Every church has programming. There might be a men’s or women’s group, confirmation and Sunday School for the kiddos, maybe an adult ed series after Sunday worship. If it’s a big enough congregation, you can count on a fall and spring series that follows a book or liturgical season.
This is what faith formation has looked like in the church for decades. People come in, seeking deeper understanding, answers to their questions, connection with others, and spiritual growth.
This programming is most commonly led by the pastor or another church staff member who picked out the book or made the powerpoint that will keep people engaged. There will be a time of teaching, followed by group discussion, and then sharing. Ya’ll know the drill. We’ve done this hundreds of times.
This is how it usually looks. Until I came to Boston.
I wasn’t much concerned with the weekly programming of these nontraditional churches when I showed up in Boston. I was planning on stopping by to get to know the fullness of the ministry they do, but I wanted to focus my energy on the Word & Sacrament part. The worship part. It is a preaching fellowship, after all.
The more I engaged with their programming, however, the more it got my wheels turning. I started to think there was something really compelling here, something I think the church can learn from.
Take common cathedral. One of their programs is Common Art, a space where people can paint, draw, build bird houses with popsicle sticks, or design beaded jewelry. There is a professionally trained Artist in Residence present who helps them with shading techniques and mixing colors, and walks them through how to curate their collections for local church art shows. The piano music playing in the background adds to the creative ambiance. Except for the brief intermission where community announcements are made and lunch is served, the artists are focused on their art and enjoying themselves.
Walk a few blocks north and hang out at MANNA, where they’ll open the doors on Tuesday at 9:30am for the Black Seeds Writers Group. You’re greeted at a table with paper, pens, and writing prompts to help stir your own thoughts. Over the course of the hour, 30 people will put pen to paper (or write through a transcriber) to share their musings, poems, and experiences, which will show up in next week’s printed booklet on the table. Christy will walk around at the end to pick up everyone’s work while James greets everyone by name and encourages them to share their voice.1
common cathedral and MANNA have programming for their community just like every other church. There’s always a meal involved, they use the same amount of printed pieces of paper on a round table, and the pastor does laps to say hi to everyone.
But at these churches, the community members don’t seem to be seeking anything. They’re not necessarily looking for someone to help explain God or the world or their life in it.
These artists and writers are already consistently on the receiving end: in lines to get food from strangers, on the other side of comments from passerby's, getting welfare or food stamps at the beginning of the month. Programming at these churches is the one place where they can finally offer the gifts God has given them to the world. They can give back. It’s a place where their innate knowledge and experience and life is enough. Where they can express their spirituality—not necessarily within the confines of a particular study—but on their own terms, as God encountered them today.
The starting point is their own story.
Not the story they have to tell social services and strangers to receive housing assistance—a story usually filled with suffering and trauma and pain.
No, the beautifully rich story that is bubbling within them, sustaining them, giving them life and meaning.
When the starting point is someone’s story, programming centers around creating a space for people to name and explore their own lives, their unique encounters with the Divine, and for the world to be graced by their proclamation. It’s a place where the pastor’s role is to be a witness to their humanity, their experiences, and empower them to share their voice.
I continue to believe that there is so much the church can learn from these nontraditional ministries, and I can’t help but wonder what would happen if we cultivated more spaces of story-telling for people in our church pews.
If we began with “God has given you life and dwells within your very being. You are a witness to the incarnation. How is God showing up for you today?”
If story and our lives and God’s activity were the starting point, instead of knowledge and fact and rational thinking.
If we had the humility to trust that the parishioner was the one who showed up prepared, and the pastor was simply a witness to God’s grace and love, whose main job was to connect the dots between their story and God’s story.
What would churchgoers—or “spiritual nones” or people who had questions about faith but were nervous about going to a service—write about if given the chance to share their own spiritual experiences?
Would it open our eyes to the vastness of God’s activity in the world?
Would it show us that God is already within each of us, including our neighbor?
Would it give us a space to share our deepest questions, convictions, doubts, and experiences?
As I witnessed these artists and writers share their gifts with the world, I quickly realized how much I had to learn from them about life, faith, and God. My job as a minister was simple: receive their stories and profound wisdom with love and compassion.
Friends, I think that’s what ministry is all about. Telling our stories. Naming God’s activity in them. Making space to stand on that holy ground.
It’s really quite simple. Yet profoundly transformational.
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If given the chance to write about your life and/or faith, what would you share? What is bubbling within you that the world needs to hear about God?
These reflections, experiences, and dedicated time for writing is thanks to the generosity of The Reverend Janet Karvonen-Montgomery Preaching Fellowship from Luther Seminary. You can learn more about Rev Janet and the Fellowship here.
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You can check out James Parker’s Atlantic piece about the Black Seeds Writer’s Group, Homeless in a City Buffeted by Plague. I chatted with James, who started this group in 2011. He helps edit their quarterly magazine, The Pilgrim, and every writer gets one piece in the publication. Not only that, but on December 6th, they had a Reading at the Boston Public Library auditorium for those who wanted to read their own work to an audience of 400 people.
"If we had the humility to trust that the parishioner was the one who showed up prepared, and the pastor was simply a witness to God’s grace and love, whose main job was to connect the dots between their story and God’s story" THIS Jenna! What if? I love the possibility.