Kindness and Good Cheer
September 2009
by Carol Mueller The church was full, very full, almost the kind of full that comes with lilies, trumpets, and the triumphant strains of “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” But it wasn’t Easter. It wasn’t Sunday morning, either. It was a Friday evening and there was no worship service. The gathering was for a meeting.
What kind of meeting brings out Lutherans in such robust numbers? Certainly not the annual “All-in-favor-say-aye-all-opposed-nay-motion-is-carried,” snoozer, in which a head count is sometimes needed to make sure there’s a quorum.
No, the meeting that packs Lutheran pews is the kind that challenges the status quo. It’s one that promises—or threatens—major change. It’s a meeting like one held in my own ELCA congregation last year, a town hall meeting called to discuss extending a call to a gay pastor.
The previous Sunday we had met the pastor, a gay man who was celibate. Because of his celibacy, there were no synod prohibitions against calling him. In fact, he was recommended by our local synod but the final decision was up to us.
As I reflect on that evening, it occurs to me that my congregation is almost a microcosm of the wider church. The ELCA Churchwide Assembly gathered this August in Minneapolis. Among other things, they considered a social statement on human sexuality. Included in that debate is an important decision: Should the ELCA allow men and women in committed same-sex relationships to serve as ordained pastors? (Read more about the ELCA's social statements.)
It’s a polarizing question. The issue of gay and lesbian clergy, celibate or not, stirs up strong feelings. As the microphone was passed among members of my congregation, many stood up and spoke. Some were articulate in their support of gay clergy; a few were firm in their opposition. For or against the call, each person expressed his or her opinion and the reasons for it. I listened to the comments and mentally listed the points I wanted to make.
Then the microphone was passed to a good friend. I knew his views because he and his wife had discussed them with me, so I thought I was prepared for what he would say.
I wasn’t. My friend began his remarks with six words that flabbergasted me: “I don’t think this congregation wants . . .”
Whoa! How could he presume to know what the congregation wants? A tsunami of indignation flooded my brain, obliterating patience, tact, and whatever remarks I’d been considering. He was barely finished when my hand shot up in the air, waving urgently for the microphone.
I was on my feet in a nanosecond. “Joe, I don’t think you or anyone else can speak for the congregation,” I said. “Each one of us has to look into our heart and vote for what we think is right.”
Though I meant what I said, I said more than I meant. Why did I call Joe by name? I didn’t have to personalize it. What was I thinking?
A mutual friend told me later that Joe was hurt and felt that I had “scolded him in front of the whole church.” I subsequently apologized for calling him out and our friendship survived.
Christians, Lutherans, old friends—even when we have faith and values in common, we cannot always agree on every issue. We can, however, respect one another’s views, hear them out patiently, and respond without criticizing.
Sometimes we fall short. I was reminded of that meeting when I read Paul’s letter to the Romans, with this exhortation to fellow Christians: “Encourage each other in the faith.”
I don’t think Paul is telling us to preach to each other or hand out smiley faces. I take his exhortation as a behavior check. Do we exemplify Christian love as we interact with our fellow believers? Do we practice kindness, patience, and generosity of spirit with other Christians? Do we offer TLC to the people in our own congregation or do we take them for granted?
What if we criticized people less and praised more? What if we expected less and contributed more? What if we complained less and thanked more?
What if we just lightened up, loosened up, and loved each other, warts and all? Would it become second nature? Very possibly.
Kindness and acceptance
Ask Marge Thorin about her congregational life at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Spokane Valley, Wash., and she doesn’t mention the words kindness and acceptance. She doesn’t have to; they are implicit in her stories.
“Our quilting group meets every Tuesday to make quilts for Lutheran World Relief and to share concerns and pray for one another,” said Marge. “One of our members just had breast surgery and we’ve surrounded her with love and concern.
“Our church secretary often directs new people to the quilters. We’re the unofficial welcoming committee for older women who may be alone.”
One of those women came into the group from nowhere. She had no church connection, but the quilters reached out to her. “She was overwhelmed that we would treat her as one of us and care about her,” Marge said.
“We come to the quilting group every week because we don’t want to miss it. We’re fabric junkies,” she confessed with a laugh, “and old enough to be frugal and want to use every scrap.”
For this lifelong seamstress and quilter, making a quilt is more difficult than it used to be. So are a lot of other things in her life, because for more than a decade Marge Thorin has been legally blind. She can no longer drive, but lives close enough to church that she can walk.
Other problems are not so easily solved, but when her husband is not able to take her places, help is always at hand from fellow members of Good Shepherd. “Everybody is always so willing, so offering, recognizing your disability and accepting it,” Marge said.
That acceptance extends to all members of the congregation.
