It was wonderful to be with the great folks of the Gateway North District today at the Morrow Memorial UMC in Maplewood, NJ. Great worship and message by Bishop Felton May! A number of laity and clergy showed interested in revitalizing their churches by using the Roadmap to Renewal process and from the learning gained from Paul Nixon’s book, I Refuse To Lead a Dying Church.
Roadmap to Renewal, which was published by the General Board of Global Ministries in April of this year has nearly sold out its first printing and will go to a second printing. It will be featured in the “Forecast” curriculum catalogue published by Cokesbury in December. Thanks to those who are using the resource!
According to Jim Griffith, himself not a Methodist, The United Methodist Church is the only denomination that has an intentional, systematic plan to plant new churches among the mainline churches in the United States. It is heartening to see how this is being lived out in several Annual Conferences. Last night I met Mark Appleyard, an Australian. The Western North Carolina Annual Conference has recruited Mark to plant the third campus of one of their healthy, growing congregations. When churches and conferences begin to search far and wide to achieve the goal of planting new churches, we are on the right track. The movement for planting churches is gaining steam. It needs to. Jim Griffith also said that the decade between 2010-2020 will show a steep decline in attendance and giving in existing churches.
Six of us from the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference traveled southward to Richmond, Virginia, on Sunday, November 8th to participate in the New Church Planter Leadership Institute. This is a training event that attempts to answer the question, “Is new church planting for me?”
The training started this morning with worship led by the Rev. Matt Poole of the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference. Matt preached on the 5 excuses of Moses (Exodus 3).
1. Why me? What makes you think I could ever go to Pharoah and the lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?
A. God answers: “I’ll be with you.”
2. What do I tell them? (I.e. I don’t know what to tell them).
A. Tell, “I am who I am.”
3. They won’t trust me. They won’t listen to me (4:1)
A. God asks him what he has in his hand (a shepherd’s staff), i.e. use the gifts you already have.
4. I don’t talk well. I’ve never been good with words. I stutter and stammer.
A. I’ll be there with you–in your mouth. I’ll be there to teach you what to say.
5. Please, send somebody else!
A. You’ve got brother Aaron who can help you.
What is our excuse?
The worship at Taizé on Friday and Saturday evenings is special. At the conclusion of the service on Friday the brothers surround the cross, kneeling. When they recess from the service, pilgrims come up to the cross and likewise, surround it. Some put their foreheads on the cross as they offer prayer. It was quite moving to see youth line up and to be so eager to touch the cross.
On Saturday evening each pilgrim is given a candle and as the service draws to a conclusion the candles are lit one from another throughout the church. The candles symbolize an Easter celebration as the sabbath draws closer.
One of the reasons, perhaps the principal one, which makes it so difficult to transplant Taizé to other contexts is that you cannot take the brothers with you. The sincerity and sacrifice of the brothers makes the entire experience of Taizé authentic.
I am so grateful for the privilege of being able to make this pilgrimage to Taizé. On Sunday, after morning Eucharist, we boarded our bus to make our way back to the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland. The week went by so quickly. I am grateful for the worship, for the new friends I made from Germany and Portugal, for the friends from New Jersey that I got to know better and to the brothers of Taizé whose hospitality and love overflows onto those of us who make the pilgrimage.
At our small group discussion at Taizé, Elke, a Roman Catholic religious worker from Germany, confessed that “In our churches we give answers to questions people are not asking. We preach of things that have no connection to people’s lives.” Another Lutheran Pastor from Germany said, “My main job is burying people. I conduct five funerals a week.” Clearly, the Church–whether Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, or Free, in Germany–is composed of a very small group of people. The future of the church as it has been known is bleak. And yet, here they are at Taizé. They come with youth from their parishes. These youth do not necessarily attend worship nor do they belong to a Youth Group as we would know it in the United States. They learn of the pilgrimage at school and the churches are more than happy to organize the trips.
As we experience decline in many of the mainline churches in the United States, Elke’s confession haunted me. Are our U.S. churches giving answers to questions people are not asking? If so, then what are the questions we should be responding to? How can we begin to know those questions without engaging in a dialogue with the people who live in areas where our churches are located? I surely would welcome responses . . .
Worship at Taizé is simple. When you enter, you pick up a songbook and a sheet with scripture readings. Once the brothers have entered and the bells have finished ringing, a digital signboard gives the number of the chant and singing begins. Prior to the singing, everyone is to be silent: silent upon entering, silent as you wait for the service to begin. In the first few days of the week there is not complete silence. A youth carries a large signboard saying “Silence” on one side and “Stille” on the other (remember, “Stille Nacht”?).
The service begins with several chants and an alleluia. The scripture is read in 2-3 languages followed by chanting. Key verses from the same scripture passage are read in several more languages. Another chant is sung. This first part takes 12-15 minutes. Then there is 8-10 minutes of silence. As the week progresses, silence is heeded. The silence ends when a chant number is posted on the digital signboard. Prayers are given with a sung response (Kyrie Eleiason). This is followed by a series of chants. The final part of the service is about 12-15 minutes long. The brothers recess while the congregation continues to sing. The entire service goes for 40-45 minutes. Some leave as soon as the brothers do while others stay to sing.
