How have I walked all that 4D talk?

 

              I feel, especially as the number of people reading my blog has recently spiked, I need to name my own limitations and that my words aren’t from a place of extra knowledge—I don’t have the inside track on anything! Like that nice Greek fella said to the cyclopes, I’m nobody.

I’m a parish pastor in “rural” New Jersey whose been blogging since I was a 19-year-old freshman doing Religious Studies at U of Oregon (hence the 19 at the end of the blog handle). I don’t have special insights from any sort of wider organizational perspective, I don’t have a background in statistics that allows me to essentially predict the future based on current trends. My non-M.Div. advanced degree, an M. Phil, is in the intertestamental period and wisdom literature. My 4D ideas simply come from on the ground observation, reading, and being a Christian in the Year of our Lord 2024.

              That said, I do have one thing going for me. I didn’t grow up in the church, so sometimes I have outsider moments where I look around a room full of religious people and wonder to myself, “What the heck are all these people talking about?”  There are times when folk are riding a shibboleth so hard it’ll never have another rodeo, and times when the working assumption in the room doesn’t comport with reality as I understand it. A corollary to not growing up in church, I’m also a Norwegian Lutheran who doesn’t see a connection between those two identities. That’s it, that’s who is writing about the world in which we are ministering.

              I first hit upon the 3Ds while reflecting with colleagues on the transition from Judges to Kings back when I was the counselor of the Raritan Cluster. We were wondering what changes in ministry were making “both of our ears tingle”—1 Samuel 3:11. It is wild to think that was a decade ago! Since then, the 3Ds, and now 4Ds, have become a shorthand I use to interpret what’s going on in ministry today.

              As I roll out all my 4D talk, I think it is worth naming my own experience of it, going from the big picture to the local and personal. How have I experienced and engaged with Disenchantment, Decentralization, Demographic Shifts, and Disestablishment? How am I a leader who shepherds souls, performs sacred science, rides waves, and crafts partnerships? 

Disenchantment and Soul Shepherding

Many of my ideas about our world as disenchanted and the church’s need to be enchanted comes from Richard Beck’s Hunting Magic Eels, though there are also shades of Root and Taylor floating around in the back of my brain as well.

I have shepherded souls in a variety of ways:

Most recently, I created a Bible Study of Wisdom Literature that invited congregants to answer the underlying questions of wisdom literature for themselves. This moved the conversation from paper to lips, ancient royal Israel to the lived present.

A few years back I invited my congregation to have God Conversations with their neighbors. This helped parishioners notice where the Holy Spirit was already at work.

Finally, I do my darnedest to help folk pray. After Hurricane Sandy, while I was without power for an extended period, I created a prayer book, Read, Reflect, Pray. Eventually that led to the privilege of being an editor of Minister’s Prayer Book.

 

Decentralization and Sacred Science

              My ideas about our world being profoundly decentralized come from the book The Spider and the Starfish by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom.

              I have been performed sacred science, harnessing the power of a decentralized world, in a variety of ways:

Inspired by a congregation in Baltimore, I’ve brought “PUB/lick Theology” with me to Jersey—an hour of learning, discussion, and fellowship out in the neighborhood. In its current iteration we meet at a local Pub in the winter and an ice cream place in the summer.

While we all became “Televangelists” on the fly during Covid, I’d been shooting my sermons and putting them onto youtube since 2013.

Taking Starfish’s admonition about classrooms shifting from front facing lectures to discussions in the round, I briefly tried a “talk-show” format for sermons one summer… it was a disaster… on one hand I don’t have the chops for that, but also the congregation’s architecture militated against the format.

 

Demographic Shifts and Wave Riding

              I was given the inestimable gift of learning, as a Field Ed student, a Vicar, and a student in Urban Theological Institute courses, in African American and African Descent contexts. Anything I say that is true or useful about being Church in a diverse country came to me from the hospitality of Black folk.

              In a very concrete way, I rode the waves of demographic shift as a Pastor in the ELCA at my first call. The first congregation I served was built by GIs returning from World War 2 and their new families, as well as refugees from the ruins of that horrible war, and that set of demographics matched with the community at the time, but by the time I got there the borough was much more diverse than the congregation, something like 40% non-white.

So, by accompanying a neighboring congregation that was closing, consistent curiosity about the India community one town over (one of the largest Indian Diaspora communities in the world) and giving thumbs up to most every cross-cultural contact a parishioner had—by the time I left, those worshipping on a Sunday looked demographically similar to the neighborhood as a whole.

Additionally, I co-wrote a commentary on Luke’s Gospel—Seeing with the Mind, Hearing with the Heart: A Thematic Bible Study on Luke by a Young Pastor and a Not So Young Parishioner—that attempted to bridge some generational divides.

 

Disestablishment and Crafting Partnerships

              Much of my thoughts about the Disestablishment of the Church comes from the Canadian thinker Douglas John Hall with a sprinkling of flavor from Andrew Root.

              Before I get into my foray into partnerships, let me share a story that solidified all those things I’d read by Hall.

I had just visited a hospital where I got to bless a newborn baby and celebrate with the parents, and I just about broke down outside the hospital afterward—you see, it was the first time I’d visited a hospital and it wasn’t for someone sick or maimed. For a decade every prayer I prayed was some variation of “Lord, be with the Doctors and Nurses keeping this person alive” never “Wow! Lord thank you for this new life!” Yet, when I went back through Pastor’s reports, even just a few decades back, they were blessing babies in the hospital monthly. Such a vocation affirming action—monthly! I couldn’t imagine how good the “good old days” once were. Problematic as all get out, but at least in that small way—getting to bless newborns, I was very jealous.

All those academic descriptions of how the church changed, how we used to be connected to the heartbeat of culture and society, were emotionally true to me in the parking lot of JFK hospital. Our ministry tends to be to a culture and a society that has passed away—if we do not become relevant and meaningful, partnering and engaging with the world as it is—we will never again get to bless a baby, nor walk with the child through to adulthood in a way that allows them to trust in God.

I am still a novice when it comes to crafting partnerships. I am convinced organizations like Partners for Sacred Places, from whom I gleaned 12 steps to finding a partner for your congregation, have a major role to play in helping congregations be good stewards of space, and Grace Duddy Pomroy’s Funding Forward project and book can point to not only examples of partnering well, but a way forward for the Church. Clint's "A Guidebook to Progressive Church" also points to some amazing ways to partner well.

Additionally, in the past I have welcomed a variety of non-Lutheran congregations into our worship space and, as indicated in the Decentralization section, have made relationships with pub and ice cream shop owners. All smaller versions of what is likely the future of ministry when engaging with disestablishment.

 

Conclusion:

              It’s funny, the last D I discovered, Disenchantment, was the one hardest for me to name, yet between prayerbooks and God Conversations, it is the aspect of the world as it is I’ve been engaged with the most, from almost the start. I imagine it is one of those “fish not knowing they’re in water” kind of situations.

              I hope these concrete examples from my own ministry flesh my earlier semi-viral “imagine a church” post.