I have fallen down the rabbit hole of genealogical research. I have always liked doing research and I am interested in my own family’s history. Some of it is very easy to find. My parents are buried in the same cemetery as my grandparents and both sets of great-grandparents on my dad’s side of the family. My grandma and I used to go to the cemetery to take flowers on “Decoration Day” aka Memorial Day. My husband and I keep up the tradition. That now means for us either a very full morning or two separate trips to the cemetery where his parents are buried; the large very old cemetery in Peoria where much of his family and some of mine is buried; the rural cemetery where my family mentioned above is buried; and the old cemetery where one of his great-grandfathers is buried. This gentleman died in a mine accident when he was going into the mine after an explosion to try to save those who were trapped. The United Mine Workers paid for his burial and gravestone and built a house for his widow and her five children.

So, what have I discovered in the quick race to a ship that constitutes finding my family and when “we” first arrived? One or two trails end before that ship, but it is kind of astonishing. One of my female ancestors was born in England and moved to Jamestown early enough to give birth there in 1631. One of the men was a baronet in England and arrived in Maryland in mid-1600s. One family line ends in Virginia in the mid-1600s; I don’t know when they arrived on this continent. The fourth one arrived here from the Netherlands in 1661 and had a grandson who was a Captain in the Revolutionary War.

I have just started looking at all of the information one can find. I can already tell that we have been Presbyterians or Reformed Christians on both sides of my family almost forever. I always knew that we were Scotch-Irish, but this just confirms it. It is also weird that both sides of my family lived in similar areas in Maryland and Pennsylvania and Ohio. I guess the Scotch-Irish people tended to congregate.

A part of what I have found falls into the category, for me, of “Be careful what you wish for.” I had always been pretty confident that no one in my family ever owned another human being since I knew that we came to Illinois from Ohio and Pennsylvania. Well, I have seen one will so far where one of my female relatives in Maryland was leaving a specific enslaved person to one child and another enslaved person to another child. Ugh. I so wanted to think that my family had never been a part of the whole history of profiting from the labor of people who were not compensated for that labor, and who had no choice about their labor, and who were subjected to conditions and treatment we do not want to imagine.

Of course, the fiction that I wanted to maintain that no one in my family participated in the evil of slavery is just that—a fiction. Enslaving people from Africa is part of the sin that continues to create the world in which we live, along with the idea that it was the right of Europeans to take over a land that had a rich culture already in place in North America. Even if my people had come to the Midwest from Europe after slavery was abolished, we still would have had the advantage of being white. We could buy land wherever we wanted to do so, work in jobs we chose, go into stores without being suspected of bad intent, and on and on and on. We could also choose to continue to be Christians; it was not forced upon us by our conquerors or enslavers.

As we think about our families and about those who have gone before us, we can truly be thankful for the blessings we enjoy. We also need to remember that some of those blessings came at a cost to other people that might be hidden from us or from which we might want to turn away. How do we repair the breach created by slavery and by “manifest destiny”?

In the midst of continuing to struggle with those questions, we still have a call to share the gospel. Let us be aware as we do so of the history that goes with such sharing, and be gentle as we continue to bring hope in the name of Jesus.

I spent a couple of weeks last summer with my grandchildren as they were attending various camps. We had lots of fun (with no parents around!) They are 7, 8, 8, 10, 11, and 13. So much easier than the days that were filled with bottles and diapers and nap schedules. Now it is my husband and me who need to take naps while they are with us!

I noticed phenomena while we were in the car and while we were watching screens that are light years away from the experience that I had as a young person at their ages. As we walk toward the car, not only do they call “shotgun” since some of them can legally and safely sit in the front seat now, but they also call “DJ.” I, of course, know what a disc jockey is—although people who play songs on most radio stations now surely do not have any kind of disc in front of them. But I did not know that my grandchildren would take turns using my phone to choose the next song that we would listen to in the car. Their experience listening to music is that they control it and are in charge of it. They do not just have to be held captive by whatever the professional “DJ” plays on the radio station.

Of course, watching screens is completely different from my day. I don’t think they believe me when I say we had three stations on TV and that if you wanted to change the channel you got up from your chair to do so. They cannot fathom that. At my house, we talk to the remote control and it takes us to what we want. We record things so we can skip the commercials. We have YouTube and Netflix and Amazon Prime. But even with all of that choice, we are generally not all watching the same thing. Because, of course, each person (including the adults) also has a smaller screen in their hands. Consuming media is no longer a shared experience.

