A visit to Church of the Savior

On a business trip to Washington DC last week I had a free afternoon and visited The Potter's House, one of the Church of the Savior missional communities. It is a combination coffee house and book store in the Adams Morgan neighborhood, about 30 blocks due north of the White House. I had been hoping to meet with a person who is well connected with Gordon Cosby, the founder of the church, and who I'd been told would arrange a meeting with me. However, that task didn't make it her "to do" list and the meeting never happened. So, when I arrived at Potter's House, I spoke with the book store manager, Tom, who had held that job for 30+ years. He was more informed than he gave himself credit for.

Tom stepped away from the cash register and sat down at a table with a cup of coffee to talk with me. He periodically got up to take care of a customer. He demonstrated to me the graciousness of the Potter's House ministry, showing patience and hospitality in the face of my interruption in his day.

While talking with Tom, I also observed what was going on in the room. There were about a dozen people there at any one time. They varied in race (Caucasian, black, white, Asian) and income level. They sat at tables in twos and threes, talking. I also fliers for talks on various subjects. The ministry has been doing this since the 1960s. Imagine the number of people who have been blessed by it

I asked Tom a number of questions. I'll write about just a couple of them here.

Q: Do the ministries gather together once a month?
A: No, but they once may have. (This surprised me. I will have to check my recall of what I learned of the Church in the 1970s, when I lived in Washington and visited it. Tom also mentioned that the communities are re-evaluating how they interact, now that Gordon Cosby, their founder and visionary, has retired.).

Q: How many people attend the church gatherings of the ministries?
A: They range from 8 to 20.

Q: Do the communities attract young people?
A: No. This is another reason the communities are evaluating how they function. (What I surmised is that the church and its ministry communities were initiated by a group of "Jesus People" radicals of the 1960s, who have carried it into the present, but didn't find a way to adapt the model to generations after them.)

Q: Why did the Church of the Savior end? (Turns out the Church was considered one of the missional communities, with Gordon Cosby as its founder and head. Some of the people affiliated with the other missional communities didn't have a worship gathering of their own and would attend the Church of the Savior gathering. When Gordon Cosby retired, the Church community sold their building and distributed the proceeds among the remaining missional communities.)
A: I'm not sure.

I have more to say on this last point, which I'll write in my next blog. Overall, though, I came away from my field trip with the realization that some of what I had remembered of the Church was inaccurate - at least it didn't represent the Church of today. Other parts, though, like the ministry of Potter's House, were as I remembered them and were impressive in how they embodied the ministry of Jesus. I am now considering what to hold onto or aim for in their model, and what to do differently. Let me know if you have any thoughts or insights.

Two-fer

If people who are not paid to be Christian teachers or leaders - but who have gifts in teaching or leading - are going to exercise their gifts, they will need to be independently wealthy or get their income elsewhere. To gain an income from a paying job and also do regular teaching or leading in a gathering of believers is to be bivocational. There is a long history of bivocational ministry in the church. The Apostle Paul was one of the first in the early New Testament church. His day job was making tents. Today, many pastors of small churches have another job to help support themselves and perhaps a family.

I have been bivocational for about ten years. It started when I was the chair of the elders for a year in my church. During that year there was a church crisis that required a significant amount of my time. Although it was a challenge, I learned how to attend to two major roles without being irresponsible in either. Fortunately that level of activity only lasted a year. When I rotated out of the position, I stayed involved in church leadership, but at a more manageable level. Even so, I carried the title of pastor (albeit volunteer and part-time) for several years. In that role, and over a five year period, I shaped how church related to other cultures, both internationally and locally. I also started a non-profit organization, Africa Rising, that supports the work of African social entrepreneurs. Today, that is the biggest part of my non-day-job work. (In case someone reading this doesn't know me, in my day job, I am a professor at the University of North Carolina.)

