Over the last several months, we’ve been working toward building an understanding of mission: What God is doing and what God is calling us to do. Certain themes have been emerging as we’ve been reading and reflecting on scripture in worship and during committee time. They’ve been showing up in my devotional time and in the books I’ve been reading about mission and the Church. I’ve also been hearing some of these themes as I’ve been visiting with people.

As these themes have coalesced, I’ve been toying with a phrase that pulls everything together as descriptor of a path forward for us as a congregation: “A Discipling Community for All Ages.” It is a description of what it means to be the Church.

In it, I hear the call of Jesus in at least three different ways. First, I hear the command of Jesus as he stands on the mountain preparing to leave his disciples. He leans forward and says, “I’ve been given a lot of authority on heaven and on earth. Here, now, is what you are to do: Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always.” As Matthew records them, these are the final words of Jesus to the community of faith. After giving them their marching orders, he ascends to heaven. “Go. Make Disciples.”

The Church is always called to be a discipling group. It is absolutely central to who we are, what we’re called to do and what Christ expects to be our central activity. To be a discipling congregation we need to reclaim the wonderful faith practices that help us grow as disciples: Prayer, Worship, Bible Reading, Service, Relationships, and Generosity. A discipling church focuses on these things all the time. They are traditional faith practices that keep Jesus in the center while challenging us to be God’s people active in the world for the sake of the world.

When these things are not central, the church loses its way, people lose sight of the wonderful gift of faith, we become “spiritually unfit.” Prayer, worship, Bible reading, service, relationships and generosity help us grow as people of faith. When we all focus on these things, our church becomes a better tool in the hands of God, who loves us deeply.

The second part of the phrase focuses on the word community. Nothing feeds faith like the community of God’s people. Discipleship does not happen alone on a mountain. It takes a community. The church has always been a gathering of God’s people. It is a social entity, a public gathering of people who worship with each other, who share the Christian meal with one another, who pray for and support each other in all of life’s ventures. The life of the community must be nurtured as carefully as discipleship.

For people of faith, the community of the church always begins in the community gathered and nurtured in worship. What we do together in the name of Jesus Christ makes a difference. The Sunday morning coming together is absolutely critical to the well being of the community. How we function when we are present in the community makes a difference to the health of the congregation. The more fully we enter into the work of the gathered community, the stronger the community becomes.

As a congregation, we need to grow in our involvement in the worshipping community. We need to be present more often and when present, we need to encourage one another to participate fully in the activities that are central to our Sunday morning gathering. The act of worship is not something that happens in the front of the church, but a work of the people that begins with our coming together. Our work is carried out in song, scripture and prayer. We worship as we eat at the table, and as we are sent on our way at the end of the service. For the sake of the community, we lend our voices and our hearts to the activities of our weekly gathering so that God’s community of faith can flourish and grow. The act of worship is a whole person experience: heart, soul, and strength – mind, spirit, voice and body. Worship is not a spectator sport. There is no audience. It is a full-participation sport: in which we all contribute and involve ourselves in this primary action that forms the basis of our community.

There’s another aspect of community building that we need to lift up. We need to be a congregation that works hard to foster relationships with each other. We need to create both time and space for us to linger with one another. While we work to build community within worship, we must also work to get to know each other before and after services, and at other times as well. Our hospitality committee began laying a foundation for this work a little more than a year ago when they printed and prepared nametags for all of us. I support them in their efforts because they know that it’s good for us to wear them. When we help others know our names, we offer other people the gift of relationship.

But we need to go farther. We need to cultivate an environment where friendships naturally form and flourish. As we come and go, we need to make sure that our facility helps further the ministry of hospitality. We must no longer pretend that it is acceptable to be without bathrooms in our primary area of activity. We must work together to make bathrooms in the narthex area a high priority. If we are to care for the community, we must do this for the sake of our older people. It is also absolutely necessary for families. As your pastor, I repeatedly hear the request for a bathroom. When I tell where the bathrooms are located, I often see the look of horror in the face of people who cannot circumnavigate our building. I see the look of frustration in the young parent who can’t imagine corralling two or three kids through the maze of our building to a location unknown. Without adequate bathroom facilities, we cannot say that we are as hospitable as we should be.

