Towards a Vision for
Emmanuel Baptist Church in Three pieces
November 24, 2024; Rev. Kathy Donley
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ous5pBm_nFA
I’m sharing today what I had expected to share last Sunday. Instead of preaching the final sermon on Acts, I will offer my own perspective on the moment where Emmanuel is in history and my glimpse of a future to which God might be calling us. This is only my viewpoint, and it is subject to change as we continue to discern together. Today’s sermon will be longer than usual – prepare yourselves.
Piece #1
Like the New Testament world in the first century and the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, we are living through a time of great disruption and change. The Reformation was a theological revolution, but it did not happen in isolation. It had the impact that it did, in large part because of the technological and political revolutions that were happening at the same time. The invention of the printing press contributed greatly to the spreading of ideas and information across Europe. The Reformation was not one event in one place, but several different religious leaders sharing similar ideas across Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Britain and it lasted for a period of years. Millions of Christians left Catholic churches to join Protestant ones. Beautiful churches and monasteries were stripped of their art and treasures and destroyed or left to fall into ruin.
Parallels with our time are numerous – sweeping changes have happened or are happening in our world. Church participation in Europe and the United States/Canada has steadily declined for decades. Church buildings are being repurposed as restaurants, apartment buildings, art galleries, or abandoned to fall into ruin. In another era, we might have said that an individual church had simply come to the end of its life cycle. But there is a bigger pattern at work. It is not just individual churches that are dying. What we are seeing is a large-scale shift from one form of Christianity to another. What was effective in previous generations is not working now. It is not that we are doing something wrong. We are doing something that was right for another time.
If we do not grasp the bigger picture, we may be tempted to believe that if we simply engage our current ministry harder or smarter, EBC will grow and thrive again. If we do understand that big picture, then there are two potential outcomes for Emmanuel Baptist Church. One outcome is that we will die. We will grieve together, dispose of the assets under NY Religious Corporation Law, hold a final worship service, and cease to be. Death is not the worst thing that can happen to people who believe in resurrection.
But there is another possible outcome. The other possibility is that we could intentionally seek to join or even co-create the new thing that God is doing in our time. We might become midwives of grace and help bring into the world the new expression of the kingdom of God, the new life that is waiting to be born.
Piece #2
To state the obvious: Change is hard. We resist it. We like things that are familiar. We really don’t like change that is forced on us. The Covid pandemic was hard for so many reasons, but one was how much everything changed overnight and how little control we had over any of it.
Let’s consider a different change. It’s something that we’ve all lived through, but it has been more gradual and for most of us, more acceptable. I’m thinking about the evolution of the telephone. One of the rules in my household growing up was not to stretch the cord of the phone too far. Do you remember those very long coiled phone cords? There was a 25-foot-long cord that connected the handset of the phone to the part where the dial was. (Remember rotary dials?) You could wander all over our small kitchen with that long cord, but my Dad had a thing about not stretching it so far that the coils got messed up.
So, I’m thinking about phones. I’m thinking about landlines and cell phones. Some of us still have a landline phone in our homes. Many of us do not. Almost all of us have a cell phone. Many of us have made a choice in recent years to only have one phone and in almost every case, the decision was for our one phone to be a cell phone.
Twenty years ago, only about 5% of Americans opted for just a cell phone. Now more than seventy-five percent of Americans live in homes without landlines.[1]
I’m not debating the pros and cons of landlines vs cell phones. I’m just noting that in the last 20 years, a huge change has occurred in the ways people use phones. We have definitely experienced it as consumers. But what if you were in the landline business? It is hard to stop doing what was successful for such a long time. If you were in the landline business 20 or 30 years ago, and you did not adapt and get into the cell phone business, you went out of business.
My contention is that for the last 100-200 years, the church has been operating like a landline business. It worked very well for a long time. But sometime, probably in the last two generations, things changed. The church did not recognize that new context and continued to deliver landlines when what was needed were cellphones.
Right now, EBC is still functioning almost exclusively in a landline world. Clinging to familiar patterns of Sunday morning worship and Sunday School with the dear people we already know and love, is like continuing to use the landline phone with its coiled cord. That strategy is already putting us out of business.
If we want to renew our active participation in the new thing God is doing now, then we need to launch ourselves into a new form of Christian community, a culturally relevant form that engages hearts and minds and makes disciples of Jesus. I’m going to refer to that as being a cellphone church.
Let me say that again, for the purposes of this conversation, being a cell phone church means becoming a new kind of Christian community, a culturally relevant form that engages hearts and minds and makes disciples of Jesus.
Piece #3
What might a cellphone church look like? In other words, what is the picture of a vital faith community that engages hearts and minds and makes disciples of Jesus in the twenty-first century? This is the heart of the question that we have been asking for many years, and most recently in our work with Arlen Vernava. We have tried to imagine this together, in several group processes over the last decade. All of those conversations were important. So far, none of them have led to a distinct clarity of vision.
You and I value the wisdom and creativity of this community. We hear the Spirit in the voices of each other. Because of that, I have leaned into our group processes with high hopes. Maybe in doing so, I have not exercised the kind of leadership you needed from your pastor, the kind of leadership that maybe these times require. Maybe what would be helpful now is a word from someone who is committed to serving God among you, someone who loves you and wants the best for you and from you.
