It's been a while since I've posted anything and let's face it things were crazy for a while between the end of the semester, the wedding, packing, moving, unpacking...you know all those great things that come with having tons of new life events all happening at once. And since then, well I've been busy be-ing and settling into this new life.
Three weeks ago I started my internship in Kittson County, MN which is the most North Westernly corner of the state. This internship is unique as it is made of up 3 different parishes cooperating together which gives me a grand total of 3 pastors and 5 churches to work with, not to mention Frank's church's which both seem to claim me as well. Despite all the differences I already have and am yet to encounter there seems to be one overarching theme they all have in common; death. I'm not talking funerals, although those happen quite a bit. I'm talking about the common held belief that they are all part of dying congregations. Considering this area has seen drastic decline not only in church membership but in overall population over the past few decades this is a fair assessment. Some of the towns in the area have simply ceased to be with only a handfull of houses and an old grain elevator sitting along the railroad tracks to remind us that hundreds of people once lived there. It's a cold hard fact that some, if not many of these communities and churches will silently slip off our maps without much notice. This fact does not worry me nearly as much as the fact that these churches identify themselves in such a way.
So often I've heard that if a church isn't growing it's dying or at least has one foot in that direction. Why is it that we are so fixated on growth. Yes, growth is great and amazing but in a place that has fewer and fewer people every year is it really the goal? I've only been at these churches for a few weeks and have barely brushed the surface of their depth and breadth and yet I've already gotten the feeling that they are in the same boat as many other churches across the country; in survival mode and wondering why it is they haven't seen a new face in their doors for a long long time. I'd like to point out that this has nothing to do with hospitality but is very much a numbers game and the numbers are simply not in their favor.
With all these things working against them and with death staring them in the face, how do we encourage them to live? How do we shift their focus from that of death to life? How do we help them to see themselves as a vibrant, faithful community full of the life of Christ? They may be dying but that doesn't mean they have to go quietly. It doesn't mean they have to simply slip away with no legacy. It doesn't mean there is no hope or that it's ok to simply give up and sustain. How do we help them, and ourselves for that matter, to stop worrying about growth, embrace death and live?
