My Notes on the 2015 1001 New Worshiping Communities Conference: Pursued by Grace

My Preconceptions

Recently, I spent a week at a conference called Pursued by Grace as a representative of the Presbytery of South Louisiana (PSL).  The conference was part of a Presbyterian Church (USA) initiative called 1001 New Worshipping Communities, which I’ll just call 1001 NWC from here on.

I told people before leaving that, at that time, I really had only vague ideas about what 1001 NWC was or how PSL would fit in, or what I was doing there. My pastor, Rev. Peggy Brown, had recommended me, and PSL agreed to send me. Peggy said she thought my interest in new and creative means of worshiping and serving God would make me a good fit. After some discussions with Rev. John Blewitt, who leads the PSL Congregational Development Committee, I got the idea that PSL had spent so much time and energy recuperating from the hurricanes Katrina and Rita a decade ago, that we had at least somewhat neglected doing new things, and founding new churches, and he thought 1001 NWC is a good initiative for us to embrace.

I do love learning things and I do love creativity (both being creative and seeing creativity in others). However, I’m not a pastor or clerk of a session or a theology professor or even an elder currently serving on a session or a presbytery committee. I imagined that there must have been a pretty long list of people who could have gone to the conference that must have turned it down before they got to me. That was a little discouraging.  On the other hand, someone went through that list and got to me, so that was pretty encouraging.

My understanding of 1001 NWC at the start of the week was that it was some kind of new-church-building program with some creative or at least non-traditional edges. Sort of like the New Beginnings program Northminster and many other existing churches had engaged in, only with new churches instead of established ones.

I read through the website and only got confused. I found none of the wording I expected (something like “1001 NWC puts forth the following steps to creating chartered churches in demographically underserved communities.”), and a lot of amorphous phrases like “taking on varied forms of church for our changing culture”.

My friend Rev. Sue Loper told me the day before I left that 1001 NWC wasn’t so much about setting up new churches, as finding new and faithful ways to serve God. In talking with Sue, I began to suspect that something I and some others at Northminster had done would have fit right in to 1001 NWC, had there been a 1001 NWC at the time. More on that in a bit.

(One note: I knew no one at the conference when it started. I met a lot of people there. I’ve forgotten a bunch of names. I apologize to anyone I fail to name or I name incompletely. Your names are important, but my memory is weak.)

What is 1001 New Worshipping Communities?
(and Why That’s the Wrong Question)

1001 NWC is not just about setting up new churches.

It's actually not really about setting up new churches at all, though that sometimes happens.

1001 NWC is about finding new and creative ways to worship God, which means drawing into active participation in God's kingdom the people on the edges, the people who may not fit in the big stone building with the (often white male) pastor who’s more or less in charge. Sometimes that structure works for a community, sometimes it doesn’t. Structure seems to be a tool for this group, not a goal.

1001 NWC is not just evangelism and it’s not just innovative worship concepts and it’s not just “emergent” church and it’s not just young people (“the future of the church”) and it’s not “branding” at all.

In fact, it’s not really an “it.” It’s a “who.”

As far as I could tell as a newcomer to this initiative, 1001 NWC is people. Like they always said “church” should be: not a building but people.

The people at this conference focussed squarely on serving the people they were ministering to, and the people they were ministering with. They were not particularly interested in committees or buildings or budgets or chains of command, but the individual people. If those other things served the people, they embraced them. If they got in the way, they got them out of the way.

I’m sure there is some kind of leadership structure at 1001 NWC, but it was not apparent at the conference. I have heard that there were or are small grants available for new communities, but I didn’t hear the details, and I wasn’t curious enough over the week to ask about them. In short, the administration and financing of 1001 NWC were much like the foundation of a house: vital to the house’s existence, but not the first thing most people see, and certainly not what the house is about.

1001 NWC is people like a guy named Gad who I met at dinner my first night. Gad, who's originally from Congo, works with a group of immigrants in Atlanta. Not just immigrants from Congo, mind you, but immigrants from Sudan and Nigeria and Congo and Uganda and Nepal and Bangladesh and... Well, I don't remember the other ones he listed off. I noted that they were not all from a single African culture (in fact, some of the countries were in Asia). They draw together not to celebrate their own heritages, but to serve each other. They run a youth group and an after-school program. He talked about how he'd love for someone like me to talk to the kids about science, so that they can expand their concept of what careers are possible. He was concerned that these kids saw only very limited possibilities for their future, and wished they could broaden their horizons. I'd love to take the Slidell High School Tiger Robotics team to see them, so that they could see what amazing possibilities Christ has provided for them even now. (If only they weren’t many hours away…)

1001 NWC is people like the pastor from a church on Long Island who was trying to figure out how to transform his congregation, or the black man from Charleston, South Carolina who I met on the shuttle who talked about how the recent crises there have drawn many churches into working together, or the pastor of the new Hope Presbyterian Church in Orlando, whose church holds to this: “God above all. Kingdom above congregation. People above property. Love above doctrinal precision.”

