The Generous Church

I have been so impressed by the generosity I see in the Church in these very trying times. Even where people are losing jobs and in the midst of real losses in retirement and investment funds, pastors I have spoken with have told me over and over again how generously their people are giving to and through the church. Now I have even more evidence of that generosity. I asked for the list of leaders of churches who were already paying their apportionments to the conference so we could offer them our thanks. As the thank you notes were printed, the stack of letters got larger, and larger, and larger until we ran out of paper! To this I say, praise God! We’ll order more paper and continue to give thanks for the generous and faithful Church God has called us to serve.

I have been serving as a pastor in this United Methodist Church for 24 years now and know the difficult decisions that pastors and leaders make in allocating the gifts entrusted to the church to pay the bills and do the work of ministry. The faithfulness of churches in making the decision to pay their apportionments in these difficult times astounds me. I asked one pastor about this and she said: “I’ve learned that God is faithful and supplies our needs. When we keep our priorities in order and meet our ministry responsibilities God provides for what we need to keep the church going.” And apparently God does, even when the economy is in the tank, provide faithfully and fully for our churches’ needs.

I pray that God will continue to meet our every need and use the church as a vehicle to demonstrate God’s faithfulness, God’s love, God’s mercy, and God’s provision. I am so grateful for the witness of the generous church to these attributes of our God. I am so grateful for you.

Connecting Small Churches Together

If you are cruising across the continent on I-40 almost dead center is the small town of Elk City, Oklahoma.  This little community in the high plains supports the dry land farmers and ranchers who eke out a living from the dusty ground.   But something is growing out of this parched landscape that is nourishing people in exciting, unexpected ways.

Elk City, Lone Wolf and Altus are scattered small towns far from any metropolitan city, but the three Lutheran Churches that were once teetering on the edge of discouragement are now in a vital period of rebirth.  Through the leadership of a visionary pastor and a "growth council" that he formed, they have banded together in a creative partnership called Lutheran Ministries of Southwest Oklahoma.  Paul Wilkes details the vital signs of excellence springing out of this beautiful partnership in the first chapter of his book Excellent Protestant Congregations.

Wilkes: ...Bill Geis, the new pastor of St. John's Lutheran Church, was bringing more baggage than he had stuffed into his 1973 AMC Hornet.  A middling seminary student at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis who had skipped more classes than he cared to admit, he was -- on one hand -- facing his assignment with a certain resignation.  It was the obligatory first assignment to a small, rural church, and he had secretly vowed to himself that if he could last three years in this (using the term advisedly) godforsaken part of southwest Oklahoma, he would consider it an accomplishment.

But there was something else in twenty-seven-year-old Bill Geis' makeup, a counterbalance to that wariness.  There was a fervor, an excitement.  As conflicted a soul as he was, Bill Geis wanted to make a difference...

Bill Geis had begun a process of transformation that has created new life in the church.

Wilkes identifies three points of excellence that are notable in this transformation:

This middling seminary student became focused on renewing the liturgy of worship for his churches.  Not content with the mediocre repetition of what he described as something like thirteenth century Gregorian chant, he brought into the worship a lively expression of 19th century gospel.  He took old melodies and wrote new lyrics, printing them in the bulletin. His leadership team built a stage around the altar to provide space for the choir to sing and skits to be performed to visibly support the message and theme of worship.  While the traditional form of worship remains entirely Lutheran, he writes specific confessions that relate to the day's scripture.  These efforts are notable not because of his brilliance in creating phenomenal works of art, but because he has poured himself out in the creation of something unique for the specific day and the specific people who show up.  His love for the people and the Lord are visibly demonstrated by his attention to the details of worship.

A second creative opportunity was seized in forming a new group of leaders in the church called a "Growth Council."  Recognizing how difficult it is for an existing group to embrace and live into a new purpose, he allowed the existing leadership teams of the church to continue to do their work the way they had always done it.  But he added a group outside the ordinary governance structure.  It is an open group, anyone can drop in or drop out at any time.  But when it meets it is for people to put forward creative ideas for improving the life of the community (and therefore the church).   No idea is too bizarre... In this forum any church member can have their say.... and from it, leaders emerged to take charge.  This growth council has become a powerful instrument for transformation in these rural settings.

The third point of excellence was forming creative partnerships with other churches, within and across denominational lines.  None of the churches in Lone Wolf had enough youth for a vital ministry to emerge, but through the leadership of the Lutheran Ministries of Southwest Oklahoma, Methodist, Baptist, Disciples of Christ and Lutheran teens now have a program with enough kids to create a critical mass and allow for substantial programming.

Bill Geis has had a huge impact on these communities by pouring himself into creating a renewed worship experience, by creating a forum where leadership could be unleashed, and by creating vital partnerships to accomplish far more than any one church could do on its own.  Could you do such things in your setting?

Pick up a copy of Wilkes' book on Amazon.com.