So, we’ve talked about being a discipling community: a community that focuses on teaching people to follow Jesus by practicing the faith while befriending each other and fostering relationships with each other. It’s time, now for us to finish the phrase.

If we are to be a discipling community for all ages, we must reclaim a commitment to reaching out to those in age groups that are currently missing from among us. As we give thanks for the things we do that feed us as we are, we must also find ways to focus some of our attention and energy on the things that will help us reach those who currently find our ministry less engaging.

In particular, we must create a worship environment that engages people of all ages. While we are good at engaging people of certain generations, we have not kept pace with the hopes and dreams of those who are my age and younger. If you’ve been reading my blog or sitting at the council table, you already know that on a given Sunday we are not likely to have many people aged 15 to 44. In fact, on a typical Sunday only 12% of us are likely to be of those ages. That means that if we have 200 people in worship, only about twenty four of us are between the ages of 15 and 44.

The good news is that we have a group of very devoted people for whom our ministry works well. What we do connects really well with people of older generations. For the sake of those who are older, we should continue to do what we do well. At the same time, though, we need to begin changing ourselves and creating worship space and styles that will engage people of younger ages, too. We can no longer pretend as if it is OK for us to ignore the needs of younger folk for the sake of keeping things the same. We need to work together to bring change to our congregation.

The last part of the phrase calls us to attend to the things that need to be done differently for the sake of being a discipling community for all ages. It calls us to continue worshipping and doing other discipling activites that meet the needs of our older members, while challenging us to think outside of the proverbial box that we’ve built for ourselves, so that we can tend to the spiritual needs of our younger members.

Jesus calls us to make disciples of all nations. He does not call us to make disciples of all nations, as long as they are of a particular age set. Instead, this call challenges us to create space in our current practices to find new ways of being the church for the sake of younger and middle aged people we are not currently retaining.

A Discipling Community for All Ages: It’s a wonderful phrase that points us toward new life.

Imagine, this congregation feeding a multitude of people in various ways. Imagine the freedom we could have as a congregation if we began blessing attempts to reach out at a younger audience not already present, while at the same time retaining a worship style and service that is near and dear to the hearts of those of already regularly present. Imagine the excitement we could have among us if there were more young people among us.

You see, I dream of a day when this church is deeply dedicated to being a discipling community for all ages that is bursting with enthusiasm. I can see a time when we no longer look at other churches with despair and wring our hands at how easy it is for them to attract young families. It is possible for us to be so engaged with younger people that we are renewed as a congregation. But it does mean that we will have to stand as a congregation and be united in our determination to be a discipling community for all ages. We may even have to give up some things so that there is room for others to emerge.

We will not give up our liturgical tradition. I cannot imagine a time without a liturgical service as a part of Sunday morning. I can, however, imagined a time when, in addition to the liturgical service, we have a second service geared toward young adults and youth: an innovative service with new instrumentation, new music, a service with surprises. I can imagine this.

I’ve been pastor here for almost three years. From the very beginning of my time here, I’ve had people asking for us to develop a band. About a year ago, I even had a member of our congregation offer to provide technology to help us add a visual dimension to our worship. There are voices among us calling for global music. There are people asking to use their talents in ways that we do not currently practice. There are voices from among us calling for new ways to do worship. I welcome those voices. We need to hear these requests and to encourage those voices to be heard, because these are some of the voices from among us that are challenging us to step out and to try new things because they love Jesus and want this church to be renewed in ministry.

So, what is God trying to do among us? I hear God calling us to be a discipling community for all ages. God calls us to be people who are deepening our faith life through prayer, worship, reading of scripture, service, relationships and generosity. God calls us to do these things in the context of the community while building the community to be a place for people of all ages.

