After the second Weird Church book party in February, my whole week went weird when a guy crashed the party and stole my computer. This forced a significant change of agenda for that week, as I got a new computer, and tried to reload everything and redo my income tax. I cancelled a five-day event and, after all the computer-related business, was left with two days of Sabbath, stuck more than three thousand miles from home. I decided to spend my 48-hour Sabbath in a temperate rain forest on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State.
On the morning of February 25, I walked in that forest and came to a
majestic tree, more than four hundred years old. But as I looked up,
there were no branches or leaves. The tree had died. An eagle's nest was
perched up top. Nothing else. A sign by the tree read, "Standing dead
but filled with life." The metaphor hit me instantly - just as it hit
you right then.
I then saw another sign that taught about giant Spruce trees in the rain forest. They last between four and five hundred years. Then they die, and eventually fall. Within 75 years or so, a new stand of Spruce will rise tall in that place. In the interregnum, smaller trees will flourish. This pattern has been repeating itself longer than people have been around. The sign stated that between now and 2100 most all of the large trees in that old growth forest will die. Then between 2150 and 2200, a new Spruce forest will rise.
We who serve Christ in the mainline Protestant context work in an old growth forest, to say the least. Amy Butler interviewed Beth Estock and me at The Riverside Church in NYC in early March, and I calculated at least three very old trees that are dead but still standing within the context of Riverside: (1) The Protestant Reformation, (2) The American Great Awakening and (3) The black church in America. We could name more trees. But most are old: dying, dead or fallen - and churches such as Riverside are living in the legacy of such great trees.
Beth and I are tree doctors. People call us in to work on their old trees, and we work with the people in such places to discern with them ways forward, so that the tree can thrive another generation or two. But every tree (church) ultimately falls. A legacy entity may arise, taking the historic name and operating out of the same building, but the trees all fall: some faster than others.
We make such a crisis out of this - but my big ah-ha in the rain forest on February 25 is that an old growth forest dying is not quite the crisis we want to make of it. All the churches that Paul planted died centuries ago, but the forest endures.
I then saw another sign that taught about giant Spruce trees in the rain forest. They last between four and five hundred years. Then they die, and eventually fall. Within 75 years or so, a new stand of Spruce will rise tall in that place. In the interregnum, smaller trees will flourish. This pattern has been repeating itself longer than people have been around. The sign stated that between now and 2100 most all of the large trees in that old growth forest will die. Then between 2150 and 2200, a new Spruce forest will rise.
We who serve Christ in the mainline Protestant context work in an old growth forest, to say the least. Amy Butler interviewed Beth Estock and me at The Riverside Church in NYC in early March, and I calculated at least three very old trees that are dead but still standing within the context of Riverside: (1) The Protestant Reformation, (2) The American Great Awakening and (3) The black church in America. We could name more trees. But most are old: dying, dead or fallen - and churches such as Riverside are living in the legacy of such great trees.
Beth and I are tree doctors. People call us in to work on their old trees, and we work with the people in such places to discern with them ways forward, so that the tree can thrive another generation or two. But every tree (church) ultimately falls. A legacy entity may arise, taking the historic name and operating out of the same building, but the trees all fall: some faster than others.
We make such a crisis out of this - but my big ah-ha in the rain forest on February 25 is that an old growth forest dying is not quite the crisis we want to make of it. All the churches that Paul planted died centuries ago, but the forest endures.
Yes, I am a tree doctor. But I am not in the tree business. I work for the rain forest. So do you. In the twenty years that I served as a pastor, I observed a rule: that if I could not lead the church to experience net gains in participation within two years, I would pass that church to someone else and move on. Fast forward thirty-five years from the time I began serving local churches, and such a rule is simply untenable in many contexts. The deaths are coming on so fast, and the young people are drifting away so fast, that even the very best leaders may be unable to bring more people in than leave the congregation. This is what it means to pastor churches in an old growth forest.
In many cases, excellent ministry no longer means revitalization of the old church. However, excellent ministry always means curating the forest, and tending to the new things that long to spring forth both in and around the old tree.
This is yet another way of making the case for why we plant new churches.
No comments:
Post a Comment