gospel.
It’s a matter of spending a few dollars to show people who we are and that
ought to be the Body of Christ in Nevada. It isn’t that they see or hear an ad
and post haste rush to church next
Sunday. The ad just tells them that we’re here so that if and when the time is
right, they’ll remember us as an option.
5. Web
sites and social media – If we intend to share a message with anyone under
60, this is where we do it. A congregation that is not actively using web sites
and social media -- not for internal communications, but to say to outsiders
“We Are Here For You” -- is effectively excluding
young and even middle age adults. If you don’t have anyone in the congregation
who knows how to do these things – that is the case for several of our
congregations – call the diocesan office. We will get you the help you need.
Welcome is making people feel at home after
they respond to the invitation. This is the most crucial step in evangelism.
Even if we don’t invite people, the sheer force of suffering will drive some to
our door. What will we do with them? We are not doing nearly as well as we
think. This is the main weakness responsible for our zero-growth record. So
what goes into welcome? Again, a lot goes into it. These are a few biggies:
1. Be an attractive community. When visitors see us, they need to see Jesus. They need to
feel God’s love. Often they don’t because the congregation is either fragmented
by conflict or fused in a clique. These are two opposite ways to achieve the
same result – exclusion. Our fighting congregations know they are fighting.
They may not be aware that innocent visitors are being spiritually wounded in the
crossfire. Our fused congregations call themselves friendly “caring families.” Statistically,
congregations that call themselves “caring families” are the least likely to
grow and the most likely to decline. Those who visit caring family churches are
often shut out and ignored. Neither a fragmented nor a fused congregation is
capable of our number 1 mission. The most important step in evangelism is
attending to the relationship patterns of the existing congregation. One way to
do that is with a behavioral covenant. Canon Catherine led her Utah
congregation in that process with great success. The outline for how to do it
is in Behavioral Covenants In
Congregations by Gilbert Rendle, but having someone from the outside
facilitate the process helps a lot.
2. Greeters, Aids, & Lurkers – Having greeters, not just ushers handing out service
bulletins, but someone trained to genuinely welcome people (not just visitors –
welcome everyone “Good morning. Good to see you. I’m glad you’re here.”) is a
game changer. St. John’s, Glenbrook took steps to become an attractive
congregation, put together a welcome pamphlet, and assigned greeters. Today,
St. John’s is a new place, a much happier place to walk into. Aids help new
folks find their way through the liturgy. We can be hard to keep up with for
folks who are not familiar with our liturgy. I have seen Harvard educated smart
people walk out in frustration. The Greeter connects the Visitor with an Aid to
help them find their way. A Lurker hangs out with the priest in the receiving
line. If there is a Visitor, the Lurker gets their contact info so the priest
and a layperson can follow up.
3. Follow up.
The week after someone visits, they should receive a follow up. Ideally it
should be a gift of some kind. My last congregation hand delivered homemade bread
(we grew at the rate of 10% a year in a town that was declining in population
and we were a decidedly minority denomination – but we grew 10% per year).
Cookies would work. There ought to be at a minimum a phone call. The priest and
a layperson both need to communicate that we were glad the person came, express
the hope that they will come again, and offer to help if there is anything the
person needs.
4. Focus on the visitor. This does not mean sell the visitor on how great we are. It does not
mean tell the visitor all about ourselves. It absolutely does not mean recruit
the visitor into anything. I have heard from new folks that people tried to put
them on the altar guild their first Sunday visit!! “Focus on the visitor” means
asking them about themselves, showing some interest in them, expressing hope
for their well-being whether they join us or not. We need to show them that we
are interested in them – not as marks but as people and that we wish them well.
The heart of welcome is the spiritual practice of looking people in the eye,
smiling, and of wishing them well.
Inclusion is making the new person a part of
the group, easing their way from outside in. This takes time and may actually
be subtler than Invitation and Welcome, but there are only two general steps.
1. Orientation Class. This is not the more substantial formation I hope we offer before
Confirmation. It is a simple 30-minute intro to the Episcopal Church. We are
different and people will not stick around to figure us out unless we give them
a hint about who we are. In a small church, this may be a one on one with the
priest. But in a larger congregation, it should be offered at least quarterly
for newcomers. If only one or two come, that would be one or two. We fish. The
angels count. Matthew 13: 47-50
2. Focus on the newcomer. This does not mean recruiting the newcomer into one of the
jobs none of us wants to do. It means getting to know them, helping them find
their own place in their own time. It takes longer for some than for others.
Instead of cramming them into some pre-existing job, figure out what they are
good at and pin a badge on them to authorize them to do it.
But why do any of this? One answer is: there are hurting
people out there who will get to know Jesus through this soft form evangelism.
I’ll be a witness. That’s how I met Jesus at St. Michael’s, Boise way back in
the 80s.
But what’s in it for us? There seems to be a natural human
tendency to close doors. I rarely see our church doors completely open. We
usually keep them half-closed, which is telling. Something in us wants to keep
our group to ourselves, our church building to ourselves, our pew to ourselves.
But here’s the problem. None of that will ease our suffering. None of it will
change our lives, give us a reason to get up in the morning, make us say, “YES”
to the universe. Our friends and our church habits that we hoard are nice but
they aren’t rocking our world. The love of Jesus will. It will rock our world
like nothing else. The catch is: we can’t receive the love of Jesus without
passing it on. We don’t get it until we
share it. If we aren’t sharing the love of Jesus with the folks who need
it, we can’t experience it ourselves. What’s in the First Mark Of Mission for
us? Our happiness, our healing, our transformation, the meaning and value of
our lives.
Less
dramatically, but no less real, there’s another thing. For a few decades now, I
have been welcoming into the Church people who need some gospel. Here’s the
surprise. They always, always, without exception, bring some gospel with them –
gospel I needed to hear or gospel other people in the congregation needed to
hear. There are wanderers out there who will bless us more than we can bless
them. All it takes is invitation, welcome, and inclusion to make our world a
more interesting and gracious home.