Telling our story, reminding ourselves of how we got to where we are

I'm currently rereading Hauerwas and Willimon's book, Resident Aliens. (Which I highly recommend.) I was diving into the third chapter this morning in which they describe a church that had invited a retired pastor to come and speak to the congregation. The man had pastored the church for 5 years in the '60s and had encouraged the congregation to welcome in the newcomers in their neighborhood -- the blacks who were moving into what was previously an all white enclave. His tenure in the church had been tumultuous and his "radical" ideas eventually led to his leaving the position. Yet here they'd asked him back again to speak to them and he took that opportunity to remind them of their own history. He preached to them from Hebrews 11-12, the stories of faith of such people as Noah, Abraham, and Joseph. And he included the church in that parade of the faithful. They had gone through a struggle, but they had trusted God despite their own misgivings. They were faithful and had welcomed in the newcomers. And when the pastor had returned many years later, the congregation was a mix of black and white, a testimony to the faithfulness of God to the congregation and of the congregation's faithfulness to the gospel despite their own apprehension about such a change.

At Cornerstone, the church that Rob and I are a part of, we've been in discussions of what we're about and where we're going. After one meeting I came home and started to list all of the people who have been a part of our congregation over the past decade. I wrote out a teeny bit of the history of our church as described through these people, and I sent it to our pastor who is fairly new to the congregation. (He's been with us for 2 1/2 years now.) I did this because it seemed like we had been talking about the church, during our discussion, as if it had no history, or the only history it had was what could be seen at a glance. (How much history Can you see at a glance?) The pastor's response was to say,

Thanks for sharing about previous people.  These are the kinds of things I need to hear to get a more balanced view about our church. I was totally unaware!   May I suggest you edit your email below and put it in your blog and/or email it to our church folks?

So here's my edited email. This congregation has been around for almost 25 years, and Rob and I have only been a part of it for the last 10, so this really is just skimming the surface of our history. But I do think it is helpful not only to see ourselves aright, but to get a better sense of how God has been working among us as well.

I thought I'd back up what I said this afternoon with some names. [I gave a list of names at the end of this, that I won't include here.] I've gotten a very clear impression from [some folks who have only visited our congregation] that they believe our church is opposed to including people who are different than us. Granted, we don't have any blacks and we've only had one Korean and a couple of Latinos in our congregation in the 10 years we've been here, but I think we've been very open to everyone who's ever come to our church, from the three felons who we welcomed with open arms (one of whom lived with Rob and I for awhile and another of whom we elected as a deacon, which we shouldn't have [for entirely different reasons], but it still shows the extent to which we welcomed him) to the two couples who left our congregation to be missionaries elsewhere through Navigators. We've had quite a few college students, and that's really saying something given that RUF [a college ministry within our denomination] took them all away several years ago. So we're looking at a pretty good number of kids in the less than a decade that we had them before they were Pied Pipered away. And we've had many baby Christians and a few seekers that have come, that we've welcomed in wholeheartedly, and who we were often available to outside of Sunday events for discussions and fellowship.

All of this to say that I don't think it's our stance that's the problem. We are a congregation who has shown over and over again that we're ready to take anyone that God sends our way. We're ready to love them, help to meet their needs, help them find work, help them with their children, help them find housing, etc.

I think it's discouraging when we've had so many people who have come to us and who we've poured ourselves into, and then they leave for whatever reason and now we're being told that we're holding ourselves back. I'm discouraged by people telling me that I'm just not putting myself out there when I feel that we have been. We have had two different people live in our house with us, one was a felon and the other was an international student. (We also had a couple live with us for a month while the wife was doing residency here. They had emailed several congregations in town and we were the only one to respond to their request for a place to stay.) And we invited some neighbors who were just seekers at the time and who the congregation welcomed very warmly and the pastor spent hours discipling. I think the whole congregation has put themselves out there, welcomed people in, and been willing to meet any needs as presented.

Yeah, we don't have a congregation that's full of evangelists, at least not in the traditional sense. Our last pastor brought a lot of people in. He was probably the main evangelist in the congregation this past decade. [Another member] probably was as well, though the people he talked to didn't always end up at our congregation and he wasn't with us for as long (2 or 3 years?). But the bulk of us are introverts who build relationships with people and invite people in slowly. Our few extroverts tend to also be pretty outspoken politically, which may make people shy away from checking out our congregation fearing that we're all like that. But overall I feel like we are a congregation that stands at the ready and is always up to the challenge when a new person or family joins us, even when they come to us with needs.

We've definitely grown slowly. And each set back seems to put us a step and a half back for every step we've moved forward. But we have been moving forward. I'm sure there are more things we can be doing to reach out to the community, and I think people are definitely open to doing that. But I don't think the problem has at all been that we're not willing or we're not accepting. I feel like people in other congregations (especially within our denomination) have regularly and routinely judged Cornerstone not by who we actually are, but by who they would like to perceive us as being. Just because people see us wrong doesn't mean that we need to change to suit them. I think it behooves them to get a better sense of us before making judgments about us.

Our congregation certainly has its weaknesses and its problems. But from what I have seen over the past decade, it is faithful. We have many stories to tell about ourselves and we should be doing exactly that. By remembering who we are and where we come from, we will have a better sense of where we are headed.