I wonder about how we can bring this kind of sensibility into worship and other aspects of our congregations’ lives. Simply putting up a screen in the sanctuary really has nothing to do with this revolution. That is what most people would call a “technical” change. It is just another way to share the content that has been created by the pastor and other worship leaders. It does not make the worshiping congregation a part of choosing the content of worship nor does it afford individuals ways to choose their own content.

An “adaptive” change would be something completely different. How can we give people agency to create part of the content of worship? How can we create spaces in which people worship alongside each other but in different ways? That is surely a challenge for the years ahead, especially as we are forced to decide what elements are essential to a Reformed way of worshiping and what elements are merely habits as we bring hope in the name of Jesus Christ.

My husband and I started ministry in two very small churches. One was in a town of 300 people. The other was an open country church. Even though we both grew up in Peoria, which may seem rural to people who live in Chicago, it is not. Neither of us had ever lived on a farm. We were not used to having to burn our garbage in a big barrel in the backyard. We had not used well water in our homes (wow, is that cold when it comes out of the faucet!) We were in a culture that was alien to us.

So, for instance, one day after worship, someone invited us to have dinner at their house the next Sunday. I asked them what time we should be there. They just looked at me like I was crazy, and then said, “Right after church.” I was still learning that dinner happens in the middle of the day, supper is the meal you eat in the evening, usually after dark; and lunch is a light snack meal whenever it is consumed. For instance, we were in a card club and about nine o’clock at night someone would say, “Well, I’ll get the lunch out on the table now.” We adjusted.

When I was a Presbytery Executive a few years later in that same presbytery, I had to help pastors new to the area learn their culture as well. If they had come from a coast, I had to tell them that they now lived in a place where a sweet, jiggly dessert is called a salad and sometimes has grated carrots and green olives in it. I had to remind them that if they were not five minutes early they were late, and if they ran 10 minutes late people would think they had been in an accident. And for rural pastors, I had to teach them about the one finger wave when you are driving your car.

Now, you may be familiar with a one finger wave as you drive around Chicago. This is not the same kind of one finger wave that you find in a rural area. Instead, the rural wave goes like this. You drive with one hand on the top part of your steering wheel to be ready to wave every few miles when another vehicle approaches you. From some distance you will be aware if you know the driver coming toward you because you know what everyone in that township drives. If they are unknown to you, as you get close to them you raise one index finger in a silent salute and nod your head slightly. You only make eye contact with the person if you actually know them. And, if you have something you need to share with them verbally, you might even pause there in the middle of the road next to their vehicle and have the conversation. I had a pastor whose call was ended partly because he refused to acknowledge other drivers. It was considered to be the height of arrogance and a sign that he could not adjust to the culture in which he now found himself.

Are you a pastor or chaplain or professor or counselor who is serving in a context that is somehow different from your culture? To what have you had to adjust? Are you a leader in a congregation that finds itself in a neighborhood that now has people who are not of the same culture as your church members? How have you adjusted your signage or your worship times or the language in which you conduct worship or any other of the dozens of ways you might make people feel welcome?

Small cultural signs can make us seem a part of the communities to which we are called or so alien that people will imagine that we cannot possibly have anything to share with them. We are not called to share the gospel only according to the way it was shared with us. We are called to look around as Paul did, notice something in the culture around us which we can use to begin the story of the gospel, and to build on it in order to bring hope in the name of Jesus Christ.

There is a new movie called “The Two Popes.” Several weeks ago, I saw an interview with the two stars of the movie. One of them looks so much like the current pope that, apparently, his own son kidded him about being the pope. Because it is a movie about religious people, the interviewer asked each of the stars about their religious backgrounds. One was a Roman Catholic as a child. The other came to faith when he became associated with a 12-Step Program. Kind of interesting information to know about these two people portraying religious leaders.

I was disturbed, though, by the way the interviewer asked them about their faith/religious lives. She asked, “Did you go to church as a child?” The assumption was, I think, that no self-respecting, intelligent adult would still go to church. Some might have it as a childhood practice along with jumping rope or playing with dolls or believing in Santa Claus. The implication was that adults leave all of those things behind.

This is not only an assumption by this particular interviewer. Many people in the 21st Century in the United States view faith as a quaint, old-fashioned and childish attribute at best and as something sinister at worst.