I hope that in the weeks and months ahead we’ll have the courage to grow in our understanding of what God calls us to be. I hope we’ll allow ourselves the freedom needed to discover a passion for what God calls us to be. I hope that we’ll grow in our determination to enter into new ways of ministry to be who God calls us to be.

We Were Featured in the Paper

Joe Orso, of the La Crosse Tribune, featured my blog in his article today. Thank you Joe! I appreciate the questions you asked and the time you took to visit with me about what I hope to do with the blog. Orso's article is titled Pastor Hopes Blog Connects With All Ages, Community.

In his article, Joe said, "I talked to Jordan about attempts I’ve seen online in which Christians trying to reach out end up using technology to remind people who have left the church why they left."

This sentence assumes that our decline has been due to people leaving the church. Of course, there are some who have left the church, but the decline we are experiencing is not due to people leaving. Rather, it's a combination of funerals, sociological factors, and the difficulty of figuring out how to be the church in a society that has changed so much over the past few years.

The funeral part of the quation is self explanatory. Over the past thirty four years, we've averaged 26.7 funerals a year: more than 900 people.

In earlier times, funerals were normally offset by baptisms, but this is not the case today. There's been a major shift in society with which the Church (all mainline churches) still needs to grapple: the world around us can no longer be considered a Christian society.

Now, to some that statement may sound like I'm just another in a string of preachers condemning people for waywardness. I'm not. When I assert that the world around us can no longer be considered a Christian society, I point this out as a sociological reality that stands in contrast to the past.

Those who study such things, point to 1960 as the end of what many call Christiandom. From 1960 on, sociologists say, there has been a major shift in America. Prior to 1960 it was almost a given that most people were connected with a worshipping community, as had been the case for centuries in the western world. 1960 is chosen as a date for the end of Christiandom for symbolic reasons. It's the year when a theater in a small community in one of the Dakotas made the decision to open on Sunday and succeeded to ride out public pressure to the contrary.

Today, we live in a post-Christendom world. This is not to say that the message of Jesus Christ is obsolete and to be thrown aside. Rather, it is an acknoweldgement that the assumptions presence in the past can no longer be assumed to be true in the world as it is today. Once, people automatically engaged the church when there was a birth. They were active throughout their lives. There was a communal understanding that to be a good citizen meant being connected with and participating in a Church. In those days, the church was the only show in town. There were no other activities, stores were closed, you couldn't even get a tank of gas. This description no longer describes life in America.

We are not living in a Christian society. Those who have grown up in the time since 1960 no longer turn to the church as the primary source of community. We are in decline not because people have left, but because of funerals and a major shift in the community around us.

This does not mean that decline is necessarily our future. Yes, society has shifted. Yet, the call of Jesus Christ still spurs us forward in ministry. Jesus calls us to be a discipling community for all ages.

Now, let's consider, again, about the role of numbers in the Church. The numbers of our church tell a story. They help us realize what's happening among us, currently. However, they are not the motivation that spur us to ministry. We are not thinking about engaging in ministry in new ways so that our sttistics look better.

It's all about the call of Jesus. He, who calls us to make disciples of all ages, calls us to do so in our local context. The Church knew how to do this in the world prior to 1960. Today, things are different. Yet, our model for ministry continues to assume that Christianity is the dominant force it once was. In this new world, we need to reclaim the call of Jesus to be a discipling community. For the sake of faithfulness, we need to keep our eye on what Jesus calls us to do.

The numbers tell us that we've not yet figured out how to be the church in this new world. Those who are most likely to be present among us are aged 65 and above. We need to figure out how to be a discipling community for all ages. We already do a good job for those who are older. We still need to figure out how best to disciple younger people in the faith.

This is our biggest challenge.

A Discipling Community for all Ages

There's a billboard on Mormon Coulee Road in La Crosse that has been catching my eye. It advertises Pepsi Cola. The back ground is blue and white letters spell out a compelling tag line. When I first saw it, I read the word "Awesome!" The 'o' of that word is the Pepsi logo.