A few things I've learned about being bivocational: (1) It helps if both jobs are of real interest to you. It is much harder when one of them doesn't also give as much emotional energy as it takes. (2) If you are married, your spouse must believe in what you are doing. (3) I have been able to do what I do because I have physical and mental health, a good marriage, healthy and well adjusted children, and a good day job. (4) I don't watch TV, not even on the computer. I know that I am missing some really entertaining shows. But what I gain in having a significant impact on the lives of others is incomparable. (5) I strategically place meetings and other tasks in the margins of my days. For a while, I had lots of early breakfast meetings on weekdays, before I started my day job. Now, with a new job, I meet with people over lunch, or a glass of wine at the end of the day. Then I aim to accomplish just one thing each evening. It could be writing a blog entry or answering a number of emails. I say "just one thing" because thats all I have time for after spending time with my family, washing the dishes, helping with homework, or whatever.

Now on that note, I'm going to go for a walk in the woods with our dog on this pretty Sunday morning.

Literacy and leadership in the church

In God’s kingdom, people are organized by their gifts, be they gifts of compassion, hospitality, teaching, discernment, and more. But somewhere along the way, something that isn’t a gift got introduced into the mix, and it even dominates the organization of the church: education. We hand over the leadership of our churches to those who have been educated the most, or in a particular way. Usually, it is years of seminary. Acceptance to a seminary is based primarily on academic performance in college. So if there is a gift involved, it may be the ability to do well on exams. But there is little call for that in the life of a community of people following Jesus.

In a kingdom where the last are first and where the wisdom of God confounds the wise of this world, how did the educated jump the queue to direct everyone else? And this even when no matter of education can give a person the gift of teaching or leadership. It could be that the educated use their knowledge to get to the front of the line, or to establish systems that give authority only to others who are highly educated. These could be true, but I have another idea.

Knowledge *is* valuable when teaching others about the kingdom of God. It is helpful to know the stories of the Bible and the admonitions of Jesus, for example. Being able to read helps one gain this knowledge. So, although having knowledge doesn’t make one a good teacher, it helps.

At the time of the early church, very few people could read. According to one source, as few of 0% in the rural areas and 5-10% in the cities could read. Since societies then were mostly rural, the country average would fall between one and three percent. And because of gender biases of the day, all but a very few would have been male. This, I believe, laid the foundation for patterns of church leadership. The ones who could read were the ones who were looked to for teaching.

But why does the church stick to this pattern today? In many countries, the literacy rates have flipped, with only a small minority of adults left who cannot read. And the number of books available today – just one copy of each - would probably cover all of Jerusalem several feet high. Not to mention other resources, such as the internet. A studious high school student of today knows vastly more than a learned scholar of Jesus’s day. With widespread literacy and a superabundance of information available to all, there is little reason for the church to make education its primary criterion for selecting teachers and leaders. We can now revert to the kingdom way of gifts.

In the church I envision, that would be the rule – those with knowledge of the kingdom and gifts of teaching would teach, and those with that knowledge and gifts of leadership would lead. That knowledge need not come from a seminary. There is an embarrassment of books available and others in the community to sharpen one another’s knowledge and teaching. This is not to say that seminary education isn’t useful. It is to say, however, that teaching in and about God’s kingdom should not be limited by the number people our seminaries can graduate. Nor should we assume that those graduates are gifted at teaching or leadership. Instead, may God’s Spirit empower those of his people who don’t have a seminary education, but who he has gifted, to teach and to lead powerfully in his kingdom.

Missional Communities

I've recently tapped into a pipeline of information that seems directly relevant to the type of church I've been thinking about. Thanks go to Randy Russell for sending me the links. I've begun reading a 23-entry blog series by Mike Breen, but I haven't finished it yet. So I don't want to comment on it or raise questions because the answers may be in the entries I haven't read.

One of  the blog entries has a short video interview that references vergenetwork.org. I found there much more to explore. Rather than wait until I can write down processed thoughts, I'll connect you to these resources and we can read along at the same time. I'll share some of my thoughts later.