And 1001 NWC is people like Sarah, who, as I understand it, helps lead the movement’s “coaching” community (more on that later), and who is convinced that I’ve already been part of a new worshipping community and will soon start another one. (She’s much more convinced of the latter than I am.)

Awake and Alive/New Song Worship

I found out from talking with Sue and Sarah and a number of other people that a program I once was part of called Awake and Alive and it's associated New Song Worship would have fit right in as one of the 1001 new worshipping communities, and we would surely have gotten support from these people. Unfortunately, 1001 NWC wasn't even around when we started Awake and Alive/New Song Worship, so time travel is/was/will be required.

For those who don't know what Awake and Alive was (and that includes several people who were in my church - Northminster Presbyterian - at the time), Awake and Alive was a group of us (originally all at Northminster) who met mid-week, intentionally in public (at a coffee shop, then a couple of sandwich places, and finally the mall). We spent a lot of time talking about our lives and thoughts, and the kids would often bring homework to work on and sometimes ask for help on. What we were about, though, wasn’t talking, but doing stuff. Awake and Alive was named after a song by the rock group Skillet. (“Awake and Alive” is also nearly the opposite of “sick and tired.”)

Awake and Alive was never chartered by the session, and, while we were respectful of the session’s responsibilities and authority, we didn’t report to any session committee or the session as a whole. The pastor at the time was invited to join us as anyone else might, but was told that he wouldn’t be in charge. We worked as a pseudo-independent community working to develop our own discipleship and, we hoped, help kindle a fire for Northminster and others.

Awake and Alive was intended to be emergent. Not in the sense of the “emergent church” but in the sense that it would be formed and re-formed by the changing discipleship of its members. It changed as the community changed. I’ve been to SO MANY SERMONS saying how scary change is.  Awake and Alive embraced change. We felt that lack of change was far scarier. Eventually, Awake and Alive died off (though it still lives in my heart) for a number of reasons, but mostly because all things on earth save God’s love and faithfulness are ephemeral, and sometimes, fighting death does more damage than dying.

At Awake and Alive’s best, we met, drew strength and communion from our fellowship, and worked to do stuff like sing Christmas carols at a retirement home, or have a board game afternoon at church, or give out water at a Carnival parade, or wear pajamas to church, or run  New Song Worship, where we hoped to reach out to the misfits and outcasts by crafting worship that was always changing and never either "conventional" or "contemporary."

New Song Worship was lay-lead. As far as I can remember, no pastor ever even attended. We met once a month or so, and each service was different. We weren’t looking for the optimum worship experience; we were looking for new and different ways to praise God. It was play. We did not always use “technology”. We once met outside among luminaries and candles for Pentecost; we ate different kinds of food as the different parts of one service; we once had a service where we listened to a sermon by Martin Luther King; we once had a service where the entire thing, from Call to Worship to Benediction, was done using secular songs that made no explicit mention of God or Christ (save for the first one, “One of Us” by Joan Osborne). (Since we were using the sanctuary for New Song Worship, we did seek permission from the session for this activity.)

The truth is, though, that many people even in our own church didn't understand what Awake and Alive was about, thinking it was just a handful of us telling jokes at the mall. I think that was partly due to my inability at the time to clearly enunciate what Awake and Alive was, and partly due to the fact that Awake and Alive was always joyfully changing. I believe that, if we had been able to access a community like 1001 NWC at the time, we could have better explained ourselves, and perhaps found ways to minister even more broadly.

I wonder how many people in south Louisiana have their own off-center discipleship or worshiping communities, or how many are thinking about it. I would love to be a part of anything that supports these folks and these communities, and shows them how valuable they are.

Vulnerability

One thing that kind of hit me in the face at the conference was how hard this work is. These people are tired and frustrated and often nearly in tears. What they do and are often don't fit into the molds we've made for “church” and “worship.” They don't look for the huge demographic. They go to bars and nightclubs and don't pull out their megaphone. Many of them have been treated like failures or interlopers.