Now that I've seen the sign a few times, I've realized that there's more to it than I first observed. The Pepsi logo also divides the word "Awesome" into two words: "Awes Me!" Depending on how you look at it, you see different things.

For many months I've been thinking and writing about our congregation's biggest challenge, the necessity of moving from decline to growth. I've been working on a compelling and simple tagline to give us direction.

A compelling tagline communicates purpose and direction. Pepsi's marketing department came up with one that communicates well. They want us to know that their product is "Awesome!" At the same time, they want you to know that it will awe you. For this reason, their carefully worded ad has punch.

When the church talks about purpose and direction it reaches to the words of scripture. A compelling scripture comes to mind. It was our centering word a few months back and it comes from the book of Matthew. Jesus said, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you, and remember, I am with you always."

According to St. Matthew, these are the final words of Jesus to his followers. He utters them just before the ascension. They are final instructions for the ones left to carry on Christ's mission: Make disciples of all by baptizing and teaching. This is the direction Jesus intends for all who follow him.

We need a tagline to describe our Church, a memorable phrase to help us know our direction. Here's what I hope could serve as a faithful tagline for our congregation: "A discipling Community for All Ages."

I like this short phrase because it calls us to remember the mission Jesus gives the church: that of making disciples. At the same time it communicates that disciples are nurtured when they are enveloped by the love of the Christian community, that the community of the Church is essential to the task of discipleship.

The inclusion of "for all Ages" does double duty. On the one hand it calls us to remember that we are called to disciple people in such a way that the discipleship is lived out for a life time, and that Christ's mission is ours for all of time. It was first given us when Jesus called the church to this task before his ascension nearly two thousand years ago.

On the other hand, "for all ages" call us to remember that the church is a discipling community for people in all their various stages of life: young, old, middle aged or other. We need to reclaim this part of the call of Jesus. For right now, we are missing significant age groups from among us. I suspect that I'll write more about the "all ages" emphasis of this tagline in a future post to this blog.

Having a compelling tagline does not change much until it guides us in our work, worship, and ministry. When it is compelling among us, we will find ourselves frequently asking the following question when considering our various undertakings: How well does this activity help us be "A Discipling Community for All Ages."

Listen for this phrase in the weeks ahead. In your prayer time, ask God to direct us in the ministries of discipleship for people of all ages.

Addressing Our Biggest Challenge

Preaching a sermon in which the on-going decline of our congregation is highlighted is not easy to preach. I did so, today, after praying hard about this sermon for several weeks. I preached knowing that reminders of our decline are hard to hear. My hope is to call attention to the biggest challenge we face: that of turning from a thirty four year decline, to growth.

It is important for us to be clear about the decline at work among us. Recovery never happens without honesty. To change our path, we must honestly assess and truthfully encounter the challenge before us, while valuing all that good that has happened during this time. Remembering all the good we continue to experience, we are trying to figure out how to be the Church at its best in a time when so much has shifted in society.

Here's a snapshot of the decline we are experiencing. Over the past 34 years we have seen our membership decline by 60%. We have said goodbye to about 700 more people than we have welcomed into the congregation at the same time. Likewise, worship attendance has declined by 56 percent. The numbers behind this snapshot tell a story of decline. Neither the snapshot given here nor the numbers behind the snapshot, tell the stories of ministry done well that continued during this time of decline.

The "Biggest Challenge" we face is the challenge of moving from decline to growth. We can do this with God's help, as we refocus our attention on the call of Christ to be the Church at its best in our current context, for people of all ages. We can do this because Jesus calls us to do so.

In the weeks and months ahead we are going to focus on moving from decline to growth. As we acknowledge the decline we will not let the decline be our focus. Instead, we will spend our time asking the questions that have the potential to redirect us:

1. What is God trying to do among us?
2. What are we trying to do?
3. Why do we do what we do?
4. How well does what we do line up with what God is trying to do?
5. What does God call us to do?

I know that talk of decline is unsettling. It makes us squirm in our seats and raises our anxiety. Now we need must let this anxiety do a healthy work among us: We must let it challenge us to engage the questions before us faithfully.