Pastor Erik--Jan 2009

As you may or may not know, I've been participating in a leadership program since September called “Leadership Spokane.” This organization describes their program as “an intensive, 10-month long training for 50 emerging and established leaders from business, government and community organizations.” Each month I gather with the rest of my “class” (which consists of leaders from throughout Spokane) for a day long session about a particular topic such as governance, media, community health, the arts, etc. Additional opportunities happen between sessions as well. I've taken tours of manufacturing plants in Spokane and learned about their operations from their CEO's, toured a new affordable housing complex downtown, and participated in a ride along with a police office. One person described the experience to me as a crash-course in the Spokane community—the sort of thing it would take 10 or more years of active involvement to gain experience in. The purpose of this program is to develop a network of what they call “trustee leaders,” people connected to the various business, non-profit, and volunteer organizations in our community who can participate in building better and stronger community—developing citizen-leaders to make our community a better place together. I thought I'd write a bit this month about why I'm excited to participate in this experience, and also share some of what I've learned in the first few months.

Part of our commitment to the Transformation process is to seek ways to re-connect and to more deeply connect our congregation to the neighborhood and community in which God has planted us. This has been a bit of a challenge for us because, although we once we a largely neighborhood church, our folks are now from all over the Spokane area. On any given Sunday at Bethlehem, people have come from Cheney and Otis Orchards, from the south side of Spokane Valley and Newport, from Greenacres and just north of the Y on Division—and everywhere in between. And yet, God has drawn all of us to gather week after week in a little church building on Ray St in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood. For two years I (along with the Transformation team) have pondered how to wrap our minds around which community God is calling us to engage—and how. While deep in prayerful discernment of this last spring, I received an invitation to apply for “Leadership Spokane,” which I had never heard of before. As I looked into this organization and what they were about, I realized that this could be an excellent opportunity to learn more about the Spokane community, its needs and gifts, and what sort of role Bethlehem might be called to play in God's dream for our area.

While I'm just getting my feet wet in this experience and just beginning to build the relationship with other participants—one common theme has jumped out at me that connects to our Transformation work. In the book “Living Lutheran” that we have used various times in the past few years (and that helped us in forming our guiding principles) the author, Dave Daubert, describes how the church finds itself faced with “discontinuous change.” It used to be that we could get our minds around how the world around us was going to change—it happened slowly and predictably and we could guess that in the future things would look pretty much like they do now, only better. But now, the world changes so often and so rapidly that it seems nearly chaotic—and we no longer can predict what will happen next and so the change is dis-continuous. The Christian church has realized that we have pretty much stayed put, resisting most change—but that the world has changed around us. Where the church once was the center of culture, family, and neighborhood life, we now (quite surprisingly) find ourselves on the edges of society—not quite sure how we got here or how to get back to where we were. How do we engage with a world that changes so quickly and so unpredictably? That is what our Transformation process is meant to help us figure out.

What I have realized in my experiences with Leadership Spokane, is that the church is not alone in this strange and precarious position in the midst of a rapidly changing world. Manufacturers in Spokane (and around the world) are seeking ways to make their production processes “lean” so that they can respond to constantly changing markets and conditions in the volatile marketplace. Media outlets are questioning how to reinvent themselves in the face of 24-7 news coverage on cable and the abundance of (free) news on the Internet. Non-profits are struggling with sagging donations and a dwindling volunteer force. “The way we've always done things” just isn't working anymore in any sector of our society—and everyone is struggling to figure out what is coming next—and how to make our community and our world a better place in the midst of all this chaos.

While its comforting to know that we aren't the only ones experiencing this, I'm starting to wonder if the Christian church might really be a resourse for the rest of society in navigating these difficult times. The Bible is full of stories of God's people struggling, wandering, feeling abandoned and confused—and of God's continued presence and guidance in the midst of all this chaos. The foundational story is the wandering of the people of Israel in the desert. Through no fault of their own, God's people were ejected from a bad but at least predictable situation in Egypt to wander for 40 years in search of the promised land. It got so bad that the people longed to be re-enslaved in Egypt—at least they knew what was coming next! But God was with them through their difficult wandering—through the trials, dangers, and chaos of the wilderness—and kept his promise to deliver them and fulfill his promises to them. And again and again this theme reoccurs in the Bible: with the people of Israel, with individuals, families, and communities, with the followers of Jesus, and with the church. God remains with us through our wilderness experiences and keeps his promises to us—even when all signs point to doom and disaster. The trick is to listen and respond to God's call for us—and to be ready for God to do something new with us and through us.

I would venture to guess that nearly every one of us lives within walking distance of a Christian church—and that this would be true in nearly every community in the United States. And I would also venture to guess that a majority of these Christian churches are struggling to make their way in a world that is very different from the one in which they were founded. And I think in our success oriented society we've come to take that struggle as a sign of divine judgment—that we must have done something wrong to fail to attract people to church like we once did. If only we'd get better at what we used to do so well, everything would be back to normal. But what if our struggle isn't a judgment, but an opportunity that God is giving us to make a difference in the lives of people and in our community? Because unlike the businesses, media, and secular non-profits—the Christian church has the resources, the strength, and the faith to weather the sort of chaos that we are in.

In the wilderness God's people learned that they could trust in God when everything else had failed them. They learned that they needed one another and the importance of community. They learned that though they may struggle, God will provide what they truly need. And they learned that even when it seems like God has abandoned them, that God is with them and that God keeps his promises. So valuable were these lessons that we've told them again and again, teaching them to our children and grandchildren, for thousands of years. What if our struggles as a church were to remind us of these important truths, and what if God intends for us to remind the world of these things as well? What a gift is our struggle! What a gift is our time in the wilderness! What a gift it is that God is giving us to share! What if the little struggling churches God has planted in every neighborhood are meant to witness to God's continuing presence in the midst of the wilderness? Our task then is figuring out how to take this gift (and all the others God has given us) and make this message of hope and faith ever more present in our families, neighborhood, and community. How will you do it? How will we do it together? Isn't Transformation fun?