Marge tells about a 16-year¬old boy who is developmentally disabled. “He can be disruptive, but he’s one of us,” she said. “He comes to church every Sunday and he knows everybody’s name and shakes hands with us.”
The boy is being raised by his mother and grandmother, who is in her 90s, and Marge thinks it’s important “how everyone has surrounded the grandma and mom with care and concern, whether we agree with their decisions about the boy or not.”
Christian care and concern, I came to learn, are vital during the tough times life dishes out. After a failed back surgery, I spent four months on disability from work, unable to sit, drive a car, or do routine tasks. When my husband was at work, members of my congregation stepped in, bringing food, doing shopping, driving me to physical therapy, and simply visiting and praying with me.
Our minister of health came regularly and together we walked to the local ice cream shop for a milkshake. Exercise, sunshine, friendship, and fresh air: It was really good medicine. Scientists should study the therapeutic effects of chocolate shakes.
Humor and communication
When lifelong Lutherans Judy and Lee Mills moved three years ago from the suburbs of Chicago to the outskirts of Lancaster, Pa., it was a homecoming of sorts. Both are Pennsylvania natives, but they didn’t return to their home town or home church.
Still, there was something awfully familiar about their new church, Lutheran Church of the Ascension, in Willow Street, Pa. That was the name of the church they had transferred from in Illinois, on Willow Road. They lived four miles from their Illinois church and moved into a home four miles from their new Pennsylvania church.
To top off the string of coincidences, Judy joined Lydia Circle, the name of the circle she had belonged to at her former church.
“I think we were meant to be here,” she said with a chuckle, as she rattled off all the church-related coincidences. Active in her former church, Judy had no problem getting acquainted at “Ascension Pennsylvania,” as she calls it. Lydia Circle and Women of the ELCA were her point of entry. “We use the Lutheran Woman Today Bible study and we really like it,” she said.
Judy also likes the good-humored atmosphere that prevails in her congregation. While members have differences of opinion, like all congregations, “There’s a fair amount of levity, a lot of banter. You can’t walk into church without smiling,” she said. “It breaks a lot of tension.”
She’s even been the object of the humor. It stemmed from her commitment to Hurricane Katrina relief and several trips to Biloxi she’d made with her former congregation to help with rebuilding. She spoke to many in her new congregation about the trips and the need that is still there.
“I am conscious of saying ‘This is how we did it at Ascension Illinois,’” Judy admitted.
One Sunday morning she got a public reminder of that habit. The pastor, in announcing a new congregational outreach initiative, said: “And here’s this new member, Judy Mills, and I get so tired of hearing Biloxi, Biloxi, Biloxi . . .”
The upshot? Her pastor took a work trip to the Gulf Coast and returned with the same commitment to the region that Judy feels. “I think he’s preached about it at least 10 times since he got back,” she said.
Patience and potluck
What do you call a church that is the product of eight congregations put together?
No, not the octochurch. You call it United in Faith Lutheran Church, Chicago, and if you are charter member Laurel Kenneally, you remember in vivid detail how it was created.
“At that time it was the largest church merger in the synod,” said Laurel, who lives in Northbrook, Ill. She originally belonged to Nebo Lutheran, one of eight small, struggling congregations that joined together 11 years ago to become one strong new church, the aptly named United in Faith.
The process wasn’t easy. Those eight clusters of Chicago Lutherans overcame multiple challenges on the road to a successful merger. There were old church buildings to sell— an emotional process—a new site to find and acquire, and a getting-acquainted period for members that required time and patience.
“Issues were music and order of service, but one thing we all agreed on was that none of our current pastors could serve the new church,” Laurel said.
A less tangible problem surfaced early and often in the form of a phrase she still repeats with a sigh: “We’ve always done it that way.”
“We said, ‘Forget that phrase!’” Laurel recalled. “A lot of people had to come to terms with that.” Each congregation lost a few people to the merger, but most supported it.
“Once a month we had a combined service at the various churches, and at first the congregations sat with each other,” Laurel said. “One summer we held an outdoor worship service at a local park followed by a potluck. After all, we’re Lutherans,” she added with a smile.
Food, coffee, and Christian fellowship worked their magic. Friendships began to form and differences began to fade.
When the building committee finally settled on a site for the new church, they held an open house. “It was a vacant printing factory on the northwest side, not far from all eight churches, and the bus went right by it,” said Laurel. “We sat there and looked at this big empty space and they presented a vision of the new church.
“But a lot of people said, ‘This doesn’t look like a church!’ and we had to say over and over, ‘What is the church? The church is the people.’”
Today, United in Faith still doesn’t look like a church on the outside, but it’s a beautiful sacred space inside. So are all of our churches, if only we remember Laurel’s words. The church really is the people.
Carol Mueller belongs to an ELCA congregation in the Chicago suburbs.