Embracing God's Future without Forgetting the Past

A Conversation about Loss, Grief, and Nostalgia in Congregational Life

Michael K. Girlinghouse

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781506458885
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506458892
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Many congregations today are dealing with changes that have led to decline and significant loss. In Embracing God's Future without Forgetting the Past, Michael K. Girlinghouse argues that until a congregation comes to terms with its perceived losses through a healthy process of grief, it will be paralyzed in the present and unable to think creatively about the future.

Acknowledging and expressing grief will give the congregation the courage to redefine its relationship with the past and draw strength and encouragement from its memories as it steps into the future.

Drawing on more than thirty years of ministry experience in varied settings and concurrent study and teaching about loss, grief, and nostalgia, Girlinghouse shows clergy, church staff, and lay leaders how they can work through the experience of loss and grief, both personally and in their congregation.

Part 1 discusses loss and grief using a contemporary, task-based model for the grief process. It also introduces recent research on the value of nostalgia.

In part 2, Girlinghouse helps leaders tell their congregation's story, including its losses, examine how that story fits in our current social context, and explore ways to accept the reality of its losses and express grief over them.

Part 3 considers ways congregations can think more adaptively and creatively about the future without forgetting or devaluing the past. Girlinghouse presents appreciative inquiry as a tool to discover and build on a congregation's strengths while coming to terms with its losses.

Part 4 is about embracing God's future for the congregation, "remembering forward," and making the changes necessary to move from the sadness of loss to the joy of taking up life again.

Each chapter includes a Bible study and questions for reflection and discussion.

II

Litany of Lament: The Reality of Loss in Congregational Life

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble. (Ps 46:1)

“Come with me!” I urged my friend. We were standing in the long hall of a hotel conference center outside a row of meeting rooms. I was trying to convince him to join me for a workshop called “The Future of the Church.” I knew the presenter and was hoping to pick up some new perspectives and ideas about where the church was going and how to help the faith community I was serving get there.

“I was going to take a nap,” my friend grumbled and then reluctantly followed me into the meeting room.

The lecture, illustrated with charts and graphs, started with a lengthy presentation on the “life cycle of a church.” The presenter talked about the heady, exciting days of a new mission start. He explained that as those nascent congregations grew and launched new programs and ministries, they had energy and enthusiasm to take risks and do things like set up and take down folding chairs in a school gym each week. He moved on to talk about the plateau years, when the traditions and patterns of programs, worship, roles, and relationships became established and a status quo emerged. Finally, he talked about years of decline and, finally, the death of the congregation.

He suggested that the only way to circumvent this cycle of birth, maturity, and decline was to intervene and help the congregation be creative and innovative during the height of the cycle, when everything was going well. Waiting to intervene until the congregation moved into decline made it difficult, if not impossible, to turn things around.

That scenario was bleak enough, especially when I thought about many of the congregations I knew that were definitely on the downhill slope of his graphs. It was depressing to think many of them were hopeless causes.

But then, he moved on to talk about the state of mainline denominations. It was clear that, in his opinion, they were over the peak and headed precipitously down the slope of decline. He warned that if we didn’t do something soon, the deaths of these denominations were soon to follow.

That was it. That was where the workshop ended. No word of hope. No word of encouragement. No suggestions for how to “do something soon” to address the bleak picture he painted.

My friend and I walked out of the workshop dejected, a gloomy cloud hanging over us. “Don’t ever invite me to another workshop,” my friend said as we walked slowly down the long hall of the conference center. I couldn’t blame him. I knew how he felt. We both carried a rock of helplessness and hopelessness . . . of grief . . . in the pits of our stomachs.

I swore to myself that I would never, ever leave a group or congregation hanging hopeless like that. I pray I have been true to that promise.

Even before attending this workshop, I had thought that recounting tales of decline was unhelpful to congregations. The workshop only confirmed that belief. What good was it to dwell on the bleak path that inevitably led to death? How helpful was it to climb into the pit of ashes and just sit there? Though I was certainly willing to respond to a congregation’s litany of lament—a recounting of its experience of change, decline, and loss—when leaders and members brought it up, I preferred to move on quickly to talk about ways to address the changes they had experienced.

Since then, I have learned from observation and hard experience that until we come to terms with our laments about the lost past, it is hard to even begin thinking more creatively about the opportunities of the future. The sense of loss, and the helplessness and hopelessness that come with it, can become an insurmountable barrier to turning things around and embracing God’s future. Denying, avoiding, or attempting to circumvent the grief that comes from these laments can put a congregation on the inevitable path to death that the presenter described at his workshop.

The way to deal with the litany of lament the presenter and many congregations sing is not to pretend there is nothing to lament or attempt to skip over the lament and get on with the problem-solving. We also cannot deal with it by curling up in a ball on the couch to wait for the end to come. Instead, we need to recognize the reality of the loss and its impact on our congregations, acknowledge the grief, and, with the courage of our faith, work through it—as hard as that can be. After all, as people of faith, we do not grieve as those with no hope.

Telling Your Congregation’s Story of Life and Loss

So far, we have looked at the experience of loss and how losses affect our individual lives, learned some of the basic principles behind a task-based model of grief, and introduced an understanding of nostalgia that suggests it is a resource for drawing strength from our past for the sake of embracing the future. Now, as we turn to thinking about your own congregation’s experience with loss and reflecting on the litany of lament your particular community of faith sings, I would like you to take some significant time to lay out the story of your congregation in some detail by developing a timeline that reflects your congregation’s experiences in mission and ministry. We’ll be adding to this timeline and reflecting on it throughout the rest of the book as we learn how we might embrace God’s future without forgetting the past. If your congregation has a written history, you might want to read through it before starting this exercise.

