May 30, 2024

By Rev. Rick King

When we’re not just trying to survive, much of our time as churches these days seems to focus on how we are distinctive, special, local, and different from that other church down the road or across town.

The reason is simple: Amid the large number of churches and the dwindling number of people who might be looking for a spiritual community, we want to stand out in an authentic way, and much money, time, and energy is spent by churches trying to determine what our “secret sauce” is and how we can let the public know about it.

But we can trick ourselves into believing that we’re unique in our assets and struggles, which prevents us from learning from others and working together.

I say this because we’re developing relationships with another church in the community, New Life Presbyterian, and thinking of merging with them. And we need to look as much at what we have in common with them as first-ring suburban, progressive, socially-active congregations, as the ways we differ in our denominationalism. Sometimes I think we in the United Church of Christ think we’re unique where others, Presbyterians included, are not.

But a certain Canadian pastor who follows trends in religion and culture cautions us about thinking this way. For three reasons, he says:

The mono-culture is everywhere–In other words, globalization and the internet have brought other cultures closer and enabled nations like the U.S. with the resources to export American culture to places around the world. Think Taylor Swift, McDonald’s, Apple, Gmail, ChatGPT, and Microsoft. And the mono-culture depends on our communities not being distinctive in order to market their products. “If their communities were really as unique as pastors say they are, Apple wouldn’t sell iPhones in them.”

People are people–Wherever we go, we see humans and communities facing the same things: greed, envy, lust, anger, ego, deceit, self-discipline, connection, joy, laughter, sadness, and the like. This is a big reason why we can study the Bible and other religions and ethical traditions, and preach from them and find ourselves identifying with their themes. In our present, divided society, it’s easy to think we have no common ground, but one of the things our merger process with NLPC will challenge us to do is look for the things we have in common—our demographics, program life, obstacles, hopes and fears.

Obstacles are obstacles–Our two task forces have met several times and discovered much in common already, including and maybe especially the challenges we face in order to attract people into community and grow, both numerically and spiritually. And as churches with attendance figures in the 50-100 range, we have much in common as smaller congregations: A small number of people show up and lead the church and do most of the work, and it’s a barrier to future growth if we don’t expand that core and share power among more people. Churches in larger-size brackets experience distinctive challenges of their own, which they have to deal with, too.

Starting this Sunday, Pastor Riz Prakasim and I will be preaching from the same texts in our congregations’ worship services, starting with what we can learn from the letter to the Ephesians, which addresses the way God’s purposes get worked out in community, for good and for ill. Above all, Ephesians is a book filled with hope because of God’s initiative with human beings.

God made the first move. Now, what’s yours? What’s ours?