Wide Welcome

How the Unsettling Presence of Newcomers Can Save the Church

Jessica Krey Duckworth, Jessicah Krey Duckworth

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780800699390
• eBook ISBN:
  9781451426250
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

While most churches offer 'new member classes' and genuinely seek to welcome visitors, too often the end result is a rush to assimilate the newcomer into formal membership and all of the invitations to participation in committees, choirs, or fellowship groups that go along with it.

In Wide Welcome, Jessicah Krey Duckworth presents the stark differences between the established congregation, which cares for current members and congregational identity, and the disestablished one, intentionally equipped to facilitate the encounter between new and established members. By intentionally extending the time of newcomer inquiry and allowing their questions, insights, and experiences to reverberate through the entire congregation both they and the church are changed. Wide Welcome does far more than point out the faults and weaknesses in current practice. Duckworth intentionally lays out possible designs for newcomer welcome that are local and particular.

At a time when only nine percent of North American Mainline congregations actively and intentionally facilitate newcomer faith formation, Wide Welcome is an essential and timely book.

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Intersections of Inquiry

A newcomer’s presence in a congregation is, in many respects, unsettling. Newcomers often exemplify the fluidity that characterizes contemporary American religious identity. Their arrival at a particular congregation is more likely about preference and choice than any immutable characteristic. Newcomers are not yet committed to be “my people.” Oldcomers (my creative word for established members) have spent a longer period of time within the congregation and tend to reflect the static and even determined nature of religious identity. Oldcomers often assume that the beliefs and practices of a congregation mirror their religious identity in a fairly consistent way, even if this is not the case. Thus, newcomers in a congregation heighten the oldcomer’s experience of hybridity because a newcomer’s inquiries disturb what is believed to be settled, determined, and fixed.

Liminals

Fluidity characterized Annie’s experience. She didn’t step across the threshold of a Lutheran church out of some commitment to the Lutheran church. She walked through the doors on a Saturday night because she was at her wit’s end. Annie was looking for peace. Born into the Russian Orthodox tradition, attending her grandmother’s nondenominational church occasionally, and then finding herself welcomed in a Lutheran church in her twenties, Annie does not conceive of her religious identity as an immutable characteristic. Her religious identity adapts and adjusts to fit her situation. In the words of two sociologists, Annie’s religious identity is “fuzzy around the edges,” and she is not alone.^[1]

According to sociologists Robert Putnam and David Campbell, 10 percent of every religious tradition is made up of “liminal members” (liminal is from the Latin word for “threshold”): “These folks seem to be standing at the edge of a religious tradition, half in and half out. Sometimes we catch them thinking of themselves as ‘something’ (Baptist or Catholic or whatever), and other times they think of themselves as ‘none.’”^[2] Switching between faith traditions or between denominations within the Christian family is curiously common in the United States. A report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 24 percent of all Americans explore different faiths regularly or occasionally.^[3]

That liminal members are switching, not committing, and regularly trying something new may not be a surprise. Another statistic is more intriguing. The religious beliefs and practices of most liminals do not change even though their affiliations change. Over a two-year period that consisted of switching, liminals “prayed as often . . . , they believed in God just as fervently (or just as tentatively), they went to church virtually as often. . . . The only thing that changed was how they described their religious identity.”^[4] Religious practices remain consistent, religious beliefs stay the same, but religious affiliation and identity change with the wind.

What does this mean? Let’s explore an example. Praying is a Christian practice. An established congregation assumes newcomers already pray consistently because of their Christian identity, even though this may or may not be true. When a newcomer joins a congregation through a three-week membership class and the newcomer’s beliefs and practices around prayer are not explored explicitly, neither the newcomer nor the congregation ever learns about the other’s perceptions of prayer. The newcomer’s beliefs and practices essentially remain the same. If the congregation has a prayer ministry and the newcomer happens to participate in that prayer ministry, then the newcomer’s belief and practice of prayer might experience significant change. It is highly unlikely, however, that a liminal who changes religious affiliation within two years will join an established prayer group. Without any explicit attention to teaching discipleship practices at the time of welcome, newcomers rarely experience any change in their beliefs and practices. In contrast, a disestablished congregation recognizes that the newcomer does not know the congregation’s resources, frameworks, and perceptions for the practice of prayer, and it sets up a process for facilitating a newcomer’s participation in the central practices of discipleship.

