Organizing Church

Grassroots Practices for Embodying Change in Your Congregation, Your Community, and Our World

Tim Conder, Daniel Rhodes

• Publisher: Chalice Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9780827227644
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

The 21st century is the age of community organizing, from rallies in the streets to online movements for change. What if congregations embraced community organizing? Organizing Church offers a unique perspective that blends proven principles of community organizing and research on socially active congregations into a formula that will revitalize and empower churches as change-agents. Seasoned pastors and community activists Tim Conder and Dan Rhodes will help pastors and other church leaders build healthier congregations, create a deep culture of discipleship in their community, and respond to the challenges presented by the global culture of the 21st century. Organizing Church is the essential field guide for joining the social justice movement today.

1—RE-Assessing the Church as It Is and Could Be

It is fair to say that Dan and I have sustained a tumultuous love affair with the church. A complicated but inescapable devotion seems inevitable for us, given that we have had so many personally and professionally formative experiences under the caring and often maddening wings of the church. Sara Groves’ achingly beautiful song “The Long Defeat” (2007) has been a favorite in the worship liturgy of the community we led together. It describes the spiritual hopes and struggles of so many in our fellowship, including us. Here are the final lyrics:

And I pray for inspiration
And a way I cannot see
It’s too heavy to carry
And impossible to leave
It’s too heavy to carry
And I will never leave1

We appear to be church lifers. We never intend to leave. But we have prayed for, hoped for, and painfully struggled for new ways forward. Without getting too far ahead of ourselves, here’s a snapshot of the backdrop that shapes our difficult devotion to the body of Christ.

The rural Baptist church I (Tim) attended in my childhood was a centerpiece of community life in that small corner of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, where I grew up. The obvious integrity of so many kind and caring persons, the unchangeable routines, the unshakable doctrine, and celebratory funerals—even the casseroles, softball games, and wild play with the other kids on the grounds—yielded a rooted sense of safety that certainly trumped the long sermons, the unquestioned expectation of dressing up, and my parents’ insistence that we attend three times a week (Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, and Wednesday nights!). I grew up about as “churched” as you can get. I made it to my teens before my innocent assent began to erode. Dan’s roots are remarkably similar, another Baptist (in his case Independent Baptist) living in the deep South—though he one-ups my story a bit by being a “pastor’s kid.” Dan was actually born while his father taught at Bob Jones University. As a child and teen, he watched his dad struggle free of the harsh embrace of fundamentalism and preach a hopeful gospel in communities that often seemed to fear change more than they did death. Most of his family remains “in the business,” so to speak, serving the church in various roles.

The first church I served during my mid-twenties, while in seminary, was located in Boston’s suburban technology belt. This large church had a historical and well-executed commitment to programmatic excellence. Meetings began and ended on time. The stacked VAX superminicomputer in a dedicated air-conditioned room looked like it could run NASA in a pinch, and the brand new, boxy, chunky Macintosh SE’s were mobile and absolutely superb! Brochures were sleek and impeccable. The office ran like a Timex is supposed to. The staff was professional. The senior pastor was widely renowned. Sermons were thoughtful, organized, and culturally relevant to the young professionals who filled the pews. Given my humble, blue-collar, country roots, the congregants were oh-so-polished and impressive!

My ecclesial journey continued with many exciting and unforeseen stops. Through long association with The Leadership Network, a foundation in Texas that networked large churches, I was exposed to the deep humanity of staff members at some of the most notable megachurches in the country during the season of their meteoric growth and unchallenged cultural ascent. As a leader in the Emergent Church movement, I encountered and watched the birth of fellowships that were theologically, culturally, artistically, and economically creative beyond my wildest expectations. Though some of these communities grew notably, many were intentionally small and surprisingly beautiful. To that point I had been enchanted by the possibilities of large churches and was often shocked to see the potential of these small communities. In response to that vision, I founded a small Christian community in Durham, North Carolina (Emmaus Way), that Dan joined in our first year. He and I then pastored together for a decade (and I continue to co-pastor) this artistic, passionate, thoughtful, over-educated, odd, small community that overwhelms us with hope.

Obviously, we have been immersed in low-church Protestantism. But when Dan first attended the church I was planting, he told me we were “free church sacramentalists”—meaning that while our polity and order eschewed hierarchy and pomp, we were a community that no less stressed the real presence of God’s grace among us, particularly in our collective practices. Somewhere along the way, I found the wonder and mystery of the Roman Catholic Church and, largely through the influence of Jesuit spirituality, began receiving spiritual direction and developed a growing love for liturgy. I often share that I finally learned to pray, despite all those years in church, when I was guided in the rule of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. As a Duke Divinity M.Div. and Th.D., finding community in Duke’s Baptist House, Dan was schooled in the value of liturgy and institutional structure. Hence, it was no surprise that when Dan finished his degree a few years ago, he followed the call to teach at Loyola University in Chicago and his family found a home in the wonderful community of St. Augustine’s Episcopal.

In the last decade, as pastors deeply involved in community organizing and as scholars whose research often engages churches of color, our horizons have been enlarged and our convictions both challenged and strengthened. We have witnessed the might and splendor of the Southern black church, a powerful institution that prompted the legendary Duke University professor and pastor Charles Eric Lincoln to offer this epithet:

Beyond its purely religious function, as critical as that has been, the Black church in its historical role as lyceum, conservatory, forum, social service center, political academy and financial institution, has been and is for Black America the mother of our culture, the champion of our freedom, the hallmark of our civilization.2

We, too, have been captivated by the black church and the many churches of color in our communities who have led the fight for justice and taught us so much about what it means to embody the gospel. We have been honored to engage together for change in our communities.

