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Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Being church in liminal space – Pastor Thoughts

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We are living in liminal space. 

I don’t know exactly when I heard the word “liminal” for the time, but it has become a word that I keep coming back to since. For those that may not know, the “limen” is the space between things. The frame of a doorway is the limen between rooms. Threshold could be another word for limen. 

A liminal space is then the place or time in between things. 

Experiencing liminal spaces or times can be as simple as walking through a doorway, or it can be as long and complex as re-training for a new job or moving to a new city or being in palliative care. 

Two people engaged to be married are experiencing a liminal time. Seminary was a liminal experience for me. Puberty is a liminal space. Being on the road or travelling is a liminal experience. And as people of faith we believe death is liminal time. 

One of the key characteristics of experiencing a liminal space is that you have to give up parts of who you were before, and you take on the burdens and responsibilities of who you are becoming, without yet receiving the benefits, advantages or authority. 

An engaged couple, for example, relinquishes the freedoms of the single life, while (maybe truer in days gone by) has to wait for the benefits of marriage. A seminarian ceases to be a lay person, and takes on many of the responsibilities of being a clergy person, such as preaching and teaching according to the dogma of the church, conforming to a certain standard of ethics and a certain lifestyle. But they must wait until ordination for the authority and ability to serve a congregation independently and preside at the sacraments.

As we have been talking about for a long time, the Church is – we are – in a liminal space. We are transitioning from what we once were in some big and transformative ways. The relative stability of what churches and pastors looked like between 1950 and 1999 is falling apart. The bustling hubs of community that many congregations once were, with full pews, overflowing Sunday schools, strong choirs and much beloved Luther League youth groups is no longer possible or likely to return. 

But we haven’t arrived at what we might become next. This means we haven’t discovered the benefits and advantages of the new thing yet. We carry the burdens of doing Church together in smaller and more resource-scarce ways, but we haven’t yet realized what the good things are or the upside of this new thing we are becoming. 

As we gathered for our visioning meeting last Sunday, I could see that we are bearing the burdens of this liminal space. We are recognizing that things are changing and Church won’t be the same going forward. But I also saw hope and excitement for opportunities that might come. “What could be” is still uncertain and hazy, but there seems to be promise and possibilities.  

While it seems that promises and possibilities aren’t a lot to go on, they are the core of the stories of faith that we tell week after week and year after year. Because with God, a promise means everything. God is a God of promises, whose word brings us hope and who has travelled the pathways that we walk.

Wherever we end up, I am looking forward to navigating this liminal space with you – together. 

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Why do churches do visioning? – Pastor Thoughts

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VISIONING.

It is a word that gets used a lot by church leaders, and I am sure by those in the business world and public sector, too. 

The first Visioning event I attended was for the Mulhurst Lutheran Church Camp Board on which I was serving at the age of 22. We had a facilitator provided by the Province of Alberta (free to charities!) who came to help our board work through the process. The camp had been floating along in a middling way for years, if not decades. They could only afford a part-time director, their weeks of summer camp were never completely full, and their ideal property with picturesque cabins and dining hall overlooking Pigeon Lake just 35 minutes south of Edmonton could never quite live up to its potential. 

So on a mid-winter Saturday we sat in the dining hall and tried out the Visioning process. Right away the questions that we were being ask sparked my imagination: 

    What is the most important thing we do as a [community of faith]? 

    Why do we exist? 

    What is our purpose? 

    What are our values? 

    Who are we as a community? 

I loved stepping back and contemplating the big picture. My mind was set alight by pondering these questions, helping me to sort through just what the camp and our job and role was in the ministry of Lutheran churches in the Edmonton area. 

At the same time I could see that other board members were struggling. They seemed frustrated by having to step back from their usual modes of serving. The facilitator kept having to pull them back from trying to make concrete decisions and action plans. The struggling board members in this case were faithful old German-Canadians (men mostly) whose commitment and service was expressed in hammering nails, fixing things with their hands and putting in their time and energy for the camp. It was difficult to step back and ask about the identity and purpose of this place they had spent years and years caring for and serving. They didn’t want to ask ‘why?’ They didn’t want to interrogate their motivations or priorities. They wanted to remain in a world where they could believe everyone was on the same page about that stuff. 

Of course, they weren’t on the same page and that was the problem! The camp had had a succession of directors come and go. They wanted to add to their facilities, but could never raise enough money. There were conflicts about what was most important and for which projects or staff they should use the available resources. 

Though it took some hard work together to unpack what our Vision for the camp actually was, once we slowed down to understand our values and priorities, we were then able to have much more focused conversations about how to use our resources. In the years that followed (with more Visioning and strategic planning), the camp was able to build new or upgrade facilities, have longer-term directors and staff, and grow in some important ways. 

Does that mean that Visioning is a magic cure-all for the challenges that we face? Certainly not. 

