A large cruise ship is capsized in the Mediterranean sea. Thousands were rescued, but some died. The captain will be punished for abandoning ship. Some vacation. I’ve never been on a cruise. Don’t think I’m going to book one anytime soon. Sorry honey. We’re landlubbers. And we are religious people. We have a routine we follow. We adopted it from our predecessors. We revise it a little, but mostly do what has been done. Sunday morning is church time. We gather for worship. We pray and sing, listen and confess, sit and stand, eat and drink, give and receive. We pass the peace and reconnect : with each other, with God. We come here. What we do here is good. Were it not good, who would come? Admittedly, sometimes we come because of an obligation. Ah man, do I have to go today? Yes dear , you’re the preacher. Sometimes being faithful here feels lonely, like being the only tourist in a small foreign village. But we come because this is the container of our religious lives. An upside down ship, a nave. The church keeps us together, shelters us from the storms. It is safe here. We are safe with God contained in this room. This is our boat.
So, why don’t more people come to church? Why is it so hard to be faithful today? Why have so many gone ashore and left us adrift? How do we get more people to come and see what’s happening here? I have suggested that we can never be entertaining or attractional enough, because we are not marketing or selling ourselves or anything else here. We are not going to package our message in a hip modern, contemporary relevant cool worship show because that is not who we are. So what do we do? Stay put until we die? The mainline church continues to shrink at an alarming rate in the US. Leaving a church, not joining a church, seems to be the direction of many Americans. So how do we reverse the trend at Zion Lutheran on Main St. in Akron? We know that our demographics, though typical, are not promising. I am not the answer man, but I have been appointed the pastor, prophet, evangelist, and teacher in this place. I am at least a couple of those things. I have learned that what I am is not what some church people expect or need from their pastor. I am sorry when I am not.
