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Written by Erin Dunigan, OUTLOOK special correspondent
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Tuesday, 09 June 2009 18:42 |
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MONTREAT — “It’s time to step into being the church that we’ve been called into,” Moderator Bruce Reyes-Chow told a gathering of younger Presbyterian pastors June 8 at the opening worship service of the 2009 alt 7 Conference.
“We have traveled from near and far together as a community, bringing with us a commitment to serve and a love for God’s people, we open ourselves to God, who makes all things new.”
The conference is planned especially for clergy under age 40, many leading congregations with a membership in a much older demographic. With the theme, “The Power at work within us,” it will run until June 11.
Reyes-Chow, who recently turned 40 himself, spoke from his experiences as a pastor. He is pastor of Mission Bay Community Church in San Francisco, Calif. “We are trained to believe that (preaching) is a dialogue, yet what we often end up practicing is a monologue,” he said, proceeding to lead conference participants in just such a dialogue.
“I think that our denomination is in an interesting time,” he shared. “We are in a great time of tension that can yield many things. … What does it mean for a denomination to elect somebody who is younger, talks about the church differently yet comes out of the church?” he asked. “It could just be that the church is open to talking about things differently.
“There have to be people within the church to figure out what is next, to step into being the church that we’ve been called into,” he challenged — a point that was quickly posted to Twitter, so that those not physically present could follow along with the alt7 Conference as well.
Reyes-Chow asked participants, most of whom are within their first or second call as pastors, what is different about their current call than they had expected. “I never thought I’d be in a small church,” “I never thought I’d be in Kentucky,” “I never thought I’d be preaching in Spanish more than in English,” were some of the responses.
The responses became examples illustrating Reyes-Chow’s point: “There are going to be multiple ways of being church and it is up to us to live into that,” he said.
He continued with a story about a woman in his first congregation, a pillar of the church, named Lucille. One day Lucille, who made sure the young new pastor knew that she had been an elder longer than he had been alive, came to talk to Reyes-Chow about the previous Sunday’s worship service. She was upset. Though he admitted he tried to hide from her, she found him in his office and made sure that he knew what was wrong: the flowers in the previous Sunday’s worship service had been in the wrong place. Before he could catch himself, Reyes-Chow said to her flat out, “Lucille, I don’t care.”
This honesty got a laugh from participants. “You think it’s funny now, but it was not funny then,” Reyes-Chow assured them. He came to see that it really wasn’t about the flowers at all. “What she had really said to me was that ‘this is the way that I connect with the Divine every Sunday’ and I said to her that it was irrelevant and that I don’t even care,” he said.
Once he could see beyond the flowers, he began to understand the larger issue at work.
“What we have to do as a body is to impress upon one another that there are multiple ways of experiencing the Divine,” said Reyes-Chow, not dismissing the ‘Lucilles’ in the church, but also not dismissing those of a new generation who might also be moving toward new ways of being church.
“The reality of the day is shifting,” he asserted, adding, “There is something about being called to helping others connect to God that is moving and powerful.” The challenge, he suggested, is for those gathered, those who are sensing these new ways, to, as Ephesians says, “grow up into being worthy of the calling” no matter how difficult or different it might be.
“As we continue to do church together my hope is that what we begin to see is this spattering of different ways of being church, that all are valued, in the same way that I came to value how Lucille connected with the divine,” Reyes-Chow said in closing.
The conference continues today, with a total of 11 workshops being offered during June 8-11, and upcoming presentations from conference speakers including Troy Bronsink, Presbyterian minister from Atlanta, Ga. — a member of the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta’s Emerging Church Committee, and the Presbymergent Coordinating Group; Lola Reiter, pastor of Seffner Church in Seffner, Fla.; and Alice Ridgill of Clinton, S.C., a campus pastor at Thornwell Home for Children and pastor of Hartness-Thornwell Church.
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If we are talking about younger clergy, 40 and under, as a resource for the church, sooner or later one must address the issues with the Board of Pensions and how they conceptualize and structure clergy health care and retirement. Right now the BOP runs its affairs like GM or the UAW. It assumes clergy careers of 30-40 years in the same line or type of work, church-related, retirement at 65, at a minimum, and healthy government programs, social security, medicare. Demeographics of life, careers, spousal issues, family issues of today imply and mean that fewer than 1 in 10, 1 in 15 clergy 40 and under will stick with the church for an entire working career, or long enough for pension benefits. Some suggestions for this day and age.
-To encourage older clergy to retire and transition out of the system, to allow more opportunity, the BOP should drop the 50% reduction in pension for those who wish and desire to retire in a 55-65 age cohort. In fact pension penilties should be applied to those who choose to work after age 62.
-The 1.25% of effective pay credited per year is neither an incentive or adequate for a career of service. Better to transition all to a church wide 401K w/matching up to 5-10% for employing churches, in this you get immediate vesting and portability. The Fidelity 403b option offered is heavy in fees and management costs relative to Vanguard and other fund families.
-There will a big government fix coming in health care. Transition to a true HMO concept of care with options and menu of services requested tailored to the individual family. We can do better than the Blue Cross/Shield plan both in terms of cost to the employing church and clergy.
1950/60s stucture and solutions for career PCUSA clergy will not work in 2009. That church is dead, is it not coming back.