Putman and Campbell also found that the percentage of people raised without any religious affiliation, the “nones,” is growing consistently. Thus, if religious practices and beliefs stay the same among people inclined toward religion, then nonreligious practices and beliefs also stay the same among those less inclined toward religion. If we place the growing number of nones alongside the statistic that the practices and beliefs of liminals do not change significantly, the reason to pay attention to how newcomers in congregations learn Christian discipleship practices and articulate beliefs is clear: when someone switches between different religious faiths and different Christian denominations or begins to explore faith again or for the first time, practices and beliefs ought to change.

Lingering with Liminals

Before I turn toward exploring how practices and beliefs might change among liminals, I want to return to my claim in the introduction that welcoming newcomers is necessary to save the church. Through a biblical analogy of God’s unique relationship with the people of Israel and a theological frame that seeks a balance between God’s inclusive and exclusive relationship with God’s people, I determine that the church is saved in its relationship with liminals and nones.

That Israel is God’s and God is Israel’s is the central promise echoing throughout the Hebrew scripture.^[5] The covenant formula, “I will be your God, and you shall be my people,” affirms the distinctiveness—the exclusive nature—of God’s relationship with the descendants of Abraham and Sarah. God promises Abraham and Sarah to provide numerous descendants and land. These promises are personal. The exodus out of slavery in Egypt is the first decisive event in Israel’s history in which God acts decisively and particularly on Israel’s behalf. God chooses a side. Following the exodus, God’s instructions to Moses reiterate the covenantal promise: “I will dwell among the Israelites, and I will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them; I am the Lord their God” (Exod. 29:45).^[6]

God’s promise to be in covenantal relationship with Israel is still particular even when the people turn away from that promise. In the experience of exile, God’s frustration with the people of Israel is clear. Jeremiah preaches destruction, announcing to Israel and Judah that God has turned away:

Thus says the Lord concerning this people:

Truly they have loved to wander,

they have not restrained their feet;

therefore the Lord does not accept them. (Jer. 14:10a)

Less well known are the decrees of the prophet Amos. Amos’s central message is death: “The end has come upon my people Israel” (Amos 8:2). Destruction is as personal as promise. Not only does Amos announce death for God’s beloved children, the prophet asks two questions unparalleled in all of scripture:^[7]

Are you not like the Ethiopians to me,

O people of Israel? says the Lord.

Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt,

and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir? (Amos 9:7)^[8]

In this particular instance, the questions arise: “Who are my people?” and “To whom does the promise extend?” and “Who else is included in the promise?” Do God’s promises extend to the Philistines and the Arameans? Is God’s election possibly something that can be experienced in a different land? According to Amos, yes.

Through Amos’ inclusive announcement of God’s promise, the people of Israel live the question “To whom do these promises extend?” They experience God’s preferential option as broader than they could have ever imagined.^[9] And more, missiologist Peter Cruchley Jones explores through Amos that exile “is not of itself a mistake best soon rectified.”^[10] In exile, the people of God become what the prophet Hosea metaphorically names “Lo-ammi” which means “not my people.” This verse in the opening chapter of Hosea is a direct reversal of the covenantal formula, “for you are not my people, and as for me, not ‘I am’ to you.”^[11] Perhaps, as Crunchley Jones asserts, exile is a place for God’s people to linger because something radical is experienced in being “not my people.”

The tension between “not my people” and “my people” is heartbreaking to observe. Amos is the only prophet who maintains the pain of God’s broken promise without resolving it. Hosea reverses the harsh decree immediately in the very next verse of the chapter. “Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered; and in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God.” (Hosea 1:10) Jeremiah, the prophet of destruction, cannot bear to leave the people without a promise. He recalls the covenant between Israel and God: “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer. 31:33). Amos holds out. Mercy will come in the distant future. Until then, only faith can see hope where there is only despair, and love where there is suffering.

