communion

A young woman attended my church's Sunday morning worship a few times this month.  She is a twenty-something RN administrator at a local hospital.  She is a transplant from another town,a few hours north of here.  She has a boyfriend.  She grew up going to a Lutheran church.  After a year off, she decided to reactivate her faith life.  She googled Lutherans in akron, pa and found us. She has participated. I hope she desires to belong with us.  We have not seen her in a few weeks. I wonder if we'll see her again. I'm not sure, but she may have been the first person to find us online.  That's actually sad. We have had a website for several years now.  We have a facebook page too.  We don't get much traffic on them.
We are not a big, flashy, attractional church.  We are not entertaining.  We are surrounded by churches casting a more sophisticated net than we are.  There are churches around us with young people, big buildings, auditoriums, praise bands, coffee shops, bookstores, big screens, fancy signs, programs for every life stage and hobby, full-time staff and multi-million dollar budgets.  We don't really have those things here.
The congregation of Lutherans I serve, Zion, has been here since the late 1890's.  They reached the height of their "powers" in the early 1980s.  Their membership has been declining since then.  The decline of the mainline has been carefully dissected, discussed, announced, monitored, hypothesized about, and statistically concluded and published.  Forty years of decline in the dominating 20th century denominational protestant bodies. Lutherans and the rest.  in the past 5 years, the growing trend in American religious identification is non-affiliated.  The nones, as they are affectionately called.  (I would be resentful at being placed in a category that places me in a negative category.  As if one is either religious or not.  I think it wiser for us to think of them anthropocentric: a word which simply means humanitarian, in a broader sense.  Centering life on the present human condition.)  I suspect a lot of people are more or less on the fence about religion today. Even religious people.  Extremism has distorted the global picture and distracted from the goodness of religious faith and its institutions. So, add the computer, the sexual revolution, and the war on drugs to an ever-changing world and you get religious institutional decline. I'm not blaming these things for church decline. I'm suggesting that cultural change forces adaptation or alienation. Adaptation is harder, but the better choice.  Alienation temporarily stops decline, but it eventually leads to death.        
I have been here 8 years.  I believe that small congregations can be vital churches offering joyful worship, spiritual guidance and learning, and opportunities to serve their communities.
Zion went through an identity crisis.  An identity crisis begins with a pair of assumptions. 1. We are not yet what we will be. 2.  We can be remade, restored, renewed, redesigned by the God who made all things and has a future prepared for us.  This assumption says, God is not finished with us yet. We don't have it all figured out. We can be better than this. These assumptions challenge us to be self-reflective, self-critical, and repentant (a church word that really means, to have one's mind changed). We needed to be challenged.    
So, we asked ourselves hard questions:  What is God calling us to be and do on Main Street?  How do we remain faithful and what does being faithful mean now? What must we give up and/or take up in order to live faithfully? How must we adapt to our surroundings, given that they have changed so much?  Akron is not the same place it was 10, 20, 40, 60 years ago.  The world is not the same place.  Since 9/11.  Since the iphone. Since Obama.  Since Oprah.  Since_______(you fill in the thing that has rocked the world.)  How do we make sense of this world?  What message and work do we carry out in this world that will do the most good and be the most faithful?
I have seen many people come and go from this congregation.  I have seen disgruntled members leave out of anger or pain or grief.  I have seen people die and their loved ones hide. I have seen babies born and baptized and welcomed in.  I have seen hurting people seeking shelter from the storms they are facing.  I have seen divorces and relocations.  I have seen people worship here once, twice, four times and then never come back.  I have seen non-practicing, non-religious people find a way to live faithfully here.
What helps people to participate, to belong, to live faithful? Is it the building, the music, the leader (s), their friends, an emotional experience, the lights?  I don't think guests who come here are really looking for those things actually.  I suspect when guests come to this church they are looking for God or Jesus or peace or forgiveness or extended family. When people come here, they will find food.  They will find kindness and generosity. They will find old and young people together.  They will find a group small enough for everyone to be known, noticed, and named. They will find doubters praying.  They will find workers and those seeking rest.
We serve breakfast and distribute food and clothing to our neighbors.  We give generously to global partners, working on the end of deadly diseases like malaria and hunger.
I think what people find in a small congregation, this microchurch, is communion.  It is a deep sense of belonging to God and to one another.  It is a physical and spiritual connection to something bigger than you are.  It may not be accompanied by euphoria, as at a concert or great movie or ball game. Church is not an event. It is not pious religious expression and sentimentalism. Church is Jesus and people, making a loving, creative God visible in words and actions. Church is a way to live a God-centered life, where we become more like Christ. Church is confronting (s)injustice. To LIVE is the reverse EVIL.  Part of Jesus' own work was to cast out the demons that possessed people, setting them free to live good, healthy lives in communion with God and others.  Confronting darkness is always a part of every good story.  
I propose that we find out who Jesus is and what Jesus was like. For over 2,000 years people have said that his life is worth following and imitating.  Discover what grace and peace sound and look like.  It includes a message to learn and a simple meal to eat and drink. That is what church is supposed to be about.  Discover communion with the creator and the creation, including the creator's most precious gift, the messed up, crazy, passionate, dangerous, wild human family.