Exegeting Church Culture

...via listserv

Our church is in the middle of a process that I’ve affectionately called “Becoming the church we are.” This is part acknowledgement. We aren’t the same church we were four years ago, or eight years ago when I became pastor. We left a rental location at a school that we’d been at for 30 years. That move took us to a new neighborhood, right downtown, and into a new ecumenical relationship with our landlords, the Episcopalians. We use a lot more Spanish in worship than we did even a year ago. We have more people coming less frequently, a lot more kids, and a lot of people who are overwhelmed and can barely handle life in late stage capitalism.

And for us that has meant asking new questions of ourselves. Who are we now? What makes up this particular life, this iteration of being Southern urban Mennonites? Our leadership team, including me, spent years wondering “is this it?” Is the post-pandemic-shut-down church here? Or could something else shift, something else change? We gave ourselves a year of intentional “reinvigorating.” Get involved again! Come to church more regularly! Let’s meet our budget! And then we called it. We said, “this is who we are now. These are the patterns of worship and participation we will be. These are the people who will mostly come on Zoom, which it appears we’re keeping. These are the questions were asking now. Here we are.”

The next part — fun for me, probably boring for everyone else — is to put in place systems and organization for this new us. We need to stop trying to shove a new church into the old ways we organized ourself.

But in the background of all of this is a question about how we say aloud who we are as a church. One way we’re doing this is by writing a corporate prayer (I’ll be collecting insights and prayers over the next two months). I wanted to do this instead of working on a new vision statement or mission statement. We might need one of those eventually, but right now I think what we need is a common language of prayer, what parts of God are most clear to us, an expression of our need, our contentment with the joys of this common life.

I’m also thinking about ways that we might discover ourselves outside the usual (often corporate) methods of inquiry: strength finders, SWOT, 360 evaluations. So I did what any reasonable person would do. I looked at what we emailed in our listserv. I could imagine we could have done something similar with prayer requests, the sharing/talkback portion of the sermon, taking notes to document conversations next to the coffee pot before church. Maybe you have other hidden places to explore a church culture - if so I’d love to know them!

But for me, our community listserv tells me a lot about who we are right now at Raleigh Mennonite, what we are willing to send out to others — to everybody — for their invitation. So here we are, Raleigh Mennonite in listserv, a sort of poem for a church I love to nurture and that so often has loved me well:

Does anyone have a sourdough starter?

Giving away a couch

Membership discernment class starting this month!

Minutes from Church Life Meeting

Re: Minutes from Church Life Meeting (this link should work)

Craft Afternoon at my house – RSVP

Prayers for teachers and families re: Durham Public Schools walk-outs

Holy Week schedule

Ceasefire protest this week

Sunday bulletin (see attached)

Could someone switch with me as greeter this week?

Bystander intervention training – let’s help keep our neighbors safe

Meals for M & J

Baseball field trip reminder to sign up for tickets!

Fwd: You are invited to an open house at the local mosque

Fellowship meal on Sunday – bring a dish, but there’s always enough if you can’t or forget

Fish tank giveaway

Could I borrow a pair of twin sheets?

Hymn sing at our house this Friday

Gaza action planning this week

Missing bag – did anyone see a bag left at church? (new teaspoons/tablespoon, a brush for cleaning the dryer vent, a red plastic cookie box – circular)

Visit to the green burial cemetery

Could someone pick up something for me at UNC? Wick left his hat on a field trip.

Last call for pancakes with the pastor!