These political experiences have taken us far from our conservative roots into mainline and progressive congregations: the “liberal” churches we were taught to disregard and even fear in our childhood. Moreover, we’ve forged strong relationships among neo-monastic communities, other intentional communities, and in the networks of progressive evangelicals. We certainly haven’t seen all of the ecclesial landscape and don’t pretend to have done so. But simply put, we have a long history of encountering the rich diversity of the church and continue to do so.

Having seen so many great possibilities and beautiful expressions of Christian community, we must admit, however, that we are also profoundly…disappointed. That disappointment in the midst of such great potential was the tension that formed the starting place for this book.

Before naming that disappointment, we want to be quick to distinguish our disappointment from our horror. We are truly horrified (but not surprised) that various streams of Christianity have become integrally entrenched in white privilege, racism, nationalism, xenophobia, nonsensical supports of the Second Amendment, national militarism, anti-intellectual pride/fear that rejects important scientific consensuses, and an unblinkingly idolatrous commitment to capitalism. Having grown up during the nationally prominent desegregation battle in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system, I have always known that churches could be wrong on social issues and social change. And I have never forgotten the critical impulse that was forged in the discoveries that shattered my faithful innocence. There is clearly a need for ongoing constructive critique. We also share in the duty to support those who prophetically write about the structural deformation of the church in our present society.3

But this book is not about that horror; it is about the possibility we have glimpsed at times in many churches and faith communities—who, when organized, exhibit a beautiful, relational authenticity within their fellowship, and have rallied to do some astounding faithful justice work where they are. In just over a decade in our own community, we have labored with other congregations to secure living wage agreements from our city and the major university that is our city’s largest employer. We have fought successfully to establish universal free breakfasts (along with the already established lunch subsidy) for students in need in our public school system. We’ve worked together to orchestrate one of the most effective rapid-rehousing network resources in the nation. Right now, in a city that is exploding with urban professional growth and the subsequent secondary explosion of development and city subsidies for upper-end housing for the entrepreneurial class (aka TIFs or other tax breaks), we are securing downtown land adjacent to significant transportation hubs for the development of workforce housing for those earning below the median income. Statewide, the NAACP’s Moral Movement is leading a coalition that includes an ecumenical and multifaith array of fellowships to fight against a coordinated attack from lawmakers on voting rights, the privatization (and, as we all know, segregation) of public education, and the invidious rejection of Medicaid expansion that results in the deaths of hundreds of North Carolinians each year. As enthusiastic participants/leaders in that coalition, we have pushed for living wages and protecting the environment and have engaged in the struggle for what we take to be kingdom justice in judicial processes and policy provisions. We have seen what can be done, which leads us to wonder: How much more of God’s righteous reign could be embodied in our community and in our world were our churches to become more actively engaged in this mission? We suspect that our imagination is too limited.

Herein lies our disappointment. Despite what obviously can be done and what could be done by organizing bodies, why aren’t more churches (particularly the dominant, white, evangelical, or mainline churches) working toward this incredibly attainable vision? Dan and I continue to expect the church to incarnate, not just discuss, what it is called to be. We recognize that we will not achieve full perfection, but we also yearn to see congregations embrace their potential. When we reflect on our calls to ministry, a common script quickly emerges. We look for a church that is so strange, so counter-culturally inclusive, so counter-intuitively free of fear and concern of self-preservation, so unique in vision that it can, in partnership with many allies, establish a beloved community in this world that reflects the jubilee of Israel that Mary hailed at hearing news of her conception, and that Jesus declared at his coming.

Sadly, despite the many victories described above, we see churches with this appetite and sustained practice only rarely. We see many, many churches obsessed with growth—though few of them succeed in this endeavor. Even the congregations most ardently devoted to reaching the unchurched generally succeed only in siphoning off members from other churches in the zero-sum Darwinian game of American “church growth.” “Beggar thy neighbor” practices drive increasing competition and aggressive marketing campaigns for the same population. Those on the losing side of this contest focus on survival, training all their resources on keeping the doors open, and hoping against hope that the next clergy will magically bring the young people back. Other congregations eschew the grow-or-perish marketing arena for the pursuit of right doctrine despite the glaring reality that their finely honed systematic theologies inevitably differ from folks down the street also honing theirs. This subtle competition of the mind, in our experience, often loses touch with the very fruit the church should bear, tending to produce not much more than animosity and isolationism.

Deep inside us is the gnawing lament that none of the above really sounds like the transformative gospel preached and embodied by Jesus. We don’t fault our colleagues caught in the hamster wheels of working from week to week without sight of larger opportunities. We’re naming sins we have committed. This is a systemic, collective problem—the commodifie...

Table of contents

• Praise for Organizing Church
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1—RE-Assessing the Church as It Is and Could Be
• 2—RE-Defining the Church: Practice-Based Ecclesiology
• 3—RE-Empowering the Church: Why Power Matters for Congregations
• 4—RE-Connecting the Church: The Constructive Practice of the Relational Meeting
• 5—RE-Collecting the Church: House Meetings and Discernment
• 6—RE-Uniting the Church: On Conflict and Revitalization
• 7—RE-Discovering the Church: An Organizing and Reorganizing Community
• Appendix 1— One-to-Ones: Building a Relational Culture
• Appendix 2— House Meetings/Listening Sessions: Building a Relational Culture
• About the Authors