What is the picture of a vital faith community that engages hearts and minds and makes disciples of Jesus in the twenty-first century? Let me describe what I see, with the hope that you might imagine something similar. Or on the other hand, you might envision something very different. If so, that would allow us as a community to discern between contrasting options.
The twenty-first century Christian faith community is highly contextual. That means that it looks different in different places. In one place, the community meets in a gay bar and belts out pop music instead of hymns. Another one meets outdoors every week for a hike and prayerful conversation under the trees. And a third one gathers to serve the poor more often than they gather for worship.
What is the context of Emmanuel? We are urban and want to stay in the city. We want to make a difference, to be a blessing to our neighborhood and the wider world. We are committed to social justice, particularly in the arenas of human sexuality, racism, immigration and environmental stewardship. We tend to make every meeting into a meal and we sometimes speak as though we personally invented the church potluck. We place a high value on creativity, inclusive participation and lively, growing faith.
Our version of the cell phone church could look like:
A weekly gathering at round tables, possibly on a Saturday or Sunday evening. The community gathers to share a meal which is prepared and served by many hands with different crews taking on the responsibility each week and with roles for newcomers every week. The meal is simple, but delicious and prepared with love. Because we value inclusivity, there are options for vegetarians and those with special dietary needs, to the best of our ability. The meal is necessary, but it is not the primary goal of the gathering. The cooks and dishwashers come from within the community and participate fully in the entire gathering.
This gathering is the primary way we nurture disciples of Jesus. Some might call it Dinner Church. I would call it relational evangelism or relational discipleship. The method relies on relationship and structured conversation. After everyone has been served, someone will set up the conversation for that evening. The set-up might include the re-telling of a Bible story or it might be a personal experience in combination with a teaching of Jesus. On a given evening, the leader might be the pastor or a lay person. After the leader has spoken, the conversation will evolve at each table as it needs to. At some tables, it may become something like a deep dive into the Bible story. Others may be entrusted with a personal crisis that one of the participants brings to the group. The design might include seating children and youth at particular tables for adult-led age-appropriate conversations. Or maybe there are multi-generational exchanges.
The table time concludes with all the tables joining together for a closing prayer and benediction. The evening ends with clearing tables and washing dishes with different crews in rotation and roles for first-time folks to join in.
The work of this gathering is to be fully present to each other so that we can attune to the moving of the Spirit among us. It is loosely structured, but there is an overall plan for the set-up from week to week. Attention is paid to the major themes of Jesus’ teaching and the seasons of the church year and to individual needs for spiritual growth.
This is the primary gathering time for this faith community. As we begin, this may be the only kind of gathering, but other kinds of gatherings will need to be added. Other gatherings might include opportunities for service or weekly discipleship classes offered with varying content and time frames to meet needs of disciples at various stages of growth.
Where might this community gather? It gathers in a right-sized building within downtown Albany, a place where we can engage our urban neighbors. We need an accessible space with parking. I envision two primary needs – 1) a highly functional kitchen and dining space and a 2) larger, more formal gathering space.
The dining space needs good acoustics, an easy-to-use, reliable sound system and a projection screen with plug-and-play technology. We also need a second space that would function as a larger, more formal area for special events like weddings and funerals and wider community functions. We might choose to do baptisms outdoors, eliminating the need for a baptistery. None of this needs to look like a traditional church. We should give some care to design so that beauty and symbol are incorporated in ways that do not trigger survivors of religious trauma.
How does this community grow? It grows by relationship. Emmanuel shows up and is fully present with each other, newcomers and long-time members alike. We create a culture of presence and engagement. We do not retreat into our introverted selves or our laptop screens or the busyness of wearing some church hat. We speak the truth that we know. We take personal responsibility for talking about the Jesus we believe to be worth knowing, because the average 21st century American does not know what we know, and they are not going to randomly pick up the Bible or watch a documentary about Jesus and then come knocking on our door. Most of us don’t know how to talk about our faith naturally because 1) we reject the 20th century models of evangelism which created the religious trauma that we’re now dealing with and 2) the landline church never really required this of us. So, the 21st century church must meet contemporary disciples where we are and help us grow as evangelists. This community also grows by sustained, effective, targeted advertising which is another skill we will need to develop.
Whew . . . I have said a whole lot at once and over Zoom. Thank you for staying with me.
A brief recap:
Christianity is undergoing large-scale change before our eyes. We have been pursuing mission and ministry in ways that have ceased to be effective. Emmanuel may yet thrive if we recognize that and seek to join the new thing that God is doing in our time. One possible way of engaging hearts and minds and making disciples in 21st century Albany is a model of relational evangelism centered around a weekly meal and structured conversation.
This is not a formal proposal. I am offering my thoughts in the hopes that they might crystallize some of yours. I’d like to take about 5 more minutes now for people to offer questions, responses, objections. I recognize that many of us need to go away and think about stuff before we’re ready to speak. The Vision Team is meeting today and we all understand that we need more opportunities for continued discussion. Let me invite anyone who wishes to speak now, to do so succinctly, knowing that there will be more opportunities in the future.
1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/10/10/who-still-has-landline-phone/75569063007/