No one, and I mean no one, not even the invited speakers, spent time promoting their own successes. No one, and I mean no one, pretended that they knew all the answers. Everyone was broken and everyone knew that only Christ’s grace was holding them together.

I’ve been to several different national or regional church conferences: the Montreat Youth Conference, the Montreat Worship and Music Conference, and several editions of a now-apparently-defunct Montreat youth leader conference called “The Blaze,” as well as a number of smaller presbytery conferences (mainly for youth ministry). I love youth, youth ministries, and youth ministers, but I’ve never ever ever seen this level of vulnerability and trust, even trust of people like me whom they’ve never met. I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful that is.

And sometimes, just sometimes, wondrous things happen to people who are just doing their best, despite all kinds of difficulties.

At Monday’s worship, Keith Gunter told a story about a young man whose family belonged to a mainline conservative church. I’ll call the young man Mike, since I wasn’t taking notes and I don’t remember his name. Mike was a musician, as I remember it, and Keith had befriended him. Keith heard Mike was playing a gig at a local bar, and Keith went there and watched Mike perform, and drank a beer with him.

The pastor at Mike’s church called Keith. “I understand that you went to such-and-such bar last night to hear Mike, and drank and told jokes with him and his friends.”

“Yes,” Keith said, ready for some kind of trouble.

“Thank you,” the pastor said. “I couldn’t do that or I’d be fired.”

Many of the people at this conference were doing the kinds of ministry that might get other pastors fired. Praise God.

Workshops

I attended three workshops at the conference. John and I had worked out which ones would be of most interest to PSL and myself before I left.

Stewardship

The stewardship workshop wasn’t really what I was expecting.

We began with a Bible study about stewardship. To be honest, that was what I was expecting. Just about every time I’ve ever had serious discussion with someone about stewardship, it started with a Bible study.

After the study, Jon Moore, a representative from the Presbyterian Mission Agency, presented a very interesting slide show. He provided notes, much to my gratitude.

A few of his points, or my notes about his points:

• The world is awash in money… it is not awash with accessible, transformational ministry experiences.
• Grants lead to nothing; gifts by individuals lead to subsequent giving.
• Individuals want to be viscerally involved or find vicarious participation.
• Donors need ministry as much as ministry needs donors.
• Commitment by leadership leads to commitment by others.
• Sacrifice begets passion which begets passion in others
• We need to show a path to impact.
• If I give you $1, what do you do with it, and how does that affect the ministry?
• Giving can often be like grandparenting: Grandparents support and help people that they do not want living with them.

Maybe that last one needs more explanation. As I understand it, the idea is that some people will support a ministry they don’t personally want to work in. For instance, maybe they love what the ministry does, but maybe it means lots of walking, and they have mobility problems. They love the work, but can’t or won’t do it themselves. Jon said that these people can be great resources, much like grandparents are great resources.

My take on all this is that when we’re asking for money and when we’re receiving money, and when we’re giving money, we should focus on the people we are ministering to, and the people are ministering with.

Just like everything else at 1001 NWC.

Starting New Worshipping Communities

This workshop provided a kind of structure and some published resources which might be of use in forming a new worshipping community.

However, as the leader Brian Clark pointed out, the framework has to be very loose. In my words, we’re looking for creativity and responsiveness, and those things love blank pages. But creativity also requires some starting point, and these materials seem to serve as that.

I haven’t read the studies, but I do have a few copies, and I’m told the book is available online.

One thing this workshop really helped me consider was that I really had no idea what I was going home to. In particular, I was unclear whether PSL had an existing structure that I was to be a part of, or whether we were creating something new. Not knowing what my role would be made it difficult for me to place this workshop in context.

I’ve spoken briefly with John after I returned, and I’m going to meet with him and the rest of the presbytery in the near future to try to answer these questions.

I feel no hesitation in e-mailing Brian with more questions once I better understand our situation.

Coaching

This was a huge surprise. I honestly didn’t know anything about “coaching” in this context. Had I been forced to guess, I would have said that coaches were like consultants, similar to the representatives from New Beginnings that visited our church and told us what they saw, and (unlike New Beginnings) what to do to fix it. (New Beginnings intentionally avoids giving solutions, allowing the churches to work out their own.)

In other words, I thought that maybe “coaches” were kind of like church self-help gurus.

I was pleased to find out that “coaching” in this context is nothing like that.

To begin with, the relationship with the coach was largely one-to-one: the leader or pastor to the coach. While the coach might meet with the session or the congregation, the meeting would only be to provide context in helping the leader or pastor.

