From the Desk of Pastor Marsha
What’s Happening 4.11.24
As I shared last week, our synod has many resources for congregations such as our that are going through a transition of pastoral leadership. As we get closer to that process of calling a new pastor, we will begin to use more of those resources. One of the first ones they share though is “The 5 Tasks of Interim Ministry”. Last week I covered “Coming to Terms with History”.
This week I’ll share my thoughts on the second. Discovering a New Identity: Identity is the task of understanding "who we are now in our present context and what it is we understand God is calling us to be." It is the task of developing the vision to which a congregation is being called.:
Once you have a sense of where you have been and who you were in the past, you can then look to the future. “Who we are now”. Zion needs to take a good look at “who we are now”, not who we used to be, or who do we want to be, but who are we? We are an older congregation, that has lost a lot of its previous active membership, with a fledging Sunday School program and children’s ministry. But we are also a congregation with a good quality music ministry. We have a heart for the hurting and poor, 25% of our budget goes to Outreach, meaning out in the world. From our own community here in Iowa City to the ends of the earth through our contributions to the ELCA and its worldwide ministry. We have many active members are very committed to volunteering in many different ways. This is just a taste of who we are now.
In our present context, that’s the hard part of this discernment process. We are in a time of unprecedented change for the modern church. Prior to Covid we knew that overall church attendance was declining, we knew that even active participation isn’t what it used to be, we knew that young people were not coming back to the churches of their childhood, or any church for that matter. But after Covid, it has been a watershed moment.
I came across a series of articles by Jessica Grose in The New York Times and here are just a few of the titles of these articles. “Lots of Americans are Losing their Religion. Have You?”; Christianity’s God a Branding Problem”; “Why Do People Lose Their Religion? More than 7000 Readers shared their Stories.”; “The Largest and Fastest Religious Shift in America Is Well Underway.”
We need to study long and hard on just what context we are living in, going outside of our own little worlds, but looking at the bigger picture, so we can truly know what is happening all around us.
Finally, “what is God calling us to be?”. So not just what we think we are supposed to be doing to fill the pews, bring back young families and keep the budget running. But what is God calling….. In order to hear God we have to pray. We have to pray before our meetings. Pray in our homes. Pray in worship. Asking God to speak to us, to open our eyes and our ears to see what he wants us to see and hear what he wants us to hear. We have to take the things we’ve learned and take the time to truly listen to what God is saying to us at this point in time, in this context, with who we are now.
