COMMENTARY: Where the rootless find grounding and the anonymous feel known

c. 1997 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest in Winston-Salem, N.C., an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter. E-mail him at journey(at)interpath.com). UNDATED _ It took a book of poetry to answer a question that has long perplexed me: Why do some congregations thrive and others melt away? Even with the […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest in Winston-Salem, N.C., an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter. E-mail him at journey(at)interpath.com).

UNDATED _ It took a book of poetry to answer a question that has long perplexed me: Why do some congregations thrive and others melt away?


Even with the advent of the electronic church, religion in America is grounded in worshiping communities, rarely larger than a few hundred people. All want to succeed _ although success means different things to different people. Some grow, offer vital ministries, touch people’s lives, and make a difference. Many don’t succeed. They stagnate, bicker, drive newcomers away, turn inward and barely survive.

What makes the difference?

It isn’t”brand name,”for no denomination has a lock on success or is exempt from failure. It isn’t location or leadership. An unhealthy congregation can squander even the hottest suburban location and undermine a competent leader. The difference doesn’t seem to lie in theology or style.

Then a friend loaned me the poetry of Davyne Verstandig, who writes in rural Washington, Conn., and produces what my friend calls”meditations on life.” I lingered over these words:”There is a place where I am all that I have ever been …” A second poem, about selling her father’s home, includes these lines:”6 weeks ago my father died

I lost my identity as daughter

yesterday

I lost my childhood home

I looked out the window of my girlhood home …

yesterday

I lost my dreams

and sold my girlhood

I can’t go home again.” Ms. Verstandig describes a world that is gone for most people. Most of us don’t have a single childhood home that hosts our growing up, but serial houses that we occupy, then leave. We lose dreams every few years and have to start again. We try to find identity in brand-name clothing, cars and houses, but still find we live among strangers. For many _ many more than the settled realize _ there is no place where we are all that we have ever been. We are wanderers.

The behaviors that I see undermining congregations are those of wanderers _ the rootless and anonymous. By that, I don’t mean newcomers, for roots aren’t a matter of tenure but of community. I certainly don’t mean to disparage, for God’s heart has always inclined toward the wanderer and the lost.

Congregations need a capacity to serve (give self away) and to risk (give control away.) The rootless and anonymous, however, cling to shreds of power. They want to be soothed. They preserve resources against an uncertain future.

Successful congregations have learned to welcome change and to embrace pain. The rootless and anonymous fight change and deny pain, especially their own.


In a healthy congregation, people insist on appropriate boundaries and respect differences. The rootless and anonymous, on the other hand, prefer walls and conformity. They avoid intimacy. Many gossip and project unresolved personal issues onto their clergy.

All communities have conflict, but the rootless and anonymous push conflict to destructive levels. Winning the conflict (or not losing) matters too much.

Successful congregations don’t screen out the rootless and anonymous; indeed, they understand the wilderness as their mission field. But neither do they allow the rootless and anonymous to run things.

To serve, they provide a sense of community _ not self-conscious congregational traditions, but real community where the lonely can nurture meaningful bonds and get beyond the self-destructive behaviors that loneliness can produce. Hence, the presence of small sharing-and-caring groups in successful congregations.

Second, successful congregations deal with story, not intellectual debate. In a healthy congregation, preachers tend to be story-tellers, and laity work at helping each other be known.

Third, the pain, stress and anomie of modern life shape the congregation’s agenda. Successful congregations are pastoral communities, not employers of professional pastors. They name the demons _ job loss, aging parents, loneliness, incest, addictions, overextended credit, failing marriages _ and deal with them.


Finally, successful congregations choose their leaders carefully, not to conserve tradition but to nurture health. They don’t soothe the prickly by giving them power.

Religion kept literacy alive during the Dark Ages. In these rootless and anonymous times, congregations serve as communities where”all that I have ever been”is valued, where the rootless can find grounding and the anonymous feel known.

MJP END EHRICH

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