Let Them Be! — Part 2
I am grateful to Shirley Duncanson who, in a comment on my original post, provided links to news articles by CNN, Slate, and the Washington Post that give broader context to the situation with the Cottage Grove campus of Grove United Methodist Church as well as a link to a letter sent by Grove’s lead pastor, Dan Wetterstrom, to the people of both congregations of the yoked church. You may read his full letter here.
I am grateful for the greater clarity provided by the letter and by the in depth reporting, nevertheless, my primary objection remains. For the sake of a church that may come to be, Methodist officials are prepared to sacrifice a church that is. The “re-launch” of the Cottage Grove congregation will mean closing the church as it is and starting over. Current members will — eventually — be welcome to worship at the “new” church, but “Wetterstrom did say that the current members who simply want to attend worship at Cottage Grove are encouraged to wait 15 to 18 months to return.”
Why encouraged to stay away for up to eighteen months? Surely because the Methodist leadership wants to allow time to ensure that a “new” culture takes root in the church, and that the existing culture — patterns of worship, congregational leadership, social interaction — are erased. Because in their view, this culture has failed. Wetterstrom again …
The town of Cottage Grove is not a dwindling rural outpost. It is a fast-developing suburb of the Twin Cities, expected to grow in population by more than 20 percent in the next 20 years. By definition, a church in a setting like that is failing if it is not attracting any of its new neighbors.
Is failing. Cottage Grove is failing because it is not adding more people. William Willimon, a United Methodist bishop and well-known author and speaker, is cited by the Slate article …
Willimon, who has made his own similar decisions to close and relaunch struggling churches, said that accusations of age discrimination paint the church’s last remaining members as victims. But he views younger people in the community as victims, too, because they do not have a church that meets their needs. Meanwhile, he said, the United Methodist Church has effectively been subsidizing a small weekly gathering of friends.
It is hard to say otherwise than that the decision is a matter of numbers: bodies and money. The church as it is is failing because it is not attracting greater numbers and it is not “paying its own way.” Now I do understand the desire to renew and grow the church and I do appreciate the mission of the church “to make disciples of Jesus Christ” too among the many newer residents of Cottage Grove not presently served by the church. But I question the way this “re-launch” is being handled.
Current members of Cottage Grove are being invited to serve on a transition team, but they were not permitted prior consultation or vote in the decision itself. And they are being asked to stay away for eighteen months! Jim Baker, the church founder and still member of the church says …
It was a bolt from the blue, handed down from on high and very shocking to the current members. The congregation was eager and totally open to a new approach, and particularly to [the idea of] a new minister [being] appointed or to start[ing] a renewal process. But they really wanted to be included in that.
He continues …
If the policy is to go into these ‘dying’ congregations and clean them out to make way for new blood, that’s really not very kind, and I think it’s counterproductive.
“Dying” merits the quotation marks, because though the present Cottage Grove congregation is small and elderly, it is very much alive. In Baker’s words, it is “tightknit, loving, and committed.” Yes, there may come a day when it must close its doors, but in the meantime, the church is being church.
In my opinion, this is the crux of the issue: What is church? Is the church an idea, an ideal, an imagined notion of what a church in Cottage Grove “should” look like? Or is the church not an idea or an ideal, but the people, the people who are there, the people who gather week by week, worshipping God and serving each other and praying for the world? The measure of a church is not growth, but faithfulness, and my faith tells me that God honors and rewards faithfulness, that God is blessing and will bless the folks of the Cottage Grove church as it is.
And the leadership of the United Methodist Church would do well to acknowledge and honor that faithfulness, too, not so easily terminating and disregarding this faithful and beloved community, but supporting them and encouraging them and working with them to be the church God is calling them — and us — to be. Disciples will be made, not by remodeling worship spaces and updating liturgies, but by faithfulness itself in action.