The singing is accompanied by a brother who plays a small keyboard instrument that makes the sound of a classic guitar. Another brother occasionally plays a pipe organ. The church is dimly lit. The chancel area is arrayed with open ended rectangular boxes each with electric and candle illumination. Red triangular drapes adorn the wall behind the lighted boxes. A cross is placed at the right front and an icon mounted on the wall to the left. Woven baskets are placed on their side with the closed end facing the congregation. Lights beam onto the back wall from these baskets.
On this Friday I awoke immediately when my alarm sounded at 6:20 a.m. I was surprised that I had fallen asleep before my roommates had turned in the night before. They must have entered the dorm room quietly and because I had already fallen asleep, their snoring did not keep me awake. I showered and shaved. Showers have a timed push button that lasts for about a minute. I was able to shower with two pushes of the button. It is always a good idea to conserve water.
I walked through the darkness of this morning to the church. Stars still illuminated the sky as did the sliver of the moon. It was cold, perhaps just above freezing. I sat in the warm, silent church reading the bible, journaling and praying as I prepared for the first number to appear on the digital signboard.
Thursday, October 15th was a cold morning. I layered my clothing to keep warm. The skies were clear, hardly a cloud as I made my way to the Church of the Reconciliation at 7:20 a.m. There are very few in the church at this hour. The cold, I am sure, is making it difficult for people to arise from the warmth of their blankets.
At each service, after the scriptures are read, there is a long silence. The sermon is in the silence. If we are to take seriously the hearing of the word then we meditate on its meaning and its application to our lives during the silence. At first it is easy to find the mind wandering during the silence. Self conciousness, even awkwardness wants to rule. As each day passes with its three services one is invited into the silence and into its purpose of reflection on the word of God. The comment one hears most about Taizé is how people gradually came to embrace and value the silence.
We live in a world full of noise. Silence invites listening–to the Spirit, to the Word, to what God might be speaking in our souls. The minutes of silence, sometimes as much as ten minutes becomes a time of peace and solidarity for the silence is not experienced alone, it is experienced in the midst of 2,000 others, it is experienced in community. And so the silence is the sermon and the sermon is the silence.
When I awoke this morning it was a crisp autumn day. The night sky still dark at 6:30 a.m. illuminated only by a sliver of a moon rising above the hills to the east. I took my Bible, journal and cushion and entered the Church of the Reconciliation–the main sanctuary of Taizé–where I found a bench near the right front. The heat had been turned on–a pleasant bonus to this early morning. After reading scripture and making entries into my journal, the bells sounded for the beginning of a new day and a new opportunity to pray together.
For each service, the brothers enter in silence in a wide corridor centered before the chancel. The corridor is bordered by green plants. The brothers walk to their spot and turn to the chancel and kneel on the floor. Some of the older brothers or those with back problems, sit in wicker chairs. There is balance in the acitivities of Taizé, a yin and yang to the experience. We worship as a group at the prayer meetings. We meet in small groups. In the small group there is intimacy, in the large reverence.
For the Bible Study on this day I served as a translator for the lone participant who traveled from Spain. The Brother gave his lecture in German, which was translated into English and then I translated into Spanish. Have you ever played telephone line? I wonder how different the lecture ended up being in Spanish than when it began in German. We pray that the Holy Spirit allowed for a lesson to be learned despite our human shortcomings.
How wonderful to share in small group study with fellow Christians from Germany and Portugal. Despite differing theological views, there was no sense of judgment, just an openness to listen to one another and to share. There is a spirit to the sharing that echoes the first verse of Psalm 133: “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!”
You never know what kind of weather you will get on an October day. Whether in the New York area or in southwestern France, autumn can be warm, cold or somewhere in between. On this Tuesday, the temperatures dropped. Big cumulus clouds floated into the sky. The sun peaked through the clouds and then hid behind them. Leaves rustled with an ever increasing breeze. Their multi-colors dotted the countryside of rolling hills and farms.
Yet the cold autumn temperatures could not chill the warmth emmanating from the Taizé community. Through worship, fellowship, bible study, conversations, I experienced the warmth of love. I wrote in my journal that day, “Taizé is first of all about love.” Love as devotion to God. Love as hospitality. Love as a choice to make for one’s life.
What is Taizé a sign of? The Kingdom of God to be sure. Might it also be a sign of the Remnant of Christianity striving to make real this 2,000 year old religion? Might it also serve as seed for Christianity’s rebirth?
Berndt, the Lutheran Pastor and a veteran of several pilgrimages to Taizé, rented an apartment in the village and invited our small group to meet there on Tuesday afternoon. We reflected on two questions: 1. What does it mean to win? 2. What was Jesus’ currency?
Our multi-national, multi-cultural group talked of winning in terms of ‘fullness of life.’ When one can be open and free to encounter others and God, including being vulnerable to being hurt, then one is on a winning track. We said that the currency of Jesus is love. Jesus loved people he encountered and was fully present to them. He did not see others as instruments for his own agenda. However, when he asks, as he did to Peter, “Do you love me?” He wants to know our commitment to him and his Way.
My Tuesday take away is that Jesus’ currency and the currency of Taizé is love. Can I embrace the simplicity of this affirmation?