When I meet with sessions about the future of their congregations, I sometimes ask them what they brag about with regard to their churches when they are talking to their friends. Or, I ask them how they answer the question “What did you do this weekend?” When a co-worker or acquaintance asks that innocuous question, do they only say, “I saw a movie, I went to the grocery store, I watched the football game on TV”? Or do they also say, “I went to church.” And, are they prepared to respond if their inquisitor says, “Why?”

Even those of us who are very active in congregations have adopted the attitude that it might be embarrassing to admit that we are part of a faith community and that it is an important part of our lives. People might think we are unsophisticated, or naïve or stupid. Maybe we should just keep it to ourselves.

Scripture, of course, does not treat faith as something we grow out of as we grow up. Instead, we are encouraged to mature into our faith as we grow older. “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult I put an end to childish ways.”

How has your faith matured as you have grown into it? What is different now about your understanding of God’s grace in your life than when you first came to awareness of it? How do you act on your faith in a more mature way than you once did? How does your faith inform our call to bring hope in the name of Jesus Christ wherever we may be?

Have you ever gone to a local store that is closing because they are having a close-out sale? You know, they have hired a company to come out and hang up big signs and mark down their merchandise in order to liquidate it, and (at least it seems like this to me) sometimes bring in merchandise that did not sell someplace else?

If you were a loyal customer of that store, the owner and staff probably welcome you to that sale. You can commiserate with them about how the times are changing and that people just don’t shop locally anymore. But if you rarely or never patronized that store, don’t you feel just a little bit guilty or vulture-like if you swoop in only when the prices have been slashed? It reminds me of the scene in A Christmas Carol where people come in to steal the bed curtains from around the dead body of Ebenezer Scrooge. They did not visit him when he was alive, but now that he’s dead, there is a reason to go there.

Unfortunately, the reason this image has come to mind for me lately is that I have spent a fair number of Sundays in the last two years at the closing worship services for some of our Presbytery of Chicago congregations. In every case, the leaders of these congregations did what they knew how to do in order to keep their churches afloat. But changes in the way people interact with the world outside of their homes and their phones, aging buildings, aging congregations, and sheer exhaustion have just gotten the better of them.

A few Sundays before that closing service, there may have been as few as five people in those sanctuaries. But in every case that I have seen, the sanctuary is full on that last Sunday; and nobody traveled on an airplane to get there. They are all people who live locally and have a warm spot in their heart for that church. They want to be sure to be there on what may be their last occasion to be in the building. They want to remember their wedding or their Sunday School class or to see one last time the window dedicated to their grandparent. They thought the church would always be there and it made them feel better about the community to know that it was.

But that warm feeling and that sense of the church being an asset to the community did not influence their behavior in the last decades. They did not go to worship there. They did not contribute financially. They did not make suggestions about how the church might become more relevant in its community. Instead, they just gather at the deathbed and take away the valuable memories.

What to do, what to do? How can we help to prevent more of our congregations from becoming a stale symbol of what used to be valued? Gil Rendle, a well-known and respected church consultant, suggests asking three basic questions.

1) Who are we? That is, analyze your assets as a congregation.

Perhaps it is the location or the space that can be provided for community groups or the huge music library. Perhaps it is the cadre of retired teachers who still know how to encourage young people to learn, or the huge church kitchen and a patient person who could help provide food for hungry neighbors, or the insightful pastor who knows how to make the gospel come alive. Perhaps it is simply the deep faith of members that cannot be contained.

2) Who are our neighbors? And no one is allowed to start their answer with “I remember when…”

Do a demographic study, or hang out at the grocery store, or talk to the local elementary school principal. Who lives in your neighborhood? What do they need? What prevents them from living as freed and forgiven children of God?

3) What is God calling us to do? How do our assets match up with the needs of our neighbors?

In other words, why has God placed us where we are and helped us to survive? How will we share the gospel with our neighbors in a way that will change their lives?

When I visit with sessions of congregations that are considering if and when they should close, I notice a phenomenon that I have noticed throughout my entire ministry. I am often the youngest person in the room. I was 24 when I was ordained, so there was a good reason for me to be the youngest in the room on many occasions. But I would never have imagined that almost 40 years later I would still end up being the youngest person in the room from time to time.