But what Visioning does is provide a venue to have important conversations about who we are as a community, about what our values are, about where we are going and about where God is calling us to go. 

Visioning can be hard work, especially if you are the sort who prefers hammering nails, fixing things, making things or staying behind the scenes. It can mean questioning our past and our decisions, it can mean realizing that we need to change our present choices in order to move into a vibrant future. Visioning is discerning work, it is important work. It is the work of following God’s call for our community and living together faithfully. 

Now is an era for Visioning. Now, as the world changes rapidly around us and as we struggle with how to use our limited resources, coming together with a common Vision will be essential for us, as it is becoming for every church and faith community. It is hard work but holy work. 

Pastor Thoughts, Sermon, Theology & Culture

Thanksgiving and the passage of time – Pastor Thoughts

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As I write, it is the coldest day of Fall so far, the wind is blowing, flurries are falling but mercifully melting on the ground. After hanging on for longer than usual, the leaves are finally turning those beautiful shades of yellow and red for fall. 

Here we are at Thanksgiving weekend already and it feels like Fall snuck up on us. Weren’t we just sitting at the beach on a hot sunny summer afternoon just yesterday or something? 

The change of weather reminds us of the passage of time. These days my relationship with time feels forever altered; maybe you feel the same. Days of the week and months of the year all feel a little more fuzzy than they did just a few years ago. The wet weather this Spring and Summer certainly changed the way time passed in the natural world with a delayed Spring, delayed Summer and now a delayed Fall. 

Time feels “off” from the pace and routines that we used to follow. There used to be structure and order to the way we experienced time. 

When I was younger I used to measure the days by orchestra and football practice, youth group events and the freedom of weekends. In university and seminary, time passed as semesters, reading weeks, exam dates and essay deadlines.

Then it all changed 13 years ago. Once I was ordained and in the parish, my life became governed by Sundays. Every seven days another Sunday arrived. And in between I needed to prepare for worship, write a sermon, collaborate with all those involved in various roles of making music, reading scripture, making and distributing bulletins, choosing hymns, setting up communion, etc. In some ways it is like putting on a small-scale musical theatre production every week, but different in that all the people attending participate in some way. 

We all have rhythms to our weekly cycle, but in the church during all the other days, and considering whatever other responsibilities, activities and stuff  we have to do, Sunday is always in the background. All the other days point to Sunday. Most pastors take Monday off because it is the furthest from the next Sunday, and the urgency to prepare is lower. My colleagues who do work on Mondays often cite a desire to get a head start on that Sunday urgency. Others have other tricks, like I start memorizing the dates of the Sundays about two months out from wherever I am – it feels helpful to know what is coming. 

Along with the rhythm of Sundays, there are the seasons and festivals that orient us to “when” we are in time. The liturgical calendar has governed my months and years in a way I could understand since I started serving in ministry. It is the same for teachers and the school calendar, for accountants and the fiscal/tax year, for business owners and the schedule of holidays and sales times, etc.

And so here we are being governed by calendars and schedules that have been knocked off their axis by the pandemic. Thanksgiving arrives and it doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving as we once knew it. Re-orientation to the structure of time as we once knew it isn’t an easy thing. 

And yet, through all that we have been through these past years, the grounding of God’s story in time has remained the same. Even as we did not work, play, serve or worship as we were used to these past years, we still found ways to tell the story of God. Of God’s death and resurrection each week. Of the coming of Messiah in Advent, of the birth of Christ at Christmas, of the revelation of Jesus at Epiphany. We still walked in the wilderness of Lent following our Teacher and Master, and we still bore witness to the drama of Holy Week, and rejoiced on the Day of the Resurrection at Easter. 

In the midst of “fuzzy” time and holidays that don’t feel like the versions that we used to know, God’s story still holds us, and, indeed, holds us close. The story of God’s promise to carry God’s people through this life with mercy, grace and new life is clear and true. 

Happy Thanksgiving,

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Turning up the faith? – Pastor Thoughts

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“Increase our faith!”

The gospel reading for this week has the apostles asking this (demanding this?) from Jesus. 

It is a request or demand that we could make too. With all that is going on in our world today: Hurricanes in the Maritimes, Puerto Rico and Florida. An increasingly unpredictable Russia that is now losing the war in Ukraine and the threats of nuclear war. Orange Shirt Day and the reminder of the hard work of reconciliation that is before us as settler peoples and indigenous peoples. Gas prices shooting up once again and inflation still running rampant and out of control. The front-runner in our Winnipeg mayoral election facing allegations of workplace harassment. 

And that is only the stuff this week…

A little more faith feels like something we could use. Or some hope. Just something more. 

Something more as a group. We could benefit from an increase in faith collectively. Something that bonds us together and helps us through. More faith as neighbourhood, congregation, community, city, nation or world might be the thing that helps us work together, that allows us to overcome challenges, strive to help the weaker and needy among us, or maybe to just stop the social media bickering for awhile. 

