Posted on 01/17/2010 8:30:13 PM PST by hiho hiho
There is no hospice for congregations facing the end of their days. No advanced directives telling caregivers when to take action and when to let go.
Dying people make out wills to direct the inheritance of their remaining possessions, but there is no legal equivalent for a dying church. Jewish tradition directs fathers to write ethical wills that explain the values by which they have led their lives, to be read by their children after they pass.
But when a church dies, there is no one left to do the reading.
On a chilly Sunday morning, congregants of Eastminster Presbyterian Church gather together to pray in their Northeast Halsey Street chapel. They shed their heavy coats and hats and set them on empty seats. Smiles abound. Many seem to visibly relax as they greet old friends with a gentle hand on a shoulder or a quick embrace. Here they have found sanctuary.
And, too, the people of Eastminster are more vulnerable than most to the harsh realities of an unforgiving Columbia River Gorge wind. They are old.
Thirty-five years ago, Eastminster was a vibrant church, with two services because the sanctuary was not large enough to contain the crowd. In 1972, the church had 450 members and 250 children in Sunday School.
This Sunday, there are fewer than 30 people attending services. The congregation’s average age, according to the church’s latest survey, is 79.
In February, the church’s Session – essentially its board of directors – will meet in the culmination of a three-month process intended to guide Eastminster’s future. The most likely option is that some plan will be put in place leading to the closing of the church.
Portland is often referred to as the least-churched city in the country, and while national statistics show a few areas of New England and the West reporting similarly low or even lower numbers of religious observance, Eastminster’s story is a tale about local attitudes toward organized religion and spirituality.
There are explanations for Eastminster’s failing attendance and unsustainable economics, and for the fact that none of the adult children of these elderly parishioners are bringing their own families into the church where they grew up. Those same explanations have been cited in dozens of local churches that have either sold their properties or evolved into different entities.
Eastminster’s pastor, Brian Heron, says he knows of two local Presbyterian churches that have closed in recent years, and he estimates that at least a dozen others are facing similar situations.
“They’re all just hanging by a thread, surviving month to month, year to year,” Heron says.
David Leslie, executive director of nonprofit Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, a statewide association of churches, says there is no precise count of how many Portland-area churches have failed, but many are searching for new models as a way of staying alive. Some rent space to community organizations; others have sold their buildings to nonprofits and simply pay rent to hold services.
Leslie says it is likely that in the future there will be church buildings shared by three or four congregations.
Some of the failing churches are simply victims of changing neighborhoods, Leslie says.
“At the base of this is the eternal reality that nothing is permanent,” Leslie says. “You look around Portland communities, some neighborhoods were middle class and they became lower income, and some of those neighborhoods became high income. A lot of it is demographic change, economics shifting.
“If the question comes back to why are some of these churches on life support, I think the fundamental question is how in tune are they to the question of who is my neighbor? Is the church a place that is doing constant outreach to the neighborhood and the people who are around the church?”
Like a family That, more than any other factor, helps explain what has happened at Eastminster. The church last year adopted a slogan, “A Caring Community in a Changing World.” For most of the past 55 years, that caring has been focused in one direction – inward. In the process, congregants neglected the invigoration that comes from opening their doors to the world outside.
Barbara Rock, Eastminster’s last remaining charter member, remembers the day in 1954 when a minister knocked on her door saying he wanted to start a church in her neighborhood. By the end of that year a charter had been signed by about two dozen people in a makeshift chapel in her basement, with curtains hiding the plumbing pipes, a picture of Jesus temporarily attached to a curtain and a gathering of children off to one side.
“It was like a family,” Rock says. “All young couples with little children, and we all had the same things in common – not much money and the church was our social life.”
In 1960, Rock moved to Northern California. When she returned in 1983, going back to Eastminster felt like coming home. She loved the fact that the church looked exactly the same as when she had left. New faces and new programs to attract young members were not what she was hoping to find.
“We were looking for a haven. We were looking for peace and our friends,” Rock says.
Jerome and Lucile Harden needed and found comfort in the Eastminster community when their daughter Debbie died suddenly in 1991. Church members brought meals to their house and all the companionship the couple needed. Friendships deepened.
Having dealt with a much greater loss, the Hardens are able to face possibility of Eastminster closing philosophically.
“I personally don’t really see us surviving,” says Jerome. “It’s sad because that building, that community, has been a part of our life for 30 years. But that doesn’t mean you stop living. Life goes on.”
Longtime congregant Walter Lersch says hiring Heron was among the best moves ever made by the Eastminster parishioners. But it happened way too late.
“When our children were little I saw the problem. I felt we were going to die,” Lersch says. “A lot of people had left, and nobody new was coming in. This was 20 years ago.”
Lersch and others say there were discussions, but nobody in the congregation was willing to take the lead toward a more open and inviting church. The parishioners of Eastminster grew old together.
But new members did not solely have to come from the outside. There were always those children.