When working with grieving people, storytelling is one of the most important ways people get in touch with their experience of loss, the emotions and other reactions of grief, and the meaning of the loss for their lives. Storytelling facilitates healing and hope and opens one up to the possibilities for the future.

When I was teaching my “Death: Grief and Growth” class in the university, I was often asked what the class was about. Kidding, I would reply, “It’s a how-to course.” Actually, I wasn’t kidding. The class was about learning how the reality of death shapes our lives as human beings. On the first day of class I would always say, “This is not a class about death. It is a class about living life with the death left in it.” The timeline you will be creating in this exercise and in the “In Conversation” discussion that follows will help you tell your congregation’s story with the loss left in it.

You’ll need to start by getting a roll of newsprint. These can be found at moving or packing stores, or as “end rolls” at newspaper offices that still print their own paper. If you can’t find a roll of newsprint, use sheets of newsprint paper. If you use newsprint sheets, I would suggest using one sheet for each decade of the congregation’s life. It will be helpful to have several sets of colored markers available for this exercise.

Start by unrolling several feet of the newsprint on tables set end to end (two or three, depending on how old your congregation is). It will be easier if you do this in a larger room with space to spread out. On this newsprint you will be laying out the basic timeline of your congregation from its founding to the present day. Draw a horizontal line one-quarter of the way from the top edge of the paper and mark off the decades.

Now, arrange your group members according to how long you’ve been a member or participant in the life of the congregation. When facing the paper, the long-term members should be to the left, the relative newcomers to the right. This way, those who have been around the longest can chart the earliest days of the congregation, and the newcomers can work on the part of the timeline when they have been involved.

Next, each person should mark on the timeline the year when they joined the congregation. After noting this, spend a few minutes talking about what brought you to join this community of faith. Who played a role in your joining? What memories about this congregation make you feel nostalgic?

After everyone has had a chance to tell their personal story, lay out as much of the congregation’s story as you can. If you have a congregation historian or archive committee, you might invite that person or group to be a part of this exercise. If there are still charter members around, you might want to invite them too. You can either do this work in smaller groups, with each group taking a decade, or all together, depending on the size of your group. Note significant events, the coming and going of pastors or other significant leaders, important anniversaries, the beginning and ending of programs, building projects, and other key projects. If there are gaps in the timeline, you may need to do some homework to finish it.

Here are some questions you should consider:

• When was the congregation founded? Who was the founding pastor? What key events led up to and immediately followed the congregation’s founding?
• Who were the pastors who served the congregation and what years did they serve?
• Were there years when you had an interim or vice pastor? No pastor at all? Make sure to mark down those transition years and significant events and activities during those years.

• Are there other leaders who should be noted? For example, an organist, music director, youth director, secretaries or administrators, volunteers, and so on.
• How many places have housed your congregation over the years? Where did you worship when the ministry first began? When were buildings built? Added on to or remodeled? Destroyed or damaged by fire or flood or wind or some other disaster?
• What key programs, ministries, activities, celebrations, or other events do you remember?

Draw a second line in the middle of the page. Now, go back through the timeline and, using a different-color marker or pen, identify the losses your congregation has experienced.

• When did the pastors who served you leave? What were the circumstances of their departure?

During one of these conversations in a congregation I thought I knew well, I learned about a pastor who left on vacation and died in a fiery car accident along with his whole family. No one ever talked about it, and yet, when I heard the story, lightbulbs came on. I suddenly understood some puzzling behaviors I had observed in the congregation like their habit of keeping their pastors at arm’s length, their resistance to the pastor taking time off, and their excessive concern about all the driving I do as their bishop.

• When were there conflicts? Divisions? Disagreements? When did they begin? How and when were they resolved (if ever)?
  .
  
• If you changed buildings, what losses were experienced as the congregation moved from one place to another?
• What significant departures and deaths do you remember? The last charter member? A key leader moving away? The tragic death of a child?

I know of one medium-sized congregation (about 150 in worship) that lost ten key members to death in one year! Those deaths resulted in the loss of a number of leaders, longtime friends, and around 20 percent of the congregation’s annual budget. The grief from those losses convinced the congregation they no longer had the resources to do ministry, paralyzed their ability to think creatively about the future, and had them contemplating closing . . . though, in reality, they still had more than enough people and resources to continue in ministry.

• What other losses has the congregation experienced? Remember to think about symbolic as well as tangible losses.

Draw a third line three-quarters of the way from the top of the paper. As best as you can, mark down any significant events in your local community, state, province or region, and nation. Again, you might need to do a little research before completing this third line. Note how significant events in the world around you affected your congregation.

In Conversation After you have finished your work, talk about what you see. Do events on the three lines align in any significant way? Do your experiences of loss connect with changes in the congregation or in the world around you? What patterns begin to emerge? What cycles repeat themselves? If your congregation is in decline, when did that downward trend start? What was going on both inside and outside your congregation when that happened? If you are growing, consider the same questions.

4

The Story of Loss: Ministry in a World of Change

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. (1 Cor 1:27)

Accepting the reality of the losses we face is the first task of grieving.¹ In the task-based approach to mourning we have been exploring, “acceptance” means acknowledging the losses we have experienced, understanding how those losses affect us and actively working through the resulting grief. Congregations, like individuals whose loved ones have died, are usually quite capable of naming the changes they have witnessed and the losses that have accompanied them. The litany of lament is all too common. We have been singing it for years. We all know the words.

Aging members

Empty pews

Lack of young fam...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface: Invitation to a Conversation
• Leaving Eden: An Introduction to Loss, Grief, and Nostalgia
• Litany of Lament: The Reality of Loss in Congregational Life
• Opening the Blinds: Adapting to Loss without Forgetting the Past
• Remembering Forward: Embracing God’s Future with Boldness
• Postlude: A Changing Church in a Changing World
• Notes
• Bibliography