There is also all the stuff that we are each facing individually too. Health challenges or crises, work stress, school stress, family conflict, or just the exhaustion of adapting to a fall time that has been completely different from the last two in how the world is approaching pandemic and activities. 

Each of us on our own could use an increase in faith, a little boost to carry us through each day to allow us to see the hope of making it to the other side of whatever obstacle or challenges stand in our way. 

Increase our faith!

But we know that this isn’t how it works. Jesus doesn’t just turn a knob and we become more faithful. 

Faith is relationship. Faith is trust. Faith – like so much in this world – is something to be worked at and practiced. The way it increases is over time as we live life in faithful community that supports and cares for one another. A community shaped by the continual telling and re-telling of the gospel story over weeks and seasons, until that story become grafted onto our bones and we cannot help but see the world through it. 

“Increase our faith!” we might say. 

And even then, our faith isn’t increased. Rather, we see that God’s faith in us has been holding and carrying us all along. We learn that God’s faith placed us – God’s promises of mercy, forgiveness and new life – have been our foundation since before we were born and will be there long after we are gone. 

God says, “My faithfulness is always given for you.”

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

What is the Church again? – Pastor Thoughts

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“What is the Church?”

The most recent article of the Canada Lutheran splashed this question across its cover. It sounds like an open-ended question with a myriad of possible answers. If you asked 5 different people sitting in the pews or watching online on Sunday mornings, you will get 5 different answers. Asking 5 different pastors might even yield 5 different answers. 

And yet, here we are, all participating and engaging in this thing called “church.” Somehow we figured out how to do something in common and we seem to carry with us some kind of agreement about what the body we all belong to is and what it is about. 

In our post-modern world, defining what the church is feels like it is something that we each get to do, that we can form and shape the church in whatever way suits us. One version of the church is all about fancy music and fancy liturgy. Another version is all about serving the local community through outreach, food banks, social programs, community meals. And still another has all the programs that someone of any age could need to feel a part of the group: children’s ministry, youth, young adults, families, men’s groups, women’s groups, seniors groups and so on… Still another is all about connections and fellowship and relationships –  a big happy family. 

If you visit enough churches, you will find versions of these and more across the Evangelical Lutheran Church In Canada, across North America, and the denominational spectrum. 

Post-modern Christianity can really be a choose-your-own-adventure reality. 

However as Lutherans, the answer to the question “What is the church?” might not be as open-ended as we sometimes act like. In fact, Martin Luther and the Reformers had a very specific and clear answer to this question. 

The church in the Reformers day was shaped by the Pope acting like an emperor, Bishops acting like princes and clergy who exploited the people. So the Reformers looked to have an answer that stripped away all human power and preference. They sought to articulate what the church was at its most essential.

What they came up with is written in the Augsburg Confession Article 7. “The Church is the assembly of believers where the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered.” Or in other words, the church is:

  • People of faith gathered together
  • The Gospel proclaimed 
  • People receiving baptism and communion

The next part might be surprising, even difficult, to hear: Everything beyond Word and Sacraments is secondary. Everything we do beyond gathering around the Word and Sacraments flows from that central foundation. 

That means that the way we worship, the programs we run, the committees that meet, the buildings that we build, the fellowship gatherings we host, the causes we undertake and so on, are things we do that are because of, or in support of, gathering around Word and Sacrament. 

The music and liturgy that we use in worship are meant to be an expression of our unity of the body. 

The outreach we do to feed the hungry are because God first feeds us in communion and transforms us into the Body of Christ – bread for the world. 

The programs we run: small groups, bible studies, youth, children’s ministry etc… are places to help us grow in faith by hearing the Gospel in new and different ways. 

The building, the fellowship events, the committees, the kind of coffee we drink, the pews we sit in, the lights and heat, the screens and bulletins, the bathrooms and couches, the eNews and volunteer teams etc… are pieces that exist in order to facilitate our gathering around Word and Sacrament. 

Even though so many of those things I listed above feel like they are essential to being church, they are actually secondary. Important, but secondary. When they serve the essential purpose of being a community around Word and Sacrament, they are worthwhile. But all too often the secondary things supplant the essential things. Suddenly Word and Sacrament takes a back seat to all the variety of versions of being church that each of us hold in our own minds and preference. More significantly, in times of change and transition – such as during the past 3 years – those secondary things that once served our gathering so well might begin to fail us or they might stop working all together. 

This is hard. Hard to understand how things that we thought were about what it meant to be church seem to be crumbling before us. Hard to let go of things that we thought were such an important part of being church. 

This is why we need to be reminded of the foundation, the core things that make us the church. “The church is the assembly of believers where the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered.” And even when so much about being church is changing and different, this core remains. God transforms us into the One of Christ by gathering us around the good news of the Word that gives us life: Baptism that makes children of God, and Communion that makes us food for the world.