“We’ve lost two generations,” Lersch says. “We’ve lost our own children, and we have lost our children’s children.”
Going through cycles Lersch and his wife, Florence, met at Eastminster. She was in the choir and he started attending services on his own in 1978. They raised their children there, among them daughter Christine Yanik, who has children of her own with husband Grant.
Christine says she would never raise her two children there, though she reluctantly allows her parents to take their grandchildren to Eastminster some Sunday mornings.
In some ways, the reasons Christine gives for rejecting Eastminster put her smack in the middle of her own generation and Pacific Northwest attitudes toward religion. She and Grant talk about believing in a divine being, and exploring their own version of spirituality, combining elements of Wicca, Buddhism and other religions they have studied.
Nearly all their friends classify themselves as spiritual without formally attending a church, synagogue or mosque.
What Christine found most off-putting about Eastminster is the very thing that Barbara Rock longed for when she returned from California, and found at Eastminster – familiar faces, familiar liturgy and real community.
“Everything goes through cycles,” Yanik says. “You’re born, you start to grow, you get smarter. With that comes maturing and change. Eastminster never changes. It never grew; it never matured.”
All those years Christine saw her parents comfort other congregants during times of need, and finding fellowship with their Eastminster friends. But it always seemed to her that, given the message of the religion, it wasn’t enough.
She heard the minister talk about welcoming in the stranger, and taking care of the poor. But Yanik didn’t see that happening through church activities. Nobody was offering to shelter the homeless on Burnside, or feed the hungry of outer east side Portland.
“They’re very good about taking care of each other, but it’s taking care of each other, not helping take care of the community,” Yanik says.
Lersch says his daughter could be right, and that he has learned a lesson, even if it may be too late to save Eastminster.
“We understand now that our community changed and we didn’t,” he says.
Changed thinking Ironically, Eastminster has changed. Three years ago, the church hired Brian Heron to take them through the process of either facing its final days, or emerging as something different. Members of Eastminster didn’t just want to let their church die, Heron says. At the very least they wanted to leave a legacy, something to mark what they had been.
Heron talks to congregants about learning to let go of their church as they have known it. Years ago, in California, Heron ministered in a hospice, helping dying patients through the last days of their lives. He knows this process. But he isn’t ready yet to declare Eastminster lifeless. Not quite.
Maybe there’s another congregation out there, he says, which lacks a building but could supply members in the space-sharing model predicted by David Leslie of Ecumenical Ministries.
Maybe a younger, homeless congregation will come to worship with the members of Eastminster, and eventually take over the building.
Maybe all of this could be combined with using Eastminster’s three acres of property and empty classrooms for community gardens and housing the homeless, and make up for some of those years when such ideas were largely ignored.
Heron has also introduced a much more progressive, and liberal form of Christianity to Eastminster, and has found his ideas welcomed. The traditional Sunday morning Bible reading now is accompanied by a second reading from sources that have included Buddhist text and children’s books.
“I’m just amazed at how our thinking has changed,” says Florence Lersch about Heron’s leadership.
On Feb. 14, Eastminster’s three months of introspection and planning culminates in a meeting of the church’s governing Session. Whatever is decided, the choice need not be viewed as tragic, or even failing, says Heron.
“Part of (Christianity’s) story is a story of death and resurrection,” Heron says. “We’re trying to trust that process. We don’t have to fight death. We can face it, we can move through it, and live through it gracefully and see what new life looks like on the other side.”
Apparently it’s preordained as to whether we’re going to heaven or hell. So I needn’t bother. I can just have wicked fun either way, my fate is out of my hands. So I may as well whoop it up. ;)
Actually, my religious beliefs have doth suffered a sea change, into something rich and strange. I am perfectly happy with where I am in relation to God.
ELCA in Everett, WA - the guy quoted from an Anne Rice novel (Road to Canaan). The two liberal pastors there are always quoting Wobegon or some other crap piece of fiction, the intern they have is quoting scripture.
The guy quoting from Anne Rice was a guest preacher. He’s got a PhD I guess and spoke about the Jesus’ first miracle. He called out Pat Robertson as a heretic, then had the temerity to MENTION the ELCA decision on human sexuality, and then WHIFFED ON IT!!
He said its not the job of lutheran colleges to TAKE A POSITION ON SUCH MATTERS. So, if you are keeping score - Pat Robertson - heretic. ELCA for turning homosexuality into another of God’s consecrated forms of marriage? - No comment.
Guy was a winner.
“Apparently it’s preordained as to whether we’re going to heaven or hell. So I needn’t bother. I can just have wicked fun either way, my fate is out of my hands. So I may as well whoop it up. ;)”
I generally regard that as a bad idea; although the thought does cross my mind. The biblical support for predestination is pretty spotty.
“Actually, my religious beliefs have doth suffered a sea change, into something rich and strange. I am perfectly happy with where I am in relation to God.”
Question for all of us is: Is God happy with where we are?
Thanks for letting me post Christian stuff without getting all crabby at me. :) God bless.
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