A question on the train

 

The other day I was returning to Garden City after a visit to Brooklyn on the Hempstead line of the Long Island Railroad.  After the iPhone ran out of juice, I was blessedly compelled to pay attention (as I want to do anyway!) to my actual, rather than virtual, surroundings.  At the end of the car was an advertisement from a business magazine that included this question, "Is your business capturing the new consumer imagination?"

 

Now I have the disease that hears all questions and assesses all statements in terms of the state of the church, especially at the fundamental level of the parish congregation.  So I read this question and began to muse.

 

First of all there is the weighty (or not) matter of effective translation.  The church is not a business, though there are things we should (and hopefully do) learn from the business way of being.  To give but one example, a responsive healthy business is responsive precisely to the people whom it is trying to either reach or to retain as customers.  As a church, how effectively responsive are we on the 'inside' to the folks around us who know little about the church, or who mistrust the church, or who have had a bad experience of church in the past?  How open are we to seeing, hearing, engaging these people (who are sometimes known as the majority of people!)?  So, although we are not running a business, there are things we can learn there.

The question on the train asks us if we are in tune with "the new consumer."  There are indeed not a few folks in the church who may rightly be called consumers in the way they relate to their parish.  (See Rebuilt: Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, Making Church Matter, Introduction and Chapter 1, by Michael White and Tom Corcoran, published 2013).  In church terms, that's not a good thing either to be or to be called.  Rather we are called to make and to be disciples.  A consumer consumes, chews up and spits out.  A disciple commits, learns, remains, and serves.

But, to go on with translation, is there a 'new consumer' in the church?  That is to say: is there a new 21st century person who needs to be approached differently in order to be invited well to consider the life of a disciple?  Are there ways we have connected with people in the past as church that are less likely to be successful now, or even advisable?  I think there are.  Is there openness among us who are already church members to be open to new ways to get to know, to approach, to accept new possible disciples?  There had better be such an openness, for the sake of the present, the future, the church, the person to whom we are speaking, and the mission.  All these benefit when we connect where people are, in the way they are accustomed to doing so.

And the final word of the question, the best word there of all: "imagination."  The new consumer, the 21st century man and woman on the street, on the web, and not in the pew, the potential disciple, can only be reached by a people of imagination, a people ready to imagine previously unseen ways of speaking the Good News, of being the church, and of inviting to discipleship.

How alive is my imagination?  Is it likely to have a walk-on role on "The Walking Dead"?  How lively is your imagination?  Perhaps the first thing we need do in answer to the question on the train is to loosen the reins and allow imagination some blessed freedom.

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Mercer’s new Vision Wall of art’s first exhibit, “Living Ubuntu,” featuring photos by the Reverend Wilfredo Benitez is ending this month. We will be sharing news soon about the new exhibit. The photos of “Living Ubuntu” are available for purchase at $125.00, all of which benefits Mercer School programming. Just come by the Mercer offices if you are interested. We are grateful to Father Benitez for helping us transform a blank wall to something much richer and beautiful.

Note the new section of the Mercer website (www.mercerschool.org called “Safe Church.” Here, fully revised and new guidelines will be made available to you after Diocesan Convention has concluded on November 16th.  These will be must reading for all parish leaders and for everyone committed to a Church in which all, including the most vulnerable among us, are safe and valued.

All of the above, and everything on this site, on our Facebook page and on our Twitter feed is meant to say this: we are a service organization here at Mercer. We serve you so that you can better serve where you are? What is your call to service? And how can we help?

 

Blessings,

John McGinty+

Dean