The point of the coach, as the workshop leaders Danny and Sarah made clear, was to get out of the way and help the leader find his or her own path. They would provide an outsider to listen to and work with the leader, giving an outside perspective, but focusing on helping the leader work out their discipleship themselves.

“Coaching” may be very close to, or even identical with “spiritual direction.” (I’m not familiar with either of these beyond their names, so I have no comment beyond the fact that someone at the workshop who did seem to know “spiritual direction” well indicated that she thought they were very similar.)

The coaching is confidential, and defined by open-ended questions and creating space for the Holy Spirit within the coached.

Coaches cost money: $250 a quarter plus travel if done through the 1001 NWC program. They said that most of the times, presbyteries shoulder the cost.

When we were doing New Song Worship, I would very very much have benefitted from having a coach. New Song Worship required a lot of creative work, and I did the lion’s share of that. It would have been very very helpful to have someone outside the community to help me focus that energy and maybe find ways of achieving what I thought of as the goal of New Song Worship (sharing God’s love with people on the edge who don’t seem to fit in anywhere; that is, evangelism through worship).

Of course, one of the points that helped us sell New Song Worship to a hesitant session was that it would cost the church zero dollars. Sara, Danny, and the others suggested that there were means to maybe help with the finances at the start, possibly through presbytery support or grant money.

At any rate, I think coaching would be invaluable, especially to people starting new creative edge-reaching ministries, because doing that kind of work seems too difficult to try to do on your own.

Using Demographics Differently

There was also an “exhibit floor” with a number of booths for different seminaries and ministry organizations. One of those was Mission Insite, a company that specializes in church demographics. PSL is a customer of Mission Insite. I’m sure we’ve used their products at Northminster, and, to be honest, I’ve been underwhelmed.

I talked with Mission Insite’s Peter Wernett about my misgivings. I’m certain by his reaction that he hears that a lot, but I worked hard to make clear that I wasn’t attacking him or his company or the idea of church demographics. It just seemed to me that demographics studies just cause every church in the city to go after the same group of people who make up the largest demographic.

I’m just not that interested in spreading the word of God to people who are already hearing the word of God from every other church in town. I'm far more interested in ministering to people who get forgotten, the folks that don’t make up the biggest demographic group.

However, talking with Peter, who frequently told me that all Mission Insite does is gather data, we worked out another way of approaching the demographics: from the bottom.

What if we looked at the demographic reports not from the top two or three demographic groups in an area, but from the bottom 2 or 3, or even the middle 2 or 3?  These groups may not be courted or served by anyone.

Serving those people is not the way to make tons of money or members (unless the groups are the Fabulously Wealthy and the Extremely Well-Connected). Still, maybe we'd be reaching the lost and the lonely and the left-out.

Other Notes

I didn’t mention earlier the broad diversity of the group. I met people from Africa and India and California. We had prayers and songs in English and Spanish and Portuguese and Korean. I met young people and older people. I met pastors, theology professors, commissioned ruling elders, and just folks who wanted to help. It was actually pretty great to be the middle-aged white guy at a religious conference and be one of the minority.

I also want to mention an amazing pastor named Tamara John, who does a ministry in a trailer park. She lives with them in California and serves them. When I heard this, I told her, “THAT SOUNDS INCREDIBLE!” and she replied happily matching my tone of appreciation, “YEAH, DOESN’T IT?”

And I NEED to mention Faith Works Wings and Prayer. Dian was a social worker and an elder in New Jersey, ready to leave her inner city home, when she felt love for the prostitutes and pimps and drug dealers and drug users wandering the streets. There was a church every block, but for these folks, they might as well have been parking lots. She got a group together to go out on a weekday afternoon and pray one-on-one with anyone who wandered by. She’d give them a chicken wing after the prayer. When the weather got cold, they opened the church and served more food.  They work to help these people, not belittle them or judge them. She had a hundred stories about them. I am honored to have met her.

We had a really cool Bible study, which, like the best Bible studies, really can’t be summarized briefly afterward. The diversity and faithfulness and vulnerability of the group made for some fantastic discussions.

We ate together A LOT, which, as a New Orleans boy, I really liked. I made a point of eating with different people as often as I could.

Conclusion

This was a fantastic opportunity for me. I’m looking forward to where the Spirit will lead me next. I hope that I can help support people in PSL who look to find creative ways to serve the people on the edges, or who embrace new ways of being a church. Maybe Sarah was right, and I’ll help start another community, only this time better hooked in to all 1001 NWC has to offer.

I am completely grateful to Peggy, John, and PSL for making this happen.