SKELETONS IN THE CHURCH CLOSET
I am on a committee at church that is coordinating our mission study; that is, our church-wide effort to understand God’s will for our congregation, so that we are better able to call a full-time senior pastor. Given the rich history and diversity of our church, it has been a fascinating exercise, which we hope will conclude with a clear and inspiring mission statement from which to head boldly into the future.
But we are wise enough to know that the best way to look ahead is to first look back, to see the foundation from which we are building. After all, there is much in our church that we can grab onto as honoring to God, that we would be remiss to neglect in our pursuit of what lies ahead. And so we spent a Sunday evening together as a congregation, telling stories about our church’s recent past.
Although I use the word “recent” liberally, for some in our midst first attended our congregation in the late 1940’s. So we had a lot of stories, personalities, and trends batting around that night. And lo and behold that some of the racial unrest of the 1960’s bubbled up to the surface.
I think it is the general impression of congregants and of outside observers that our church is remarkably racially diverse. Given that we sit at a nexus university transients, recent immigrants, and neighborhood old-timers, and that we have always drawn from that immediate circle, it is not surprising that many skin tones, languages, and countries of origin can be found worshipping together on Sunday morning. It is a diversity that is one of our strengths, and one of the ways our congregation’s existence is pleasing to God.
And yet, we too have skeletons in our closet. One particular skeleton became known to me at this Sunday evening forum, but was driven home by follow-up conversations our coordinating committee had last night. Seems that in the 1960’s, the congregation was not the most welcoming to black families. We accepted a few, begrudgingly, which, if graded on a curve, would put us ahead of most churches at the time. But God doesn’t grade on a curve. And as one of our old-timers, a quiet Caucasian woman, pointed this out on Sunday evening, some in our midst got defensive, others uncomfortable. The big pink elephant called race, which is in the middle of almost every room in America, had been identified. And a general unease spread through the room. Not long after, we moved on to another subject.
I found out at our coordinating committee last night, there was a massive decline in membership when one pastor was replaced by another. The party line was that the previous pastor was more relational, while the new pastor wasn’t as much so. Last night, I found out the real deal. The new pastor, upon arriving at our church, worked really hard to welcome a black family he had befriended into the congregation. Over the course of a few years, a membership of 400 had plummeted to 100, as many white people and families left.
As I shared tonight, our church, like any organized group of people, is like a dysfunctional family. We know what are the subjects we aren’t to talk about, and we keep a vigilant silence about them. The job of a good therapist, of course, is to bring that family together and make them talk about those unmentionables. To put a spiritual spin on this analogy, unrepented sin continues to fester, and cripples or even negates a church’s ability to be healthy.
What an opportunity, I proclaimed, for us to “do therapy” for our congregation; to put the unmentionables out into the open, and humbly and repentantly confess them to be part of our organization-wide past, its effects seeping into the present. Race is not an issue to be addressed lightly, and the committee struggled to know how to appropriately address it without either shortchanging it or thinking we could solve it in a season. But I think our conversation last night was a good start, in that it reminded us that we too have skeletons in our closet, and that the healthy and functional thing to do as a church family is to discuss them openly and prayerfully.
I am on a committee at church that is coordinating our mission study; that is, our church-wide effort to understand God’s will for our congregation, so that we are better able to call a full-time senior pastor. Given the rich history and diversity of our church, it has been a fascinating exercise, which we hope will conclude with a clear and inspiring mission statement from which to head boldly into the future.
But we are wise enough to know that the best way to look ahead is to first look back, to see the foundation from which we are building. After all, there is much in our church that we can grab onto as honoring to God, that we would be remiss to neglect in our pursuit of what lies ahead. And so we spent a Sunday evening together as a congregation, telling stories about our church’s recent past.
Although I use the word “recent” liberally, for some in our midst first attended our congregation in the late 1940’s. So we had a lot of stories, personalities, and trends batting around that night. And lo and behold that some of the racial unrest of the 1960’s bubbled up to the surface.
I think it is the general impression of congregants and of outside observers that our church is remarkably racially diverse. Given that we sit at a nexus university transients, recent immigrants, and neighborhood old-timers, and that we have always drawn from that immediate circle, it is not surprising that many skin tones, languages, and countries of origin can be found worshipping together on Sunday morning. It is a diversity that is one of our strengths, and one of the ways our congregation’s existence is pleasing to God.
And yet, we too have skeletons in our closet. One particular skeleton became known to me at this Sunday evening forum, but was driven home by follow-up conversations our coordinating committee had last night. Seems that in the 1960’s, the congregation was not the most welcoming to black families. We accepted a few, begrudgingly, which, if graded on a curve, would put us ahead of most churches at the time. But God doesn’t grade on a curve. And as one of our old-timers, a quiet Caucasian woman, pointed this out on Sunday evening, some in our midst got defensive, others uncomfortable. The big pink elephant called race, which is in the middle of almost every room in America, had been identified. And a general unease spread through the room. Not long after, we moved on to another subject.
I found out at our coordinating committee last night, there was a massive decline in membership when one pastor was replaced by another. The party line was that the previous pastor was more relational, while the new pastor wasn’t as much so. Last night, I found out the real deal. The new pastor, upon arriving at our church, worked really hard to welcome a black family he had befriended into the congregation. Over the course of a few years, a membership of 400 had plummeted to 100, as many white people and families left.
As I shared tonight, our church, like any organized group of people, is like a dysfunctional family. We know what are the subjects we aren’t to talk about, and we keep a vigilant silence about them. The job of a good therapist, of course, is to bring that family together and make them talk about those unmentionables. To put a spiritual spin on this analogy, unrepented sin continues to fester, and cripples or even negates a church’s ability to be healthy.
What an opportunity, I proclaimed, for us to “do therapy” for our congregation; to put the unmentionables out into the open, and humbly and repentantly confess them to be part of our organization-wide past, its effects seeping into the present. Race is not an issue to be addressed lightly, and the committee struggled to know how to appropriately address it without either shortchanging it or thinking we could solve it in a season. But I think our conversation last night was a good start, in that it reminded us that we too have skeletons in our closet, and that the healthy and functional thing to do as a church family is to discuss them openly and prayerfully.
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