EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2021 I began a new venture writing a newspaper column titled "Finding Faith" for the Forum Communications Co. network of newspapers and websites. I was asked to contribute to the company's ongoing conversation about faith, lending a Lutheran and fairly ecumenical approach to the discussion. The column was published in several of the company's papers and websites, including The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. This column originally appeared as a "Finding Faith" column on April 19, 2024.
By The Rev. Devlyn Brooks
Sometimes, if you’re very in tune and open to it, you can actually see, feel and hear the Holy Spirit in action.
And it’s in those moments you can actually witness the thin veil between this earthly world and the heavenly kingdom parted to reveal God’s gospel in all its glory!
This week, a group of volunteers from our church met for the first time as a sort of critical response team to our most pressing question: What is to become of our church in its next chapter?
After a faithful 90-year history of building community in our farm town, our small church is like many others: Maybe not in a crisis, but definitely in need of a new mission now that the full pews, the mounded offering plates and the bustling Sunday school rooms of the past are distant in our rearview mirror.
So what now? And what to do about it?
After an intense five-month study process, facilitated by the keen eye of Pastor Melissa Pickering who oversees the Northwestern Minnesota Synod of the ELCA's "Rural Revival" initiative, and in which our council and congregation all eagerly and willingly participated, it was discovered that while for generations our church had faithfully cared for and tended to its own flock, we’d maybe not done so well with the mission of looking beyond our four walls.
I suspect other faith communities can relate.
Recognizing a need to change, our church is turning to this response team to chart a new way forward. A way that redefines what it means to be church; a way that turns our gaze and our mission outward rather than in; a way that still stays true to caring for our members but simultaneously tells our small community, “We see and care for you too.”
There is no illusion among this group of members who volunteered to meet that any of this will be easy, nor quick. After all, we still have the same number of dwindling available sets of hands, the same budget and the same busy schedules all around.
But the feeling in the room that night was electric, hopeful, and made this pastor’s heart grow!
Watching the deliberations unfold over the course of 90 minutes was most certainly a rare glimpse of the Holy Spirit in action, nudging people toward action, toward loving their neighbor, toward a more "Jesus-ly" approach to being church. And I feel privileged to have witnessed it firsthand.
What will become of our efforts to redefine what being church means? Who's to say.
But after watching the spark come back into the eyes of this group of our members in one short strategy session, combined with the infinite creativity of the Holy Spirit at work, this pastor is willing to bet that this next chapter of church for us is going to be divinely beautiful! Amen.
Devlyn Brooks is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and serves Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He blogs about faith at findingfaithin.com, and can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com.