Terrifying, but awesome

The Internet blew up yesterday. No, really. Blew slam up. When I announced I would be part of a team that is re-starting a church in New Orleans, the dang thing when kablewee. Amazingly enough, I didn't get a spell-check on kablewee. Goes to show you.

Anyway, there must have been, well, 60 or 70 page views on the blog yesterday, which is the equivalent of, oh, say, the time Sean Payton was suspended, and I had words to say.

The local newspaper wants to do a story. I tried to tell them moving day is more than two months distant, but you know, when the Internet blows up, well, whatcha gonna do?

I want to elaborate on a point I made yesterday about being fearful at this point. I'm reminded of last summer when the family went all Clark Griswold and journeyed together to Universal/Disney. I believe we had just gotten off Space Mountain when the 6-year-old sage Gavin said, "That was terrifying, but it was awesome."

From the mouths of babes.

I am terrified, but it is awesome. When we came to Eunice two brief years ago, I came full of what they used to call spit and vinegar. Now, I have no personal idea what that means, but it seems rather appropriate. I was confident, to a fault. What had worked for the ministry in all the other places would work here and then some. I leave a bit less confident because for the first time in ministry, this is the great unknown.

There are so many, many things I don't know.

I will quote from a woman you'll be hearing a lot of in the next few months, Rev. Dottie Escobedo-Frank.

In an article for Ministry Matters, she writes, "According to one report, 188,000 orthodox churches in America today are in need of a reStart. The U.S. has 200,000 orthodox Christian churches, and 300,000 churches overall. What recent history has made very clear is that the mainline church in America is dying. Thom Rainer, in a U.S. study of 1,159 churches (2002), said that 94% of American churches are in decline. Recent church attendance records show that in America, real attendance numbers are not near 40% as previously reported, but a shocking 17.7% (2004). These numbers also report a trend for growth in small (less than 49) and large (over 2000) churches, while a sharp decline in medium-sized churches."

That being said, what do we do?

I believe what we do is embrace the terrifying, for it is in doing so we can be sure that we're not running things, but instead there is a much greater power in place. When I say I don't know, it is weakness for sure, but as Paul taught us over and over it is in weakness than He is strong.

Escobedo-Frank continued, "Some churches are still alive but declining rapidly. Some are near death, clinging to what once was as the hope for the future. As a result of the obvious near-death experience of congregations, denominational structures are looking for ways to “revitalize” churches. Revitalization means taking what is and making it alive again. It tends to utilize current leadership, current understandings of what it means to be a church, current locations, and current worship styles. Revitalization makes an assumption that what is was once vital, and therefore, can be vital again, if we do the same better. So churches increase programs, dollars spent, and formulas adopted in order to bring the re into revitalization. The prefix “re” means back to the original place again. It infers stepping back in time to recapture a period when the church’s role in society was vital. A church seeking revitalization typically does more of the same, but in a hyped-up fashion."

So, what we're doing in New Orleans won't be a revitalization. For those do not work, I've read over and over. What does work is a restart. That is what we're going to do.

In God's time, in God's way.

At the end, which I can see roaring at me faster than I thought possible, I'll be able to look back as Moses did at the journey, even if I don't get there. For it is in doing so, this looking at what God has done, that I can truly say, "Whew, that was terrifying, but it was awesome."