The Church Around the Corner

There's so much talk about the decline of Mainline Protestantism that I’m bored just writing these words. Mainline churches are suffering. We are low in numbers and low in money and Washington Street UMC is no different. Our ability to sustain ourselves is on shaky ground. For many churches it’s because it’s no longer the 1950s and people are not flocking to church and giving it their time energy and funds. So many fixtures around our buildings have not changed since then. So many plaques date to that period as if nothing substantial has taken place within these walls for 50 years.

In many ways, that’s the simple truth. Our culture has massively shifted and so have our churches, but we have not done anything to catch up except wallow in the self-pity and loss of our golden era.

Have you watched the Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks flick You’ve Got Mail? I feel like we’re The Shop Around the Corner. We’re the local store that’s trying to survive. But there are Fox Books churches out there that are easier to drive to, offer slicker merchandize, intoxicating interiors, and cheap grace.

People should come to us for some of the same reasons that they don’t want to go to a super store. Some of it might be out of an interest in reconnecting to the local, the organic, the fair-trade side of life. We do have fair-trade coffee on Sunday mornings. We do serve organic meals on Wednesday evenings. We are a local church with local folks.

We live in such a time of anxiety and uncertainty. The churches that are growing are ones that can offer stability and certainty. You have questions? We have answers!

Well, let me tell you I have questions too! More questions than answers really. And my answers do not always satisfy me. We don’t have certainty here. Stability is a myth. Security never really existed anyway.

But if a church doesn’t offer answers, then what good are we?
Is it worth your time to go to a place where everyone, including the pastors, have just as many questions and doubts as you do? Is it worth it to sit in a Sunday School and wrestle with issues and never come up with anything definitive? Is it worth getting to know people who don’t have it all figured out?

It turns out that I do have an answer: Yes. It’s worth it to come together with other people and wrestle and fight and question and talk and cry and sing and pray. It is good to not be alone. It is good to find other believers and doubters, to figure out what that means, to figure out who we want to be, and to figure out what we can do for those suffering around us.

I don’t know how the story at Washington Street ends. I hope that we don’t fight a good fight only to close our doors anyway. I hope it doesn’t “become something really depressing like a Baby Gap.” Like everything else, we’re facing great times of change. I’m not sure what its going to look like, but I hope you’ll join me in figuring it out.