So many churches get stuck with the same people being in leadership over decades and I think this is sometimes a part of what has led to the demise of the congregation. Younger people were either overtly or subtly discouraged from being in leadership. In an effort to keep things steady, to be sure they are done correctly, and (perhaps) to protect young adults from being even more over-burdened than they are, people who are my elders hung onto the reins. For some of these congregations, money is not the deciding factor in closing. Instead, the combination of dwindling resources and dwindling energy on the part of a handful of leaders leads to the inevitable decision.

I was recently at an event at the church my husband serves. It was a fund-raiser for two mission projects—a boys’ home the church started in Mombasa, Kenya after our daughter served there as a Young Adult Volunteer; and a snack pack project for a local school in Peoria. This fundraiser has been going on for about a decade. Until this year, it had been the kind of fundraiser where one is expected to dress up, bid on silent auction items, and wander around with a tiny plate of appetizers and a glass of wine. It raised money, but there were not many young people in attendance. It was too expensive for them and it did not appeal to them. It was planned by people close to my age.

This year it was completely different. It started in the late afternoon. It was a trivia game. No one had to dress up. Babysitting was provided for a small fee. The bidding on a handful of silent auction items was handled in a different way. And, most impressive was the fact that it was planned and executed by people in their thirties. I was commenting to the people whom we had invited to sit at our table (half of whom are not church members) that I thought it was great that the old guard had turned it over to the younger people and was letting them manage it.

The next day, I found out from my thirty-something daughter that it was a knock down drag out fight in the mission committee. The younger people prevailed. One of the people who had fought hardest to keep the event exactly as it had been volunteered her time for the preparations and during the event. She even got her retired physician husband to be the bartender. There were twice as many people as there had been the year before.

Will this make a lasting change in this congregation? Time will tell. But they have all seen that a new generation can have a good idea, that they can carry it out and that it might even be an improvement. Best of all, those who have to set aside their preconceived notions about how things should operate can help something new to grow without losing face.

When was the last time someone in your congregation under the age of 40 was encouraged to be completely in charge of an event? When did your educational institution last let an assistant professor make a change in an existing program and have a full professor serve in a supportive role? When did your health care institution last make a change that was suggested by someone who was in their first five years serving there?

How do we talk about race or gender in 2019/20 in the United States? There was a time when neither of these constructed ways of looking at other human beings seemed to be flexible. Race was defined by skin color—we even sang about it at church: “Jesus loves the little children, all the little children of the world. Red and yellow black and white, they are precious in his sight . . .” Newer versions take out one of the “ands” and add the word “brown.” It’s good to remind us that Jesus loves us all; the song also divides us up by skin color.

I remember watching Star Trek with my family on TV in the 1960s. You might remember that there were actors with different ethnicities who played the human roles on the show. My mom commented that she thought by the time in which Star Trek was supposed to take place that there would not be such distinct racial differences. She thought that people would marry and bear children across racial and ethnic lines in a way that was not very common in Peoria, Illinois in 1967.

Then there is the issue of gender. I was at an apple orchard very early this fall with part of my family. This is the kind of place where you can pick apples, feed the goats, ride the ponies, make yourself sick on apple cider donuts, and so on. Most of the people there were with various kinds of family groups.

There was a young person standing in front of me at the goat pen who was pretty tall. I noticed that the person was wearing a dress. As I looked up toward the person’s face I saw broad shoulders and then the face of a teen-ager with a beard. Later, I was commenting to my daughter whose doctoral dissertation was about bringing diversity into the preschool classroom about this. I noted that I thought it was a bold choice to appear in this setting so attired. I was trying to say that I thought the person was brave.

But then I tried to use pronouns. I was stumbling around and my daughter was just rolling her eyes. I was confused. Should I assign a pronoun based on the way the person’s face looked or the way the person was dressed? I guess I should have adopted the convention that is becoming more normative and called the person “they.”

I heard someone quote Dorothy Parker the other day. Her direct quote is “Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common.” It seems to me that we could apply this to many aspects of our life together.

Being a man in ministry is not normal, it’s just common. Being sighted is not normal, it’s just common. Being a native of the digital age (knowing how to use everything on your IPhone) is not normal, it’s just common. Being of a particular racial background in a particular neighborhood in Chicago is not normal, it’s just common. Having a particular body size and shape and no facial hair while wearing a dress is not normal, it’s just common.