Jesus’ own ministry stands in continuity with the prophets of Israel. And in him, we see the God of Israel. In the fifteenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, a Canaanite woman confronts Jesus. Interpretations of this text often portray Jesus as displaying more human than godly qualities because of his dismissal of the woman’s plea for her daughter. I have come to see this text differently. Here, Jesus is the God of Israel, determined to reestablish the covenant with those who had turned away from God. He responds, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 15:24). At her second request for help, he responds again, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” God’s preferential option is clear. The promise is personal for Israel, and the implication is that this promise is not for her. The woman persists, “But even the dogs eat from the master’s table.” And in her faithful response, we can hear faint echoes of Amos: “If you, the God of Israel, can liberate the Philistines and the Arameans along with the Israelites, then you can heal a Canaanite woman’s daughter.” Jesus instantly recognizes her faith and heals her daughter. God’s exclusive promise is extended in radically inclusive ways.

Exclusivity appears in some of the hardest texts of the New Testament. In John’s Gospel, Jesus says to the disciples, and specifically to Thomas, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). The disciples are perplexed and demand to see the Father. “Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied” (John 14:8). Thomas and Philip doubt even as “I Am” is standing before them. This conversation is found in chapter 14 of John’s Gospel as a portion of Jesus’ farewell discourse. New Testament scholar Sarah Henrich translates the first verse of this chapter with the word, “trust” instead of “believe.” Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, trust in God, trust also in me.”^[12] To trust Jesus is to trust the God of Israel. To see Jesus is to see the Father. To trust and see the God of Israel is to trust a God whose covenantal reach extends beyond our wildest imagination.

Theologian Paul Rajashekar recalls the old patristic dictum extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the church, there is no salvation), which among Lutherans became extra Christum nulla salus (outside Christ, there is no salvation).^[13] Among Lutherans, this particular exclusivism is described in a hermeneutical circle of the solas (sola means “alone”): God alone, Christ alone, grace alone, scripture alone, word alone, faith alone, etc. Rajashekar explains that the solas create what appears to be a boundary of faith, exclusive and particular:

In a multi-faith society, a generic affirmation of faith in ‘God alone’ may not meet a great resistance (except of course by atheists!). However, the Lutheran hermeneutic is not content with a theocentric view of reality that easily accommodates other religious belief in terms of grace and truth. The Lutheran view of ‘God alone’ is imposed with a decisive limitation in the claim, ‘Christ alone.’ But this ‘Christ alone’ claim does not represent a ‘cosmic Christ’ or a ‘universal logic’. Rather, it points to the historical Jesus Christ. The Lutheran way of interpreting Christ is invariably tied to faith in Christ, which in turn comes by hearing of the word (ex auditu). The word alone is not any word, any good word, not even the words of Scripture, but a word of promise that points to grace alone. The grace alone refers back to what God has done in and through Christ alone.^[14]

The solas invite Christians to confess the promise; ultimately the cross alone is our theology. The boundary of the solas (or what I have been terming the promise) becomes clear only when it is met by the simuls (or what I might call the question), and for Rajashekar, the simuls are the basis for Christian engagement. The simuls affirm God’s radical inclusive love for the world. Without the simuls the solas will turn in upon themselves and vice versa.

Lutheran theology understands that God’s revelation is simultaneously hidden and revealed; God’s activity occurs simultaneously through the work of the left hand and right hand; Christ is simultaneously human and divine; the saving activity of God is simultaneously through law and gospel; the Christian is simultaneously saint and sinner; the sacrament of the bread and wine is simultaneously the body and blood; the kingdom of God is simultaneously present here and now and not yet.^[15]

The simul approach captures the radical inclusive love God has for God’s creation and enables Christians to view the world in the same way, engaging creation and culture. God’s intention is for creation to be good.^[16] What is good in the world is God’s creative work as larva dei—the work of God under the mask of God. Where evil reigns in the world and where cultures and practices turn in upon themselves, God is at work making good—even within the church. Indeed, in Christ, the cosmos has been redeemed and so too the materials of culture and practices and the Holy Spirit is making the church’s engagement holy. Thus, Christians can engage the world trusting that God’s hidden work of redemption through the cross is present.^[17] The people of th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Deliberate Disestablishment
• Intersections of Inquiry
• Facilitating Newcomer Participation
• Designing Disestablishment
• The Task of the Ecclesia Crucis
• Appendix: Research Methodology
• Bibliography
• Index